Expert’s Name:  Gail Edgell
Does menopause really make you look at life differently?

As time passes, there are certainly a few things that I have definitely noticed.

I am appreciating life and others more than ever before.
I am beginning to understand others a little more.

Is it because my menopausal hormones are raging or is it because I am getting older?

So why do I bring this up? My husband and I spent a significant amount of time with my parents yesterday.

I am very grateful to still have them in my life, at the ripe age of 80 and began to think about some things. When I was twenty, I did think I could survive anything.  In fact, I thought my friends and family were eternal also.

As the years flew by, I realized this was not exactly the case.  People do pass on whether you are ready for them to go or not.

This brings up my parents.  I love them so much.  They have given me the world.  They are loving, grateful, generous and happy.  Traits that I want to continue long after they pass.

But, as I look at them, I see their posture changing, their energy levels dropping and even their zest for life slowing.  Not that they are ready to check out of this world, but that things are certainly changing in my world and in theirs.  No longer is my father the guy who can take apart a car or even build an addition on a house, but he is now a father of wisdom, knowledge, compassion and survival.

I just said to my husband last night that I feel like I need to see them more often to soak up as much as I can.  As if I can store it for a future time.

It has taken me all of these years to even begin to understand my parents, especially my father.  Just this weekend, my father, told my husband and I,  he was in the Chosin Reservoir Battle in North Korea.  It lasted for 17 days in -35 degree weather.  The few, the chosen, survived….and one of them was my father.

Now I can finally say, I am truly beginning to understand where my father came from and how that has impacted his whole life.

And how this has trickled into mine.

I have no excuse to give up on anything, knowing that my father survived one of the most brutal battles in Korea.

I vow that in the next week, I will send both of my parents a  letter telling them how much I appreciate them being part of my life.

So I have to ask you, who do you appreciate?  Have you told them?  What are you learning about others?