Strong Women Stories (Chapter 8)

Bonita Lawrence wrote this chapter reflecting her own life and the struggles she has gone through. She is forty four years old and just finished her Ph D, she lost her mother and her partner of ten year. While going through these tough times she also suffered some health problems that resulted in having a hysterectomy. She interviewed many older Native American women that expressed their feelings and experiences at this point in their lives. She found that the most apparent thing was as these Native women enter their forties they all carry massive burdens. The responsibilities for their children, families, and communities are taken up the younger women but as they get older they take on more and more. Despite the high workload most women in their forties were comfortable saying they are at the peak of their productivity in doing what they do.

Sexuality and older women can be a hard process for some women. Some face the difficulties with being able to have their sexual needs met and some feel they are never going to be too old for sex. Some women however struggle with their sexuality and seeing their sex life slowly disappear to never re- exist. This happened to a woman who lost her husband to a younger woman after twenty years of marriage. Menopause can be a difficult stage for many women also, many women who are struggling with accepting this are women who have spent so many years looking after other people’s children and after the community she hadn’t had any children of her own. If beginning a menstruation signifies an entrance to adult hood the end of menstruation signifies a transition out of womanhood.