The Wisdom of Menopause

by Christiane Northrup

  Unfortunately, this sort of martyrdom had already claimed Sharon’s mother, who was only sixty-eight when she died of a heart attack. If Sharon wanted to escape the same fate as her mother, she was going to have to revise her beliefs and behaviors about sacrifice and caregiving. She would have to ask herself, “Am I willing to exercise, meditate, get more sleep, and [fill in the blank] to add more quality and years to my life, or do I prefer to be dead for twenty-four hours a day—and then be unable to help anyone?”

  Changing this kind of pattern is rarely easy, however, because when a caregiver like Sharon finally takes a stand, a kind of emotional domino effect gets put into action. When I saw Sharon several months later, she had spoken with her brothers about chipping in toward their father’s care. One was so angry with her, he didn’t speak to her for a month. But another was a bit more understanding. Eventually, a split developed in the family over the stand she took. Her brothers eventually assumed about 40 percent of their father’s care, while he was forced to do more for himself. (Imagine that!) Sharon has lost some weight as well as lowered her blood pressure. Though she feels bad about the rift she “caused” in her family, she is encouraged by the positive changes that have taken place in her health. She knows that she is on the right track and that she is changing her legacy of self-sacrifice and martyrdom.

  Breaking the Chain of Self-Sacrifice

  Every one of us makes choices every day. For every choice we make, there will be consequences. The more honest we are with ourselves about the motivation that drives our choices, the healthier we will be. This is as true for caregiving as it is for any other area of our lives, perhaps even more so. The following steps are designed to help you consciously care for yourself while caring for others if and when the need arises.

  STEP ONE: Acknowledge that women have inherited a cultural and personal legacy of self-sacrifice that has been passed down to us for generations. If you routinely sacrifice yourself for others, relax. You’re normal. We’ve been socialized to value our contribution to our family or social group—our social worth—more than we value ourselves and our relationship with our soul. For at least the past five thousand years, a woman’s worth has been largely determined by how well and how much she serves those who have more power and clout than she has. If you doubt this, remember that American women won the right to vote only in 1920, not even a hundred years ago. Before that, women’s opinions and lives didn’t even receive official recognition in the government. We haven’t had much time in which to shed the automatic caretaking roles that have won us so much praise and support for millennia, let alone replace them with new beliefs and behaviors associated with taking our lives as seriously as we take those of others, particularly men. Despite this legacy, thousands of women all over the world are now taking themselves and their own fulfillment seriously. We are in the midst of a very fast-moving—and often delightful—evolution in this area!

  STEP TWO: Learn the difference between care and overcare. True care of others, from a place of unconditional love, enhances our health, in part because it’s associated with oxytocin, the bonding hormone. That’s one reason why volunteering and community service feel good and are associated with improved health. Overcare and burnout result from not including ourselves on the list of people who require care. Burnout destroys our health and runs our batteries down. Overcare is often motivated by guilt and unfinished business, for which we hope to somehow compensate through the caregiving role. The way to tell the difference between the two is to be aware of how caring for another makes you feel. You must also be 100 percent honest about what you’re getting out of excessive caregiving.

  One of my friends told me, “When I do things to make my family happy, I feel good and loved. The more I do, like baking, cooking, and keeping the house picked up, the more compliments I get. Though this can be exhausting, and though I keep saying that I need to get a life for myself other than work and cleaning up after everyone, I’m secretly afraid that if I take a stand and delegate responsibility to other family members for some of the caregiving work, they will resent me and not love me as much. So the payoff of doing it all myself is that I get my parents’ love and my husband’s love.” When I hear something like this, I have to wonder whether it really is pleasure that motivates the caregiving, as she believes, or fear. (A couple of years ago, I seriously contemplated not putting up a Christmas tree—then relented at the last minute. I didn’t really want one, but I thought my daughters would enjoy it when they were home. Turns out, they didn’t care one way or another. I haven’t felt the need to have one since but would happily reinstate this tradition the minute one or the other daughter decides that she’d like to assist with the setup, decoration, and dismantling of the tree. This was a lesson for me in examining my own caring versus overcaring behavior.)

  Each of us needs to examine what we get from martyring ourselves. One of my patients, a woman whose mother was physically and verbally abusive, learned early on that the only way to avoid being hit was to make all the meals, scrub the floors, and clean the rest of the house. To this day whenever she meets new people, she feels compelled to cook, clean, and bring them gifts to earn their love. She recently told me that she’d had the following insight: “If you act like a saint, no one ever confronts you—no one beats up on you. You become a valued part of every group you’re in.”

  Sainthood of this kind seems mainly an avoidance strategy. On the other hand, the desire to nurture others, including plants and animals, is a positive emotion that is built right into the biological programming of most women (and many men as well). Studies have shown, for instance, that when volunteers in nursing homes are taught how to give massages to the residents, the health of the volunteers is enhanced as well as that of the recipients. Who hasn’t enjoyed the satisfaction gained from making a special school lunch that surprises and delights a child, or helping out a sick friend who needs a meal or someone to watch her children?

