Update:

I’ve been spending more time on my other blog these days. There has been much going on in my personal life, changes and decisions being made and those posts are only appropriate for my mature blog. If you are 18 years or older, please join me at my other blog which I hope you will enjoy.  -Kate

A Call To Arms…

While I was looking through some of my past written works I came across this one. How I could have forgotten about it, is beyond me, other than to say I most likely became distracted by other things. I sent it to a couple of my friends explaining to them I wished I had a place to post it for others to read, which is what sent me on my search that eventually brought me to wordpress.  It is quite different from my other postings in my journal, but for me this expresses my more deeper thoughts that become aroused when I find a book which stimulates my mind. So here it is unchanged from its original (2011), enjoy and comment if you feel the desire to do so.

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In a book I have been reading called ‘Faith of the Fallen’, I have come to recognize our own predicament.  The story is much about people having fallen into slavery under a falsehood of doing good for the people.  Sacrificing themselves and all they have for the good of the people.  The common worker almost starves to death while working and slaving hard to only have the money they rightfully earned taken from them in the guise of helping others, and in actuality it feeds the rich to become richer.

 

I have in essence worked for the same company that has migrated through transformation after transformation with the guise of doing better.  In the beginning there was once pride in the work the common workers performed but in some areas the degradation had already started.  Workers were threatened with the loss of their jobs if they didn’t perform, and were lectured to and punished when a wrong was committed by only one of their fellow workers.  If someone stood up to the unfairness of the situation then rules would be tightened down on everyone and fear would be the common ground on making the common worker keep in line.  As transformation came it was with speeches of ‘inspiration’ of how good the transformation will be for all, how it will improve the overall standing of the company, thus providing benefit to the common worker.  Transformation over transformation, and year over year, the common worker has never seen improvement on their situation.  The common worker continues to be ‘inspired’ by fear.  Watching as those they have worked alongside of for years, lose their jobs while others who have no skill be hired in to do the same work, replacing the skilled common worker.  We watch with our hearts in our hands, and fear in our throats afraid to speak for fear we will be the next one to be walked out the door and left to rot on the doorstep.

 

I take away from the book I have just finished a quote which cuts to the core of what we all need to be reminded of: ‘Your life is yours alone. Rise up and live it.’

 

Large corporations have taken upon themselves the right to enslave us with false testimonials of ‘perform well and you will be rewarded’ because the company will do well and in the same breath they speak of millions and billions of dollars being spent to acquire, expand, take over…  Not only in the many transformations of the company I work for have they proclaimed this throughout all transformations but have continued to grow and expand while the common worker sees nothing for the hard work they put in except fear and more fear and the constant expectation that their skill and ability and good performance will account for nothing when the rich decide the bottom line needs to be increased to make them richer.

 

I proclaim nothing but honesty and the brutal truth.  I know of no worker who does not fear of losing their job.  I know of no worker who doesn’t see the futility in the never ceasing ‘transformations’, which are really just a reshuffling of department heads to keep the common workers so confused as to who they report to, and cannot tell when another management/director/vice-whatever position is made instead of being eliminated, and know performance evaluations no longer have any merit when the person performing the evaluation hasn’t even worked with the individuals being evaluated.

 

We are just slaves being shuffled from one slave master to another, with pillow talk to soften the blow of yet another master who will not fight for the value provided by the common worker they have enslaved.

 

The book ‘’Faith of the Fallen” is the sixth book in a series of which I’m driven to reading the rest of the series.  I am quite blown over by the depth for which the author had to have knowledge of the psychology of warfare, slavery, governments, institutions, and of individuals to be able to write a story that is classified as ‘fiction’, takes place in a period I can only classify as ‘medieval’ and yet have reverberations throughout our current period in time.  I have yet to come across a current situation that is not represented within the story.  I applaud the man for his boldness and understand why it is written in fiction.  If he had written this as current history with a call to arms for revolution he would have been jailed without counsel for treason to never be heard from again.  It is a sad state of affairs we see ourselves in, not only as a workforce but as a so called ‘free’ people.  And I fear it will have to get much worse in order for revolution to occur to bring about change for the better.

 

© Kate Spyder

Opening and Closing Doorways… which do you want open?

