For too long, menopause has been cast in the language of loss — a quiet decline, a soft unravelling into invisibility. But endings are never simply endings. They are compost, dark soil for something new to take root. What if menopause were not a diminishment, but an initiation? Not a failure of the body, but its deep wisdom at work — a fire that burns away the false so that we can meet what is true. Writers and teachers like Red School, Sharon Blackie, and Katherine May have