EP 160: Second Spring – Discernment, Intuition, and Healing During Perimenopause and Menopause with Kate Codrington

In this episode, Kimberly and Kate discuss navigating the physical, spiritual, and lifestyle changes of perimenopause, menopause, and postmenopause. They discuss the negative associations with perimenopause and menopause based on culture that condition us to view of these life cycles unfavorably. They also discuss parenting during these stages, tending to symptoms with curiosity and kindness, and using the pulls inward to bloom into seasons of second springs and second summers of life. Perimenopause and menopause can be powerful times of tending to ourselves more kindly, reintegrating and healing ourselves from previous life stages, and harnessing the power of intuition and discernment.

Bio

Kate Codrington is a menstrual and menopause mentor, speaker, workshop facilitator, writer, podcaster and former therapist for nearly 30 years. She is also an artist currently weaving textiles, words, story and stitch. Her first book Second Spring: the self-care guide to menopause is published by HarperCollins and she also has a variety of offerings such as yoga nidra, online classes, and more.

What She Shares:

—Identifying the perimenopause phase

—Cultural anxieties around menopause

—Defining perimenopause and menopause

—Parenting while transitioning

—Tending to extreme symptoms

—Superpowers of menopause 

What You’ll Hear:

—Peri-menopause 

—Cultural anxieties surrounding peri-menopause

—Gaining weight and losing elasticity during perimenopause

—Facing mortality through menopause

—Peri-menopause time to examine and let go to life that doesn’t serve us

—Shedding before moving into new phase of life

—Culture making menopausal women invisible contributing to anxiety 

—Healthcare uninformed generally around menopause

—Perimenopause defined as “around menopause”

—Symptoms are changes in menstruation from what is normal

—More desire to be alone

—Health costs to amount of working leading up to menopause

—Perimenopause time ranges between months to many years

—Negative connotations associated with “postpartum” and “menopause”

—Interfering versus accepting peri-menopause and menopause

—Parenting during perimenopause

—Stages of menopause in relation to seasons and cycles

—Oxytocin encouraging sociality in direct conflict with need to withdraw during menopause

—Guilt over feelings of needing alone time while parenting 

—Enormous call of turning inward 

—Meeting conflict of needing alone time while parenting

—Differences of rhythms and slowness within family systems

—Changes in relationship to sex during peri-menopause and menopause

—Embracing physical changes in vaginal tissue

—Staying close to pleasure, safety, and kindness sexually

—Endless variations of sexuality and meeting the moment

—Post-menopause as “another country”

—Reconnecting and reintegrating with former teenage self 

—Disorientation during losing cycles of menstruation

—Ritual, journaling, honoring loss and grief 

—Being tender and sweet with ourselves moment by moment

—Call for attention and kindness

—Severe symptoms calling for attention and kindness for treatment

—Menopausal super-powers of discernment, intuition, and spirituality

—Second spring and second summer of life postmenopause

Resources

Website: https://www.katecodrington.co.uk/

IG: @kate_codrington