(Remembering) How to Be a Woman
A personal essay on rites of passage and growing into ourselves
Oh, she takes care of herself
She can wait if she wants
She's ahead of her time
Oh and she never gives out
And she never gives in
She just changes her mind
And she'll promise you more
Than the Garden of Eden
Then she'll carelessly cut you
And laugh while you're bleedin'
But she'll bring out the best
And the worst you can be
Blame it all on yourself
Cause she's always a woman to me…
— Billie Joel, Always a Woman, 1977
When I was twelve, my friend’s mom took us to our first rock concert. We sat in the nosebleed seats at Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky, staring at Billie Joel through binoculars. It was 1985. I remember three things: smelling marijuana for the first time at close range; feeling unexpectedly, but unquestionably aroused by the smiling guitar player grooving on stage; and wondering what to make of the ballad, Always a Woman.
Later, in my 20s and 30s, I was embarrassed to admit this was my first concert when the topic came up. It didn’t seem very…cool. But in truth, it was a beautifully appropriate and safe initiation into the world of sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. I was a child that night—anything more…animal…would have been too much for me. When I think about it now, I feel grateful.
It would be two years before I got my period, braces, contact lenses, and a permanent wave; two years before my first date and first kiss. Those two years are hard for me to retrieve. The memories are lost…because I was lost. I remember my body changing in ways that I felt wholly unprepared for and being hijacked by emotions bigger than I could handle. I remember laying on the couch in the living room (more than once) wailing to my mother that I was ugly and wanted to die while she looked on, helpless. I knew nothing of hormones. I think my mother told me the bare minimum about what happens when your first period comes…enough so that I wouldn’t be frightened. But, it wasn’t nearly what I needed and I was frightened when it happened.
I don’t blame her…she wasn’t prepared to usher me through such an initiation. She hadn’t been through it, herself. Uninitiated adults cannot initiate the youth. Neither of us knew what we were doing, and being the empath/feeler that I am, I sensed that. I sensed the vast chaos enveloping us—her frustration and anxiety, my fear and dread. We hung on by our fingernails and eventually things stabilized…though I missed the threshold, the portal, the rite of passage that could have saved me years of wandering and self-harm.
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I am in perimenopause now. Even as I write that, part of me flinches and offers her opinion which is something like, “Really? You’re going to write that in public? Isn’t that a bit too much information?” This voice is one I’ve been trying to reconcile with for years, now. This one was born in 1973. She remembers taboo…especially all the taboos around being a woman, blood rites, and all things to do with the body. So, I say to her now, “I hear you. I know it feels like I’m exposing us, but it’s ok. It’s safe. Women are talking about these things now…must talk about them. The silence has been stifling and isolating. We’re coming out.” So, yes…I am in perimenopause.
Just like puberty, it’s been a rough time for me; a destabilizing time. For whatever reason, this body of mine has always been a highly-sensitized organism—which has been a gift and a curse. The gift is that I feel everything and I mean everything. You know that princess and the pea story? That’s me. This makes it possible for me to work in subtle realms; to notice what other’s can’t sense, see, hear or feel; and to help people heal and integrate their own unconscious patterns and trauma. The curse is that I feel everything in a world that has normalized comfort and numbness.
Traditionally, there are three “blood rites” for a woman (or someone who ovulates): the onset of menses/puberty; pregnancy and childbirth; and the cessation of menses or menopause. Each of these passages of the body is accompanied by significant hormonal shifts and changes to the major organs of the brain and heart. The woman’s psyche, her inner life, and connection to the sacred are inextricably linked to these fundamentally-embodied changes. How could they not be? During our fertile years, we bleed regularly in sync with the lunar cycle. This still seems miraculous to me. Our female ancestors were well-aware of this and used it to their advantage in planning activities, events, sacred ceremonies, ritual worship, and even in making practical decisions about activity and rest. Today, mainstream culture encourages women to override our moon time of month, sail through pregnancy and postpartum, and do all we can to ignore hormonal changes or control them with medication.
