The Number One Problem of Perimenopause: A Must Read For ALL Women

For most women perimenopause is sadly not a time associated with an attitude of empowerment. Instead for many, it can be the most mentally destabilizing era of a woman’s life outside of adolescence. The pendulum of emotions can swing to the furthest ends of the spectrum, with feelings of anxiety one day, depression the next, colouring every feeling inbetween.

In the physical body all manner of changes can manifest. Our bodies suddenly feeling like a pastiche of poorly made goods purchased from the $2 shop. The vaginal and nipple plumpness that was birthed in puberty can start to thin, body parts that were meant to be dry are now oily and other parts once juicy now more arid than Algeria with spinifex pubic hair to boot. The smorgasbord of symptoms that may appear can throw women into crippling bouts of ‘terminal narrative’, each new weird lump and patch that appears surely symbolizing the beginning of the end. Beautifully boosted with lashings of ‘what am I doing with my life’ inner narrative that tends to be at it’s worst on waking to the potential of another glorious day filled with self doubt and loathing. That’s if we’re lucky to have fallen asleep at all. But you know what? None of that is the worst of it. You know what is? The worst of the worst, the number one thing that enhances all of the negative, is that the majority of women in the year 2020 are entering this phase with little to no awareness of it leading in. The turbulent but immensely powerful (we’ll come to that shortly) period of perimenopause becomes for many women like a lynching in a dark alley from the inside out. And that, is absolutely not necessary.

So what is this mysterious phase of perimenopause? Why is it happening and what the hell is it good for?

Perimenopause is the death throes of a process in the body that is no longer required. It is the beginning of the end of the reproductive years and it is also the beginning of a whole new incredibly powerful era of life. The most powerful if we approach it right. The perimenopausal phase is signified by the onset of irregularity. When what we once might have known for decades as our cycle, starts to change. It is at this precise moment - when our once however-many-day cycle becomes elastically short, long or both - that we have no other choice but to surrender. To go mentally limp like a leaf going over an estrogen waterfall that’s making it’s way to a whole new land. Very, very sadly however the knowledge of this time has been vastly lost. Partially due to the burning of the ‘witches’, the male-domination of the modern science space until recently, disconnection from close family lines, all topped with our overall disconnection from nature that once taught us many things about our own inner landscape.

During perimenopause, estrogen, progesterone and melatonin all begin their relatively rapid decline. By rapid I mean 4 or so years, and by decline I mean more like a fluoro light with a faulty starter, as our once rhythmic ovaries turn into pulsing electric disco balls throwing out eggs whenever they damn well please. BUT and this is a very VERY important BUT. All of this is fine. F.I.N.E. It is beyond fine - it is the NATURAL. And the not knowing of this significant piece of information, is what drives the vast majority of women to despair - or worse to HRT. This notion that we can and should forever delay menopause because the unpredictability of perimenopause is too uncomfortable is, dare I say it, another product of the disconnection of women from their own power. So how do we get it back? How do we reclaim this command of our own experience once more? How do we make ourselves as comfortable as possible within the experience of being physically and physiologically demanded to change?

The first and most important step is to be aware that the change is natural, essential. To accept the change and then begin the journey of forming an excellent relationship with change. Perimenopause dredges up all of that sticky muck from the deepest part of the barrel. It can make the most seemingly powerful woman crumble through the journey of vulnerability to - if she allows it - the most truly powerful version of herself possible. But we must have awareness of the natural. That during this time estrogen spikes up and down erratically and progesterone follows the lead. Melatonin begins to plummet almost completely and testoserone hangs about with a little more consistency. So if all of this is the perfect natural, why are women so uncomfortable? Because we are ill-prepared. In education and therefore approach. And our endocrine systems - along with all of their beautiful, defiant, ever-changing rhythms - have been criticized and demonised for centuries until we too as women, have absorbed the same mentality. We pretend we can walk in a straight line without it causing any harm but our systems don’t walk in straight lines, they walk in cycles, curves and spirals. There are NO straight lines in nature.

Imagine if as young girls we were told the stories of our systems like a loving family member might tell us the story of the stars? Told us that in adolescence we would bloom like the most spectacular flower into womanhood and during that time we might burn with rage and desire and sorrow beyond our imaginings, we would see the world as it is but face the injustice of our voices never being heard. That we would grow into steadiness, our hormones would help us understand our relationship and connection with the moon and the moon’s relationship with the Earth would help us to understand our own. We would be told the story of perimenopause; when all that we had accumulated in our life to that point would rise to the surface and the gems would burn into diamonds if we let it and the rest would turn to ash. Imagine if we were taught that every step of the way we were preparing for the next step, so that we could enter perimenopause like a warrior knowing we would face the time of the great reveal. Imagine we were taught that our whole life we needed to look after our bones and our hearts, that when stress arose we needed to sink into the river and cool off the adrenals so they didn’t cook us with estrogen excess and when a time of fatigue came after raising children for many years or even without children when we had still put so much energy into the physiological possibility of children, we would rest in the sun for as long as required.

Knowing is key. Not knowing is hell. Perimenopause is hormonal turbulence because the system is undergoing fundamental and necessary change and because of that perimenopause is power, preparing us for the full expansion of our wings as wise women. We can’t become that continuing to carry all of the accumulated burdens of the past, we can’t clear the burdens of the past unless we can see them. Perimenopause is the great microscope through which to see the muck that needs to go. The greatest sadness is mistaking that for madness, unaware that this is the very gift of this time, that it’s nature is change; turbulent life-changing, diamond-forming, wing-expanding kinda change.