This weekend has been a reminder to me. A reminder to be true to myself. To not let the superficial interfere with allowing life to flow harmoniously. To not allow insecurity to play a role in deceiving myself. But mostly to not run away from anything that awakens me to what lies dormant within me.

It is interesting when one changes their focus how doorways will open and others close. I made a leap in my own observations realizing the focus I had was not clear, was not defined enough in detail and thus was allowing distractions or should I say detours from my intended course.

Sometimes focusing on a point too far in the future will allow for too many possibilities that in the end will steer us off course. This is what was happening to me.

When I realized this, I asked myself how I could correct my course and ultimately attract that which I ultimately seek. As in programming a super computer, one doesn’t sit down and write the program in one long uninterrupted session. Though a genius probably could, it isn’t usually done and a genius probably knows it is better to do so in incremental steps.

This is the conclusion I came to. Instead of focusing on the end result, as ‘the result’ which was not completely clear anyway because of too many unknowns, I switched my focus to visualize the first step in the process. Then to alter that visualization as progress is achieved to reach the next step in the process all the while keeping the idea of the destination as a reference point while allowing flexibility for change in the destination if what is learned along the journey brings one the knowledge that the original destination is no longer desirable.

What I realized in doing so is the end is not really an end at all but an ongoing process that brings us much more than we were ever able to visualize when we were focused on the end result.

A friend told me, “the journey is more important than the destination”.

Though I had already taken the steps I did to alter my focus, his words reminded me, that my altered course was now about enjoying the journey and in fact I have no doubt if I had not altered my course, the door to meeting him would have remained closed.

Our choices open some doors and closes other doors. If the right doors are not opening then maybe we are not making the right choices.

A Gift I’ll Never Forget

He touched me with gentle hands. A single finger that slowly traveled down my spine and up again, over my face and down again. Ceaselessly, tirelessly. Some would say, a lover’s touch. I might would say the same thing now, but I knew then it was the touch of a man who loved me, cherished me, and adored me.

I touched him in turn. Sliding my finger along the raised vein on his hand. Watching it disappear beneath my finger just to pop right back up as my finger passed along its length of blue-green color. His skin darkly tanned, gnarled knuckles like the knots on an old tree. He was beautiful even with the aging spots upon his leathery skin.

For as long as he lived with us, I spent as much time as I could with him. Watching him prepare the rinse he would use to wash his eyes out every night before bed. Or to sit with him and just let him touch me. It didn’t matter what we did together. He was the only one who touched me anymore. He was the only one who sat with me, actually talked with me. He seemed to understand, I needed nothing except him and the love he gave me. So I loved him back fiercely.

I missed him after my father, his son, pushed him away. I miss him still. It wasn’t until some four or five years later I heard of his death and only then by reading the announcement of his death that my father had wrapped within one of my Christmas presents. I wanted to scream at my father, yell at him for not calling me so I could have said my good-byes. Instead, I clamped my lips tight, held back my tears, closed the lid of the gift never remembering what else was in the box, only the announcement of my grandfather’s death.

Saying Good-bye

They were tears. She was sure they were tears falling down her face. As she looked around her, at all the people, every one of them looked the same. Sullen, sad, downcast, whatever words you want to use, but nary a single tear.

Why? Why was she the only one crying?

She looked up at her father. Looked around at her brothers. Looked up at her mother. They were all the same as all the others surrounding them.

Even her grandfather.

No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t stop the tears. She tried to be like them. She tried. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t stop them, not until she felt her mother take her hand.

Her grandmother was there too, just not where one would expect their grandmother to be. She was there sealed in a beautiful shiny wooden box.

The last time she saw her had been over the weekend. Her dad had suddenly packed them all up in the car and taken them to his parent’s house, her grandparents.

She loved spending time with them, only this time was different. This time it was only her grandfather who met them at the door. When she asked where her grandmother was she was told she was in her bedroom, and that she was to stay out of the bedroom.

But when everyone was busy, she snuck in. She had to see her. She walked in, and walked around the bed to where her grandmother lay. She was dressed in her Sunday best dress. Even her shoes were on her feet. She looked like she was ready to just get up and go right to church.

