The Wisdom of Being Itchy

One of the bazillion symptoms of menopause is itchiness. A minor one, usually, compared to major league problems like hot flashes, terrible mood swings, and dried up mucous membranes, it’s a bit like Chinese water torture – a scratch here, a fidget there, furious scraping with the fingernails at 3 a.m. It starts small and then spreads, until you are clawing at your body as if being invaded by a nest of fire ants. Even just typing this paragraph, I have scritched and scratched in about twenty places.

Symbolist that I am, I like to think of this menopausal itch as a snake-like shedding of the skin. Remember what our mothers used to call growing pains? It seemed dismissive, but when you think about it, kids grow like corn stalks. And, farmers say, if you’re quiet enough, corn grows so fast you can hear it. If a time-lapse camera were focused on a person standing perfectly still throughout his or her lifetime, I have no doubt we’d witness the same kind of twists, turns, and re-shapings as a seedling breaking ground and reaching for the sun. Growing up – and then growing back down with age – endlessly stretches and reforms us, inside and out.

It’s no secret that menopause is a time of great “homecoming” for many women; maybe itchiness is also a restlessness for change and authenticity. Today, on the last day of this month’s period, everything is getting under my skin. My desk space, where I spend ten hours or more a day, is cramped and doesn’t work; some of my relationships are bothering me; our apartment feels smaller and less appropriate every day; and I have no reliable or suitable place to do my artwork. You could chalk up this irritability to shifting hormones, but as Dr. Christiane Northrup points out, symptoms that arise during PMS and menopause are also truth tellers in women’s lives, if only we’d learn to listen. It’s during these times brain chemistry shifts us to be more inwardly focused, more intuitive, and less interested in meeting the needs of others.

Life is beginning to feel too small again. I say again, remembering that the last manifestation of this urge resulted in a purging of belongings, jobs and residence, and a nomadic trip around California with my bewildered but loyal husband in tow. I don’t think we’re in for anything quite so drastic this time, but I do sense changes are in the wind. (Aren’t they always?) The key is to make them consciously, to be discerning about the pros, cons and reasons for each choice.

I don’t know exactly what is being called for other than making room for what I want, which is emerging with rather slow but exciting clarity. There is no way to hurry this process; it’s been a lifetime in the making and now is not the time to be impatient. (Impatience is what the last 49 years were about.) What's essential is that I watch carefully and, like this passage from Zorba the Greek, let nature do her thing.

"I remember one morning when I discovered a cocoon in the back of a tree just as a butterfly was making a hole in its case and preparing to come out. I waited awhile, but it was too long appearing and I was impatient. I bent over it and breathed on it to warm it. I warmed it as quickly as I could and the miracle began to happen before my eyes, faster than life. The case opened; the butterfly started slowly crawling out, and I shall never forget my horror when I saw how its wings were folded back and crumpled; the wretched butterfly tried with its whole trembling body to unfold them. Bending over it, I tried to help it with my breath, in vain. It needed to be hatched out patiently and the unfolding of the wings should be a gradual process in the sun. Now it was too late. My breath had forced the butterfly to appear all crumpled, before its time. It struggled desperately and, a few seconds later, died in the palm of my hand.

That little body is, I do believe, the greatest weight I have on my conscience. For I realize today that it is a mortal sin to violate the great laws of nature. We should not hurry, we should not be impatient, but we should confidently obey the external rhythm."