Power of language on your brain
Language is powerful. The words we use and assign meaning to help shape the stories our brain tells us. There’s that powerful moment when someone tells you or you read something that encapsulates an experience you’ve been grappling with. This often happens when I offer the label of “grief” to what they are feeling - be it career grief or climate grief or another kind of disenfranchised grief. I see then that AHHA moment of, “Yes, that’s it!”
Language can also shape how we come to think of ourselves and our life’s transitions. As I start to wrap up this email series on menopausal transitions, I’d like to know what words you associate with the time of life called menopause.
All stories start with words. Words matter. The term menopause does not exist across all cultures and languages. In Dutch and Norwegian the word is overgang - meaning the place where one crosses - a transition. Moving to Norway, anyone? [Raises my hand.] In Japanese, the word is konenki - the renewal years - ko for renewal, nen for year(s) and ki for season or energy. In Ojibway and some other First Nations, there is no word that translates to menopause, at least in current memory.
Our current word of menopause - la ménèspaisie - originated in an 1812 dissertation by a doctor named De Gardanne. Up until that point there were many different words used to describe this time. Perhaps we shouldn’t have taken (and still continue to use) a word selected from a man with advice on leeches for the vulva area. [gasp]
(I learned these nuggets of history in reading The Menopause Manifesto by Jen Gunter.)
One key thing I’ve learned is that the transitional stages related to menopause is a time when your brain is literally rewiring. You know when else your brain rewires? During experiences of grief. During puberty and pregnancy. The gift in this cognitive restructuring is that previous stories you lived by can shift, if you let them. You can use this time to restore regenerative connections and set new priorities. You can tune more into what you care about and revise your life’s purpose and work.
Maybe you are surrounded by positive, empowering stories about transition times as transformative. Or maybe you’ve no stories of your own that you want to hold to. My mother, who was a trained and practicing OB/GYN nurse, told me she remembered nothing about her menopause. I had nothing to hold onto beyond social messaging of doom and gloom. I had never heard anyone say anything positive about menopause until I met Dr. Sharon Blackie, an Irish psychologist, when she was rewriting the stories around our second half of life which would become the book Hagitude.
The menopause transition time is a rebirth. Think of it as puberty in reverse. The difference being you’re an adult now and you’re in control of your story and journey.
How would you rewrite your own story?
What was something powerful about puberty or some other major life transition?
What stereotypes are you ready to shed?
What does that teach you about how you might want to design a new, empowering story about the menopause transition?