Nancy Friday, Part 2, My Menopause, My Sexual Self (tm)

OnlineHost:     Nancy Friday has entered the room.

Dearest:  Tonight we welcome back to Power Surge, author, NANCY FRIDAY, to 
continue the dialogue about women - at midlife - women getting better - women 
relating to men, to themselves, women reclaiming the little girl inside - 
reinventing themselves.

Sexuality isn't simply having intercourse. Sexuality is part of a passion of 
living - a passion we never really lose, but may put on hold for a while. 
It's only one piece of the jigsaw puzzle we each are.

Nancy Friday reminds us in a chapter of her latest book,  "The Power Of Beauty," revised and 
renamed, "Our Looks, Our Lives: Sex, Beauty, Power and The Need To Be Seen" - Becoming 
the Girl We Left Behind : To Hell With Other Women's Envy!" - "Here, now, at the age 
of wisdom, it is time to take life in hand and bend it, shape it, make it what we will."


With seven best-sellers under her belt, all dealing with relationships between 
men and women and within the family, let's benefit from such an esteemed guest.


Dearest: Welcome back to Power Surge, Nancy. The little girl, the one of whom 
your husband, said ... "she never met a challenge she wouldn't happily embrace."  
If she could give us all a message tonight, what do you think it would be?


Nancy Friday:	Take life and use it, make it work for you. It's a short bit of 
time. Let me ask all of you for a minute to think about the most exciting time 
of your life. When was the most exciting time of your life, when were you 
happiest?  When were you most yourself.

For me, I think I was most myself when I was ten and eleven, just before 
adolescence. What I wish we could talk about tonight, instead of thinking hormones, 
is that highly creative period	of time just prior to puberty.  We were all sexual.  
We were not yet reproductively sexual.  Well, we are sexual now but I would suggest 
to you that we have been brainwashed to think of ourselves as burned out.  There 
are years and years and years in which to create ourselves with that same energy 
we had when we were 10. When you do that, other people will SEE you as sexual.  
That is sexual energy.


Dearest:  Nancy, has the child always been there... inside of us?  


Nancy Friday:	Yes, the child is absolutely there.  That child is the quintessential 
you.  Every time you've felt absolutely wonderful and at ease, and people have 
been drawn to you, a part of your attraction is your sexuality.  


Chrismaine:	What of us who can not recall that child, having had to face 
adulthood too soon [dysfunctional family]?  How do we start?


Nancy Friday:	Okay, try this.   When in your life were you happiest in the sense 
of feeling totally alive?  And open?  And there was no tension and anxiety, which 
are totally asexual? (addressing Chrismaine)


Chrismaine:	At work - at high school & college - only when I got that A, though!


Nancy Friday:	Well that's a start.  Your brain, your intelligence had been 
acknowledged.  Let's begin menopause, the meaning of it, with a sense of feeling 
invisible.  When we feel invisible there is a sense of panic as in "doesn't 
anybody see me?"  You felt SEEN when you got an A. 


Chrismaine:	Physically, I look like Dolly Parton and worked to downplay my shape 
and focus on brains.


Nancy Friday: If a few more things had happened at that point you would have tripped 
over your sexuality.  And now, Chris, what do you feel, today?


Chrismaine: Like I am powerful! I will get my degree & finally teach school soon.


Nancy Friday: Very well, use that wonderful self-image you have of yourself and look 
people fully in the eye.  SEE them.  When people are seen they respond to you and 
that is the beginning of a sexual link.


Chrismaine: I've recently remarried but confessed that returning to school 
gives me a higher high!


Dearest: Thank you, Nancy  Zoe Una, go ahead.


ZOE UNA: What *actions* could we take to get in touch with our child within?  Are 
there physical actions, along with thought actions?


Nancy Friday: I would begin by thinking of what it is that gives you the most pleasure.  
To go back to age 10.  At that time we let our mind take us to whatever activity 
interested us.  My point is this.  What is it today that interests you, excites	you, 
that particular activity that really turns you on.  


Incidentally, I was my most sexual, right after my house burned down, everything was 
gone, and I had to go on a book tour.  I thought, what the hell, and took my carpenter, 
who was rebuilding my house, with me.  I was menopausal  at that time.


Dearest: You took your carpenter on the book tour with you?  :)


Nancy Friday: Yes I did.  I'd had it written into my contract with my publisher that 
if I did a tour they would provide two tickets.


