Reading right now.

I have just started reading Germaine Greer's book - The Change: Women, Ageing and Menopause.  I am on page 18.  I love her.

Analysis of The Gray - Part 2

I ask her the same thing and she tells me that after her father died, she went looking for 'The Gray'
In the dream, I know that this refers to a fantasy quest game that we played as children and that The Gray is a bracelet of red, white and grey polished stones, cut into cylindrical shapes.
I knew from my own father that M's father in real life died a couple of years ago and that he had Alzheimer's disease;  my mother suffers from this and is currently being cared for in a nursing home.
In my dream notes which I scribbled down early in the morning, I have written The Gray - capitalised just as I have here, using the American spelling - normally I would write grey  and not gray.
As children we played many elaborate fantasy games usually involving some adventurous quest, or mystery and we often found ourselves believing in our fantasies.  In the dream I recall straight away that The Gray was such a game, and I felt very excited that she had gone on to fulfill this quest. I had an image of The Gray as a bracelet of long cylindrical white, grey and red stones.

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The death of the father is symbolic for me on a couple of levels here.  It could refer to the  'death' of the superego - that controlling voice inside which governs socially appropriate behavior in us, and also induces feeling of guilt. (apologies for that huge generalisation there).  Both M's father and my mother had/have Alzheimer's disease - an insiduous condition which, among other things, can totally strip away that control, often resulting in 'socially inappropriate' behaviours.
Received wisdom portrays women as going crazy at menopause. In fact, despite the raging hormones of the climacteric,  depression and sadness at this time is more likely to have other causes - poverty, marital problems, workplace difficulties.  It seems from my reading so far that the madness of menopause is a societal condition, created by... guess what?  It seems that those early church fathers did not like the idea of women enjoying sex, let alone indulging when there was no chance of procreation, so they decreed all older women to be crazed and ugly - a charge that seems to have stuck. So,  the death of the father could also be the disregarding of patriarchal attitudes here - basically the father is dead, long live the mother. 

Now that this patriarchal superego is dead, I am free to grow old disgracefully - to search for The Gray, or find my inner crone. This phrase is capitalised to emphasise the importance and the sacredness of this quest, and I feel an anticipatory thrill when she tells me about it. (I don't think the spelling is important - most of the literature I have read thus far has been American, so will contain that spelling). I also think I can use the experiences I have had under the father's control to become stronger in this new phase of life and to make my menopause my own.
Barbara G Walker talks about how the Virgin and Crone aspects of the Goddess are interchangeable, and she tells the original myth of Persephone who was in fact the crone aspect of the Demeter trinity.  I find it truly amazing how in my dream, the friend of my childhood, or maidenhood, whom I have not thought of or seen for almost 40 years, appears as I approach the time of the crone - 'Do you not recognise me?'  It packs this big idea into such an accessible form.  The idea of a quest ties in so much with this Virgin/Crone theme, too, as in Roman mythology, the maiden/new moon was known as The Huntress (Diana), but Ms Walker argues that The Huntress character originally was part of the dark third aspect. I don't think there is too much of a difference between a quest and a hunt. Interestingly, she also says that the mother aspect in this trinity was Pluto, who was a female deity and the name Pluto meant abundant with milk - who gave her the sex change, I wonder?

The image of The Gray as a bracelet of red, white and grey stones.  The colours are almost equated with those of the Triple Goddess - white, red and black.  Stones are part of the Earth and there are many stone monuments and figures sacred to the goddess.  We recently spent a few days in Callanish (? cailleach - old woman?) and were very taken with the stones there.  I said on my other blog that they made me think of strong mothers.  And a bracelet is a circle - each part merges into the other in a never ending cycle.
So - what a dream!  It has been quite a journey of discovery unpacking this one.  I feel very positive about the images and ideas that I have taken from it, and grateful for the insights it has given me.  If you have read these posts, I hope very much that you have taken something from it too.
Blessings.

Peeping through the crack.

So - I have felt the stirrings - what do I do now? Invest in air-conditioning and purpley-coloured baggy jumpers? No!  I do what I always do when faced with new or challenging situations  ... head over to Amazon. There are bound to be loads of books written about spiritual aspects of menopause. I type the word 'menopuase' into the search page - Miriam Stoppard's book comes out top - well - it would really. Scrolling down, I am quite disappointed  - most of the books seem to be about: what to expect physically, how to 'beat' the menopause, how to stay young, thin and beautiful despite the menopause, or are comedy/celebrity takes on the change. I even come across an MP3 download called "Smells like menopause" by an outfit called Kalibas. A sample track is available - I listen - it sounds like our old central heating boiler when it was breaking down - a subliminal connection maybe?
Surprisingly, there are no books which appear to be aimed at the menopausal breastfeeding woman! In fact, very few jump off the screen at me - they are either: not available, expensive, don't appeal after reading the spiel, or will take too long to arrive. I am a woman of change and I have a need for information now! Then I spy Susun S Weed's - New Menopausal Years: The Wise Woman Way. Well, I have enjoyed her other books and dip into her Ezine on occasion, so I pop it in my basket, along with Christiane Northrup's: Wisdom of the Menopause. I am not too sure of this one, as it is written by a GP. Not that there is anything wrong with that, it's just that I don't really want a lecture on what my hormones are up to etc. As a former nurse, I know a lot about the medical stuff - what I need is stories of the ancient wisdom. I am, however, slightly won over by the reader's reviews, so in it goes.
I await the parcel impatiently. Having decided that I am on the cusp of a life-changing transition I want to shout out "BRING IT ON"