Like many little girls, I grew up with dreams. Some came true, many have not and that is just the way it should be. The Divine Miss M, Bette Midler, offers an interesting perspective on women and their dreams: ‘Sometimes they are fantasies and sometimes they are hormonal.’ When they are fantasies, we can create a path to realization or keep them hidden from others and even ourselves. When the hormones fade or rage, then the dreams no longer mean the same things. In either case, we can chose to get ourselves a new dream based upon our truth.
I remember shopping for my wedding dress when I was 48. I thought this would be fun. It was the opposite of fun, until I created my dream of what I wanted in my wedding dress.
Most bridal stores cater to the young, the very young. I would walk in and the sales people would assume I was either the mother of the bride, the aunt of the bride or the older sister of the bride. (Lesson one in sales, never ever make an assumption!!) After I clarified that I was the bride, we would have a brief consultation, then they would show me bridal dresses that they thought I would like.
I visited boutique bridal stores in NYC, as well as bridal departments in Bloomingdales, Saks, and Lord & Taylors. I looked at bridal magazines and bridal websites. Nothing, nothing was what I had imagined. Most, if not all, were big and poofy or made for people very very tall and slender.
It didn’t help that I was perimenopausal at the time; hot flashes and mood swings. Some of the sales people were at the receiving end of sarcastic Sharon with ‘are you kidding me?’ If I had been practicing my yoga on a regular basis back then, my symptoms would have been mitigated and the sales people would have been on the receiving end of nice Sharon.
Hot flashes and bridal dresses sound like a made for tv horror chick flick. It was starting to make me crazy, so I stopped looking for awhile.
For those that know me, I am not a big poofy dress kind of girl. I had to re- imagine what I wanted to look like and feel like on my wedding day. With my new dress vision, I went to the dress department at Saks, not the bridal department. There on a hanger in the middle of the department was my wedding dress. Perfect. I tried it on and it required no alteration. I was in heaven. I purchased the dress and came back a few weeks later to pick it up. Another bonus it had gone on sale in the interim.
I did not have a big wedding, but I did have the perfect wedding of my 
dreams with the perfect dress.
Live your life outside of your head and breathe through your hot flashes, and watch your dreams flourish in many delightful unexpected ways.
Namaste.
Who Stole My Estrogen? 