But, she knew. She knew her grandmother would never get up again. She also knew what she looked at was only the shell that had held her grandmother. Her grandmother was no longer inside. She was gone and would never come back.

She didn’t cry then. She just stood and looked at her, knowing she still loved her. She was here to say her silent good-bye.

She didn’t stay long. She didn’t want anyone coming in and spoiling her time with her grandmother, chasing her out of the room, so she silently said her good-bye and quietly left the room. As she walked out she saw her grandfather and father letting in some men. She knew they were here to take her grandmother away.

A few days later, she was instructed by her parents to tell her teacher she would not be in school the next day since she had to go to her grandmother’s funeral. It wasn’t until after she told the teacher that she felt the hard lump in her throat so she asked to be excused to go to the restroom.

She sat alone in the restroom crying until a group of girls came in from her class and asked her why she was crying. She told them about her grandmother but she could tell many of them didn’t understand, especially didn’t understand why that would make her cry.

As she stood at the grave site watching them lower the shiny new wooden box into the ground, she looked around her at all the people without any tears and she wondered what was wrong with her. Why she was so different from all the others. Why she couldn’t be like them and not cry.

Slowly, Perpetually, Going Insane…

For the past three months I stepped away from almost all online activity other than checking my email and only searching for websites when something in my life required it. Not even any online chatting. Even phone calls to friends sort of took a nose dive into oblivion.

I took this time away to do some internal searching and evaluation. It was and is quite difficult to realize I am slowly, and quietly going insane while no one sees or cares.

I have no doubt I’m not alone in this evaluation however no one will admit it, even me, at least until recently. I wonder how long it will take others to finally admit it. Even if they do, I find no one broaches subjects that could possibly be hurtful. In fact, no one broaches subjects other than the politically correct niceties any more. Even the “Hi, how are you.” Is expected to be returned by “I’m fine thanks for asking.” While everyone knows it isn’t the truth but allowing the lie to convince them it isn’t a lie and gives them permission to ignore what is behind the façade.

There is something to be said for insanity. Insanity allows a person to say anything, even the truth while not hurting anyone, because everyone knows you are insane and that what comes out of your mouth is total nonsense to be shrugged off and ignored and whispered, “Do you see how crazy they are? It’s so sad.” While shaking their head and ignoring the truth of the statement.

In a larger part the world is perceived as insane so what goes on in it receives the same treatment as individuals of insanity. “Oh do you see how insane the world is? It’s so sad, especially for our children.” While shaking their heads and walking off ignoring all the truth around them.

I used to think I could change the world, but instead the world changed me. Made me cynical, distrustful, and doubt everything about myself and others. I used to think there was a man out there who would love me with so much depth he would fight for me. He would break down walls for me. He would show me that love really exists. But sadly I’m starting to believe that I believed in a lie.

And now I find myself slowly, perpetually, going insane.

An Insanely Muddy Conversation

“It’s perfectly muddy.”
“What is?”
“The distance from here to there.”
“I see no mud.”
“But it is perfectly there.”
“Where?”
“Down at your toes.”
“There is no mud there.”
“But oh there is, if you just look from here to there.”
“I don’t see what you are saying.”
“Of course you don’t. After all, my voice isn’t muddy.”
“I see no mud. I see not what you are saying. There is no here to there, only my toes down there.”
“And there you have it. It’s perfectly muddy, if all you see are your toes down there.”

Learning to Love Myself

I’ve had people tell me I am smart. I am intelligent. That I am strong. They envy me my independence and ability to stand up for myself and do what I need to do to make my life better for me and my daughter. But in all the years I have never told myself those things. I’ve never looked deeply at all the things I have done in my life and thanked myself for taking care of me.

I was strong enough to walk away from several potential sexual abuse situations and keep myself strong, but I never allowed myself to grieve over the loss of my innocence that those situations stole. I also never allowed myself to grieve over the loss of the loving relationships that had existed prior to the change those situations caused. I also never forgave myself for not seeing the danger.

I blamed myself for a lot of what transpired throughout my life even though they were things I could never control. I couldn’t control the anger my father presented to us nor could I control the lack of love expressed by any of my family members. The only thing I could control were my own emotions and my own responses to what was presented to me and unfortunately I buried them deep within myself. I have never forgiven myself for having made those choices. Instead I blamed myself and my family. Then when each and every relationship failed, I blamed myself and buried my feelings even deeper.

