There is a moment in a woman's life when something quiet but irreversible happens.

It isn't loud.
It isn't dramatic.
And it isn't the breakdown we've been taught to expect.

Menopause is often framed as something to manage, fix, or endure. A list of symptoms to brace for. A season to survive. What I was never offered, and what so few women are, is the deeper truth of this passage.

Menopause is not the loss of self. It is the reorganization of self around truth.

There is a spirituality to this experience that our culture rarely names. Ancient societies understood this threshold. They prepared women for it. They listened to the women who emerged from it. Today, we tend to rush her, medicate her, and ask her to return to normal even though there is no normal on the other side of transformation.

This reflection names what becomes possible when menopause is honored as a rite of passage rather than treated as a hormonal inconvenience. I speak to meeting physical changes with curiosity instead of fear, allowing ritual to replace resistance, and listening for the deeper intelligence inside each shift.

In this episode, I explore:

• Why menopause is not a breakdown, but a profound internal shift

• How fear-based narratives disconnect women from their bodies

• What happens when a woman stops bending, explaining, and bleeding energy

• Why discernment sharpens and tolerance drops in this season of life

• The difference between patriarchal and matriarchal stories of aging

• How choosing a different narrative can change the experience entirely

Here, I share my experience…not from a medical or prescriptive lens, but from a lived, embodied one. I offer this for the women walking that path now. And for the younger women who deserve a different imprint than fear.

Because menopause does not diminish a woman. It reveals her.

If this conversation resonates, consider sharing it with a daughter, a friend, or a woman you love.

To continue this work of reclaiming inner authority across every season of womanhood, my book Muse is available now…a guide for women returning to themselves.

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https://www.instagram.com/midlife.muse/

Order your copy of Muse
https://amandahanson.com/muse/?utm_source=menopause&utm_medium=podcast&utm_content=episode64&utm_campaign=podcast