Evergreen Tea

Salena Godden on writing about the menopause plus a brand new poem

Evergreen Tea is the title of a new menopause poem published in my new collection ‘With Love, Grief and Fury’ by Canongate Books. Thank you to Liv Little for inviting me to share some thoughts about the process of publishing this piece, and asking how I came to write it …

I wrote Evergreen Tea over several years, seeking courage to finish it and share it, taking memories and observations from my vagina diary. I started keeping a vagina diary as a conversation with myself, a record of my body, a way to witness changes and irregularities, trying to fathom why my body wasn’t behaving itself anymore. Why my periods suddenly made no sense, why my body was hurting and hijacking me with hot flashes, with strange thoughts and impulses, with random biblical floods. I want you to know I can only write about all of this so candidly and frankly now, because I feel like I’m on the other side. I also know I’m only here to tell the tale because I was fortunate to have a loving partner and family and friends that helped me through.

I have a theory about menopause — If you want an indication into how your menopause is going to pan out and present itself, it is a good idea to look at your mother and grandmother’s journey and then also look back at your own puberty, early periods and early teens. Now this isn’t scientifically proven, but I started menopause early, the same as my mum and nan. I was once a messy and emotional teenager with frequent suicidal ideation, so it makes sense that when my hormones went haywire, my perimenopausal-self mirrored that time. I should have known the warning signs. It was alarming, I watched myself weep and behave like that frustrated teenager again. I felt that teen rage rise again. It was bewildering to have the rants of the pubescent as my narrator again, her internal dialogue came with unwanted thoughts and destructive impulses. When my perimenopause was beginning it felt like that inner teenager was stomping down the corridors of my mind and slamming doors inside my perimenopausal body. So to cut a long story short, both during puberty and perimenopause, I went bananas, also not a scientific term.

I don’t miss my periods, but for a long time I missed knowing my way around myself. In my 20s and 30s I knew what was happening. I knew I was lucky, my periods were easy, as predictable as the full moon. How I’d get premenstrual and cry and be a bitch. How I’d get bloated and retreat and write sad poems and rage and rant and then apologise for being so moody. Then once the bleed was done, I’d get that delicious high, the gorgeous time after my period, when I would feel careless and carefree, when I’d be bold and bright and clever, full of ideas and creativity and sensuality, with so much joyful energy and wanderlust.

For a long time I felt like I’d lost a lot of that good stuff in a fog, it felt like the map to me was all blurry. It dawned on me that a lot of this depression was because of a certain shame I was feeling — I felt embarrassed that I didn’t know my body anymore. I felt ashamed that my shape was changing. I put on weight, my bra size went from a C cup to E cup. Deep down I felt ashamed of these changes and of feeling differently about the world and of myself.

As I write this, I feel like it is a crying shame just how much we romanticise youth, forgetting to put the same amount of love and time into visualising the beauty and magic of this next stage. I want to start romanticising now and what the present version of us feels like.

I heard about HRT because lots of my friends were on it, but for years it was like gold dust and I couldn’t get my hands on any, my GP seemed reluctant to prescribe it. Looking back I now know these years in this lacklustre wasteland were just a naturally occurring hormone imbalance. Eventually I got a tip from a friend who was having similar symptoms and went to a private menopause clinic. I spent a small fortune to get a consultation and my blood and hormones tested and was given a clear diagnosis and prescribed HRT. I honestly felt such a great relief just to be listened to at last, and after a few months HRT seemed to bring me gently back, I could hear myself think and get back to myself.

Some people are all gun-ho and others vehemently against HRT — all I know is that I found HRT helpful at a time when I was really struggling. It is also available for free on the NHS.

Looking back, I remember when I was a kid, I witnessed my lovely mum go through her menopause. I didn’t understand any of it until now. I have a beautiful memory I want to share with you: the picture in my head is of my mum and me, back in the 1980s, back when she was going through menopause as I was starting my periods. I recall we were bickering all the time around that time. Then one day during one of our arguments, she took me around the side of the house and we threw empty milk bottles against the wall. It was such a satisfying crash of glass, side by side, we hurled milk bottles against the side of the house. We made this glorious pile of shattered glass. I remember how we stoped crying and began laughing together, realising we weren’t angry with each other, we were both just hormonal, we lobbed those bottles as hard as we could against the wall, watching the glass explode, yelling, screaming, roaring and cracking up laughing together. It is one of my many favourite memories of my amazing mum and her unique and unconventional approach to parenting and I love her for it.