Dearest:	Did you have fun?  :)


Nancy Friday:	Did I have fun? Are you kidding?


Dearest: Hahahaha!!!


MsLizzieB: hahahaha


Dearest: (giggle) Cesca, go ahead.



CescaSF:  Will you comment on diminishing libido and the emerging feeling that men 
in general aren't as important as they once were?  


Nancy Friday: Well, they weren't all that important when you were 10 and the boys were 
ten.  Life was full without them.  Maybe, just maybe, you don't need men in your life 
now.  Anyone today who is in menopause was raised to believe she was a zero without 
a man.  We are the first generation to change that.


Dearest: Nancy, why do you suppose women see it as a "fault" if they ephemerally lose 
interest in men? 


Nancy Friday: Because of how we were raised, as I said. When we were adolescents, 
everyone felt sorry for us if we didn't have a date. Now, a year or two earlier, 
no one felt sorry if we were on our own or with the other girls.  Just remember, 
no one feels sorry for a man who's having an interesting life on his own.


Dearest: Perhaps too many women let their men define who they are. JESU, go ahead.


JESU8:	About to tell my 2 grown girls that I haven't had period in almost year. 
Idea being that I wanted to show them its not that bad. Think that's okay? 


Nancy Friday: Sure I think it's ok.  If you felt good about it and if you continue 
to feel good about it, don't tell anyone.  Remember, that the most powerful sexual 
organ is your brain.  Each of us makes herself sexual.  When she feels like it.  
Sex with another person is just that.


Joan5000:  Nancy, majority of even older [after menopause] women think it "takes 
a man to feel complete", how do you feel?


Nancy Friday: I happened to live with a man, my husband, and if he were not here 
I would be living with another man.  I think my interest in men has a lot to do 
with the absence of a man in my life, no father, until adolescence riveted my 
attention on boys.


Joan5000: Thanks Nancy, that answers it (ha ha)


Nancy Friday: I also think that because my mother and sister were so involved with 
each other, making me feel invisible, a part of my interest in men has to do with, 
okay women if you won't include me, I will turn to men.


Dearest:  You sound as though you felt left out of the relationship with your 
mother and sister, yes?


Nancy Friday:  Yes, but it was not a healthy relationship they had.  


Dearest:  Would you care to elaborate?


Nancy Friday: Believe me, I was well out of it, but a little girl has to wait 30 
or 40 years to realize that.  They were very competitive, the two of them.


Dearest: I see. VBrando, your question, please.


VBrando101:  What is your definition of sexual? Can you think your sexuality back?


Nancy Friday:  Just for a few days stop thinking hormones and menopause and 
estrogen replacement and instead think about how to get your sexuality back in 
the sense of losing the tension, the anxiety and feeling yourself open, really open 
so that people who walk by you stop and think, 'Ah, she's open!'  


MJElite: If I weren't going through menopausal madness maybe I could *remember* being 
10!  


Nancy Friday: Excuse me but let's stop the menopausal madness for a minute. I know 
what you're talking about, but you still have control over your life and your life is 
probably going to go on for a number of years.  Even people with illnesses far worse 
than menopause, which isn't an illness, build extraordinary inner lives for 
themselves so that other people are drawn to them. Isn't that what we are talking 
about?


Dr Trill: Do you think that we have started to confuse mood swings from hormonal 
changes and impatience that we are entitled to after 5 decades of being quiet?


Nancy Friday: I think we've confused life with hormones and hot flashes etc.  Those 
are the downsides of these years.  But the upside is enormous. Right now life is for 
the remaking.  And I would imagine that most of you, like me, feel most "crazy" when 
we feel invisible.

Our culture treats women over 50 as if we were invisible.  The clue, the trick, is 
not to buy the invisibility.  You must begin by	leading the life you would really 
like to live. What do you have to lose?


Dr Trill:  Only misery and my family would probably believe my sanity, thanks.


Dearest:  Is it possible some who use it as such may be afraid of losing the crutch 
that menopause may provide?


Nancy Friday: Very good, Dearest!!  The reason I keep going back to age ten is that 
once we became sexually reproductive our families worried about us. Now there's no 
one to worry except you and I.


CHamann:  Are we crying in our corn flakes here? I feel great. I don't feel 
invisible.


Nancy Friday:  And incidentally, CHamann, I think it's great that you're feeling 
so terrific. Tell me, are these years better than the ten previous?


CHamann: Thanks:) I am trying to get along in here. Sorry I was confused before.


