Yeppers….it is the dreaded mental-pause for sure.
Finally. I say finally because my younger sisters have been complaining of this stuff for years already, so I have been anticipating for quite a while now.

Hot flashes – experiencing about a half dozen or so a day. Very brief but very warm. Face flushes a bit and I get damp on my face and neck. Nothing like what I was expecting. From listening to my mom and grandmother I was expecting to SUFFER, BABY but so far it’s not really that bad. I fervently hope though, that it gets no worse.

In a way, I’ve actually been feeling better since the hot flashes began. All summer I was kinda in a mental fog. Finding it hard to stay focused. A real lack of physical and mental energy. Lately though (the last couple of weeks, same time frame as the hot flashes), my energy levels have been quite good and I am mentally more alert and my focus is coming back.

This just lends more credence to my little pet hypothesis that menopause is a kind of reverse puberty with all the same horrors and hopefully, joys.

Think about it:

At the beginning of a female’s fertility cycle, she resents the changes her body is going through, her emotions go haywire, and she thinks she is losing her mind.

Then she settles into her new “normal”, and begins to actually enjoy this phase of her life.

Then she gets pregnant, resents the changes her body is going through, her emotions go haywire, and she thinks she is losing her mind.

At the end of her cycle, she once more resents the changes her body is going through, her emotions go haywire, and she thinks she is losing her mind, YET AGAIN.

Which means I should, at the end of this, come into a new “normal” – which I hope, pray, and suspect is going to be similar to the carefree, careless joys of pre-adolescent girlhood when you really didn’t care at all about boys or what they or anybody else thought or expected of you, and you just went out and had lots of fun exploring the world!