HOT FLASHES

(Re-posted for the Poetry Pantry on Hallowe'en - time to unleash our Inner Witches!!)

[This poem was written in 1998. I am now well more than halfway through my life, and hot flashes are long gone.... However, today this poem still speaks to me - I remember when I wrote it, I was living in Tofino. Life is very different now. But that wild woman, though somewhat squelched down by fatigue, illness and circumstance, is still in there somewhere. Perhaps through this blog she is clawing her way back out :)]


I'm standing in the middle of my life:
looking back at the journey of becoming who I am,
through transformations wonderful and strange.
It's no wonder that they call this time The Change!


The view is kinder, gentler from here:
sometimes heat rises divinely
and a slow fog creeps over my glasses.
Life becomes a pleasant blur
at which I nod and smile benignly,
comprehending absolutely nothing
through the steam from my hot flashes!


When the steam clears,
I look into my mirror.
A strange lady is looking back at me.
I have been watching
a wildish woman growing there.
Beginning with her wild and frizzy hair,
I have seen her growing ever 
more determined to be free.


She sports a crooked grin and if I cover it,
the corners twitch, and her mouth opens wide.
Out pops a loud and wicked cackle!
Agh!
And when she speaks,
she speaks a truth I cannot hide.


She doesn't act like anyone I ever knew.
She is the one I have run from
and run home to.
I have to admit I'm starting to enjoy
never knowing what new adventure
she's going to take me through.


She lives on the Wild West Coast
and she wears funny clothes.
Out here she finds it easy to fit in.
She's feeling more at home inside her skin.
These days she's living in a world of kin.


She's taught me that
I'm not allowed to quit.
Instead of "oh poor me, this is way too hard!"
she's taught me to say things like
"Wow! What an INT-eresting curriculum about Challenge!"
and "Let 'er rip!"
"These are Power Surges, not Hot Flashes"
and (my very favorite), "What a trip!"


Wild horses gallop often through her heart.
Now she takes risks and leaps off shaky ledges,
trusting she will find a place to land,
because she finally seems to understand
that if she's ever going to learn to really fly,
it had better be now before it's way too late to try.


She is free now - she can never again be tamed.
She will not grow old gracefully
and refuses to be blamed.
She plans to laugh and sing,
to hope and dream until the end.
This wild woman is becoming
my best friend.


She has brought me through the fire and the rain
and to the Circle of Sisterhood we turn.
We find the gain has been well worth the pain,
and turn to help our younger sisters learn.


Standing on the brink of an ancient way of knowing,
I can feel Wild Woman singing through my bones,
and I know that I am standing at the doorway
of a special passage to the Age of Crones.