Foto: Stefania Lucchetti
October and Menopause Awareness
October is the month dedicated to menopause awareness, a topic that is still rarely discussed and often approached with discomfort.
Menopause is a passage that many women experience in silence, caught between shame and confusion, as if the changing body were a boundary to be hidden. Yet it is a boundary that opens, not one that closes. It is a time of profound transformation, when we learn to know ourselves again and to inhabit our own skin with a different gaze.
Menopause brings with it fragility, fatigue, and a certain amount of physical discomfort. Over time, however, it also creates a new form of power: the freedom from having to prove anything, the strength to choose, the ability to listen to oneself. It is a time that calls for acceptance and tenderness toward oneself, with the awareness that it is a phase of change and, like all transformations, it can be painful, yet when fully embraced, it can lead to an expansion of the self rather than a contraction.
In Coffee Stains On My Books you can find poems about menopause dedicated to Artemis, Crone, Hekate
In Poetry is Cyberpunk, there are poems dedicated to one’s body changes such as Monster.
In Afternoons of Suspended Love you will find love as recounted by adults.
Love, always.
Love as passion.
Love when there is no room left for pretending.
Poems about menopause and older women
In 
In Coffee Stains On My Books you can find poems about menopause dedicated to Artemis, Crone, Hekate
In Artemis
© Stefania Lucchetti, from the book Coffee Stains On My Books
[If you share this poem, please make sure you include author and book name, and if possible buy the book]
Fierce, free, alive, energetic,
I roam the forests with a frantic spirit.
This is how you know me, this is how you admire me,
in my wild runs, in my free breaths.
But I can lay down my weapons and solitude,
rest for a while, shift my attitude,
devote myself to others, take care,
live new experiences, with passion laid bare.
You think I live only in youth’s embrace,
that time will dull me, that I will lose my grace,
but I can suspend my wild spirit,
let it rest awhile,
then return renewed, unrestrained, without guile.
More vibrant than before, stronger than ever,
more aware of myself, rediscovered, unfettered.
I still exist in a body no longer young,
but with a spirit that loves adventure,
unchained and unsung.
You don’t see me, but I am here, and I express myself,
and in the absence of your elusive gaze,
I am even freer.
An invisible, unshakable force,
without the need for approval that limits me.
_______________________
This poem reimagines Artemis – goddess of independence, instinct, and wild, adventurous life – not as eternally young, but as a woman who has lived through time and transformation to find herself stronger, freer, and more independent. It speaks of the renewal that can arise after the transformations of life and age — a return to oneself that is freer, stronger, and more authentic.
On the occasion of Menopause Awareness Day, I wish to share it as a reminder that vitality does not necessarily fade with age — it evolves. The wild spirit of Artemis does not disappear: it may at times rest, wander, or turn its energy elsewhere, but it rises again — free from others’ expectations, finding new ways to express passion, strength, and freedom.
Menopause is not a loss of power: it is an initiation into a different form of power: the power of personal freedom.