Childless Menopause – Embodying the Matriarch Beyond Biology
- Brainz Magazine
- 7 days ago
- 6 min read
Claudia Scalisi is a visionary educator and modern matriarch, founder of a global movement redefining womanhood through ritual, story, and embodied wisdom. She teaches that matriarchy begins with initiation – a conscious passage through menopause that births sovereignty.
When motherhood dissolves, grief becomes a portal into deeper wisdom, and legacy is reborn through ritual, storytelling, and embodied leadership. I thought motherhood would be my rite of passage into matriarchy.
Having established my career and met my soulmate later in life, I imagined the rhythm of pregnancy, the chaos of toddlers, and the joy of family to follow. It felt like the timing was perfect. But menopause arrived early, and with it came a thick silence I didn’t know how to hold.
The grief was cavernous. The way I had always seen myself, capable, resourceful, and adaptable, was fractured. And the identity I had prepared for dissolved before it even began. Yet, in that unravelling, something else emerged. Not absence, but initiation. A different kind of inner leadership was rising, carrying wisdom beyond my biology.
The silence around unrealised motherhood
We speak often of menopause as the closing chapter after motherhood. But what of the women who never crossed that threshold? What of those who wanted children, but whose bodies or life trajectories said ‘not this lifetime’?
The silence is heavy. It carries grief that is rarely acknowledged, because our culture prefers neat narratives, maiden, mother, crone. For those of us who never became mothers, the story feels unfinished, as if we are suspended in an in-between space.
Jody Day, founder of Gateway Women, calls menopause without children “the missing story,” naming how most narratives assume motherhood and leave childless women invisible.
I lived that silence. I carried the ache of unrealised motherhood, the quiet envy, the shame for my overbearing emotions, and the questions that had no answers. And yet, within that grief, I began to hear another invitation. Neither menopause nor my grief was erasing me. They were redirecting me.
My menopause arrived before I was ready. As a yoga teacher and facilitator of wellness experiences, I had always trusted my body’s rhythms. Yet in that frozen time between believing I faced conception loss and being told by a fertility clinic that I was in late-stage perimenopause with almost no ovarian reserve, my world shifted. The medical explanations I reached for left me confused. What I found online were depictions of much older women, portrayed as worrisome and diminished. None of it reflected me. I felt unseen, spiraling in my emotional and mental health.
I am grateful for my yoga training. Hitting rock bottom, I called upon my spiritual path. Forgiveness rituals became my lifeline, and I began to reconnect with my changing body. I studied everything I could about menopause and completed a certificate as a Menopause Coaching Specialist, using that knowledge combined with my embodiment training to deepen my understanding of what was occurring for me. My practices shifted to accommodate this new landscape and continue to support me as I redefine myself.
At first, the physical symptoms felt like a betrayal, the heavy fatigue, relentless hot flushes, night sweats, and sleepless nights. But slowly, I began to see them differently. They were not malfunctions. They were messages. My body was asking me for repair, to recalibrate my frequency and return to myself. Christina Archetti, psychotherapist, researcher, and World Childless Week ambassador, wrote a piece reflecting that menopause intensifies grief but also offers wisdom, stating, “I own the knowledge of a hard-won life.”
Owning my knowledge and using it became my lifeline. Ceremony became my medicine. Nervous system repair became my anchor. Breathwork, body-based techniques, and sacred womb-heart connection attuned me to the rhythms beneath language, the pulse of grief, the whisper of joy, the silence that ignites knowing.
These practices invited me into communion with what was unseen but deeply felt. They reminded me that initiation does not require a child to mother, only a willingness to listen. Sovereignty emerged not through identity, but through intimacy with the spaces where identity dissolves.
Redefining matriarchy beyond biology
For too long, matriarchy has been defined by biology, whether or not a woman has borne children. That narrow lens excludes countless women whose wisdom, leadership, and presence shape families, communities, and cultures in ways no less profound. As explained in The Legacy of Mothers: Matriarchies and the Gift Economy, matriarchy is not confined to reproduction but is expressed through stewardship of wisdom, culture, and renewal.
