Confessions of a Menopausal Mom at the Gym

Since I have seven months experience, six if you count that I've only been to the gym four times since Thanksgiving, I wanted to share my vast, hard-earned experience with you my fellow Menopausal Moms.

I just started wotking out last year in May. It was  12-wweek  program for people over 50. I always was an overachiever so I started at 49.  For $100 you got two visits with a nutrtionist, a weekly visit with a trainer and access to the gym. (HealthWork Baptist Health in Lexington offers the program called Joints in Motion)

Best Money I Ever Spent.

It did not start out in a great way. During my first visit the trainer didn't know what to do with me I was so nervous and sweaty. Sweaty partly because of anxiety, partly because my air conditioning didn't work in my car and partly because of the occasional hot flash which a careful reader will know by now are apparently made worse in me by stress.

He, seriously, took me past a Zumba class with a woman dancing in it with a chair in front of her so she could sit down. She easily had 100 pounds on me. There, he said, if she can do it you can.

 Looking back I guess that isn't a terrible motivational tool but it didn't feel encouraging at the time. I just got sweatier and more hot flashy.

But I stuck with it. It wasn't pretty. It was plenty sweaty. But I did it and am going to go back at it again in the New Year.

Here are some randoms thoughts, some confessions, about the gym.

• My first time at the gym the trainer told me to walk for four minutes on treadmill then left, seeming confused that walking 30 seconds seemed a challenge. I thought those four minutes would never end. It was nearly all due to nerves. In no time I was doing 15 than 20 than 30. It gets better. 
• There are very few chubby white haired women at the gym. I don't know where they all are because trips to Wal-Mart show me there are plenty of us. Let's see what we can do to change that.
• If you haven't worked out in a long time or ever then getting ready to work out can be a work out. Those damn tennis shoes don't tie themselves and gym shoes don't slip on. I was stiff, stiff, stiff. My awesome second trainer would catch me as I emerge from the dressing room, sweating from shoe-putting-on and no-airconditioning in the car and say "oh good, you are warmed up." It gets better.
• Most people aren't paying any attention to you. If you think they are judging you in some way for being in a gym but not being in shape...you are in the wrong gym and you, like me, are probably too self-conscious. That gets better too.
• Yes, sometimes, there are grunty, sweaty men which can make you, if you are like me, uncomfortable. (Women, in my experience, are 90 percent less grunty.) If you put in your ear buds, say tuned into One Direction, you can't hear them. (Or, maybe, grunt back randomly. I haven't tried that yet but I might. It's something to aspire to in 2015.)
• After the treadmill, I really, really wanted to stick with something that looked like a recumbent bike and that was it. It was where the Super Seniors at my gym hung out. I wanted nothing to do with the elliptical, no free weights, no walking to the part of the gym where the muscle-lifting, super grunters roam. I was scared. But with some encouragement I tried new things. I liked them. So, push yourself and get support.
• Sometimes there are fit young men in the gym. I feel that it is appropriate to admire them in not a creepy grandma way but in a way that honors God's good work. When I see a fit young man I say to myself, sometimes out loud, "Good Job, God. Look what you did there? Nice work!" There are some perks at the gym you just can't find anywhere else.
• Today's shout out is to Ireland. Yes, someone in Ireland has read Menopausal Moms of Kentucky. Mary Charlotte Meehan is my name. If you say it with an Irish accent you can see where my roots are. Go Ireland. Menopause and Moms are Universal.

Ok, now I believe you. There's a stretch when you won't recognize your teen.

