Power Surge

"I'm lying on the floor half the day," my friend is telling me. "The hot flashes are so strong I feel like I'm going to faint." Renee is one of many women I've spoken to whose perimenopausal symptoms are intense enough to alter her daily functioning. I feel an instant bond with her as we share stories of our difficult passage. Popular wisdom says that if your mother had an easy time of it, you probably will too. But Renee is one of several women I know who questions the popular wisdom - because her mom, like mine, reported few if any symptoms.

Are our mothers' menopause memories just a form of amnesia, an example of how people tend to remember the good and sweep the unpleasant under the rug? Or do they indicate a cultural change that reflects the navel gazing qualities of younger age groups compared to the outward-looking views of my parents' generation?

It could be some of each. Let's throw a third possibility into the mix: environmental contaminants, which have permanently invaded the bodies of each and every one of us. Chemicals from plastics, pesticides and other man-made toxins act as endocrine disruptors - which, say researchers, can mimic or block hormones and disrupt normal functions. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, "This disruption can happen through altering normal hormone levels, halting or stimulating the production of hormones, or changing the way hormones travel through the body, thus affecting the functions that these hormones control." Debate continues on the human effects, but low birth rates, birth defects and failure of nesting behavior in the animal world can be traced to known extreme exposure to endocrine disruptors.

Since the female body is already in hormonal chaos around menopause, it's certainly possible that the build-up of environmental factors since our mothers' time could compound symptoms in the more hormonally-sensitive of younger generations.

Last, we can't forget that the world is changing faster than we are, demanding more from us than seems humanly possible. It's been pointed out that humans have not evolved to cope with the kind of chronic low-to-moderate stress that modern life imposes on us. Despair, depression and anxiety about world events and personal issues can take a toll on our immune systems.

Though most people carry on in public as though nothing is wrong, more and more of us are sharing stories about just how difficult it is to live in the world we've created. Technology brings evidence of our short-sightedness to our living rooms every minute of every day. Our parents were worried about their survival during the Great Depression. Many of us are doing that too, only now it's coupled with ongoing distress about carcinogens, rising oceans, failing pollination due to bee decline, soil depletion, killer viruses, genetically altered and hormonally treated food, and so on. Not to mention more immediate stressors such as joblessness, homelessness, lack of education and global economic crises (to name just a few).

So when a 50-something woman says she feels like lying down half the day, perhaps menopause isn't entirely to blame. I feel a fatigue and an anxiety that may or may not have affected my mother, who was perhaps too busy raising four children to notice, too busy willingly taking on a role that I rejected (motherhood). It was still the 70s, after all, and cultural consciousness about female sexuality (and equality) was young. There were lots of things we didn't talk about then, and the types of internal conversations many of us have now were probably too luxurious for the women of her day.

There is something to be said for roles, expectations and rituals, not that I'm advocating a return to any particular "good old days." But today's lack of such markers and civilities leaves us with little to hold onto, and few indications of progress. If we can no longer find meaning and purpose within our homes, our jobs, and our communities, the world begins to look like a pretty scary place. Circa, say, 2009.

Perhaps we women, with our extra sensitivities, are canaries in the coal mine, indicators of the health and balance of the planet. It's not such a far fetched idea; to bring the world into equilibrium many have called for the return of the feminine principle. I say, give Mother Earth a big estrogen patch and let's get the show on the road.