Perhaps I’m paying for my good luck. My uterus, my hormones, my entire feminine machine has been mostly happily trouble-free and has shouldered my life’s burden admirably, all of my life. I had low-key, regular periods with nary a cramp, year after year after year, never really understanding the whole PMS thing. Insomnia was also a mystery to me — if you’re tired, you sleep, my naïve little pre-peri brain reasoned. I have four children, all the results of blessedly easy, healthy pregnancies and smooth drama-free births. I nursed everyone with little trouble, had a child perched on a cocked hip for 10 years or more, shared my bed with tiny people for at least as long, and my body went along with all of it like Shel Silverstein’s ‘Giving Tree’. I asked, they asked, it gave.

And gave.

And so, maybe it’s time to pay up for all that giving, all that taking, all that abuse. Not to make it too dramatic, it was wonderful. But it was hard. Sometimes it was really hard. And I didn’t listen to the body’s warnings. I overdid the wrong things and under-did the right ones. I abused myself in the timeworn ways of all busy women forever — I didn’t sleep enough, didn’t nurture my brain or psyche, didn’t heed the messages from my own needy self, all in the service of everyone else’s need. Sound familiar?

I was fairly high-functioning for a long time, until the magic of mid-life chemistry said, “Would you just sit down and shut up for awhile!”

And when I didn’t, the brilliant, tired, overused body knocked me down. Perhaps the body knows more than the mind, if we would just listen. It’s hard to hear, though, in a culture that says, “get up, shut up, keep up, always up up up!”

Women going through ‘the change’ (don’t you just love euphemisms?) these days are often ignored, dismissed and otherwise marginalized by friends, partners and doctors, but our experience is charmed compared to that of our foremothers.

Consider — the word ‘hysteria’ comes from hystera, meaning womb; from the Greek notion that hysteria was peculiar to women and caused by disturbances of the uterus. Acclaimed Victorian physician Edward Tilt called the womb “the keystone of mental pathology” — this from the go-to guy for many women suffering gynecological issues in his day. Talk about needing a second opinion.

Women were subjected to horrifying, unnecessary surgeries, all manner of experimental chemical and herbal potions and the lock-up. It was remarked by prominent Victorian physician Lawson Tait (who considered the asylum one of the best treatments for menopause) that there was a rampant tendency toward alcohol abuse in menopausal women.

Really? The ladies want a drink?! YOU THINK?!

To quote the ever brilliant, always relevant Tom Waits,

There’s nothing wrong with a lady drinking alone in her room.*

If you are a woman, anywhere in the rough middle of your life (ladies, that starts in the 30's), listen to me.

Sit down. Shut up. Say no. Breathe. Take walks. Be alone, a lot. Eat well. Drink cautiously. Get massages. Take hot baths. Write or sing or paint or build. Create. Sleep. Rage and cry and purge. Honor you.

Gentle yourself along as you plod toward your ‘passage’ (sorry for the euphemistic bullshit — we need new language). It’s coming and, though you may be lucky or forgetful or even a liar, you will face something. Perhaps it will be a hot day and an achy thumb. But it could be 35 earth-shattering symptoms for 8 years. You won’t know until you get there. Forewarned is forearmed.

And so, I will start the counting again, watching the numbers pile up slowly, knowing that they lie but tentatively embracing the false hope, the small comfort. Waiting for the tide to turn and sweep me ragged into my next act.

I need a drink.