Holy mackerel. Roseanne’s three-page-long ode to menopause is really intense. Aside from being funny and something we ladies should probably all email to our future selves, it makes me feel like everyone connected on this human journey and that being a woman is like riding a giant pirate ship through the Amazon, stopping only to spear fish before forging on ahead through the jungle to take pictures of parrots (I may be thinking of the popular 1994 computer game The Amazon Trail). Here is what she says to fellow menopause-passers:
Ahoy, matey! Hail, hail, all ye who enter here! You have arrived! Congratulations, sister!You have made it through the grip of Nature, and the attack on your intellect that began at your first breath as a female on this spinning sphere of waters, and you are still here to tell the tale—the tale of the Queen of Swords alive in each of us who navigated her way through those most dangerous Matriarchal Waters and Emotional High Tides. Sailing through the dictatorship of the body, the pulsing, plodding meat machine of it all, from that first shock at puberty, through birthing, nursing, raising, and letting go of grown children, you have reached uncharted territory, dangerous and mysterious. Brain space seems more liberated now. Time to kick back a little, to observe more, to feel less fear and more connection.
Ugh, no fair, I want to go through menopause! It sounds awesome!