What I’ve noticed as a woman in these times, is that our collective, societal disconnect from the cycles of life makes traversing these blood rites really difficult and isolating. We feel crazy. We feel out-of-control. We feel off. We suffer in silence or medicate to comply with mechanized time and expectations around performance, pain, and appearance. I really believe it’s a much bigger problem than we know. So much dysfunction, depression, anxiety, and illness stem from the unwelcome (even openly antagonistic) atmosphere we’ve created for women…for girls becoming women and for women becoming elders. I don’t need to get into the details here because any woman knows this intimately. What I want to talk about here is how it can be different.
For example, my experience of perimenopause is already different from my mother’s. My generation, Generation X, is breaking the taboo, talking openly about this time of life…called “the change.” We’re entering this phase of life with eyes wide open, with a sense of optimism and curiosity I don’t think the world has seen in many generations. To tell you the truth…it’s scary, but also extremely liberating and empowering. We are actively and real-time reinventing what it means to go through menopause and what it is to be post-menopausal women. Most of the women I know going through this change right now are thrilled to be moving through it with the support of friends and circles of confidence. We are gathering, having public conversations, and swapping information and advice, herbs and supplements…the way women DO. It’s natural and it’s right. Hallelujah!
But, talking and breaking taboo are just the beginning of what needs to happen. What we really need—beyond talk, data, and information—is ritual to support the spiritual and initiatory aspects of menopause. Just like we need ritual to mark the other blood rites. Because our culture is so ageist and death-scared, menopause seems like the last of the blood rites to be addressed in this way—as something beautiful to be celebrated…it’s taking a whole new generation to move into it together with this intention…mission, I’d say.
If I had to sum up my experience of perimenopause as an initiation, it would be with two words: LETTING GO. It is the ultimate surrender. It asks you to let go of all you have been clinging to through your fertile years, while you played that game. It asks you to let go of all your self-limiting beliefs…as comforting as they may be. It asks you to let go of all you are hanging onto that is dragging you down. It asks you to let go of your attachment to looking a certain way and even feeling a certain way in your body. And then it ask you to let go of your body altogether. It is beyond anything I have ever experienced. If you can pass this test, survive the initiation, cross the threshold…the result is…well, we shall see…but, what I am beginning to feel is that I will be lighter than ever. Where I was once attuned to the cycles of the moon, I can now be attuned to the cycles of life itself, the whole cosmos. I may even be…beyond time.
That’s something worth experiencing. That’s what I want. To be free within this body. To be embodied, present, but no longer identified with the body. I want to walk the earth like this…like a queen…and one day, like a grandmother, a crone. A WISE WOMAN.
Right now, I am in conversation with women my age to design for ourselves rituals to SEE each other through this portal. There is a witnessing aspect of initiation. We must be held through our changes and also seen and received as we emerge different, new, reborn. My friends are wanting to be witnessed as they become medicine women, psychics, healers, shamans, great lovers, prolific artists, successful career women, rock legends, great moms…We focus so much on menopause as “the end” of something related to youth (and therefore relevance and desirability in this broken culture), but every end is a beginning. It seems to me that it’s just the beginning of a woman in her PRIME.
I know I’ll see even more on the other side. At times, it has felt like I might not make it to the other side. As my friend said recently, “Have you been on your knees with your head on the ground? Have you wept for mercy? Yes? Congratulations. No? Then you’re not in the initiation, yet.” It isn’t a proper initiation without the looming presence and real possibility of death.
When I heard myself confiding to a friend recently that there have been moments in this perimenopause journey when I felt like I wanted to die; when I felt my life wasn’t worth living; I realized there was something familiar happening. It didn’t take me long to remember my 12-year old self on the couch in my childhood living room saying the same words. Slowly, it dawned on me that the girl who missed the chance for initiation is still with me and scared to death to go through another harrowing ordeal. I have conversations with her about how it won’t be the same now as it was then. I share with her how much support we have: friends who are going through it with us, a loving and supportive partner, stability, independence, joy, embodiment, years and years of healing work and stepping into conscious living. I share with her all we have going for us and she seems to hear me. I tell her all the things I wish I’d been told. Things like…
Being a woman is just being YOURSELF.
