This is a blog about our plan to transition from being a couple raising children and owning a home to a couple sailing around the world on a yet-to-be-determined boat. As we reflected on our Who Are We page, we are firmly in the middle of life. This has its pleasures, more free time being the biggest one. But this can be a dark time for women, a dark and dreadful time. This can be a time filled with horror and fear, and not just because Halloween is closing in on us. What, you may be asking as you shake in your shoes, could be causing this otherwise sensible and even-tempered woman to be filled with horror and darkness? Is it criminal activity in her neighborhood? No, sweet readers. It is not. It is criminal activity in my body. This criminal is known by the sobriquet ‘The Menopause.’
‘The Menopause’, as we call it in our house, sucks. I am not making this up. No one could possibly make up the cosmic joke that is menopause. I am the first woman in my family to go through ‘natural’ menopause. While the the other women in my family have had their lady parts taken out, I still have mine, not that they are doing much for me. Therefore I had no idea what to expect. I avoided reading about it because on some level I must have known it was going to be filled with expletive-type experiences.
Craziness. It’s not just for PMS anymore.
What, you might be asking yourself, does The Menopause have to do with sailing? It has absolutely everything to do with it, even down to the fact that after menopause there is no need to take up three square feet of space storing those unmentionable feminine hygiene products. So far this is the most positive result I’ve experienced. Consider the following chart of accurate data:
What is needed in order to be an effective sailor: (a knowledge of the boat and sailing basics is assumed)
- Use of language
- Memory
- Emotional strength and containment
- Muscles
- Body visibility, ie the ability to be seen by others
- Bladder strength
What The Menopause will take from you without your permission:
- Use of language
- Memory
- Emotional strength and containment
- Muscles
- Body visibility, ie the ability to be seen by others
- Bladder strength
Are you seeing an overlap here, a pattern? Do we need to break out the Venn Diagrams?
Lest you forget what you learned in Algebra I. In this case, imagine one circle directly over the other circle. That’s right, you’re catching on! It would be just one huge circle with a thick edge. If you are a math type, then in my case A=B.
I started to do one massive post on this topic and then realized that I had way too much material. Really, The Menopause offers so many rich opportunities to rant, whine, and stomp my feet in frustration that there is simply no way to say it all in one post. So there will be multiple posts fleshing out some of the subjects so accurately stated in my data charts above. It may be that I will come up with more. I can’t remember everything just now. Or ever.
Not much has been written on the interweb about the effects of menopause on sailing and/or vice versa. Doing the ‘google’ on those two topic words produces an irritating number of websites devoted to ‘sailing through menopause’. As if. They have nothing to do with boats and are useless to me. Suzanne Giesemann, Navy Commander, World Sailor, and professional Medium/Psychic, wrote a
blog post about her ennui due to Menopause Mood Disorder™ back in 2009. I felt I’d found my kindred spirit! But then she followed up in the comments section that she found a little supplement that made it all better. Oh, come on! Really, Suzanne? I mean, you are one of my personal heroines! I’ve read all your books on sailing! Hell, I OWN your books! Your name is the SAME as my middle name! Et tu? I was crushed with disappointment.
I feel like The Menopause is a good topic for this blog on occasion. Think about it. Many of the women who are out there cruising around are middle aged women. They’re either looking forward to menopause, are in the middle of it, or have already said goodbye to it. I wonder how some of them are faring? (And their partners, too.) If I had a research grant, I would perhaps do some study of the effects of the sailing/cruising lifestyle on the sufferings of menopause. My hypothesis? Cruising might make a lot of it better. On the other hand, having a hot flash down in the tropics cannot be anything but hell on earth.
Between this series, the product reviews which are still in the works, and the series on cheap tricks, I should so busy in the coming weeks I might forget to apply my hormone creams. Be warned. We try to keep this blog ‘family friendly’, light and fluffy like marshmallow cream, but emotions run high on this topic and you’ll note number 3 above regarding emotional containment. So if you are the sensitive type, don’t say I didn’t warn you. I may have to break out choice expletives to get my points across as sometimes those are the only words that manage to surface through my menopause fog. I’ll try to remember to disguise them with the use of ***, but no promises.
*Your experience may differ, and if it does, consider yourself lucky.
