The Alchemy of Menopause

sjholisticyoga
Oct 16
5 min read

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 helped so many of us remember what our bodies already know: menopause is alchemy. A sacred, if sometimes brutal, transformation. We are undone so that we can become.

A call to reframe

When we speak about menopause, the conversation so often collapses into management — how to ease, fix, replace, or control. We are handed choices that feel binary: HRT or not. Natural or medical. Surrender or resistance. But this, too, is part of the old story — a story of striving, of endlessly needing to optimise or transcend what is.

Yet alchemy is not about control. It’s about allowing the heat of transformation to do its work. And so perhaps our invitation is not to decide for or against, but to live with — to make space for the full spectrum of support available to us.

For many of us, that looks like HRT and herbs. Science and stillness. Movement and rest. We can hold both; we can choose what nourishes us.

The metamorphosis

There is a stage in every transformation where we must surrender action. We have to stop trying to hold things together. In yogic philosophy, this is where abhyasa — the steadiness of practice — meets vairagya — non-attachment to outcome. We keep showing up for ourselves, but we let go of the need to know where it’s taking us.

It is unsettling, this undoing—the ground of who we’ve been starts to crumble. Roles we’ve lived in — mother, carer, pleaser, doer — begin to feel too tight, like clothes we’ve outgrown. But if we can stay close to ourselves, if we can soften into the space that opens up, we begin to sense something else taking shape.

Menopause isn’t a single moment of cessation. It’s a slow metamorphosis — emotional, spiritual, and deeply embodied.

At menarche, we are born as young women. Through pregnancy and motherhood, we birth the mother within us. And through menopause, we birth ourselves — not in relation to anyone else, but from the depths of our own being. It is the most personal kind of creation: the forging of selfhood.

Remembering this, we might offer ourselves the same care and accommodation we would give a pregnant woman. So much deep work is happening within us — unseen but immense. So much energy is being gathered to build this new life we are growing into. Rest, gentleness, nourishment — these are not indulgences now, but essentials.

The spiral journey: the five phases of menopause

Red School speaks of menopause not as a single threshold, but as a spiral of five phases: Betrayal, Repair, Revelation, Visioning, and Emergence.

We may move through these in order or circle back to them again and again. They are not steps on a ladder, but turning points in a spiral — each one asking us to go a little deeper.

(Disclaimer - my summary of these five phases does not do justice to the teachings of Red School, and I urge you to read the book Wise Power and visit their website to get the most benefit from their wisdom.)

Betrayal — when our bodies no longer behave as they used to, when exhaustion, fog, or rage catch us off guard. The archetypal 'dark night of the soul'. It can feel like the ground has shifted beneath us; feelings of loss and confusion are very normal. It can feel like grief. For me, this has been the most challenging phase—the one I spiral back to again and again. I think it was Sharon Blackie who called this time The Wastelands, and that image has always resonated deeply with me. Each time I find myself wandering through those barren places, I wonder if I’ll emerge with even a scrap of sanity intact. Yet somehow, I always do. Each return brings with it new strength, deeper wisdom. My skin feels a little thinner for a while, but beneath the tenderness, renewal quietly takes root.

Repair — when we begin to tend to the fractures, learning to rest, to say no, to listen inward.

Revelation — when insight begins to rise from the quiet: truths about what we need, what we can no longer ignore. In this phase, you might find you lose friends who no longer meet you where you are, or shed habits that once felt comforting but now feel heavy. Old identities loosen their grip. The light of awareness can be both liberating and lonely — it shows us what must be released to make space for what’s true.

Visioning — when clarity emerges, we start to imagine what a truer, freer life might look like.

Revelation — A turning point where you have a sudden insight into who you truly are, often during daily life.

Emergence — the new self taking form, not as a final state, but as a continual unfolding.

Each time we circle the spiral, we are invited to let something else fall away — and to meet ourselves again, a little lighter, a little truer.

Beyond either/or

Part of this work is releasing our need for certainty. The world loves binaries: right or wrong, natural or artificial, young or old. But menopause belongs to the wild spaces between. It is both loss and renewal. It is grief and grace intertwined.

When we treat this transition as purely physical, we miss the deeper medicine. The body is speaking, yes — but so is the soul. And if we can listen beneath the symptoms, we may hear the whisper of something ancient: You are being remade.

HRT supports me, and I also sit in meditation, eat with intention, move with the moon, and let myself rest more deeply than I ever allowed before. It isn’t about being pure; it’s about being whole.

Deconstruction and Reconstruction

Menopause deconstructs us. It strips away pretence, pushes us toward the edges of what we can tolerate, and invites us to meet ourselves there — raw, unmasked, unadorned. It’s not comfortable, and it’s not meant to be. But this deconstruction is what allows the reconstruction to happen.

This is the alchemy: the fire that burns through illusion, the pressure that transforms stone to crystal. We emerge altered — perhaps quieter, perhaps less interested in the noise of the world, but infinitely more aligned with what matters.

To step through menopause consciously is to claim our own authority. We begin to trust our rhythms again. We become our own wise women.

A closing reflection

If we can soften our grip on who we were, if we can run towards something instead of running away, we will find that something luminous remains. This is the gold the alchemists spoke of — not youth recaptured, but truth revealed.

Menopause is not the end of our power. It is its distillation.

May we keep speaking of it. May we keep honouring it.

May we walk each turn of the spiral with grace and fierce gentleness.