You are stepping into a great power and you are capable of handling it. You will be taught how to protect this power. You will be shown how to use it. You are a magical being. You can bring life into the world.
Your feelings are wisdom. Your feelings are important. Your feelings are sacred.
Your intuition is your most precious tool for navigation in this life. Trust yourself. You have a direct connection to source (which you already know). Even if you feel you lose this from time-to-time, it’s always there. It never leaves you. You are never alone.
You never need to please someone else at the expense of your own comfort or values. You don’t even need to be polite.
There is no shame in sensuality, pleasure and big, bawdy joy. Express yourself fully! Live! You are love embodied.
This is just the beginning of what I needed to know about how to be a woman. What I still need to be told. Incidentally, these are the same things I am telling my own daughter as she moves into puberty. The beauty is, I can feel my inner little girl listening, too.
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In my household, it’s just me and my daughter. Right now, she is moving into puberty as I move through menopause. That is a hormone stew. It’s also an incredible mirror and a chance for me to do things differently—for her, of course, but also for my own inner teen. Sometimes, life can be so on-the-nose with its teachings.
A few weeks ago, I planned a trip for us to go to Santa Fe for winter break. She loves to travel and she’d really been wanting to go to Europe, but we can’t afford that right now. So, I thought about a U.S. destination that’s culturally very different from our everyday experience in New York. I’ve always loved Santa Fe and I thought she’d love it, too.
I was feeling pretty good about my decision when I brought it to her. Her disappointment was obvious immediately, but I chalked it up to the teen moodiness that she’s prone to now…to hormones…and ignored it. I forged ahead with our plans, renting a car and buying tickets to some local events.
The day before the flight, I asked her to start packing. The request unleashed a storm of resistance. She complained and stomped and threw things around. Ultimately, she slammed her bedroom door and disappeared. I was feeling hurt and unappreciated. I’d gone to great lengths to make the trip a fun one. I was trying. I’d spent a lot of money on this. I began to feel angry.
Instead of digging a deeper hole, I went for a walk with my friend, Deborah. I told Deborah the situation. I told her about my hurt feelings and how I felt unable to reach my daughter. I told her with some righteousness that I felt angry and unappreciated in my efforts. Deborah stopped walking and stared at me.
“Let me ask you something…How did you present this trip to her?”
“Uh,” I thought about it, “Well, I told her we were going to Santa Fe…”
“You told her? You didn’t ask her if she wanted to go?”
I couldn’t lie, “No.”
“So, if you and I decided to go on a trip together…you’d ask me if I wanted to go to Santa Fe, right? And if I said ‘no,’ we’d come up with another plan together, right?”
“Of course,” I said already seeing her point.
On my way home I began to take account. I realized I could get a credit for the airline tickets, the AirBnB was fully-refundable, and the rental car was just a reservation. I realized with some surprise, that nothing was binding about this trip. We didn’t have to go. I walked into the house feeling completely unattached to the plan. I apologized and told her we didn’t have to go to Santa Fe. I told her I wanted to make a decision together; that I wanted to do something she wanted to do, too. She was stunned.
“We have a few limitations now given that vacation starts tomorrow and we can’t spend a fortune, but we have options.”
“Like what?”
We discussed some options. I showed her some photos of Santa Fe and she considered them genuinely. We talked about places we could get to by car. Suddenly, she had an idea.
“You know what I really want?”
“No, but I’d like to know.”
“I want to go to the city and get my hair cut.”
