“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
I would like to tell you that when the priest spoke these words and spread ashes on my forehead on Ash Wednesday, my heart was moved to some “right” place. It wasn’t. Instead, when I went back to my pew and prayed, I felt seen—but not in a way that I wanted.
That morning, I was sick to my stomach. I had a headache. I had been having periods that lasted far too long, cycles that arrived unpredictably, sometimes not at all. This was not an anomaly; it had been happening for months now. My body, meant to be a source of joy, now felt as if it was betraying me.
Perimenopause. This word had been creeping into my conversations, dropped in group texts, joked about in passing with friends. I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it. But there I was, sitting in a pew with ashes on my forehead, reminding me of my body’s temporal reality, which I would prefer to conveniently ignore: Fertility, once a defining part of my womanhood, was slipping away from me.
For years as a younger woman, I had longed for a child, prayed to God for my body to work for me in one particular way—toward childbearing. Yet pregnancy did not come easily to me. In Catholic circles, it often seems that childbearing is unfairly pitched as the best and singular way of embodying womanhood. But it was more than social expectations that drove my yearning for motherhood. I felt a deep, deep biological and spiritual yearning to be a parent in those years, and still do today.
After years of waiting and wondering in my 20s and into my 30s what this body of mine would do, I had a child: a boy! And then, praise the Lord, another, a girl! And since then, for years, I’ve been waiting, hoping—though mostly giving up now—for another child. I have Matthew19:26 memorized, and I believe it: With God, anything is possible.
And yet—and yet—I am 42. I believe this as well. I am aware my window to have another child is closing. With God, anything is possible, but the children I already have are likely the fruit of that possibility. Now, I am entering another life stage.
OK, Lord, I prayed on Ash Wednesday, my gaze resting on the statue of Jesus, suffering on the cross for me. I don’t need a reminder that I’m turning to dust! I lamented, a little bitterly. My body is already revealing to me this truth, daily. O Lord, I feel it in every random pain up my leg, every heart palpitation, every headache, every random anxious moment that’s interrupting my life.O, Lord! I wrapped my arms around my stomach as I prayed, placed my hands on my heart, felt it racing.
The parade of male celebrities, politicians and influencers who frequently fill my social media feeds often make me feel, at least momentarily, as if the pace and feeling of aging for men is going differently. They seem to be perceived as stronger, gaining austerity and dignity; no one is describing me as becoming more stately.Proverbs 20:29 reads, “The splendor of old men is their gray hair.”
Perhaps there is a proverb about women’s graying hair, but I don’t know it. And most days I do not feel the “splendor” of growing older. Instead, the verses that offer some solace come fromFleetwood Mac’s “Landslide,” which I had on repeat in my car: “Time makes you bolder,” I prayed, nodding a little to the music in my head, as I thought of recent life changes, some I’d been trying to make, some that I couldn’t control, “children get older, and I’m getting older, too.”
And what am I to do with this aging body of mine? I wondered, this body that, every day, has skin that was once soft but is now dry. The question of what changes to my body mean has been a lifelong one. When I discovered I had my period as a pre-teen, I began bawling in the bathroom, convinced I was dying because no one had ever talked with me about anything regarding puberty. Even then, my mother didn’t explain what was happening to me: She simply gave me a pad, said this was part of “turning into a woman” and sent me about my day. It wasn’t until watching a video at school later that I found out what was happening, and even then, the overly careful scientific explanations didn’t make much sense.
So, when I considered that I might be entering perimenopause, even at 42, my first instinct was to dismiss it. Nothing to see here, just crying over the dishes, the weather or the laundry—or nothing at all.
But as Catholic women, we are called to embrace our bodies, with all their changes—hormonal or otherwise—and not to hide from what they reveal at different stages. We should not become hyper-focused on one life stage or another, but rather acknowledge and, yes, celebrate and embrace each new pattern. The liturgical calendar teaches us that each season holds a different promise of growth for us. It is one of the reasons I have come, as a convert, to love the church with all her rhythms.
Catholic teaching on embodiment tells us that our transforming bodies are not inconveniences to be hidden but are integral to our spiritual lives. St. John Paul II in his vast corpus on the theology of the body suggests our bodies are inherently theological: In seeking to better understand them, we better understand God.
In one of his famousweekly audiences on this topic, he shared that the body is “a witness to creation as a fundamental gift.” All of our bodies are created by God as a gift, and like earth itself, they ebb and flow in different ways. We as humans change, grow and have much to offer to those in communion and in relationship with us if we embrace rather than dismiss our changes. Thus, even in discomfort and uncertainty, our bodies witness to the truth of our journeys toward God—and those who journey alongside us, too.
Further, as Catholics, we have a special calling to recognize the different stages of womanhood because we recognize that each path in the church is not a single journey to grow closer to Christ but a journey of believers together, that of a whole church and a whole body of Christ, trying to better understand one another in relationship. Pope Francis affirms this concept in “Laudato Si’,” writing: “The human person grows more, matures more and is sanctified more to the extent that he or she enters into relationships, going out from themselves to live in communion with God, with others.” As Catholic women, we must not hide in these moments, or feel shame, but use them as moments of building relationship and as a chance to talk to others about the beauty of women’s bodies and their rhythms.
There’s a meme about perimenopause that says,“Being a woman is fun because no matter what symptom you search, you’re either dying or in perimenopause.” For Catholics, it may ring even funnier because it’s absolutely both at the same time. We’re a Memento Mori lot after all. Each reminder of our death points us toward Easter, toward the promise that, even when our own bodies are in flux, we as humans—bodies and souls—will not remain in stasis but are created in God’s image. We are meant to be seasonal creatures, creatures of change, and all changes in this world point to resurrection in the next.
Whether my body bore children was out of my control, just as this temporal stage of my life is. All of it is in God’s hands. I am left, waiting, wondering what he has in store for me. But no matter the changes, I am no less a woman; my body is no less a body.
Despite my hesitancy, I find it helpful to talk about such changes these days. I make a point to talk to my husband more freely about how I feel. We wait in communion for whatever comes next, for us, for both our changing bodies (that man has aching knees now), for our lives in more general ways, for the church. We do our best to prepare our bodies, minds and souls in communion with each other and all of God’s holy people for “the life of the world to come.”