There was a time not so long ago when I was scared and sad and lonely in these changes. I wrote a poem titled RED. Writing has always been a way to narrate my world and start big conversations. The RED poem exploded, literally, with jam and ketchup and fake blood. (You can see the film RED we made on my YouTube channel) People think RED is my ‘period poem’ but I see it as my perimenopause poem, written in a bloody mess, written to describe epic changes, the last bloody firework display my body gave me. RED was written before I got help, before I got therapy, before my periods ended for good.

So here we go from the wilderness days of RED to a much cooler and calmer place, Evergreen Tea. Thanks again to you Liv for the opportunity to share these words and feelings. I give this poem to your page and your readers with love and solidarity. I hope some of you read this and don’t feel quite so alone in this wild journey we are all on, this adventure into the other side. Meet me there. Don’t be afraid, change is constant, you are growing, blossoming and blooming into you.

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Read an excerpt from Salena’s poem Evergreen Tea or listen to the poem in full below.

Evergreen Tea

Six flashes from a menopause diary

1

Hang on. What is this? I am different . . . but the same. What is this thing? This monster? And what is this obstacle, what is this uncertain path, because, well, it seems to me, just as we know ourselves, yes, just as we know our bodies, just as we have found our path and learned our way through, the woods suddenly grow cold and strange, darkest evergreen. For decades we know our cycle, we know our own sex and bodies, and we say, yes, I know these woods, I trust myself here, but now, suddenly, see how the forest is changed and now all deep pools and thick brambles and nettles, and we are told to drink nettle tea and so we drink the tea, evergreen tea, and sip the truth of it and we drink sage tea too, yes tea, love tea, all the tea, and the truth of it, the truth is in the tea, but what really is this . . . change?

2

I keep forgetting people’s names. I forget people I have known for years. I stand there blinking and lost even though I know this is you and this is me and please can you be patient for a moment because I’m so hot right now and this night is long and loud, with heat and sweat and this deep red water and this flash flood and this blood and then no blood and then ache and then the ghost blood and the trick of a one-day show and then no show for months and then a flooding and the bed is waves of it and waves of it and what is happening to me? I don’t leave the house without a bag stuffed with tampons and pads and clean pants and a mask and gloves and diving equipment and goggles and tissues and waders and armbands, just in case, just in case, just in case of what? Oh the shame of it, I am afraid of the shame, what is this new fear and tears and more tears, as I write this I am crying again and I am roaring my eyes out, Chaka Kahn is on the radio, she is singing I’m every woman and the song feels so different today and poignant and yes Chaka, I hear you, I’m every woman, it is true: I’m every woman, I’m every woman, I’m every woman . . .

3

OK. HOT. Slow down for one hot minute hot minute HOT because hot HOT because it’s HOT. So I open the fridge and stick my head in it, because it is cool like the longing for an evergreen forest. What is this strange behaviour? Why is it so hot? I am boiling in my own blood. I am a boiled ham. I am in a bubbling pot of feelings. So tell me now what is this? This thing we cannot get any answers for and this thing that is happening to me and in spite of me? Does anyone care? No. Not really. Nope. OK so we must cope and we must manage and we must struggle on our own and we whisper a new secret word we read: PERIMENOPAUSE. It is easy to remember because it is the bit before menopause but with extra peri-peri pepper sauce and so that explains the heat.