I could feel the truth in it. I could feel that this is truly all she wanted on her vacation. At first, I felt judgment like it was a silly thing to plan a trip around. But, then I remembered that hair cutting has been a significant part of rites of passage for all time. I realized she knew exactly what she needed. And I decided to follow her lead. The minute I surrendered to this process, maybe the minute I walked in the door and changed the script, we entered an initiation portal. We spent five days in the city (NYC) doing exactly what she wanted to do.
At first she struggled. I saw how used she was to looking to me for guidance and decision-making. I realized how I’d begun to enable a kind of helplessness by not giving her the reigns; how I subtly influenced her decisions around food and clothing and activities; and how I was constantly preventing her from making “mistakes,” by offering advice. It wasn’t pretty for me to see. And it wasn’t pretty for her to feel me pull away. For a full day she raged when I handed the decisions back to her. She was frustrated and overwhelmed with the responsibility. At one point, I asked her to navigate us through the subway system—something all 13 year-olds in the city can do. She grew up in that city and I knew she could do it. She fumed and pouted, but ultimately got us to the right platform.
She also got her hair cut that day. I took her to the place she’s gone to since she was six, but to a new stylist. When the stylist came to gather her, she looked at me with a question in her eyes: would I come or should she go by herself? I let her go. I pretended I was interested in a magazine and let her disappear to be shampooed on her own. When she emerged with shorter, styled hair, she looked beautiful…like a young woman.
That afternoon, she decided she wanted to go to The Strand, a four-story bookstore in Union Square, a landmark. She read in the stacks for over an hour while I sat far away on a bench waiting. She chose one book to buy: Lord of the Flies.
That first night, I went to sleep exhausted and completely strung out. It had been a harrowing passage. I was fighting my own demons: ancestral codependence and my own lack of initiation. I was holding two flailing teens: my daughter and my own inner child. I prayed for help. In a dream, I was addressing a young woman who was dying (death is key to initiation) and I said, “I just want to take you in, in all your magnificence; witness all you have been.” I woke and realized this was the attitude I needed and wanted to have with my blossoming daughter. I wrote a poem for us, for all girls, there in the dark (I’ll publish it tomorrow. It’s called Without Expectations).
The next day at lunch at a café she’d chosen, she looked up at me over her dish and asked, “What are we going to do after lunch?”
“What would you like to do?” I asked, completely free from my own agenda. The day before, this question had enraged her. It had been too much.
She paused, her fork hanging in mid-air. She stared down at the food, “I feel strange…” The pause was unusual for her and I stayed very still. Then she said slowly with a kind of mild wonder, “I don’t know what I want to do.”
I resisted the urge to jump to her aid. I held the truth of the moment, her awareness of what it’s like to know you don’t know something and then search for that knowing. We sat there like that for a minute. I trusted with all my heart something would come.
“Oh, I know. Can we go to the Natural History Museum?”
She had gotten in touch with her desire. I looked at her hard, “Yes, we can go. But, let me ask you something…are you choosing that because you feel nostalgic and want it to be like when you were a kid and we used to go there? Or do you want to have a new experience there? One that fits you right now?”
She considered the question, even brightening to think about it, “I want to go for a new experience now. Not to be a kid.”
We went with excitement. We skipped the halls of animals we’d visited many times in her childhood and bee-lined for the movie about blue whales (she loves animals) and the gems collection, which I have to say…any girl or woman would love.
On the fourth day, we were scheduled to go home and she asked to stay another day. We’d begun to have a lot of fun. And she’d begun to ask me what I wanted. She now had capacity to know her own needs and desires and also to hold mine. I never told her she was being initiated. While my inner child longs for lavish initiations and rituals and I’m often trying to engage her this way, that’s not what she likes. It’s not her. At least, not right now. The last morning, as we were leaving the hotel room I posed the question:
“You know, after a great trip like this, I like to give thanks or make an offering. When I come to the city, I often make an offering to the river. It’s walkable from here, we could take some flowers…” I saw her beginning to roll her eyes, “Or we could just say a quick thank you here in the hotel room.”