There are certain things that we Moms, menopausal or not, simply don't share willingly with each other. Did someone, anyone, come to you when you were pregnant and tell you that your feet would never been the same size again? Did your best friend or sister let you know that the shoes in your closet would forever be a reminder of your pre-pregnancy glass slipper size as your newly evil step-sister sized feet will never again squeeze into.
No.
No one tells you.
I've never told anyone.
I don't have the heart. The baby-making mammas are so excited. I can't stand to point out any of  the downside.
They'll find out soon enough.
 Giant feet. Raw nipples. Lack-of-sleep psychosis. They'll find out.
Along the same vein, no one tells you while you are growing a human that someday that interloper will think you are an idiot and actively show their disdain for you. Eyes will roll so far back into their head you aren't sure they will ever unroll. This may be because you suggest, perhaps, wearing a coat to a high school football game because with the windchill factor of -15 degrees.
Apparently it is a part of the developmental process. The paperwork given to me by my mental health counselor -- if  you don't have one you should totally get one -- shows that it is a child's job to separate from their parents. My personal experience is that it is especially painful or dramatic between mothers and daughters and compounded exponentially between Menopausal Moms and hormonal teen.
No one told me.
Ok, that is not true. A couple of people told me and I didn't believe them. One of the them was the sweetest, kindest, most Christian woman I know. She swore her daughters were terrible as teens. She didn't recognized them. The got better when they were young adults. I didn't believe her. Her family was so adorable it couldn't be true. They looked like the families that come in pictures frames when
you buy them at fancy stores.
My fellow Menopausal Mom, Kim, told me of the Dark Times with her now grown, and awesome, children. She also said it will fade and my girl will come back to me.
I'm not sure I believed that either.
So, I have been taking two informal polls in the last few weeks. One is of mothers whose daughter's recently travailed adolescence. I don't even have to really know you. I just have to know you have a young adult child. I just say something like: My daughter and I are at that stage where she acts like she hates me.
They nod and look sympathetic.
The other is among any unfortunate young woman who I encounter between the ages of 20 and 35. Did you hate your mother at 15? I ask. They all say yes.
What about now?
Generally, it's something like "Oh, I totally love her, I talk to her every day. She's in Bolivia and we FaceTime every night."
So I take some solace.
This being the holiday season every sitcom I watched this week seemed to have an over reaching mother shaming, begging, manipulating their children to spend time with them And, sitcoms being what they may, in each instance the child, often grudgingly but most genuinely as a sitcom can manage will see -- gosh darn it-- I love my Mom too much not to spend an evening
around the Christmas tree with her if that's her hearts desire.
Oh, if life were wrapped up like a sitcom.
But I realize I have to adjust my thinking. This developmental stage isn't personal.
When my girl was a baby and she cried I didn't think "that cry is a indictment of my skills as a
mother". No, I tried to help her. I tried to figure it out. I put myself second and worked for the better of both of us. And that's what I need to do now.
I never thought of myself as one of those moms who saw herself first as her kid's friend. But maybe it slipped that way. Maybe I thought I was protecting her by letting of some things I need her to do ...like chores or listening or being respectful because overall she is a great kid.
But, apparently, according to my mental health professional, she needs something to push against.
That is me.
So here is my job. She pushes, I stay firm. She hurts me and I let it go.
I set a rule and I stick to it.
It is a little trickier because part of this for me is saying no, setting boundaries and making her accountable so she can be an accountable adult. I was really good at setting boundaries for her when she was little. Even when she would push. Because I could see it clearly. Don't touch the stove you will get burned. No matter how much you want to touch the stove the answer is still no.
And now it is the same. The lines are just more involved. But I will figure it out although I could use some suggestions.
And I know, and I should have known all along, we are family and we will work it out. It might be a couple of years, apparently, but it will work out.
Polls don't lie.

1020 days and counting....reluctantly feathering my empty nest

I joke that I have less than three years to emotionally cripple my daughter so she can't leave me and go away to college.

Seriously, it's funny when I say it.

That's because my daughter is an exceptionally grounded little human. My friends know it. She is like that, I promise, because of who she organically is and not because of anything I have done. Most likely, it's in spite of me.

But I do mentally count the days until she will leave and I find it terrifying. My world has been centered on her for a very long time.

I got divorced a little past her second birthday. Her dad, who is at his core a good guy, unfortunately bugged out early and often. He skipped  out on picking her up so I often I stopped making plans. I tried and tried and tried to get him to commit to at least one day a week to keep her. He never could. (Until last year. Seriously. And now he wants to keep her several days a week. I guess he is doing some counting himself.)

So I tried to take pottery classes. Go out with friends. Have a life apart from her but it never worked very well. I had a great baby sitter who she and I both love but didn't like leaving her to do anything but work because I felt guilty. I had to work enough at night and on weekends. (Although now I wonder why I ever did that.) I had awesome family and friends, like my friend and fellow Menopausal Mom, who would keep her. But most of the time it was the two of us.

And, to be perfectly honest, at some point it just got too hard. I was working full time. I was taking care of her, as easy and awesome as a kid that she was, full time. It was all I could do to do that. And I always felt like I was behind.

And so.......it was the two of us. When I did stuff, we did stuff.
And now....she is going to be leaving.

About a year before I got pregnant I started a baby hope chest. I'd buy stuff for a baby, some of it practical like bibs, some of it not so practical like a stuffed bunny wearing bunny slippers. It was my way of getting use to the idea of having a kid.

Now, I am doing that in reverse. I am starting to do things to get use to life without her.

First there is the letting go.
Yes, you can go to that Slipknot concert but you have to stay in your seat.
Yes, you can drive to the wings place with your friend who has a license
Yes, I will not fuss at you about wearing a coat when it is 30 degrees because you are old enough to figure that one out for yourself.

Then there is the doing things for myself.

I danced in the street like a zombie. (See post "You Rock Zombie Grany") I've joined a club. I'm working out. (See post "An exploding hotel) I'm blogging.
I'm making an extra effort to see friends and do things, sometimes on school nights!
I am making a lot of soup from scratch.
I know there is some place in all of this that I should be excited about the prospect. It will be me time all the time.
I'm not that good at me time.

I guess it's good to remind myself I've done this sort reinvention before. Several times. I was a kid. I went to college. I've moved across country three times. I've been married and divorced. I've freelanced. I've volunteered. I've had many incarnations.

This will just be the next one. I realize that worrying about it doesn't
help. It just takes me out of enjoying the moment that is.

But still.....1020 days and counting.