There comes a time in ones lifetime that you will cross paths with one or two people that will change your life. It is but for a brief moment but the conversations feel like a lifetime. You sit there and chat for hours about everything and nothing. You share deep secrets and it surprises how easy the words that are hidden deep within your secret internal chambers flow out. There is no immediate regret or fear of betrayal. You feel somewhat safe as the person nods her head gently and says reassuringly, “Its ok. Its your story to tell. You owe no one an explanation.”

Where has she been all my life I ask myself. But I realise, I’ve met her at the right time. She’s strong-willed but full of compassion. Has days filled with hard-work trying to run current businesses whilst starting new ventures simultaneously, and as we sit there talking about the effects of menopause-101, she informs me that she’s  going to India for thirty days to reboot.

No mobile phones or laptops in communal places. Everyone wears the same flowy kaftans and matching pants with comfortable sandals. Her face lights up as she continues to tell me how she will eat well, do yoga and experience all these ayurvedic treatments. What immediately comes to mind is a little sadness that I may have lost a friend I’ve just found because what she describes  as her zen like place to me, sounds more like a sect. She bursts out into  rich laughter when I voice out my concerns and suggests that we go together. I say one thing or another to get me out of it, but it seems I dug myself into a deeper hole , for she suggests a silent retreat in the depths of Germany as an alternative.

This is a no brainer. I would rather go ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ in India than sentence myself to a month with the 'Poor Claires'  in the middle if Germany.

We get back to the topic at hand in-between mouth full of succulent steaks. Rump, Sirloin, Fillet? She schools me in the difference of each cut and I keep insisting I just want a soft steak that’s not alive on my plate. We settle for Rump and Sirloin so we can taste a little bit of both. Fortunately, menopause hasn’t taken over my taste buds. Am a Rump steak kind of girl.

“Am moody and tired all the time,” she declares.

“Well, I’ve been moody since I was four so I wasn’t sure it was a symptom.” 

We both laugh and share our menopausal experiences for which we were so unprepared. Funny how we spend hours of research on business topics, or what to expect when your expecting and comparing the size of peas to oranges as your baby grows within you, and hours on how to be a pig farmer and yet when we started to cook from the inside, our ears emitting some kind of heat signal and the endless search for the coldest part of the bed at night, research was the last thing on my mind. Maybe it was because I had no mind! It was cooked!

It is this 'cooked' mind that is going to India to search for inner peace for one and for the other, to restore her default settings and pray that ‘new brain’ is on the list of treatments.

How much of me, can I blame on menopause when I’ve been a moody bugger all my life? Well, my cooked brain agreed to the trip to India to join my new found friend whose looking for inner peace whilst I just want know how she has such beautiful hair.