And so I noticed...

Menopause didn't quietly arrive in my life—it crashed into it like a freight train.

One day, my body no longer felt like my own. I remember the relentless waves of heat, as though I was living inside an MRI machine that never shut off. But the physical symptoms were only the beginning.

At the very same time, my teenage daughter was pregnant, unemployed, and determined not to move in with me despite desperately needing support. My relationship with my parents was deteriorating faster than I could process, and teaching had become emotionally exhausting as I struggled in a classroom filled with increasingly volatile students and very little administrative support.

To say life was unraveling would be an understatement.

Like many women, I hoped hormone replacement therapy and a low-dose antidepressant would be enough to steady the ground beneath me. I wanted to believe they would fix everything.

They didn't.

The darkness became so overwhelming that I reached a point where I genuinely believed the world might be better without me. It is difficult to admit that now, but it is the truth. And I know I am not the only woman who has silently stood on that terrifying edge.

Then something changed.

I found an extraordinary therapist whose work centered on Jungian shadow work. She didn't promise quick fixes or easy answers. Instead, she gently helped me face the parts of myself I had spent a lifetime avoiding.

Healing didn't happen overnight.

It wasn't dramatic.

It wasn't pretty.

It happened one painfully small step at a time.

Slowly—that is the important word.

Around the same time, my relationship with a man I cared deeply about came to an end. The reality was simple: he neither had the time nor the emotional capacity to walk through that season of life with me. As painful as it was, I don't blame him.
Sometimes people simply cannot carry what isn't theirs to carry.

Then I made one decision that changed everything.

I moved out.

Almost immediately, it felt as though nearly 80 percent of the chaos, sadness, and emotional weight disappeared. I remember thinking, Is this what peace feels like?
It felt nothing short of miraculous.

I didn't overanalyze it.

I embraced it.

Approaching fifty, I stepped back into the dating world—a prospect that felt equal parts exciting and terrifying. But this time, something inside me had changed.
A quiet voice I'd never truly listened to before finally spoke.
"Establish deal breakers."

So I did.

And let me tell you something...

Deal breakers work.

For the first time in decades, I stopped measuring my worth through someone else's approval. I stopped criticizing every reflection staring back at me. The woman I had spent years judging, rejecting, and trying to fix slowly became someone I could respect.

Then something even more unexpected happened.

I began to like her.

Not because my life had become perfect.

Not because the pain magically disappeared.

But because I had survived it.

After decades of self-loathing, impossible expectations, and feeling trapped in the quicksand of sadness, I finally discovered the one person I had been searching for all along.

Myself.
​
And she was worth fighting for.