“Yeah, let’s do that.”
So, we did.
We made a lot of mistakes that trip. We went to some bad shows and restaurants; she read a pretty raw book; we bought some strange clothes—in my opinion. And she was thrilled. It was what she’d wanted to do…all of it. She literally walked with more confidence and I was able to take her in in all her magnificence.
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About a week after that trip, I began to notice I was dissociated. As great as it was, I had to admit, I’d had a really rough time. Holding us through that process on my own had taken a toll. I’d also weathered a lot of her anger and frustration; and as I said, was dealing with my own inner child. I wasn’t sleeping well and my appetite was poor. My digestion was off. I couldn’t feel. When my beloved partner came to visit (we live 3,000 miles from each other) and I couldn’t really feel him, I knew I was in trauma. I just wasn’t sure what the trauma was. It was something that wasn’t yet accessible to me—something still unconscious.
Driving to dinner one night, a few days into his visit, we heard Billie Joel’s Always a Woman on the radio. I hadn’t heard the song in years. It hit me so hard I nearly had to pull off the road to cry. I drove and sang and wept, still knew every word. We were both surprised by how the song moved me and we laughed. He asked me what I loved about it.
“I think it meant so much to me because it helped me understand that a woman can be many things, she can be mean or irrational or imperfect and still be adored. That was a big relief to me.” We both laughed—no one knows better than him why that would resonate with me.
Later, at dinner he said something that set me off. It had been an innocent comment, but it brought forward my inner uninitiated teen, the 12/13-year old. She was beyond distraught. Through that evening, her arrival into my awareness put me in touch with how I had actually felt on the verge of puberty. I felt again the strangeness and discomfort of my body changing right before my eyes…everyone’s eyes—I felt the terror of being noticed in a body beyond my control. It immediately struck me that I am having the same experience now, in menopause. The hormonal surges, the bloating, the weight gain, the body taking the wheel…
I realized she’d been activated and had been right under the surface of my awareness for a couple of weeks—since my daughter’s initiation. The dissociation was a kind of “What about me?” cry for help. She was getting ready to come forward, bringing all her pain with her. It didn’t take much—the feelings were ripe.
I felt her terror—yes, the word is not too strong—of stepping into adulthood without preparation. And my own terror now of becoming invisible or moving ever-closer to the disintegration of the form. My beloved held me as we tended to the intensity. In the midst of it all, I heard my young self wail, “I don’t know how to be a woman!” She felt utterly alone.
I shared this with him, and thought about my daughter, “If she asked me this right now, I’m not sure I’d know what to say! 35 years later and I’m still not sure…” I searched my experience for answers and came up short. But, I saw how much work I’ve put into it, “And I’m actually more in touch with the feminine, than most women! This is what I’ve dedicated myself to…” The truth of that struck me dumb.
“But, you’re not alone now…and neither is she.”
His words calmed me and I could feel through the personal layer of the story. The terror, the feelings of being lost, confused, and overwhelmed—the rage—was not just mine; it belonged to all girls who struggle to become women…become the full expression of who they were born to be…without the essential function rites of passage serve. It was the anguish of the extinguishing of and suppression of feminine wisdom; the breaking of the chain of feminine initiation and guidance into adulthood that has been ruptured almost to extinction for maybe 5-10 generations, depending on ancestry.
Suddenly, my body calmed. I felt my happiness at that Billie Joel concert in 1985 and my adoration for that song, Always a Woman. Suddenly, it made sense: even as a girl, I was looking everywhere—in song lyrics, in movies—for clues. I was trying to answer this question of how to be a woman that wasn’t being answered for me by the women I knew. I felt compassion for my own resourcefulness, for the purity of the girl’s determination to know.