Then a couple months ago I saw the connection between how I related in relationships with how I was raised and though the light turned on, it only turned on half way. I chose to blame my parents for my failures instead of understanding I needed to understand that the way I handled relationships was my fault and not theirs and I needed to learn to forgive myself for what I perceived as my own failures.

I can continue to look back and blame everything on my past, but that would just keep me in my past and never moving forward. I could continue to allow my past to control me and never forgive myself but that would never open the door for me to have a truly loving and fulfilling relationship.

Instead, today I choose to find the things about myself that I like, love and respect and learn to forgive myself and love myself. I started by writing down those things I like and it was harder than I thought it would be. Someone told me to be gentle on self-judgements and that isn’t as simple as it might sound.  It is very difficult to not be hard on one’s self but I’m trying. I’m trying by looking at some of the more simple things I do every day for myself and my daughter that are done with very little thought behind them, but things I just do, not because they have to be done but because I like doing them. I enjoy doing them. Like waking my daughter up in the morning for school, even though it can be frustrating because she doesn’t want to get up, she reminds me of how I was at her age. Even though she has her own alarm and I am working on teaching her to be responsible for herself, I do enjoy seeing her wake and look at me and wrap me in her arms to give me my morning hug and kiss that welcomes our day. I just hope I can learn to love myself as much as I love her. Maybe someday with her help I’ll be able to do just that.

Change is Good

I feel like a baby beginning to walk again. That’s not bad mind you, just a bit disconcerting at times. I’ve been reading a blog “Earth Connections”. It is like one of those blessed books you find where every page, every sentence, every word seems to have been written specifically for you.

A day or so before I found “Earth Connections” I wrote the following, which I never finished, it was like it was waiting for something else.

It isn’t the dew on the grass that makes me feel this way. It isn’t the sun on the leaves either, nor their new colors before they tumble and fall to the damp grass.

I feel confused, and also excited. I feel blessed but also possibly cursed. I feel the strands of the nether reaching out to pluck at my happiness telling me it isn’t at all what it seems.

Maybe love is supposed to be quite ethereal. Or maybe it is just that I’m not really of this world but other worldly. What am I to think?

I don’t believe in God as other people do. I gave that up many years ago for it held a crap load of contradictions, and predispositions. I did not, I could not believe as they do, as the organized religions do. This is not me, and never has been no matter how hard I tried to bend, and mold myself into whatever form I could.

I tried bending and molding myself into that form for years and ignored the voice within. I am however finding it amazing how much I have come to understand intuitively even through all the years of trying to bury it deep underneath the organized church teachings.

So now I feel like a baby who is first learning to walk, looking out over the landscape and realizing nothing is outside of my reach, but not really knowing where to place my first step. Intuition tells me to focus inward to get in touch with my heart and spirit and all else will flow.

I’m not afraid of this new world that I can manifest. In fact I feel relieved. There is someone out there who has confirmed what I’ve intuitively felt my whole life.

One Woman’s Experience: Hormones, Love or Hate or Both

I get these events. I like to call them events, that way it doesn’t sound like I’m whining. I hate whining. I even taught my daughter not to whine when she was small, but I think she has forgotten it for I’m realizing she whines when she is having difficulty with her homework. But I’ve gone off track so to speak which is a new record for me, I think, when sitting down to write since I did it within about three sentences *laugh*. So back to these events, it will make more sense why I so quickly went off track, once you hear about today’s event.

These events occur, with some irregularity, some occur after I’ve pushed myself physically, while others occur when I push myself mentally. They start at the base of my skull which are mild and rather not very noticeable. I tend to only give them a cursory look when all it is, is at the base of my skull. They either start on the right side of my neck or on the left side of my neck. Thank god I’ve never had them on both sides at the same time. In a while, they begin to travel up the side of my head and over the top to settle behind either my right or left eye depending on what side of the neck they began. 

