SQUEEZING ORANGES IN MENOPAUSE

In this week’s INSIGHTS for Healing by Design I’d like to riff about one of my favorite Dr. Wayne Dyer stories for a moment to help inspire you to turn your (what I call) “PHUCK-IT Genes” on in peri and post-menopause!

HAVE YOU HEARD WAYNE’S STORY ABOUT SQUEEZING ORANGES?

This concept could just possibly be what helps you turn your life in a new direction today!

At a conference he was speaking at, he had a conversation with a 12 year old boy in the audience about what would happen if he squeezed the orange he was holding in his hand. The young boy of course said “juice” would come out of the orange, and he went on to confirm it would indeed not be grapefruit juice but orange juice that comes out of the orange because that’s what’s inside an orange. Great obvious logic.

Wayne’s moral of the story then was:

“Let’s assume that this orange isn’t an orange, but it’s you. And someone squeezes you, puts pressure on you, says something you don’t like, offends you. And out of you comes anger, hatred, bitterness, fear. Why? The answer, as our young friend has told us, is because that’s what’s inside.”

This story has been with me since the day I heard Wayne talk about it and I was reminded recently of its profoundness for women as we go through the gauntlet of natural physiological chaos during the years of perimenopause, into decades (hopefully) of post-menopause. 

During this time of natural transition, so much change is happening to our organs, especially our brain and nervous system, and old hurts, frustrations, sadnesses, intolerances and more… start to bubble to the surface and spill over a lot of the time, leaving us feeling adrift in challenging emotional chaos.

It’s often a period of our lives where the old ‘control’ mechanisms we’ve used to keep those pent up emotions covered up no longer work as effectively anymore. We break open and then have to mop up the inevitable messes the dam breaking leads to.

It’s what I call “BABYSITTING CHAOS” and it’s super real and super painful for most women at this time, especially because we don’t talk about it enough without shame and heavy self-judgment.

When we are squeezed in menopause, just like with the orange in Wayne’s example, often the unresolved old stories, old conditioned beliefs, old hurts and traumas, anger, rage, frustration, sadness, grief… all come running out all over the place, often with little to no direction who the “juices” hit!

And you know what? It’s our fault in any way. 

Women are taught in all societies to conform, to keep the peace at all costs, to forget about it, to let it go, to move on, to get shit done! 

We’ve got people and pets and work and dinner and and and… to take care of, dammit. No time to clear up the deeply rooted old emotions that haven’t seen the light of day for who the heck knows how long! Maybe decades and decades!

I think, though, we crafty, powerful women could TRANSFORM those unresolved traumas into GIFTS through a commitment to rewriting our perceptions of those things and by learning how to treat our bodies in new ways so that the menopausal transition is much smoother.

This is the inner contemplative work I’m doing right now, right as I write this article, right as I take my next breath and the next and the next… and the work I love teaching other women on this same journey.

I am practicing turning my “PHUCK-IT Genes” on in menopause – a term I coined to reflect the shit-storm of old traumas being squeezed out while our brains are in the throes of transforming and transforming them into healthier rules to live by:

Peace

Honesty

Understanding

Confidence

Knowing

~

Inspiration

Trust (in self)

I swear these fictitious but mighty “genes” were flickering on and off for me for 11 years of perimenopause and now are almost always turned on fully in early post-menopause. I did the work, keep doing the work, know more work will be needed… to keep the “genes” turned on.

And then what comes out of me when I’m inevitably squeezed will be LOVE, TOLERANCE, PATIENCE, ACCEPTANCE for whatever shows up. At least most of the time.

Am I a work in progress? OF COURSE! 

But am I better today than I was yesterday? Damn straight I am - because I practice keeping my “PHUCK-IT Genes” on every day. I bring awareness to whenever I am leaking stuff I no longer want to be attached to, even as my brain is rewiring and the rest of my body is figuring stuff out for this next phase of my gift of a life!

I’m enamored with this philosophy, so much so that I’m writing a book about it, largely inspired by many of the teachings, especially this orange juice story, from Dr. Wayne Dyer.

If you are loving these ideas and want to hear more, learn more, embrace the “change” - follow me on my Instagram channel and become part of my growing private Facebook group of peri and post-menopausal women learning to “Babysit Chaos” with their “PHUCK-IT Genes” turned on at The EASY YOUniversity.

Let’s make sure what is squeezed out of you is what you want to come out!

Dr. Krista xx

Dr. Ac, IFMCP

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