Midlife Wake-Up Call for My 40+ Sisters
Midlife Wake-Up Call for My 40+ Sisters
Avoid incarceration and divorce with these peri-menopause tips
Middle age is a reckoning
Those cutesy, coy warnings from your aunties about the Change should have been offered with you strapped to a gurney.
“LISTEN!”
A dousing of cold water. A slap, maybe.
At least a Valium.
“Prepare yourself, honey. You don’t have much time!”
I wish to God someone had warned me.
Nine years of unexplained, progressively worse symptoms.
Hair loss
Memory loss
Brain fog
Insomnia
Weight gain
Dry skin
Digestive issues
Depression
Anxiety
Mood swings
When you have one or two symptoms, it’s easy enough to chalk it up to aging, but when they are all stacked together in a shit sandwich, it’s a lot to bear.
I’d seen every specialist under the sun: endocrinologists, naturopaths, gynecologists, internists, psychologists, neurologists, and GPs.
No definitive answers.
At 47, while recovering from Covid, my insomnia worsened. I couldn’t sleep for days and was barely coherent.
Three months later, apathy and dread moved in.
Though the dread was dreadful, I loved the apathy — at first.
Not feeling anything was an improvement. But when the apathy honeymoon waned, feeling nothing felt terrifying.
This went on for months on end.
The neurologist diagnosed me with Major Depression. Anti-depressants helped for a year, and then the bleak darkness crept back.
Insistent, nagging self-doubt
Panic attacks
A curious and inexplicable fear of driving
By most definitions, I’ve had a successful career, navigating life relatively easily.
I’ve lived in five countries and built a successful career leading large teams from the ground up. A strong, empathetic leader. A large network of friends. A worldwide traveler, meditator, and yogi.
Everything was now on its head. A tornado that keeps circling back, devouring everything that once stood solid.
The worst was yet to come
The hair loss was easy enough to manage. I spent thousands on PRP treatments to stimulate hair regrowth. Anything to cover the thinning patches.
For insomnia, sleeping pills helped, as did Cognitive Behavior Therapy.
But when the depression came crushing back, there was a new quality.
On top of the dread, apathy, and relentless anxiety, there was untethered rage too.
A quartet!
Bitchy is an understatement
I’d heard women mention increased ‘irritability’ during midlife.
Think of irritability as a sleeping kitten. My experience is more akin to a starving lioness tearing the beating heart from their prey.
Snapping, seething, boundless fury.
There was a very near divorce from the withering WhatsApp messages sent to my husband.
I couldn’t figure out what was wrong.
Six months ago, I booked a famous Mexican sleep doctor. I figured if I could fix my sleep, maybe everything would fall into place.
She casually suggested that my insomnia was likely due to peri-menopause. HRT would do the trick, she thought.
WTAF.
Why did no one ever tell me about perimenopause?
No one ever told me that between menstruation and menopause, there is a four to 10 gap called peri-menopause.
Up. To. Ten. Years.
Don’t laugh, but I thought there was only menopause and not menopause.
I started HRT, and within a few days, I felt a 5% ease in my symptoms. After a month, there was the odd glimmer of my old self.
When I returned to Canada for the summer, there was an unfortunate mix-up with my prescription, and the HRT they prescribed me sent me back to the abyss.
Mood swings so intense I could not trust what I might say or do.
Out of desperation, I started micro-dosing, and this was helpful. The changes were barely perceptible, but the edges of my experience relented.
I met with my family doctor a few times to discuss my symptoms. When I requested anti-depressants, she said: “Everyone is depressed. It’s not just you.”
In other words, suck it up. Health care in Canada has its challenges.
I read somewhere that your symptoms in peri-menopause will mirror how you were as a teenager.
Society forgives a snarky teen, but unfortunately, this kindness is not extended to middle-aged women.
Meltdowns
A few weeks ago, as I waited to cross the street, a man in a pick-up truck hollered out the window at me.
“Nice ass,” he shouted and then gunned it through the intersection.
I, a 48-year-old woman wearing leggings, a T-shirt, and trifocals, started screaming and swearing like a sailor.
“Fuck you! Go fuck yourself and die!” I flipped him the finger, jumping up and down before stomping across the street.
That was me on a micro-dosing day by the way. A calm day where the blue sky shone brighter.
It is a switch to rage and wrath that cannot be contained. I am grateful not to be armed during times like this.
Of course, I was mortified.
I know better. I have been meditating daily since 2016.
But as I keep re-learning, you cannot meditate your way out of a hormone imbalance.
Wrap up
Several months in, I can say that the HRT and micro-dosing have been a big help. By big help, I mean that the mood plummets are more manageable. There are many terrible days when I want to scream into a pillow or burn something down.
I am trying to give myself grace. I am leaning into surrender and self-forgiveness. I am paying attention to my moods and honoring them. They are a part of me after all, and, frankly, they are impossible to ignore. I am in therapy.
Eventually, I’ll get to the other side of this quicksand pit, but for now, I’m warning all my sisters approaching 40.
Prepare yourself, I beg you.
Prepare yourself.
Resources:
If you are suffering from perimenopause, here are some resources I’ve found immeasurably helpful:
This story was first published in Bitchy on December 12, 2023
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