A chiropractor told me they are migraines but I always heard migraines were severe and debilitating, sometimes causing the person to have to go to a dark place so sunlight would not bother them. I guess not everyone has those types and I’m thankful mine are not. This one though can become painful but I can usually function through them. Today’s event not only carries with it the discomfort but also a struggle to keep my eyes open. I try to focus on work but find even five minutes is difficult to do, and usually even within two minutes I find myself just staring at the report I need to update and not having a clue of what that update needs to be or where to get it.

I tell myself I need to focus and work and get the job done, while the pain tells me to just go crawl into bed if I want it to go away. My eyes burn and lose focus. I rub them, then rub my hands through my hair rubbing my head, my forehead, the back of my neck and wish I could reach inside my brain and rub from the back of my eyes to the base of my skull. Sometimes I break down and take two Advil, but I wish I didn’t have to pollute my body with medications I don’t want so, I hold off as long as I can. I’ll probably go get them once I finish writing this.

I walked yesterday for forty-five minutes. I suspect that is part of why I feel this pain. I’ve tried to start exercising but this seems to always happen which tends to defeat my determination to get with the exercise program. And my doctors just look at me and tell me I should walk. I tell them I do but afterwards it’s all lost because I feel like crap with this pain I can’t stop. Funny how they say nothing.

So here I am rubbing my eyes again, my head leans to the right because that is the side that hurts and from time to time I notice my shoulders have moved up to my ears because the pain has me so tense. I relax them to only find them back in the same place a few minutes later. I’ve been told I must have a high pain tolerance to only need Advil for my migraines or other pain they would normally prescribe pain medicines for. What good is a high pain tolerance if they can’t find the root of what causes the pain, other than to just get you through the day? Oh but doctors only treat the symptoms and not the root cause. I keep forgetting that one truth about the medical system. If the root is treated then they wouldn’t have to see us again and the pharmaceutical companies wouldn’t need to create so many medications for all those symptoms we keep having.

When I asked my doctor what caused my normally working thyroid to suddenly become a hypothyroid around the age of 35, he told me he didn’t know. That it just happens to some and they have to stay on thyroid medicine for the rest of their lives. So I started taking the thyroid medicine, never feeling really any better. Now at age 53, I read about some progressive doctors that are on the leading edge of science are finding out that thyroid dysfunction (that has no known cause) is being caused by hormone imbalance. That hypothyroidism can be one of the early signs of a woman entering peri-menopause which is when her hormones begin to shut down because mother nature has determined she is no longer within healthy child bearing years.

Interesting that my migraines started around the same time.

My focus keeps breaking, and I just found I had left the milk out from earlier. Not a good sign especially since I had put all the other ingredients back where they belonged. This is how it is when I’m in the midst of a migraine.

This event today, isn’t all that different from my other events other than this one has me fighting to stay awake. I should just give in and curl up in my bed, but I think it is important to describe this for others and the best way to do that is to write the description while I am feeling it. Have you ever noticed that after pain is gone that all we can really remember is that we had pain, that it felt bad but we can’t actually remember the pain? If we could remember the pain, I wonder how many women would agree to having a second child after they had the first.

I write not just about my migraine because there is much more to this than just it, if what I perceive is true. My migraines and my hypothyroid began around the same time. I also have a different sort of migraine that has no pain. It is an ocular migraine, one that causes what looks like a cut in my vision that looks like the prism effect of light going through broken or scratched glass causing a rainbow of colors, except for me the rainbow is inside of this sliver that appears in the shape of an irregularly shaped C. It might start out in the center of my vision, like a little tiny ‘c’ and expand outward until it is a large ‘C’ until it moves completely out of my vision or it might begin at one side of my vision and work its way across to the other side. In any of these cases if I am reading sometimes I cannot see all the letters of the words if this funny shaped C is traveling across my direct visual path. This one luckily has no pain associated with it but visually it can be rather disruptive. I am not sure but this one may have started a little later than the other symptoms or it could be that I just didn’t talk to a doctor about it until I had a number of them that caused me concern. These wouldn’t appear very often and it wasn’t unusual to go six months or more without having one, so I could have gone for years before mentioning it to my eye doctor, which was when I found out it was a migraine.

