I am in one of those intense hot flash phases. If you are menopausal or peri-menopausal, you know what I mean.
If you’re not, imagine being locked in a sauna. Imagine heat that swallows you up and makes that you feel like it is burning you from within. A heat so intense that even when you breath, the air feels hot. Even when you are naked, there is no relief. Because it isn’t coming from the outside. The burning is inside of you.
I consider myself one of the lucky ones though, because despite the intensity of my hot flashes, they do not leave me drenched in sweat. But they do toy with me relentlessly. They might disappear for weeks at a time and I think, “Yes! It’s finally over!” And then the next day they come back – and often with a new level of fierceness I never thought possible.
Lately, it feels like I have one long hot flash all night long. This is something entirely new. Hot flashes 5.0. Who knew?
And yet here I am, in the middle of September. Feeling like I am sleeping in an oven.
When I told my husband last night that I needed to turn the fan on before we went to bed, he looked at me like I had lost my mind.
“Only on low,” I promised him. “And it will help with the mosquitoes. They don’t like wind,” I added to convince him. As if I know anything about mosquitoes and what they like and don’t like.
He let out a long, deliberately audible exhale, “Ok, my love. Whatever you want.”
Maybe you are wondering why I don’t just take hormone replacement therapy (HRT). There are a couple reasons: one is that my hepatologist told me to wait. “Estrogen is an anti-inflammatory. If you take it now, then we won’t know whether it’s your medication or the estrogen that is helping your liver values to come down.”
My thoughts on this could be an entirely separate blog, but suffice it to say – I can’t help but question her rationale. If we know estrogen is an anti-inflammatory, shouldn’t I be taking it in conjunction with my other meds? Doesn’t it stand to reason that I might need a lower dosage of steroids or the immunosuppressive if I take it?
Fact is – there’s just not enough research going into the interplay of menopause and autoimmune disease. But, more on that topic in another blog.
The other, more compelling reason that I would rather not take HRT is that:
I do not want to interrupt the process I am going through of letting go of everything that no longer serves me.
In certain ancient healthcare traditions, hot flashes are considered a natural, necessary transition process. They literally allow us to “burn” everything we no longer want/need.
For me this includes dysfunctional beliefs, like:
- I have to be perfect.
- everything is my fault.
- I am a bad person and it’s just a matter of time before others find out.
- despite over a decade of experience in my job, I am an imposter.
In the Daoist tradition, it is said that if you stop this process of letting go, you will end up carrying all of your unfinished business with you to your grave. But the kicker is, it doesn’t just disappear into thin air…it gets inherited by all those you leave behind. Just like you inherited it from your ancestors, many of whom are still waiting and hoping (in whatever realm you might believe in) – that you will be the one to finally put it all to rest so that they can find peace.
I have suffered deeply with my self-defeating beliefs. Of course, I want freedom from them, but even more importantly – I want my son and my nieces and their future children to be free from them. That’s why I am deliberately allowing this process to continue, for as long as it needs to.
I do it not just for me, but also for the ones I love. For all of my ancestors and for all of my descendants.
May we all be free.
Now, every time a hot flash consumes me, I close my eyes and say:
BURN BABY BURN!!
Well, if I’m being totally honest here (& I have always promised you from the start that I would be), what I really say is a loud and unforgiving:
BURN MOTHER F*CKERS BURN!!
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