The Polar Bear Years

What if a totem animal can get me through this time of transition?

Do you have a spirit animal? I think mine might be the polar bear.

I’ve been reading a book called Heartbreak by Florence Williams. It describes the author’s attempt to fix her broken heart after her husband of over 20 years leaves her. Williams explores the physical changes her body undergoes in the grief-stricken aftermath, and takes herself into the wilderness to see if adventure, danger and nature can help her heal.

It’s a fascinating book, but the thing that has stuck with me and that I’ve thought about every day since reading it, is the section where she describes an ethnographer relating a conversation with an Inuit woman.

In his interview the ethnographer asks the woman to map out her life. He notices there’s a gap.

‘I see everything but the years from when you were 50-54.’

She replies, ‘Oh, I have no words for those years… In those years, I was a polar bear.’

Honestly, it’s taken me a few retellings to be able to get through relating this out loud without crying. The idea that we disappear in mid-life is not new - I have become invisible since letting my hair go grey – but the notion that we actually shapeshift into different animals for a while, as our bodies change and we unhinge ourselves from the monthly cycle that has been part of our lives for so long, felt utterly liberating and compelling.

I’ve been in perimenopause for several years. So far I’ve had it pretty lightly, but it’s still a massive shift. I’m trying to imagine what living without that cyclical rhythm is going to feel like. And as my marriage comes apart I’m also trying to imagine what my life as a whole is going to feel like.

These, I think, will be my polar bear years.

I will float for a while on the ice. I will let myself be carried on the current but I will also swim with powerful paws and shake my frozen fur and lift my head to taste the wind. Strong, resilient, but alone.

I looked up what polar bears symbolise in shamanic thinking:

• patience

• determination

• a messenger of change

• intuitive navigation

The perfect guide for choppy waters.

Do you have a totem to help you through challenging times? Tell me in the comments below - I’d love to hear what it is.

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