Winning Ideas from Winning Women
with Ruth Marian

A new name was just the first step for Ruth Pittard. Divorced for a decade with her children gone from home, her married name just didn’t fit, now that there was another Ms. Pittard. And her maiden name didn’t make sense either, since it was hard to pronounce and from the past. “Wanzer” just didn’t roll off anyone’s tongue. So Ruth became Ruth Marian, neither wife nor daughter, a new woman pared down to her essence with her first and middle names; a woman rooted in her past, but growing toward a completely new future.

Name change came as an outgrowth of menopause for Ruth, but this body change primed the pump for change all through her life. It was the first shift of many centered on the theme of paring down, simplifying, getting to the essence of things, and to recognizing her own unique spirit. She gave a year’s notice to Davidson College, where she had worked, satisfied and safe in a challenging job, for almost thirty years; she had become a part of the establishment there. She sold her house with its beautiful gardens and lived with her good friends as she prepared to take her 59th year as a sabbatical year to decide what should come next in her life. She let most of her “things” go—furniture, clothing, jewelry, books, cooking utensils, art—all to fund the exploration. Everything underwent the same close scrutiny as her name. Is it rooted in the past or is it useful in this new phase? She came alive in a new way, free and unencumbered, open to a world full of possibility. Literally anything became possible.

Ruth Marian

Many called Ruth “brave”; some called her “foolish,” some “crazy,” but all agreed that menopause had begun for her a life-enhancing process. She began to talk to other women about their menopause experiences and heard, almost without exception, horrific tales of sleepless night sweats and hot flashes and depression. She absorbed the same negative thoughts and images on TV, in magazines, and at women’s groups. Women around her seemed to be in the throes of an enemy process, something to be suffered through and feared. Where was the joy of transition? Where was the honored rite of passage into cronehood? Where was the impetus for spiritual growth? She began asking herself why her experience had been so satisfying, so positive and creative, and so profoundly different from that of her friends. She had the same hot flashes, the same physical symptoms, the same interruptions. But her thoughts centered not on these occurrences, but on her experience of them and the lessons learned, the surprising gifts opened.

She began to write everything down—the questions she asked herself, the processes around hot flashes, the thoughts born during her quiet night times, and, most importantly, the funny stories, the humbling moments and the core emotions. She read Christine Northrup, Gail Sheehy, and other women of the baby boomer generation who looked at women’s health and women’s issues creatively. She began a memoir of women in her life who had formed her; she synthesized and thought and gathered wisdom.

Now, almost nine months into her transition year, Ruth has birthed a business; she has become the expert in helping women capitalize on menopause. She has developed MENOPAUSE LIGHT, a teaching, coaching process that helps women experience menopause as a physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual transition to a creative maturity. She has herded all her own experiences, authors she has read, creativity training, and thirty years of coaching experience into a week-long course in creative menopause, one session of which involves partners, because they go through transition as well as women. And she plans also to work with gynecologists, opening them to the possibilities beyond the physical that exist as women travel through menopause.

Ruth hopes through this educational process to provide an exciting alternative to the negative press that menopause has gotten. She hopes that eventually women will join together to talk about their exciting transitions, their process of “becoming” through the fire of menopause the best that they can be. Her vision of menopause hot flashes, menopause fire, is the refining fire that burns away the dross from personal metal to expose the pure gold underneath.

Ruth hopes her final name will become “The menopause lady” because so many people have heard her positive process that she will become synonymous with the message! One thing is for certain: there will always be a fresh group of women facing the CHANGE, so she will have a captive audience.