I could hold my pain as not personal, but collective. I cried for the rupture, for the loss of this essential wisdom. My mother suffered it, too. And likely, her mother…as far back as I could sense. The loss was staggering. And I felt it for men, too. Men have also lost their rites of passage. Boys aren’t initiated or go through botched initiations and suffer to figure out what it means to be a man. It felt sad, but good, to really be in touch with the grief.
I also recalled what I’d just been able to do for my daughter, to guide her into this new phase of life slightly more prepared. I did that with the support of my friend, one of many beautiful wise women I spend time with now. Women who teach what it is to be a woman in their every word and gesture. I’m not saying my rite of passage in NYC for my daughter was perfect or even that it was enough…but, it was heartfelt, emergent, and intentional. It was conscious. It was alchemical and intuitive and it worked.
I felt hope.
I spent that night tending to my young part, promising her the rite of passage through menopause that she didn’t get into puberty. I told her all about how we’re going to change this for girls and women. How I have dedicated my life to this work bringing women into their hearts and back into true sisterhood.
Later that week, when my partner and I went into the city for the night, I took my inner teen down to the river and we did a ritual. We made a mandala and filled it with a red berry for every period I ever had in 35 years of bleeding. We reflected on what I have learned (the hard way) about what it means to be a woman. And I held her hand and let her know…it was all worth it.
As I sat there, on the banks of the East River, an Orthodox Jewish woman came and sat nearby. She was wearing a wig and the uniform women in her community wear. She asked me about the mandala and we engaged in a brief conversation. At one point she asked me, “What do you do?”
“I’m a writer and I teach meditation…” I gauged her readiness for the next part, “And I create spaces for women to come together and open their hearts.”
She looked impressed or surprised, I couldn’t tell.
“What do you do?” I asked her in return.
“I own a shop. I sell clothes and shoes—women’s and men’s…” She paused and looked at me, maybe gauging my readiness, “You know women in my community don’t really work. It’s not common.”
“I figured. Do you like to work?”
“Yes, I like to stay busy.” She smiled and I smiled back. I felt like asking her name, but felt we’d already come up to the line of intimacy that felt comfortable. Names were besides the point.
I silently thanked her for participating in my rite of passage and for bringing her curiosity and truth to the process. Initiations need a witness. She was mine in that moment. I think she got something from it, too.
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I know there are a lot of women out there who have been holding this flame and keeping it alive—sometimes at great personal expense and even peril. I bow to you. I see you. And the flame HAS been kept alive. As I move through the portal, I continue to explore this question of initiation and look for new rituals to mark the passages that define a woman’s life…or any human’s life. I’ve come to understand that much of what we were taught about “being a woman” was corrupted by patriarchy and distorted. I love that we’re in a time when so much of that is being rejected and reinvented by women and people of all genders and those not defined by gender at all. The freedom is glorious. And that we’re doing it in community is even better.
It’s telling that two of the biggest movies of 2023 were about this question: how to be a woman. Can you guess which movies? Barbie, of course. And Poor Things. At first, I found both Barbie and Bella Baxter a little alarming as a portrayal of womanhood, but then I realized that there’s something genius about our starting from a blank slate! A doll come to life…a creature who becomes a creator…both of them fumbling, making mistakes, and experiencing life as if through a child’s eyes, new eyes, fresh eyes. I think it’s progress. A grand do-over!
Finding new rituals and rituals that include all kinds of people feels like the work of the next cycle for me. I don’t want young girls and young women to feel the terror and existential angst I felt. I know the reality they’re stepping into is grim, but isn’t that what initiations are for? They help us bring things into perspective, and approach life empowered. Every generation has their particular monsters and battles to fight. Sadly, my daughter will face threats I can’t dream of, let alone protect her from. But, I can help her become a woman who can face such things. I can give her the tools she needs as she learns for herself what it means to be a woman—not in the past, but now.
'Cause I, I
I don't know how to feel
But I wanna try
I don't know how to feel
But someday, I might
Someday, I might.
—Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For” from Barbie
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So beautiful…
So beautiful!! I cried! ❤️❤️