I once believed motherhood would be my initiation into matriarchy. When that path dissolved, I felt exiled from the archetype itself. Yet slowly, through grief, ritual, and the fire of lived experience, I came to see that matriarchy is a birthright, embodied through the hard-won cultivation of self-wisdom, stewardship, and renewal.
Matriarchy is the crown worn by women who birth culture, who mother communities, who hold space for healing. It is the mantle of those who carry grief and transmute it into guidance, who embody presence not because they raised children, but because they raised themselves through fire.
This redefinition matters. It opens the door for every woman, mothers and non-mothers alike, to step into midlife as a threshold of power. It dismantles the silence that has kept so many of us invisible, and it reframes menopause not as a decline, but as a coronation.
Embodiment as self-attunement
Cradling the nervous system, nurturing pleasure
When motherhood was no longer available to me, everything I had built in my life suddenly emptied of meaning. I was disoriented about my future and unsure how to continue my career when the horizon had so drastically shifted. My body absorbed the shock, stress spiked an inflammatory response in my body, menopause symptoms intensified, and my mental health suffered under the weight of grief and uncertainty.
It was in that rupture that I began attuning to my new needs, not as a choice, but as a means of survival. Breathwork slowed my racing thoughts. Gentle nervous system healing tools reminded me that safety could be restored one steady rhythm at a time. Grounding practices pulled me back into the earth, into the body that had felt betrayed yet still longed to be trusted.
These practices were not indulgence, but initiation, the embodied doorway into matriarchal presence. To hold myself with reverence was to reclaim sovereignty. To attune to my own body’s needs was to step into the matriarchy's presence. Intentionally seeking softness and pleasure becomes a form of repair. Ceremony became the lullaby that cradled me through sleepless nights.
Legacy as offspring
The children of midlife
When motherhood was no longer possible, I feared my lineage would end with me. But I came to understand that legacy is not bound to bloodlines. It is the imprint we leave through our creations, our communities, our words.
Creative expression and self-permission to reinvent yourself seemed to unlock a raw power within me to shape-shift into a richer, wiser, and more powerful version of the woman I was born to become.
A recent systematic review of women’s experiences of menopause observed that identity and cultural narratives, especially for women without children, are often overlooked. This gap underscores why new voices must rise to reshape how midlife and matriarchy are understood.
My programs, my writing, my rituals, these are the offspring of my matriarchal journey, the living proof that legacy is not limited to bloodlines. They are part of a movement redefining womanhood, born from grief composted into wisdom and shared so others feel less alone.
This is what it means to rise as a matriarch, the birth culture, not just children. To midwife visions into form. To leave behind not only memories, but frameworks, practices, and stories that will continue to nourish women long after we are gone.
Legacy is the offspring of midlife, the mantle we pass forward, the rhythm we entrust to future women.
Closing reflection & invitation
Embodying the matriarch beyond biology is an initiation, a rite of passage into sovereignty. Whether you have children or not, midlife is a threshold into matriarchy, a torch of wisdom, presence, and power. This is the movement I am building, and the conversation I will continue through The Reconnection Journey.
I invite you to walk with me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram and visit my website, where I share living practices for women reclaiming rhythm, pleasure, and sovereignty, not as theory, but as daily ceremony.
Read more from Claudia Scalisi
Claudia Scalisi, Renaissance Embodiment Coach
Claudia Scalisi is a visionary educator and modern matriarch, founder of a global movement redefining womanhood through ritual, story, and embodied wisdom. Her journey through early onset menopause and unrealised motherhood became the crucible for her work, reframing grief as a portal into wisdom. Through courses like The Reconnection Journey, she guides midlife women to practice self‑attunement, reclaim pleasure, and rise into sovereignty.
