When I first started going through perimenopause, I was flailing in a sea of podcasts and audiobooks telling me all the things I should be doing, from hormones and diet to strength training and supplements.
I’m someone who loves to optimize things (any other Virgos out there? hey!), so at first I was all in. But I was also completely overwhelmed. And underneath all the things I was trying to fix, I was falling apart.
I was depressed and anxious. I didn’t know who I was anymore or what I wanted, and I definitely didn’t understand what any of that had to do with perimenopause.
There are so many helpful conversations happening about how to care for our changing bodies during these years, and I’m grateful for them. But no amount of protein or strength training is going to solve an existential crisis.
I needed someone to tell me about that part.
About what happens when the life you’ve built starts to feel unfamiliar. When you’re questioning things you used to feel certain about and wondering why, at this point in your life when you thought you’d have everything figured out, you suddenly feel more lost than ever.
Your perimenopause journey might look different than mine, but if you’re falling apart a little (or a lot) right now, I want you to know you’re not the only one.
These are the things I wish someone had told me when I first found myself here.
If you have a friend or family member who needs to hear this, please share it with them!
1. Perimenopause can start much earlier than you think
I wish I’d known that 39 wasn’t too young to start perimenopause. It wasn’t even on my radar until I found myself in my functional medicine doctor’s office being told I was on the fast track to menopause.
The reality is that perimenopause probably started for me around 37, but it took a couple years for my symptoms to get disruptive enough to do something about.
2. It can change parts of your life you’d never expect
All I knew about menopause was that it was the time when I’d stop getting my period. And all I knew about perimenopause was … well, pretty much nothing.
I had no idea it could change my marriage, my work, my sense of purpose, what I believe, my friendships, how I prioritize my time, what I’m willing to tolerate and even the colors I like and the clothes I want to wear.
3. Losing your drive and direction doesn’t mean something has gone wrong
I’d always been driven. Through my 20s and 30s I built a thriving community for women entrepreneurs in Boulder, Colorado and coached clients all over the world who went on to build 6 and 7 figure brands.
I climbed multiple 14ers throughout Colorado. I did Crossfit. I tracked calories and macros and broke down my goals in journals, apps, spreadsheets and wall calendars.
But during perimenopause I lost all future focus and I didn’t know where I was going in life anymore. The things that used to motivate me didn’t anymore and it took everything I had to just show up for my daily responsibilities.
What I know now is that losing my direction and drive was actually a gift. It was perimenopause inviting me to slow down and pay attention to the inner workings of my body and mind in ways I’d been neglecting for a very long time.
4. You might have no idea who you are anymore
There can be a time during perimenopause when the identities and roles that used to give you purpose no longer fit, but who you’re becoming hasn’t arrived yet.
Your career might come into question, your marriage might end or go through a big upheaval and you’ll ask yourself if you want to keep playing the roles you’ve been playing.
You’ll start looking at your patterns, belief systems, the stories that have been running your life and the rules you’ve been living by and you’ll question if they’re true, where they came from and if you want to keep carrying them with you.
As you uproot everything that’s made you, you, it will feel really uncomfortable.
Sitting in the space between who you were and who you’re becoming might be so unbearable that you want to rush to fix it or fill it with the next thing.
But if you can muster the patience, stay.
Stay in the not-knowing long enough to allow what’s trying to emerge to come through. Something inside you wants to be born and it needs space to find its way to the surface of your life.
5. You won’t be able to tolerate what you used to
During perimenopause it can feel like you’re becoming less capable. But what I’ve found looking back is that I was actually becoming less willing to override myself.
For most of my life I could push past exhaustion when my body was asking me to stop or make “yes” come out of my mouth when everything inside me was signaling “no”. I could take responsibility for other people’s needs and convince myself it was my job to solve their problems.
I got so good at doing these things that I didn’t even recognize I was abandoning myself.
And then, during perimenopause, they started becoming almost impossible to do.
6. Your relationships will have to adjust
When you change during perimenopause, relationships built around the old version of you will eventually need to adjust or fall away.
As you stop playing the role that kept a relationship functioning, conflict will inevitably arise. But don’t take conflict as a sign that something has gone wrong. Your relationship may simply be going through the uncomfortable growing pains it needs to become more aligned.
The relationships where both people are willing to show up and take responsibility for their part can deepen through this process. The ones that can only function as long as you stay who you’ve always been may fall away.
7. Your body will stop letting you push through
For most of my life, I expected my body to keep up with the plans my mind had made. I spent many years being really frustrated, particularly with my excruciating periods and never ending PMS that got in the way of showing up for my business and life.
I felt like my body was against me, and I would push through even when my body was clearly asking me to slow down.
Perimenopause made that impossible.
