The Black Tent, a Menopause rite of passage

For me It all started 8 years ago, the most challenging journey that I was ever to embark in, Menopause, the third Change of a Woman's life, that's how lucky we are women, we can have at least four completely different lives with four gigantic rites of passage embedded in our phenomenal bodies.

It all sounds exciting but at the time I didn't know what on earth was happening to me and to be fair I didn't understood until the messages got really loud in all sort of ways physical, emotional and even spiritual.

I thought I was going mad, loosing my will to live and maybe even facing my imminent death, until I suddenly stopped bleeding at the age of 44 which seamed far too early to me, that's when the ride got into mystic epic proportions of intensity.

I remember that crispy autumn evening in which I was given the news that my hormone levels were the ones of a woman in menopause, that literally brought me to my knees in despair and in shock.

Back in my mid-twenties I had spend a year in nature learning how to love and embrace my menses, to reclaim them out of "the curse" status which lead and allowed me to birth, my two children, at home.

I later became a Doula and since I’ve had the honour to support women at the births of their babies with complete reverence and fascination for women's bodies and the phenomenal experience of birth.

But this?

Why nobody had told me about the enormity of this before?

Where were the elders that were going to guide me and support me through this transition in a way that would keep my body's wisdom at the centre?

When you give birth or witness a beloved's death, one just wants to share it and talk about it in any possible opportunity that presents itself, these magnificent miraculous mysteries that life throws at you need to be spoken in order to be chewed, digested embodied and praised.

But to my surprise hardly anybody was interested in indulging in Menopause chat, an awkward silence filled the party whenever I mention the word, almost in whispers the women I spoke with were at the best resigned about it, they talked about how to 'help' with the symptoms with herbs or HRT or this and the other, in other words managing the symptoms so they could carry on with life as "usual" like nothing was happening no one talked about the journey as if they just had to bare an unwanted & inconvenient ... and then the ones that had not gone through it were glad that it wasn't happening for them yet or in denial and not very looking forward to it anyway.

It felt like coming face to face with one of the biggest taboos of women's lives in this death phobic always young, sexy and juicy culture, I strongly believe that there is a strong connection between menopause and death for us to attend.

Well, all that denial wasn't good enough for me, I wanted to experience the whole thing, I wanted to know what was there at the core of this transition, the whole thing, the rage, the visionary dreams, the burning flushes, the sleepless nights, the recapitulation of previous relationships been shown like a film, the enlightened moments, the steep mountain of regret, even the libido desertion, the heart is completely broken open and more. I wanted to learn the wild ecology of my body at this time without back doors exits. I could not surrender into the idea that nature would bring demise and suffering for no reason and no benefit to my door, that, would be agreeing with the view that females bodies carry the hardest load with no gifts attached, that ageing is something to fear avoid and wishfully deny, that death is something to avoid to experience at all costs, this for me was like going back in "the curse' box.

So I read everything I found on the subject and the elders were there guiding the way, after all, I began a purposeful thirteen months of pilgrimage & descent in April 2015, I travelled first to my ancestor’s land and to the mountain that gave me my name, literally sang to the bones of my Dead, Then went to the Americas to learn with my life long teacher Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estes which gave me her blessing and meet many powerful women like my Beloved Elder Sister inspiratriz Alisa Startweather and many other that encouraged this mission as mandatory. I also was kindly invited by Martin Shaw to the Great Mother Conference where so many women claimed me as theirs and lastly managed to extract myself and my daughter (she was also transitioning her first year of menses) to a piece of land in rural Spain in which we off-grid lived for 8 months communing with, water, wind, fire and earth and its creatures.

In the midst of it I was brought to court by Brighton Council for taking my daughter out of school for one week to do the first stage of the pilgrimage on the grounds of Religious observance. I had to come back from the land to defend my right to rite and our pilgrimage as Spiritual, and being Pagan as a religion, my partner turned his back my community although virtuous signalling the need of rites of passage for the young turned a blind eye, so I had to reach out to far and wide to many influential writers Teachers or people that I considered my Elders like Vicky Noble, Starhawk, Toko-Pa, Martin Shaw among many others to back me up in this and this mayor ordeal within the ordeal of an ordinary middle-aged woman story, which deserves it’s own honouring.

Even at the hardest of times, I recognized that my deepest yearning was to be with other women, women who were also in transition or in the other side and equally to spend time alone in deep nature which in some ways are the same one thing for me. Being with women that would want to listen in to the conversation of the wild speaking through them, I knew how different it would have been if I lived in a culture that revered this liminal time as holy and had a language and ways to go about it. I knew that at a bone level.

If you have come this far, thank you.

So here I am Montserrat, a postmenopausal woman now, a baby crown re-setting The Black Tent.

Even though I am engaged in therapeutic work and some of you probably know me for my work with couples, the bereavement/grief work or even as my Cantadora persona in Jagged Mountain - LaXula. I am not intending to create either another workshop on how to manage well, a Menopausal program with tidy self-development exercises, or a therapy group, because firstly I don't believe in intervention in the birthing process and secondly because it would defeat the object and distract us from just being present to what is that needs to be listen to and spoken about, unfortunately, there are no maps in this journey. I cannot promise you anything else than fearless presence, respect and willingness to hold you in your truth with no agenda or need to be another thing than what and where you are at, even if that is in silence.

In Service to what is.

Montserrat Ruiz Puigdomenech

(Jagged Mountain)