Then about six years ago, I started having some other problems. I was on the metro in Montreal going downtown to the office I was now supposed to work from. The metro was rather crowded, bodies pressed against bodies. I was sitting thank god, but even that was a bit uncomfortable for a stranger’s body parts could inadvertently be pressed against parts of me that wouldn’t want a stranger’s body parts to be pressed against. We started to pull away from one of the stops and the metro suddenly stopped. The doors remained closed and locked and here we all were pressed tightly together. I felt panic start to rise.  I’m not one for being claustrophobic, but for the first time in my life I felt and understood the rising terror of someone being claustrophobic. I hung on by breathing deeply and biting my lower lip and trying very hard not to think about how tightly enclosed we all were and that the doors were locked that even if I lost it, I would still be locked in tight. I wasn’t too successful about not thinking about those things. Finally the train moved and at the next stop several people exited and there was room to breathe again. A few stops later and I was exiting as well and on my way to the office.

After that event I started recognizing other type events of anxiety and panic. While living in Montreal I passed it off as being just a product of living in a place that was stifling our need to be who we were and how becoming permanent residents of Quebec was trying to conform us into a box of their choosing instead of allowing us to live outside of the box which is our way of being who we are. Part of my anxiety was how badly my daughter was effected by this confinement and attempt to mold her into being something she is not. I felt for sure all of my anxiety and panic would suddenly disappear the moment we moved to a place that allowed us the freedom to be whom and what we are.

It took a year but we finally moved, to the beautiful province of British Columbia. Our freedoms were assured and we were able to relax into our new life and work on creating our new home.

But then it happened out of the blue one day, anxiety. Anxiety that grew into panic and I wanted to rant and scream and stomp my feet but all I could do was ask myself why. The thoughts I was having were no different than thoughts I had every day only a week or two prior or even a day or hour before without any anxiety or panic, so I couldn’t understand why they would grow, on that specific day, into full out anxiety and feelings of panic. A day or two or so later they would go away, and then weeks later they would come back. Then one morning I awoke with my bedroom spinning out of control. I closed my eyes but still felt the room spinning around me and in an attempt to stop it, I put my hands to my face, and over my eyes.  Beneath my hands I could feel my eyes moving rapidly out of my control. Then I skipped right past anxiety and into full blown panic. I felt my hands and feet go numb and I thought for sure I was going to have a heart attack and die. Then the anxiety kicked in as to what would happen to my daughter if anything happened to me. I was scared beyond anything I had ever been afraid of before. All I could do was wait to see what would happen.

Eventually, the spinning stopped and I was able to get up and walk around but any sudden movement would start the spinning so I moved slowly, cautiously for that day and several afterwards. Then I began my research. Research into all the various symptoms I had, to see if anything had them all.

One of the symptoms I hadn’t spoken of was problems sleeping through the night. I would wake sometimes two, or three or even four times a night and this happened every night. I was living a life of exhaustion, perpetual tiredness, the lack of good quality sleep was making my life miserable.

My mind was blown away when I discovered them all listed under peri-menopause and menopause. If in deed this was the case, I didn’t want to go to a General Practitioner and end up on pharmaceutical hormone replacement. I had heard enough horror stories about them. So I started researching Naturopaths and found one within an hour of where we lived. I set up an appointment and went to see her. I filled out their long questionnaire, which she looked over quickly before seeing me. We sat and talked for an hour, by the end she agreed it was most likely my hormones but wanted to do a saliva test to verify because as much as she felt sure which hormone I needed she wanted to make sure because there was always that one patient who didn’t fit what her observations were telling her.

I took the saliva test and waited for the results. We met to discuss and she put me on pregnenolone and progonB.  ProgonB is progesterone, a bio-identical progesterone. It is biologically compatible with the human body. It took a bit of increasing the dose slowly over time to determine the optimum amount I needed and we used my feelings of anxiety and panic to help make that determination. Once we had my progesterone where we needed it to be, I no longer had anxiety or panic attacks, except on rare occasions when I was under a lot of stress. When that would happen I would increase the progonB for that period of time I was under stress and then lower it back down afterwards. The body burns through our hormones during times of stress.

After doing some more research and a lot of reading, in particular Suzanne Somer’s books on anti-aging and hormones, I went to my Naturopath about what else we could do since I was still waking up at night and the research I had done indicated I should have all my hormone levels evaluated.

