Menopause Notations
-By Martha Serrie Benedict

• Menopause is a woman's transition from the responsibility of biology to the freedom of opportunity. It is the emotional passage from physiology to spirituality. Menopause marks the "midlife crisis" from the first half to the second. The rules of the first half need to be reworked and modified to prepare for the challenges of the second. Initially we go energetically from birth through expansive growth stages and reproduction. Life is busy, busier, and busiest. The carousel starts slowly with wonder as a child and revs up seemingly without relief. Choices and challenges of career, life partner, and family can become daunting. As women, our basic Yin nature is to be nurturers and give of ourselves to our mates, children, work, and communities.

• Just when the cycle peaks at a frenzied intensity, it's time to take a breath. Ahhhhhh. It's time for menopause. In Chinese theory, women's life happens in cycles of seven. So within the decade of forty-nine, that transition occurs. Most of us think about it with as much zeal as having a tooth pulled. We've all heard horror stories of hot flashes, night sweats, flooding menses, loss of libido, dry vaginas, headaches, memory loss, exaggerated mood swings especially depression, bone loss, muscle mass decline, and body weight increase.

• These symptoms do occur. In the past thirty years I've worked with thousands of women in an effort to influence and soften or resolve the intensity of the passage. No, I don't wave a magic wand. I do apply some of the guidelines of Chinese medical thought and a lot of wisdom acquired from the world of plants, and occasionally, I refer you to a western practitioner for chemical hormone support to compliment the work we do together.

Martha Serrie Benedict, M.A., O.M.D., Lac., received her master's degree from Stanford Medical School and was on the faculty of the University of California's medical school before she began studies in Taiwan and then mainland China. This led to her becoming the first non-Asian woman to be certified to practice Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) in California in 1976. She integrates Native American medicine, naturopathy, and homeopathy into Chinese and Western Medicine in her practice in Santa Cruz, CA.

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