A Traveler’s Guide to Menopause
Burn Your Maps. Make Your Own.
I was several hours into a flight to the US from the UK. I was leaving a man who had once been my husband, whose behaviors had gone from erratic to dangerous in the space of three years. Lockdown convinced me to leave him for good.
On that plane in June of 2021, I floated between lives. Between an ending and a beginning. The life I would be entering in the matter of several hours was an uncertain one. I’d have to start all over again.
But I knew that the uncertainty and difficulty of the unknown life ahead of me was better, safer than the life I’d just left. I couldn’t go backwards.
Somewhere between the life I’d left and the life I was going to, I saw Greenland through the small, oval-ish plane window. Snow-covered peaks plunged into blue green sockets of cold, valleys of shadow. And far out, in the deep end of the sky, was the curved line beyond which the world becomes a planet. An ending and a beginning.
I thought, My God. I’ve left him. I’ve really left him.
A feeling lodged itself in the middle of my chest, one I’d never felt before. The only word I have for it is awe.