I don’t know how else to describe it other than my ability to push just up and left.
I had to surrender to what my body was asking, and in that surrender I received a beautiful gift. I learned to listen beneath all the “shoulds” my mind had convinced me I was supposed to follow and start asking, what is my body telling me about how I actually want to live?
8. It will bring up a lot of grief
The perimenopause years can bring up a lot of grief as we let go of who we’ve been and what we thought our lives would look like.
I’ve grieved the door to motherhood closing and the ending of a business that had been such a big part of my purpose. I’ve grieved finally letting go of the hope that I could have the relationship with my mom I’d spent my life trying to create.
And I’ve grieved the years I lost spinning in patterns I can see so clearly now, like second-guessing myself and devaluing my worth.
You can grieve something and still know that you don’t want to carry it with you anymore.
9. You might feel like hiding
Being social during perimenopause can feel like showing up to a party naked. When the identities and direction you once based your self-worth on start slipping away, it can leave you feeling vulnerable and insecure.
For me, questions like “How’s your business going?” could send me spiraling into shame because I didn’t have answers anymore.
I went from being a confident, social person who posted daily on social media, went live every week in my Facebook group, emailed my list every week, hosted monthly networking events and group coaching calls, to basically dropping off the face of the planet for a year. I didn’t even say goodbye because I was so confused myself by it all that I didn’t know how to explain what was happening to anyone else.
I wish I’d had the capacity to say goodbye to a community that had been by my side for almost two decades, but I didn’t. And I forgive myself for that.
There’s a lot of encouragement these days to let people witness us in process and I believe there’s a time for that. But there can also be something sacred about allowing parts of our becoming to happen privately. To give ourselves the space we need to fall apart without having to make sense of it or explain it to anyone else.
10. You don’t have to immediately turn your unraveling into a reinvention
I alluded to this in #4, but it’s so important, it’s worth mentioning again. There’s so much cultural messaging around midlife women reinventing themselves.
New career! New purpose! New chapter! New body!
But what this messaging usually misses is how important the space between who we were and who we’re becoming (I call it the void) is to living the rest of our life in integrity with what really matters.
I understand the temptation to fill the space (I tried to do it many times before I was ready, and each time it fell flat sending my right back into the void).
True emergence can’t be manufactured. There’s no 3-step plan and you can’t get yourself out of the void by desperately trying to construct what’s next.
For me, emergence began as a tiny spark of inspiration. I held it gently at first and kept living my life and over time the spark grew into a flame.
11. You have to fall apart before you can wake up
Falling apart doesn’t mean you have to blow up your entire life. For some, maybe it will, but for others it will be more subtle, like an internal reorientation that changes the way you show up in the life you already have.
Regardless of exactly what this looks like for you, most of us will receive an invitation to look at our shadows and the parts of our lives that have been running on autopilot.
And with this invitation, we get a choice.
We can look the other way and keep pushing, numbing and filling the space to distract us from facing the uncomfortable truth that’s trying to get our attention …
Or …
we can slow down, get curious and find the courage to sit with our shadows long enough to hear what they want us to know.
Those of us willing to do the latter get the opportunity to put down what was never ours to carry and transform the patterns that have shaped our lives without us even realizing it.
This can feel like we’re falling apart. But sometimes falling apart is what breaks open the cages we’ve been living inside and allows us to finally wake up to ourselves.
Which of these jumped off the page at you?
And if there’s something you’d add to the list, I’d love to hear that too.
Hey , I’m Jessie May!
At 39, perimenopause turned my life upside down and eventually became an awakening I never saw coming. Now I guide women through the whole arc of this initiation, from sitting in the void of not knowing what’s next, to finding our voices as we emerge into who we’re becoming.
I love creating spaces where we can talk about what this time feels like with people who understand. Thanks for being here, I can’t wait to get to know you!
Ways I can help
✨ Substack Coaching - For women who want to turn the experiences they’ve lived through into a meaningful Substack publication that helps others feel less alone.
✨ Perimenopause Initiation Coaching - For women waking up to themselves through the initiation of perimenopause.
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A space for women unraveling and recreating their lives during the perimenopause years. Pivots, purpose, identity, patterns and turning our experiences into meaningful work … those are just some of the things we explore together here.
The line about protein and strength training not solving an existential crisis gets at what is still missing from many menopause conversations. Physical symptoms are becoming easier to name, while the loss of certainty, drive or identity is often turned into another problem to optimise. Your point about not rushing the unraveling into reinvention leaves room for a part of this transition that may need time before it needs a plan.
I gradually blew up my life and 10 years later I’ve learned so much about me and life. I’m becoming who I want to be instead what was expected from society and relationships 🙏🏽