Walking the Menopause
Walking the Menopause is an ongoing project that creates site-specific menopause-walks in a range of landscapes and places including in the Lakeland Fells, Lancashire and the Yorkshire Dales.
These menopause-walks have been created in response to both my personal experiences of menopause and the experiences of others. Some are created and led by me for occasions such as World Menopause Day or International Women's Day. Whilst others are made in collaboration with a individuals or groups and are bespoke to the people involved and their particular experiences of the peri/menopause transition, including, menopause due to chemotherapy or endometriosis, Premature Ovarian Insufficiency or early menopause, and surgical menopause as well as menopause as experienced by someone who has transitioned gender.
Whatever their relationship to the menopause each menopause-walk is designed in such way that participants are guided to explore the landscape / site through the lens of their menopausal experiences.
As part of the creative walk-making process or following a pre-designed walk participants are invited to draw a 'menopause-map' – using words, symbols, colours, shapes and line – of their reflections and discoveries. Paper, pens and careful guidance is provided. The maps can be of real or imagined places and landscapes, rural or urban, near or far – they do not have to be visited in person but can be mapped and walked in the mind.
Walking the Menopause: Eskdale and Little Langdale
The first two Walking the Menopause walks I created were in the Lake District, Cumbria. They were personal to me made in response to a hysterectomy and the surgical ‘cliff edge’ menopause that led to. The first walk, created in Eskdale, follows a route of meandering paths that incorporates stepping over and swimming in an ice-clear river, ascending a step-sided valley through a woodland of standing and felled trees, and stepping onto a vertiginous platform where the view down the valley and away over the distant fells prompts bodily responses akin to hot flushes. The second walk is sited within the caverns and passageways of a series of dramatic slate quarries in Little Langdale. Here, the removal of slate from the land becomes a metaphor of the removal of my womb, fallopian tubes, cervix from my body and negotiated how both processes remove matter, leave ‘human-made’ voids, and produce spoil.
Walking the Menopause: Eskdale and Little Langdale
The first two Walking the Menopause walks I created were in the Lake District, Cumbria. They were personal to me made in response to a hysterectomy and the surgical ‘cliff edge’ menopause that led to. The first walk, created in Eskdale, follows a route of meandering paths that incorporates stepping over and swimming in an ice-clear river, ascending a step-sided valley through a woodland of standing and felled trees, and stepping onto a vertiginous platform where the view down the valley and away over the distant fells prompts bodily responses akin to hot flushes. The second walk is sited within the caverns and passageways of a series of dramatic slate quarries in Little Langdale. Here, the removal of slate from the land becomes a metaphor of the removal of my womb, fallopian tubes, cervix from my body and negotiated how both processes remove matter, leave ‘human-made’ voids, and produce spoil.
Scout Scar
Walking the Menopause: Scout Scar
The Scout Scar (Cumbria) menopasue-walk was a group walk that first took place on International Women’s Day 2023 and was open to women+ involved in a day of events and workshops. Carefully planned through a number of solo site visits and pilot walks with friends – who identified sites that spoke to their peri/menopause experiences – this walk followed a route along topographical fault lines, edges and scars; over dry, ice-shattered and weather worn limestone pavement to cairns and trigpoints. It took in side-ways, wind-blasted trees, rare juniper bushes viewed close-up through geology eyeglasses. As we walked, I invited participants to tune into the landscape and environmental forces – wind, rain, ice, sound – as a metaphorical by means by which to reflect upon their own experiences of peri/menopause – physical, emotional, corporeal.
At different places land and menopause connections, designed to prompt reflections and conversation, were drawn out. This juxtaposing of site and body created a space where, though guided by me, participants could make their own interpretations, and connect their experiences to the land. For some an out of place erratic reflected the unpredictability that menopause had brought and holly leaves prompt conversations about feelings of spiky rage and anger. Whilst others found that the shards of rock clinking under foot triggered thoughts of drying bones and loss of oestrogen to receptors.
In the final stage of the walk, we arrive at a sheltered viewing station where a panoramic view of the surrounding fells in Cumbria, Yorkshire and Lancashire can be seen, and a map outlines and names each distant fell top. Here, wanting the work to have a community-building affect beyond this walk and this day, I invited participants to choose a fell, ‘something you like the name of’ and to ‘think of a person you would like to take there.’ This could be ‘someone experiencing peri/menopause or a family member you would like to, or need to, share what you are going through with.’ Then, using the paper and coloured pens provided, participants were invited to map/draw-out the walk as they had experienced it.
Walking the Menopause: Scout Scar
The Scout Scar (Cumbria) menopasue-walk was a group walk that first took place on International Women’s Day 2023 and was open to women+ involved in a day of events and workshops. Carefully planned through a number of solo site visits and pilot walks with friends – who identified sites that spoke to their peri/menopause experiences – this walk followed a route along topographical fault lines, edges and scars; over dry, ice-shattered and weather worn limestone pavement to cairns and trigpoints. It took in side-ways, wind-blasted trees, rare juniper bushes viewed close-up through geology eyeglasses. As we walked, I invited participants to tune into the landscape and environmental forces – wind, rain, ice, sound – as a metaphorical by means by which to reflect upon their own experiences of peri/menopause – physical, emotional, corporeal.