About a year after starting on progesterone, I took a 24 hour urine test to get a good reading on all of my hormones. Even with taking pregnenolone and progonB my progesterone was still a little low and all of my other hormones were low as well. I hadn’t taken thyroid medicine since moving to Canada in 2004, and though it didn’t show low in the report, I have a low body temperature of 97.6 which is a symptom of an underactive thyroid.  I am now taking Prometrium instead of progonB, pregnenolone, thyroid, DHEA, and testosterone. Estrogen has yet to be added. There is a good:bad ration for estrogen and my bad estrogen is higher than the good so we are working on flipping the ratio before adding estrogen. I’m taking I3C and lycopene to hopefully help flip the ratio. The plan is to check my estrogen ratio in about six months.

Oh and I had forgotten to mention one other symptom. Lack of libido. Ever since my daughter’s father departed our company, my libido has been almost non-existent. At first I excused this as a symptom of a very bad relationship and not wanting to be around men any more. But after eight years of celibacy and not caring whether I would ever be with a man again, I realized it was more than the result of just a bad relationship. In the past, even after bad relationships I still had sexual desires, but that wasn’t the case here.

When testosterone was added I realized just how out of balance my hormones had become. My libido came back full force and hasn’t stopped telling me about it ever since. I consider this a good thing, even though there is no man in my life, it has helped me to refocus and realize how empty my life had become and how I was depriving my daughter of possibly having a father figure who could and would want to be there for her if or when she ever needed a father.

The hormones I am taking are all bio-identical hormones. That means they are biologically compatible with our bodies and our bodies can use them quite efficiently. I go to a compounding pharmacy to have my prescriptions filled. If you want to know more about the pharmaceutical hormones, especially the negative side of them, research them online or read Suzanne Somer’s books.  I do not receive any compensation for promoting her books, I mention them here because they were of great help to me in understanding what was happening inside my body and helped me to connect my past medical history with what was currently happening and what the test results showed and helped me to talk knowledgeably with my Naturopath on what my goals are and what treatments I would or would not want.

Hormones, you either love them or hate them, or have a love-hate relationship with them. Right now I love mine. I’m hoping once we add estrogen that my migraines will disappear as well.

In regards to medical coverage, it has been a challenge to have these medical expenses covered.  I am lucky in that I am able to get supplementary medical coverage above the provincial medical care and between both of these coverage’s I am able to get most of my expenses covered. Unfortunately that might not be the case for others who are not in my situation and with the changes in healthcare in the US, I have no idea any more. Even though I used to live in the US and have experience with their medical insurance, the new changes in medical coverage is beyond my experience. I would appreciate any comments from others who might know.

I am hoping this will help other women to seek help if they experience similar symptoms.  I had no idea that anxiety and panic attacks could be a sign of hormone deficiencies.  The tough part about anxiety and panic attacks is it is very, and I mean VERY difficult to think straight while you are in the midst of having them. Sometimes it is very difficult to even realize that is what is happening. All you know is you are scared that something really bad is going to happen, and it will be connected with whatever concern you might have had at the time the anxiety started to occur and once it starts it is very difficult to change the direction of your thoughts. I at times also took valerian root which helps to calm the central nervous system which I feel is what is under attack when anxiety and panic attacks occur. So valerian root helps some but it doesn’t solve the problem. For me the answer was progesterone replacement, because my progesterone was severely depleted, almost bottomed out. And it took several months to determine what levels I needed for replacement. The key is to listen to your body, recognize the symptoms and have open communication with a doctor who understands the body’s hormones and works with bio-identical hormones.  

Plus, I maybe 53, but I am almost certain my hormones started depleting back in my mid-thirties. Women should get their hormone levels evaluated while in their early to mid-twenties so they have a base-line in their records so tests later in their thirties or early forties can be compared to the base-line to determine if their hormones are depleting and should start hormone replacement.

I would love to hear from other women on this subject. I can be contacted at kate.spyder@gmail.com if you don’t want to leave a comment on the blog or wish to communicate privately with me.

Please note: I am not a doctor, nor a medical professional. This blog is about my experiences and my opinion of what can be done to help women in a similar situation. It should not be taken as medical advice nor supersede any doctor’s advice or treatment.