Hormones, Middle Age, and The Mess

First things first: Why didn't anyone tell me this was going to happen? Why isn't this a widely discussed topic in our work lives, churches, clubs, and community conversations? Why isn't it included in "the talk", right alongside menstruation, sex, birth control, and menopause?

If it is discussed, what should we call it? The truth is, so many of us have been caught completely off guard by this thing - this middle-life turned upside-down and kicking us upside the head and catching us unaware.

Hey, Younger Woman! Here's What's Coming Down the Pike:

If you are in your teens, 20's, or 30's, let me be the one to break it to you gently: Middle-age gets rough, especially if you juggle a home, children, husband, job, and 21st century western First World living and culture. 

Your doctor likely won't let you in on this either, which is weird. My (male) doctor said, "That's not a thing." I politely replied, "Okay" and took my business elsewhere. There's really no use arguing with the uninitiated; that would be like arguing the finer points of childbirth with a man.

My Story of Hormones, Middle Age, Stress, and the Mess

A psychologist friend patiently listened to me as did my RN sister-in-law, and both wondered aloud if this was more hormonal than anything else. Regardless of what is being taught to physicians, there is hard evidence that stress adversely affects our hormones, and middle-age women tend to carry plenty of it. In my case, my body was also breaking down the fallout of three children nearly dying, a son's failed wedding, my husband's cancerous tumor diagnosis and removal plus his Type 2 Diabetes diagnosis, the day to day management of our brain-injured son, my brother's precarious cancer removal surgeries, and interpersonal extended family turmoil.

I put all of that in writing and stand back to look at it and think, "Well, duh! Of course you were falling apart!" But as you probably have observed in your own life, we don't always take stock of a stressful situation in the midst of it. We just do what we have to do and move on until the storm passes. 

How to Know When It's Time to Make Changes

Clearly, when I read all that I had been living and managing (plus 8 kids!), it's easy to diagnose the problem, or at least understand where those pesky symptoms of anxiety and weight gain had come from. But we're not always so good at diagnosing ourselves. 

I'm thinking that if you landed here to read this series, you have an inkling that something isn't quite right. Is now your time to make a change? Ask yourself:

• Am I managing everything that is in my life as well as I did six months or a year ago?
• Do I feel sick or overwhelmed when even a small change is made to my routine?
• Is my body showing signs (weight gain, hair loss, acne along the chin line) that it is carrying more tension than is obviously healthy for me?

If you can see that it's time to do something to change the trajectory of your health, stick around for my last post in this short series. You can even scroll down and subscribe to get it delivered right to you so you don't forget. There is hope, I promise!

Read the rest of the posts in this series:

Post 1: Health, Hormones, Anxiety, and Middle Age

Post 3: Hormones, Anxiety, and Middle Age: How I Got My Life Back

August, 2016 - Our oldest son's wedding, and at my heaviest non-pregnancy weight. 

December 2016 - Down 25 pounds for our second son's wedding.

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Health, Hormones, Anxiety, and Middle-Age Weight

This month my husband Fletch wrote a series on his blog about taking hold of his health as he hit middle age. The response he's received has been hearty, to say the least.

Last October, I too, decided to make public my own battle with my health. When I posted on Facebook all that I have been up against and how it was being resolved, I was not prepared for the response I received, either. My phone began to buzz  - all day long - "off the hook" with text after text. Women messaged me privately, and I had a few call and ask to get together to discuss what they had been experiencing. 

It's not an understatement to say that so very many of us in our middle age are really, really struggling. 

If you feel as if you're one of them and you missed my original Facebook post, here it is. Maybe you'll read your own story in mine:

“Been pondering this post for a few days but am deciding to go ahead in case it’s helpful to someone. I will be writing about it elsewhere, but for now, here’s the short version:

After 8 straight years of trial after trial and poor stress management on my part, I hit this past summer with a deluge of panic attacks and anxiety. I cried. All the time. About everything. I was angry, unable to forgive, and mad at God. The kicker was when I found myself on the floor of the church kitchen one night, unable to breathe, heart racing uncontrollably, scared to death I wasn’t going to ever be healthy again.

I met with a psychologist who correctly recognized that what I was dealing with was due largely to nutritional and physical depletion, as well as imbalanced hormones (age, 9 pregnancies, stress . . .) I also made an appointment with our family practitioner, who ordered blood work and prescribed Xanax. He and I agreed that the Xanax wasn’t a cure, but there if I needed it.

I then headed full steam into a nutritional overhaul and after getting connected with the work of a Harvard Med School doctor who specializes in hormone research, I added supplements to help the hormones figure themselves out.

4 days into it all, I felt like a new woman. Now 6 weeks in, I have lost 13 pounds (12 to go) and I feel like I have my life back. No panic attacks, no freaking out, no crying. I never filled the Xanax prescription.

Sound like you? Maybe it’s not your brain, your ability to cope, or your spiritual life (don’t get me started). Maybe it’s just a simple need to take a very close look at how you’re fueling your body and managing everything on your plate. Part of that meant taking things off my plate, too. So there’s that. And ballet. My ballet class is a key.

That’s all. My story. And if it helps you, I’m glad I posted it.”

Is this your story, too? I'm not a nutritionist or a medical professional, but I can tell you what has made all the difference for this over-committed, middle-aged, working, homeschooling, mother of 8 plus 2 daughters-in-law. That post comes next.

Part Two: Hormones, Middle Age, and the Mess

Part Three: Hormones, Anxiety, and Middle Age: How I Got My Life Back

While this photo encapsulates one of my favorite memories, it was taken on July 4th, 2016, at the height of my panic attacks and worst health. It's painful to look at because I know how badly I was struggling at the time.

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Supper Club

Our supper club started out as triage for the brokenhearted. 

Born of a need to simplify the outsized "community groups" of our local church, there are just six of us - three married couples - and we came to the table wounded, or tired, or both.

We meet just once a month, and we rotate homes. It's easy on the hosts and we look forward to every carefully planned dinner, every meaningful conversation.

If I could tell you what we have weathered together over the past 20 months as a supper club, you might find yourself in our stories. You might understand the despair that catches the faithful completely off-guard and threatens to take us under into a suffocating death that sees the end of lifetimes spent in churches and church communities. The threat has palpably edged its way into each of our six lives, and it seems that just as one of us comes up for air, another is brought down under its weight, plunging and flailing and gasping to inhale some oxygen. 

We are the supper club of the struggling.

What makes that pronouncement odd is the fact that we are, each of us, somehow tied to ministry, either currently or in the recent past. We aren't supposed to be the ones who struggle. We're supposed to be the people who are firm in our faith, solid in our theology, and unwavering as we serve and encourage and carry the load for others. Instead, we've found a safe place to wrestle with doubt and discouragement.

We don't expect to have all the answers. I think that's why I love these five other people the most. When I unleash my deepest struggles into sharp, tangled words, there is no condemnation. There is a genuine desire to understand and to question and to remind me of the truth, but there is no judgment. No one walks away, gets into their car and talks about me as if there is some ethereal or actual spiritual ranking in place and I have just bumped my way down the rungs to level zero. I don't walk away doing the same. 

It's desirable and healthy to be able to say the hard stuff. It's right and good that we should be safe places for others to do so. If you want a supper club like that, be the supper club like that. When we are real, when we show our true hurt, when we share the hardest, ugliest sides and imperfections, something beautiful happens: we free others to do the same. We become the safe place, and soon we realize that the shiny, polished, all-together people are the ones who hurt the most. 

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