Menopause Isn’t Breaking You. It’s Rearranging You. Here’s What’s Actually Happening.

Five years ago I put a vacation autoresponder on my email and stepped away from everything I’d built. I didn’t know it at the time but it would be years before I resurfaced. What happened in that time would change me at my very core. What happened? In a word: menopause. Such a simple term. How could a normal biological function turn me inside out as a woman and turn my life upside down? The truth is menopause didn’t just bring physical symptoms. It murdered the old me. I was SO TIRED. I was not hot flashing, I was hot flooding ten or fifteen times a day and three or four times a night. I was experiencing moments of complete and total blind rage followed by mortified shame. And in the back of my mind I was toying with a secret terror that I might have early onset dementia. I didn’t. And you likely don’t either. Here’s what’s actually happening.

The Science of What’s Happening in Your Body

Estrogen is a biologically active hormone with receptors in every organ of a woman’s body. When we lose estrogen in perimenopause every system in our body is impacted. Our brain. Our heart. Our skin. Our muscles. Our bones. Our urinary tract. Our hair. You’re not imagining the itchy skin, the frozen shoulder, or the heart palpitations. Those symptoms are related to estrogen leaving your body. The brain fog. The word-finding problems. Walking into a room and having absolutely no idea why. This is not you losing your mind. It’s your body changing. For those with no contraindications hormone replacement therapy is a safe and viable path to restore health, vitality, and sanity. I suggest you find a medical partner who has been educated in menopause medicine within the last two years. The Menopause Society certifies trained providers and you can find a list on their website.

You are not who you were, but you’re not yet who you will be yet either. You’re in the middle of the most important rearrangement of your life.

Menopause Is an Identity Transition Not Just a Hormonal One

Here’s the thing most conversations about menopause miss entirely. On the other side of this transition you’re not going to be the same woman you were when it began. I wasn’t. Gone was the desire to please or gain approval. My inclination to hold my tongue to spare another person’s feelings had completely disappeared. Things I used to tolerate suddenly seemed completely intolerable. The woman you were at 35 is not going to fit any longer. You are in a liminal space. You’re not who you were, but you’re not yet who you will be yet either. Some days you’ll feel completely fine. Other days you’ll feel like a stranger in your own life. Both realities are true. Both are normal. This is what identity transition looks like in real time. And most women go through it completely alone, thinking something is wrong with them. There is nothing wrong with you. Everything is working exactly as it’s designed to work.

The Invitation Inside the Upheaval

Midlife is an invitation to re-evaluate the way you’ve been doing things. Not that you’ve been doing them wrong. Just that you get to do them differently going forward. What if you’re not supposed to manage the mental load of an entire household or emotionally regulate a fully grown man? What if you’re not supposed to be the woman who catches every ball thrown at her? You have a chance to make an informed decision about who you want to be, what you want your life to feel like, and how you want to experience this next chapter. What did you love when you were eighteen and dreaming about what your life would look like? What did you hope for? It’s not too late. The woman you’re becoming is worth meeting, and you don’t have to find her alone. I’m right here. We can find her together. You’ve Got This.

You can fall back in love with your life. You can feel joy again. The woman you are becoming is worth meeting.