"Pay attention now," Grandmother Growth says, taking your hand and holding your gaze. "The Change known as menopause deserves your full attention."

"Pay attention now, and relax. focus, allow, observe, surrender. Your egg basket empties; your memory basket grows heavier."

"Memories are sweeping through you, great granddaughter, like lightning flashes, leaving you shaken and trembling, sweating and panting. Memories too gossamer to catch with words are weaving themselves into your nights and shattering the patterns of your days. Fragments of melodies, half-seen gestures, sketches, muted drifts of color emerge from your memory. All the wild passions of the Maiden are restored to you. All those Maiden things you left behind or pushed aside when you became Mother-woman, return to you now, enriched.

"Do those memories crowd painfully into your head? Do they send your heart racing? So they make you weep? Sweep you off your feet? Leave you wondering what it would feel like to jump off a high bridge? Take my hand, dear one. Let us walk and talk."

There is no doubt in your mind. Your menstrual cycles are coming to an end. You are in the midst of your menopausal climax years.

During the years before the very last period (and a few years afterward) most women experience disturbing menopausal Changes, such as hot flashes, heart palpitations, sleep disturbances, emotional uproar, anxiety, and/or headaches.

Menopause, like puberty, requires that we give in to Change and accept that it is beyond our control. If we arrive at mid-life feeling more in control of our lives than ever before, giving in to menopausal Change can be incredibly difficult. The desire to use anything — drugs, herbs, whatever — to avoid disruption of our normal life pattern is strong; it comes from within and is reinforced by society. Why resist?

Here's why. The Wise Woman Way offers us a new/old story: where hot flashes and wild heartbeats are honored, where menopause is considered woman's greatest transformation — her crowning as Crone — and where old women are vital, flexible, hale-hearted, strong-boned and clear-minded. The Wise Woman Way offers us women's mystery stories of menopause and a host of helpful herbal allies that aid the process of menopause instead of attempting to stop it or fix it.  

My series Menopause 101, Menopause for Beginners, introduces you to the most effective green allies. It's one my gift to you, to celebrate selling one million copies of New Menopausal Years the Wise Woman Way.

Click here to find all my Gifts of Change to you.