At different places land and menopause connections, designed to prompt reflections and conversation, were drawn out. This juxtaposing of site and body created a space where, though guided by me, participants could make their own interpretations, and connect their experiences to the land. For some an out of place erratic reflected the unpredictability that menopause had brought and holly leaves prompt conversations about feelings of spiky rage and anger. Whilst others found that the shards of rock clinking under foot triggered thoughts of drying bones and loss of oestrogen to receptors.
In the final stage of the walk, we arrive at a sheltered viewing station where a panoramic view of the surrounding fells in Cumbria, Yorkshire and Lancashire can be seen, and a map outlines and names each distant fell top. Here, wanting the work to have a community-building affect beyond this walk and this day, I invited participants to choose a fell, ‘something you like the name of’ and to ‘think of a person you would like to take there.’ This could be ‘someone experiencing peri/menopause or a family member you would like to, or need to, share what you are going through with.’ Then, using the paper and coloured pens provided, participants were invited to map/draw-out the walk as they had experienced it.
Holme Park Fell
Long Churn
Walking and talking with Louise has enabled me to start naming and shaping the experience of menopause in a creative and healing way. I've had time to reflect upon and see with more clarity and with different perspectives what my bodymind has been experiencing through the last eight years. Having written that sentence I now want to lie down on the earth and roar with laughter. There has been so little clarity throughout this time and so many moments where perspective went walk about. I often feel as if these have been the lost years and yet and yet.
With Lou's support and an invitation to lean into the land; the landscape has come to support me and enable me to find new ways to move forward. Moreover there has been a strong emphasis on discovering what is still possible and what new stories/new creations can be grown. We have talked and drawn and made marks. We have swam in rivers and climbed into caves and all the while talked about our bodies and the changes we are undergoing and paid attention to what helps.
Walking the Menopause participant, 5.1.23.
Walking and talking with Louise has enabled me to start naming and shaping the experience of menopause in a creative and healing way. I've had time to reflect upon and see with more clarity and with different perspectives what my bodymind has been experiencing through the last eight years. Having written that sentence I now want to lie down on the earth and roar with laughter. There has been so little clarity throughout this time and so many moments where perspective went walk about. I often feel as if these have been the lost years and yet and yet.
With Lou's support and an invitation to lean into the land; the landscape has come to support me and enable me to find new ways to move forward. Moreover there has been a strong emphasis on discovering what is still possible and what new stories/new creations can be grown. We have talked and drawn and made marks. We have swam in rivers and climbed into caves and all the while talked about our bodies and the changes we are undergoing and paid attention to what helps.
Walking the Menopause participant, 5.1.23.
Menopause-Maps
The menopause-mapping process is designed to discern the landscape/site that ‘suits’ each individuals (or groups) experiecne of menopause. Through this process major themes emerge – these themes then suggest a particular type of landscape/site that maps onto their experience. Menopause-mappings can take place off-site – in person or at a distance via Zoom – or outdoors in an initial site. Working in and responding to that initial site leads to a more precise site that is then visited, explored, and mapped.
The process of drawing a menopause-map involves the use symbols, words, pictures, line and colour. Participant/s are invited to imagine and map their menopause journey using imagery, actions, objects, and metaphor relating to landscape and environmental forces. Using drawing and landscape in this way can connect the participant to a less conscious, deeper part of their mind that often frees the imagination to think and feel in abstract and through metaphor and symbolism. Participants do not need to be a confident or skilled drawer or artist, rather it is the thoughts, ideas, feelings, and images generated by the process that are important, not the quality of the drawing itself. The maps/drawing do not need to follow logical, or linear timelines or pathways, and the landscape/s referenced can combine real and imagined locations through which experiences can be articulated and explored and expressed. The maps are then discussed, and further ideas, symbols, stories and major themes emerge as do types of landscape – it is these landscapes – manifested as ‘real’ physical places – that we go on to visit and work in.
The menopause-mapping process is designed to discern the landscape/site that ‘suits’ each individuals (or groups) experiecne of menopause. Through this process major themes emerge – these themes then suggest a particular type of landscape/site that maps onto their experience. Menopause-mappings can take place off-site – in person or at a distance via Zoom – or outdoors in an initial site. Working in and responding to that initial site leads to a more precise site that is then visited, explored, and mapped.
The process of drawing a menopause-map involves the use symbols, words, pictures, line and colour. Participant/s are invited to imagine and map their menopause journey using imagery, actions, objects, and metaphor relating to landscape and environmental forces. Using drawing and landscape in this way can connect the participant to a less conscious, deeper part of their mind that often frees the imagination to think and feel in abstract and through metaphor and symbolism. Participants do not need to be a confident or skilled drawer or artist, rather it is the thoughts, ideas, feelings, and images generated by the process that are important, not the quality of the drawing itself. The maps/drawing do not need to follow logical, or linear timelines or pathways, and the landscape/s referenced can combine real and imagined locations through which experiences can be articulated and explored and expressed. The maps are then discussed, and further ideas, symbols, stories and major themes emerge as do types of landscape – it is these landscapes – manifested as ‘real’ physical places – that we go on to visit and work in.
