Menopause versus Puberty, God help us!

Yep, I am a mother of a 14 year old daughter and am 48 myself. Can I tell you, the hormones are active in our house!! It's just sad that they can't be complimentary to each other. In a perfect world, when one of us has fangs the other could be supportive and nurturing. Instead we're usually on the same page at the same time. The good news is that we are honest about it and either retreat to opposite locations in the house to stay out of each other's way or at least own the bitch in us and apologize to each other when the aggression may be unwarranted.

My daughter calls the spontaneous yelling "Tweaking". I try not to do it too often. When I feel the crazy woman rearing her ugly head I try to go behind closed doors. Once it passes I am able to laugh it off as it is the most absurd thing. Yelling because the dishwasher hasn't been emptied or the mail hasn't been gotten from the mailbox. I tell myself it's not the end of the world and it only makes me look like a lunatic. Besides, I'm the adult. It's a right of passage for my teenager to say and do stupid things. After all, she's only 14!

To think, one day she and I will share a cup of coffee or a glass of wine and laugh about how crazy we were with conversations that will start with "remember when..." In the meantime, God help us :).

It's always something...

Well this week menopause has been taking it's toll on me. My physical, mental and emotional stability has been tested. I take a medication that is supposed to reduce the night sweats associated with our dear "late in life friend". Well it turns out that one of the side affects of the medication is light headedness and headaches. Not that it is supposed to help the hot flashes but they seem to have increased recently. So needless to say, I am what the kids call "a hot mess", literally! So I made the decision yesterday to take things into my own hands. I called my doc and advised her that I had had enough of the pills and I wanted off. Fortunately (for the sake of my man and my daughter) I had the good sense to know gradual reduction was the recommended method for withdrawl. Needless to say, otherwise they would have had to cage me until I returned to a civil state.

All that said, if I begin to cry at cereal commercials, pictures of babies, and sappy love songs on the radio over the next three weeks, I have an excuse...what's yours? :)

Inagural Posting for My Sisters

I am a relationship and life coach specializing in guiding female baby-boomers through life's transitions. You might ask what I mean by "life's transitions"? Well, it's true, we do get better with time as fine wines do but sometimes the journey can be taxing for some. Menopause and the emotional and physical ups and downs alone can make most of us think we're loosing our minds (as well as those close to us). Add in the possibility of starting over in relationships due to death or divorce after the age of 40. Did you wake up today wondering "what next". Am I really where and who I want to be or is it time to reinvent myself to find true happiness in my own skin. If your content with all of the above (minus the menopause of course, no one is content with that) but find the aging process is putting a damper on your sexual libido, this alone can be frustrating.

In this blog, I plan to address these issues and more. I hope that others will post their experiences as well. It always helps to know you're not going through transition in a vacuum. You're not loosing your mind; and if you are, there are a lot of us who are insane as well and misery certainly loves company.

I know first hand. I am a 48 year old women raising a teenage child as a single parent after loosing my husband to a massive heart attack 5 years ago. I had been an executive with a corporation for 9 years until a year ago when I was laid off without any advance warning. I opened my own business 2 years ago which focuses on relationship strengthening and intimacy enhancing products and I coach as well (as noted in the opening statement). I have found peace in my transition and now I want to help others do the same. Locally I started a MeetUp group for Women in Transition and enjoy the fellowship gotten from those gatherings. Hopefully some of my friends from there will add to my blog as time goes on. We hope to be able to laugh and cry together and then celebrate the fantastic women we have become and nurture those who will come on this journey behind us.

So now, that being being said, tell me what's on your mind!