Excerpts from her book, “The Queen of My Self: Stepping into Sovereignty in Midlife:”

Sometime, usually between about forty-five and fifty-five, we lose our monthly blood and hormonal balance. No matter how much we might have minded the fuss and muss of our periods, there is an alarming awareness of irrevocability when they stop. It is, after all, the end of a thirty or forty-year way of being in the world. Menopause marks the termination of our participation in the bottom-line, bigger than we are, biological imperative of our species. Our reproductive potential is now no longer an option. Whether or not we chose to use it when we had it is not the point. What is crucial is feeling that our choices have narrowed. […]