Perimenopause: The Season Nobody Warned Us About
Reorganizing, Not Falling Apart in the Midlife Whiplash
—An Essay, by December
August 27, 2025
Well… I wasn’t expecting this.
Technically, sure—I knew menopause would show up one day. I grew up hearing whispers about it. Maybe it was a closed-door ceremony no one talked about until they were handed a fan and a bottle of calcium supplements. And I definitely don’t recall it ever coming up in school—perhaps they thought the whole women’s cycle and reproduction crash course was already more than enough to throw at us. I assumed menopause meant hot flashes and maybe a dry sense of humor. Eventually, no more periods. That was it. A vague, distant phase of life. Nothing urgent, at least not for me.
What I didn’t know, until my thirties, is that there’s a before. A years-long, shape-shifting, emotionally disorienting season that starts when you still feel young-ish, sharp-ish, and totally unprepared. And speaking from my own experience, it doesn’t knock politely. It ploughs in like a freight train and leaves you staring out the window, wondering what just hit you.
This, my friend, is perimenopause! Something I didn’t even know existed, let alone had a name.
Growing up, “menopause” was the only word I’d ever heard. I thought it happened suddenly and mostly meant you were done. Done menstruating. Done being hormonal. Done with your reproductive identity. But no one said a thing about the slow unraveling beforehand.
The mental fog, the anxiety from out of nowhere, the way sleep begins to slip through your fingers while your joints throw a private rebellion—just to name a few. No one warned me that the before can last anywhere from four to ten years. And if you’re “lucky,” it can continue beyond its supposed era, stretching further than anyone ever told us.
Every woman’s experience is its own story—some are hit with hot flashes but spared the brain fog, others wrestle with rage or bone-deep fatigue, and the intensity and duration can vary wildly. There’s no single version of perimenopause, and that’s both the hardest part and the most unifying part.
And for me, gosh, is it ever loud. It shows up as insomnia when I thought my evening routine was finally working. It comes in through my skin—itchy, dry, strangely reactive in ways it never used to be.
My brain feels unreliable. Names go missing, words evaporate, and whole sentences abandon ship halfway through. I find myself snapping at a dog that did absolutely nothing wrong or crying at the sight of a baby’s smile. Mornings are excruciating—sitting on the edge of my bed, wondering whether standing up will require strategy, breathwork, or a small team of volunteers.
The strange part? These symptoms often show up in a swirl, not a sequence. One week it’s rage, the next it’s apathy. Then everything feels fine for a few days. Until it’s not.
What I’m starting to notice is that they move through me like weather. They’re not permanent, even when they feel like they’ll never end. That reminder—that I can observe them without fusing with them—keeps me afloat.
And in the middle of all this chaos, I try to remember that my body is still a miracle in its own right. It may be recalibrating in ways I don’t always understand, but it’s the same body that carried me through decades of living, the same body that gave me the gift of bearing my children. For that, I am grateful—even on the days when gratitude feels harder to access.
Looking back, I see now that my mom carried herself with a quiet, deep wisdom. I don’t remember her talking about this. Maybe she did experience it all quietly while holding the world together—she wasn’t one to complain. Maybe she didn’t have the words. Or maybe she simply assumed it wasn’t something we were meant to speak about. Whatever the reason, she carried it with grace. And for that, she remains my hero.
But here’s the shift I’m grateful for: we don’t have to carry it in silence anymore. Our generation is starting to name it out loud, to share our messy truths, to laugh and cry together about symptoms that once felt isolating. Back then it was endured in silence; now it’s shared in solidarity.
Perimenopause isn’t a malfunction—it’s a transition. A new season of womanhood that begins long before our periods end, with hormonal shifts that touch everything from memory to mood to body temperature. And it’s not just about feelings—these shifts reach right into the wiring of our brains. Estrogen helps steady how our minds work, so when it rises and falls, we rise and fall with it.
It explains why we can suddenly feel off in our own minds. Why noise becomes unbearable. Why a simple “What’s for dinner?” can light a fuse we didn’t know was that short. Our emotional processing center is recalibrating—while underneath it all, life is simply inviting us to notice what’s shifting.
What I’ve started to learn—slowly, imperfectly—is that resisting this shift doesn’t help.
What helps is letting it be messy and noticing it as it comes and goes. Naming what’s happening without trying to make it smaller than it is. Reminding myself that I’m not the chaos itself—I’m the one watching it move through. When I can do that, even for a moment, there’s a steadier part of me that shows up.
I’m learning to build softness into my day instead of waiting until I break. To step out of the room when I feel rage rising—not as avoidance, but as a conscious act to protect my peace and to give the people I love the version of me that can still listen. To close my laptop the moment I sense my mind has stopped cooperating. To let silence stretch in conversations—still uncomfortable, but slowly becoming space, presence, a breath for both of us. Some days I forget, some days I remember—and both still count.
These gestures might seem small, but they’re not. They’ve become the quiet rituals of someone learning to adapt to herself with love instead of judgment. Choosing rest when I need it. Moving slower without apologizing. Releasing the pressure to be productive in every waking hour. And surrounding myself with people who don’t ask me to explain or justify the change—they simply nod, because they know.
There is wisdom in slowing down. Tending to ourselves in these seasons isn’t indulgence—it’s a way back to presence. A way of living in our bodies, even when they feel loud and unfamiliar.
Special shout-out to my three beautiful sisters for our messy, whiny, and heartfelt conversations… even if they stall mid-sentence, take four tangents, and require at least one of us to text later with, “Wait, what were we talking about again?” Those exchanges, imperfect as they are, remind me that we’re not meant to hold all of this alone.
And beyond those conversations, what we need shifts too. Sometimes it’s magnesium. Sometimes it’s canceling plans. Sometimes it’s a moment of silence before opening another email.
Perimenopause is not the end of anything. It’s a reconfiguration. A hormonal remix. And while the playlist may be chaotic at times, it’s still your soundtrack. You get to turn the volume down. You get to press pause. You get to listen in new ways.
One last thing before I go.
Remember, you’re not falling apart. You’re reorganizing. And maybe—just maybe—this is life’s way of reminding us that life isn’t meant to be controlled, only witnessed.
And that, my friend, is worthy of gentleness.