  It feels good deep inside me to bring comfort to those who are suffering. In fact, my entire career is based on helping others feel better. Oftentimes, as I give health assistance to someone, I feel as though I’m in touch with a power that is greater than me but moves through me, helping me as it helps the other person. But many women, including myself, have learned over the years, sometimes through the wisdom of personal illness, that we cannot be available to another in a healthy way unless we’re also getting our own needs met. And those needs must include time for pleasurable activities such as eating well and getting enough sleep.

  STEP THREE: Learn the health benefits of benign self-interest. Here’s a basic scientific truth: our health is best served by participating in those activities that are in our own highest and best interests and that bring us the most pleasure. This is not selfish. It is the very basis for a healthy life. There is not a single cell in our bodies that flourishes through sacrificing its own health for the health of the surrounding cells. It simply doesn’t make sense. Instead, cells communicate with one another constantly. The health of one affects the health of them all. The more fully you are participating in the work and activities that brings you the most joy, the healthier you and your entire group become.

  This lesson was brought home to me very clearly a couple of years ago when my mother was honored along with a number of other women for being a distinguished citizen of New York State. The entire family gathered in the state capital, Albany, for the ceremony. All of the honorees had provided their communities with a huge amount of service in the areas of home health care, breast cancer advocacy, and so on. And I could tell that my mother was feeling nervous about how her contribution would compare with those of the other women. Although she had served as mayor of her town for two terms, she had also completed the Appalachian Trail after the age of sixty and climbed the hundred highest peaks in New England, many of them on unmarked trails. She did this solely for her own pleasure. As it turns out, her contribution provided such inspiration for everyone in the room abo
ut what’s possible as we get older that there was no question about its value to the community!

  STEP FOUR: Understand that caring for parents or aging relatives inevitably brings up unfinished business from our family past. Claris, one of my menopausal patients whose diabetes was particularly difficult to bring under control while she was tending her dying father, told me that the very thought of not caring for her father, who had cancer, caused her to feel overcome with guilt. She said, “Daddy didn’t want any strangers in the house, so I didn’t feel as though I could hire a nurse or home health aide even though the money was available. To tell you the truth, his insistence that I be the only one to help him made me feel special.” When Claris entered therapy after her father’s death, she realized that she had never felt her father valued her as much as her brothers, so she tried to prove her worth through caregiving, something she did better than her brothers. She came to see that being constantly available for her father, even though other choices were available, was a way of trying to win the love and approval she had never felt from him in childhood. For some women, caring for a dying parent is an enormously fulfilling and satisfying experience. On the other hand, for those who have a particularly self-centered parent, the experience of caregiving can be draining and is a health risk. Don’t attempt to do this without support.

  STEP FIVE: Learn to delegate and ask for help. Caregiving at midlife is yet another opportunity to learn how to establish healthy boundaries, set limits, and get clear about the ways that other family members can assume some of the burden or pay for your help. If your husband isn’t working or is working fewer hours than you are, for example, there’s no reason why he can’t pitch in. (You will have to learn the skill of asking for this help without anger and resentment in order to get what you want. And to do that, you first have to believe that you deserve and are worthy of help. You are!)

  Many women are not in a financial position to hire outside help to provide care for family members. But in almost every case there is a caregiving solution that needn’t fall squarely on only one woman’s shoulders. It’s time that all men learned the basics of cooking and cleaning. Or, if no one else in the family can or will pitch in, another tactic would be to figure out what your caretaking time is worth, by finding out what it would cost to hire someone to come in and do the work you are doing. Then you could ask your brothers or other family members to pay you directly so that you can cut back on the hours you work elsewhere. That way you would have more time to replenish yourself each day, including time to exercise and eat well. It’s no secret that the work of caregiving is grossly undervalued and under-compensated all over the planet. So please understand that including self-care in your caregiving is a radical and courageous act of power.

  Like Sharon, you will no doubt have to recover from the family programming that leads you to believe that your role as a woman must include self-sacrifice and that to do anything less is to be selfish—something women are so afraid of being called. Sharon had to let her father know that he needed to learn how to receive care from someone other than her. And her father also needed to undo a lifetime of conditioning telling him that all his household tasks would automatically be taken care of. It is well documented that older people, including men, can learn and grow until the end of their lives. There’s no reason a man can’t learn how to boil an egg, broil a piece of chicken, or stick a load of clothes in a washing machine! Parents who truly love us want what is best for us, even if that means making some adjustments in their behavior and expectations.