Nancy Friday: Is there something positive that you feel in being menopausal, I 
hope?


CHamann: Yes, my kids, 2 men, are grown. I've had a growing relationship with 
husband for 31 years.  Its work but worth it.


Dearest: Lynn, go ahead :)



LynnCSE:  Are you going to do another Garden or More Flowers, those fantasies getting 
stale;-) ?   I still refer my clients to both of them


Nancy Friday: What is always interesting to me is that people write me today who 
are reading Garden and Flowers and Women on Top and they still say as they did 25 
years ago, "Thank God you wrote that book.  I thought I was the only one."  Just 
when you think, after 25 years, that absolutely everybody accepts that women have 
sexual fantasies of all sorts, you realize that well, it's six degrees of separation.


Joan5000:  Nancy, why does manic/depression cause severe sexuality outbursts, 
? emotional & physical?


Nancy Friday:	I'm not at all surprised.  I have a friend who's a manic-depressive 
and she too has sexual outbursts and why not?  Would we question any other outbursts?  
No.  I think a sexual outburst from a manic depressive is absolutely in type.


Dearest:  Lizzie, your question for Nancy.


MsLizzieB:  Agree with your comment about invisibility, yet find other women are not 
very friendly toward others who are more self-actualized and happy and open and 
together.  Any comment?


Nancy Friday: Absolutely, oh boy do I have a comment!  Once again, it goes back to 
how little girls are raised.  Everyone wears the same socks, and when adolescence 
comes it is all right to have one boyfriend but if you have two you are out of the 
group. Women do not like it when one of their own arouses envy and competition.  
Women are terrible at handling competition because of how we are raised.


MsLizzieB: Boy, that's for sure! How do you deal with it?


Nancy Friday: Mother refused to admit that there was any competition between us, 
thereby making competition something evil when indeed it is a normal sometimes 
healthy emotion and activity.  

This is a very important idea for women in menopause because if you start seeming 
to have your life under control and indeed are having a good time when your friends 
aren't you will arouse envy and you know that I am right.


MsLizzieB:  Thank you!


Dearest:  Nancy, what's the difference between jealousy and envy?


Nancy Friday: Jealousy is a feeling that involves three people namely, you, the person 
you care about, and the rival. We call it the jealous triangle. Envy, on the other 
hand, is a two-way proposition in which someone has something you want.  Envy very 
often leads to anger and even violence.


Nancy Friday:  Let me add one thing.  


Dearest:  Sure, go ahead, Nancy.


Nancy Friday: When we were talking about any one of us suddenly feeling on top of 
the world in these interesting years, it would not be unusual if one of our friends, 
even our best friend, telephoned and said something like "Oh you know, you don't 
seem like yourself these days." Instead of complimenting us, she would put us down.  


Erica: Is it possible that if women are taught at an early age that they don't need 
a man to feel complete, that the emotional issues of menopause will be easier for 
future generations of women?


Nancy Friday: Oh absolutely, yes!  Three cheers Erica! Right on the money!


Dearest: Mauve, go ahead. 


Mauvemistz: How to refocus feelings of loss to gifts of wisdom and power of the 
time?


Nancy Friday: Think of the sexually reproductive years that we have just finished as 
a skin we are sloughing off.  Then think of these years as a huge canvas on which you 
could paint, just maybe, the best years of your life. I agree with somebody a few 
minutes ago who mentioned that all the medical jargon we've been getting may be a 
plan to make us feel extraneous.  

Believe me, the world needs us, women of our age, more than we've ever been needed 
before.  We are the clay.  If we don't make something of ourselves, our daughters are 
going to be more terrified of menopause than we.


Nancy Friday:	Hey guys, Please come visit me on my web site:  http://www.nancyfriday.com  


Dearest:  Nancy, these last two chats were just wonderful:) Thanks so much for helping
me launch, "My Menopause, My Sexual Self," and to helping us address our sexuality as
as part of the entire woman. 

If you haven't already, I strongly recommend Nancy's books: 
My Secret Garden, Forbidden Flowers,   My Mother, Myself, Men In Love, Jealousy
...and her most recent book, "The Power Of Beauty," published this year by
HarperCollins (revised edition renamed "Our Looks, Our Lives: Sex, Beauty, Power,
and the Need to Be Seen." 

Thank you, Nancy. Goodnight and best wishes from all of us here in Power Surge :)


Nancy Friday:	My pleasure. So long everybody. So long, Dearest.
 




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