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By Zarod Rominski
Review of Red Moon Passage: The Power and Wisdom of Menopause
by Bonnie J. Horrigan, Harmony Books, NY: 1996; 242 pp., $24.00 hardcover
Red
Moon Passage is the story of one woman's search for the "wise woman"—she who knows. In seeking her, Bonnie Horrigan shares with us conversations
she had with eight contemporary wise women as well as her own fearless
search and discoveries. All of the women that Bonnie speaks with are rich
contributors to contemporary culture, drawing on diverse cultural and
mythic traditions: Paula Gunn Allen, Jamie Sams, Clarissa Pinkola Estes,
Kachinas Kutenai, Barbara Walker, Carol Pearson, Jeanne Achterberg, Angeles
Arrien.
Red Moon Passage heralds a new time for women. While issues of menopause
have finally become acceptable on public book store shelves; while alternative
healers have begun to dig deeper and come up with holistic suggestions;
Red Moon Passage goes beyond all this. Here we come face to face with
our mortal and our eternal beings. This is the time to take your life
in your own hands, and shape it into what you are yet to become. Menopause
is an opportunity to step fully into your own fifth dimension.
How to achieve this? This is the overriding message: as we pass through
menopause we are physically transformed, and with this we have the opportunity
to effect a total spiritual/psychic transformation.
The physical transformation will take place. As estrogen is flushed
from our bodies, we become hormonally, chemically, psychically, emotionally
changed. Expect it. As traumatic as the transition can be, these women
carry the message that there IS somewhere to get to. Paula Gunn Allen
speaks of the Great Divide. For her, the passage was long and filled with
challenging illnesses, emotional torrents. But she got to the other side.
And on the other side she says, "It's amazing how beautifully your mind
works."
Women
who have chosen not to bear children themselves will find that Red Moon
Passage is devoid of that narrow and frustrating perspective that can
only find meaning in menopause as the end of child bearing. Those of us
who long ago chose to not bear children still know menopause as a powerful,
life shaking event. The writers in Red Moon Passage acknowledge what has
ended, but speak more excitedly of what can begin.
We don't have much sense of this. The later years as adventure and pinnacle.
Carol Pearson suggests we are all participating in an evolutionary leap.
A leap into a time when so many women live, and live fully, beyond menopause.
When life expectancy for women is in the area of 50 years, few live into
post-menopausal maturity. Paula Gunn Allen suggests that the earth as
a whole is going through a menopausal time—a time of letting go of
old expectations, rhythms and energies and a time of opening up to new
waves. Might we women who share this evolutionary leap in a most personal
way have a particular role to play on the planetary level?
As I spent time reading this book I felt awakening in me a new attitude
toward menopause, a fascination, an excitement. A shifting happened. I
was no longer a woman who got dizzy, but one who consciously centers and
grounds herself numerous times throughout the day.
Carol Pearson speaks of this reframing as 'magic:'
I am also very aware that we
are, in fact, creating our own lives. There are ways that our lives
change by simply reframing what is happening to us . . . Magic begins
to happen when we stop fighting life or trying to manipulate or control
it. Magic is fostered by radical trust in the universe and our own choices.
Initiation
—Opening to the Vastness of the Universe—Release from the tether
of monthly cycles—Daring—The Great Divide—Sense of Self as Spiritual—these are some of the notions put forth by the contributors to Red
Moon Passage.
These are the possibilities that are ours for the shaping, for the daring.
© 1996-2001 Zarod Rominski
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