4

So finally, tonight, you share your burden at full moon with a bottle of rum in the kitchen with your best friends and you say, Sister, are you going through this too? Yes! She says Yes! Yes, oh thank fuck, I thought it was just me, so what the fuck is this? This rising power, this mighty rage, and what is this intolerable heat? It is called a hot flush. A HOT FLUSH? They call it a hot flush? Well, I’m on fire. I feel like I ate a volcano. I’m bubbling lava and my head is all flames, I’m a walking burning witch. But we must carry on as normal and say excuse me, darlings, can you smell smoke? Please don’t mind this wildfire inside me. We don’t talk about it. Sister is wise, she tells me to boil herbs, fresh parsley, sage and thyme and use old magic. Drink more water. I cleanse and I clear a path inside myself but inside I feel prickly. There are tigers in my blood. So we simmer a leaf and drink the tea, anxieties thriving in the weeds and undergrowth. I steep herbs, drink the tea, and how does it taste? Honestly? OK it tastes a little bit like drinking a hot salad, hot wet grass juice, but I’ll try anything at this point, because I cannot get an appointment and I cannot get any help. I’m a raging maniac insomniac and I’m a volcano and bubbling in my own geyser and I want all the things: I want ice and I want you to touch me and I say don’t touch me and I don’t know what I mean or what I want. I want to jump out of the window into the cold night air, hmm, the wet rainy cold pavement looks inviting. I want to sleep and curl up into a ball like a cool and slimy snail. I want to be held. I want to be alone. I want to hide in a cave and eat cold rocks, delicious chunky crunchy icy rocks and I want to stick smooth rocks down my pants and I want to fill myself with smooth ice and then just walk into Antarctica to feel my feet in the snow and then sink under icy water and die and live like a happy cool-skinned seal, skidding on the ice on my flabby belly into the darkest deepest blue. I want all of this now and all at the same time. Such violent flashing death-thoughts and desperate itchy feelings and too many feelings, feeling all the feelings, die die die, all day long, hot hot hot, feeling all the feelings, all night long, and all the feelings and so what is this? More feeling feelings and more crying. I’ll give you something to cry about. Thanks.

5

Perhaps it is a bit like puberty but in reverse. That’s what this is, just like puberty, but going in the other direction, you are growing away from being fertile and useful to men, to being useless and invisible. Ah, well now, haha, when you look at it like that, it makes so much sense, that’s why they didn’t tell us, that’s why they don’t warn us. Nobody told us, nobody told me. It don’t matter. Of course. We don’t matter. Hormones go haywire, I feel exactly like a suicidal fifteen-year-old, again, feels so familiar, here are those old dark thoughts, here the childhood death-wishes, here the crying and why am I crying this time? Maybe because the song was sad or because someone was kind or I cried because I was hungry or I cried watching Attenborough and I cried because the world is mad or because my love made me a really nice cheese toastie and I cried because it rained because the rain was the saddest rain and I cried like the rain and I cried because Chaka Khan is so beautiful and I love Chaka Khan and I love that song ‘I’m Every Woman’. I’m laughing and roaring with tears all at the same time and looking at the rain being rainy. Furious weather inside me, a tirade of emotion. I am taking everything very personally, all weather is me, wave after wave after wave, smashing me against myself.

6

And breathe. Then here we are. Today there is this calm bit and this very grounded feeling and it is a most gentle breath, and well this is strange and new too, so now what is this? I am wearing new white knickers with no fear of stains, why so much fear of a little blood, I dunno, decades of shame and guilt, but yes, look, see, yes, the bleeding has stopped. Forever. You will never bleed again. Wow OK I think I get it now. So yeah, so no more periods. EVER again. Wow, getting older is amazing and being a big sister, to be an elder, it is an honour. Why was I afraid of this? Is this what’s happening now? Some acceptance perhaps? It is a privilege to get older. Say it again. Yeah, OK I think I understand now, I am lucky to get to this age at all. Hallelujah, oh wisdom, oh clever one, oh look at me now, look how I got so wise and jolly and plump and how I am so Zen and wise, I accept it all and oh it must be over and done with now and I think this is what finding balance feels like? I feel like I will be allowed to enter the evergreen forest.

Salena Godden FRSL is an award-winning novelist, poet and broadcaster of Jamaican and Irish mixed heritage. Her debut novel Mrs Death Misses Death won the Indie Book Awards for Fiction and the People’s Book Prize, and was shortlisted for the British Book Awards and the Gordon Burn Prize. Her literary childhood memoir Springfield Road - A Poets Childhood Revisited and a new full poetry collection With Love, Grief and Fury were published with Canongate with a double book launch in May 2024. Her work has been widely published, anthologised and broadcast on BBC radio, TV and film.

Salena Godden

is on Substack. You can purchase With Love Grief and Fury in hardback or audio. Follow everything else Salena is up to here.

I am on three big writing deadlines at the moment so the feels will be dropping into your inbox every two weeks! Liv x