  STEP SIX: Plan ahead. Don’t wait until a parent or relative is in need of care before discussing a potential plan with your siblings. That way you can avoid the emergency caregiving that seemingly “just happens” to us but in reality was set in motion by our beliefs and choices years before. One of my friends, an eldest daughter who has just turned forty and has no children, has already made it clear to her younger sister, who lives in the same town as their mother, that she has no intention of allowing the mother, a very dependent woman, to come live with her should something happen to their father. My friend is not being selfish. She’s being realistic. She loves her mother but does not intend to sacrifice her life and career for her. Her unblinking approach concerning her mother’s possible future care alerts other family members that they can’t automatically rely on her to house her mother in the future should the need arise. This breaks the chain of eldest-daughter sacrifice before it even gets welded in the first place.

  STEP SEVEN: Learn how to say no. The art of saying no with grace and ease is one of the most important skills you can ever develop. The beauty of midlife is that you’ve now paid your dues and have had enough life experience to know what is likely to drain you and what will replenish you. In her groundbreaking book The Art of Extreme Self-Care (Hay House, 2009), my colleague Cheryl Richardson writes, “Funny, but after years of practicing Extreme Self-Care, I’ve realized something ironic: if you want to live an authentic, meaningful life, you need to master the art of disappointing and upsetting others, hurting feelings, and living with the reality that some people just won’t like you. It may not be easy, but it’s essential if you want your life to reflect your deepest desires, values, and needs.”3 I couldn’t agree more. Which is why I loved the chapter in her book entitled “Let Me Disappoint You”!

  HITTING PAY DIRT: GETTING CLEAR ABOUT

  MONEY AT MIDLIFE

  Whatever the changes that precipitate a woman’s empty-nest experience, the only path that will allow the full expression of her creative potential in the second half of her life is the path that establishes her true independence, both financially and emotionally. Even if she currently has a husband who supports her or money coming in from her family, it’s important for her to know that if the need arose, she could manage alone. Inability to support themselves financially is the number-one reason why women stay in less-than-ideal relationships in which they are not treated as autonomous individuals with equal decision-making power. Being able to care for ourselves financially opens up a whole new world of pleasurable possibilities.

  Though I do not claim to be a financial expert, I do know this: how, what, where, when, and on whom a woman spends money, and where she gets that money, tells you more about her true values, beliefs, and priorities than any other aspect of her life. Our behavior around making, spending, and saving money lays bare our core beliefs about ourselves and our worth in the world, pure and simple.

  The dynamics of money also hold up a mirror to our relationships, telling us how each partner’s contribution is valued and whether we are in a truly co-creative partnership. That’s why discussing who pays for what and who does what tasks in a relationship is such a loaded and often unpleasant topic.

  Cultural Ambivalence About Women and Money

  Even though many women now make more money than their mates, the data suggest that we are still not comfortable, as individuals or as a culture, with that pattern. Consider the following research: although a study from the University of Missouri–St. Louis showed that women now outearn their husbands in one out of five marriages, only 56 percent of men surveyed in the Virginia Slims Opinion Poll 2000 said that it would be acceptable for their spouses to be the primary wage earners. Many women agree with this. In the same poll, only 61 percent of women felt that it would be acceptable for them to be the primary wage earners.

  When a woman does earn more than her husband, it doesn’t wipe out the power differential. If anything, it seems to exacerbate it, due to the ambivalence couples feel about their status reversal. Julie Brines, a sociologist at the University of Washington who studies status-reversal couples, found, for example, that the more women contribute to the family account, the less likely their husbands are to contribute to the housework. In fact, when women made all the money while their husbands stayed home, these men actually did less housework per week than men who worked part-time outside the home!4 Brines also found that in status-reversal marriages, women cede much of
the decision-making power to their spouses. This is the opposite of what happens in traditional marriages, where the husband, who brings home the bacon, tends to call the shots. In other words, when women are the major wage earners, there’s not a straightforward relationship between income and power. Instead, there’s an effort to achieve balance, even though this so-called balance is anything but.

  The implications of this research are clear: no matter how much of the financial burden we shoulder, we still feel responsible for keeping our husbands happy, for making them feel good about themselves—especially if they’re not making as much money as we are.

  The sad truth is that many of us are still unsure of our worth as women in relationship to men—which is perfectly understandable given our history. So we do even more than our share to keep the men in our lives happy, lest they leave us for someone who appreciates them more than we do. Secretly we’re afraid that if we demand too much, we’ll be left alone. We don’t realize how much inner power we have to create the life of our dreams because we’ve been talked out of it!

  And then there’s that other deeply feminine desire: we want to be cherished and taken care of. We keep hoping (sometimes despite ample evidence to the contrary) that to have a husband means that we will be taken care of. I grew up loving Tarzan movies. Recently I watched the classic Tarzan and His Mate, which I hadn’t seen in years. This time I saw it through a new lens. The programming about gender roles was very clear: Jane provided the playfulness and the sex, while Tarzan protected Jane by fighting off wild things and doing a lot of heavy lifting to make sure she had a secure, comfortable home. Very compelling. Very appealing. And like most women, I want to get in on the good parts of this but without having to sacrifice myself to do so. I have finally figured out how to do this, but I first had to reprogram my subconscious beliefs and behaviors around relationships. This took several years, and I’m still learning daily.