Oh joy! My first full night of sleep after about 3 weeks of surviving on 3-4 hours per night.

This bout of insomnia has been particularly dire. I have recently realised that I am in the grip of a multi-faceted transition. There’s been no way of resisting it - it has been utterly overwhelming. It is one of those processes of nature that cannot be controlled and I have had to go with the flow of it as the Dynamic Feminine archetypal energy has taken hold. I am on the brink of moving from one stage of life, “the Mother”, into another, “the Crone”. This is a time of reassessment for me, where I am questioning what I want for the next decade of my life, what will take priority. It seems to be a time of my need to assert myself to a position of greater equality with others. I feel like I have something to say and I finally feel in a place to say it. It also seems to be a time of intense creativity for me, to the point of overflowing: I have a need to be creative. The creativity that is currently manifesting is my writing, and I am on a steep learning curve. Any point of stability I think I retain from the old life is rapidly disappearing and everything feels as though it has been thrown up into the air like the sticks in Spillikins. I can only wait to see how they will fall.

At the core of this upheaval is a loss of identity, which makes sense spiritually because I am letting go of one stage and moving into the next. What, or who I will be in the next stage of my life, is as yet unknown. All I do know is that I seem to want more of a say in the next stage of my life path than I have previously – and that is my Static Masculine archetype at play. Issues of death and growing “old” are also very much around and I wonder whether at some subconscious level it is difficult for me to sleep in case I never wake up again. The identity crisis is much more tangible and overt, as is the desire to be heard and to assert myself in the world more than previously. All of these things seem fitting for the new stage of development I am embarking on.

Who would have thought there was so much going on behind the mask of insomnia!

On the more practical here and now level, it is a struggle health-wise to be in this state of being. Given the work routines that we need to adhere to in current society, it is particularly difficult. My body wants instinctively to work in a more aligned way with nature, but my work routine does not allow for that. Consequently, consistent insomnia has resulted in a deterioration in my health in that as I become more tired, the less able I am in holding information in my head, the more irritable and intolerant I become, and the more clumsy and accident-prone I am. I usually incur a collection of injuries during my times of insomnia and this period has been no different.

My sense is that this level of disintegration had to happen to get me to realise the issues at play underneath the surface. Whilst I regard myself as a relatively conscious person, sometimes the universe still has to knock loudly at my door to get me to listen.

I would love to hear about your experiences, thoughts, feelings on the subjects of menopause, transitions, life changes, mortality or any other related issue.