If you told me 4 years ago that I’d be writing on Substack about perimenopause as a spiritual initiation, I would have looked at you sideways and said … “what are you even talking about?”
Back then, I’d heard the word “perimenopause” before, but all I knew was that it was somehow related to menopause. And all I knew about menopause was that it was the time I’d stop getting my period.
I expected that time to be 13 years down the road.
But there I was, 39 years old, sitting in the doctor’s office being told that I was on the fast track to becoming a post menopausal woman.
In that moment, I went from feeling like I had my whole life ahead of me, to feeling like time had run out and I failed.
The physical symptoms were challenging.
My body felt stuck in the worst week of PMS for months on end …
My boobs hurt so bad that taking off my bra was excruciating …
Hot flashes kept me up all night …
Anxiety and restlessness made me want to crawl out of my skin …
I had such bad brain fog that I’d just sit and stare at my computer for hours instead of getting any work done …
I’d forget why I walked into a room or what I wanted to say mid conversation …
And I had extreme emotional sensitivity to things people would do or say that would typically roll right off my shoulder.
These symptoms got in the way of living the achievement-driven entrepreneurial life I created for myself, but what I didn’t see coming were the deeper questions perimenopause would bring to the surface, like “who have I become?” and “Is this even the life I want to be living?”
During the next few years, everything that was unresolved or out of alignment in my life came to the surface to be looked at and sorted through.
My relationship with my mom, my marriage, my work, my goals, my beliefs and the stories I’d been telling myself for decades …
Through a lot of agony and bathroom-floor moments, I untangled myself from lifelong patterns of second guessing, rescuing other people, perfectionism and over achieving.
And I learned a lot. I learned to …
Trust myself
Express my voice
Listen to my body
Say no
Give myself what my mother never could
Set boundaries
Receive love
Follow my intuition
Accept situations for what they are
Experience more peace and inner okayness
Feel connected with myself and others
Let go of controlling, fixing and saving
Redefine success
Rest
Take messy action
Feed and nourish my changing body
Sit with questions without forcing answers
During this time, I lost all future focus. My goals fell away and I didn’t know where I was going in life any more. It took everything I had to keep my head above water with day-to-day responsibilities while dealing with my existential crisis that was unfolding behind the scenes.
But eventually, a spark of inspiration started to come through.
As I spoke with more and more women who shared a similar story, I realized I wasn’t the only one whose life was completely turned upside down during the perimenopause years.
And I started to wonder … why were so many of us caught off guard?
Why wasn’t perimenopause talked about more by our doctors, mothers, friends and culture?
I kept thinking about how different those first few years could have been if I’d known that perimenopause was about so much more than hormones and hot flashes. If I’d known that I actually wasn’t dying or losing my mind, but going through a huge initiation that would eventually bring me home to myself.
So I decided I wanted to share my story and create a space where we could talk openly about the parts of this time of life no one prepared us for.
Which naturally led me to Substack.
When I joined Substack, I immediately tried to wrap this space up in a neat little package and tell you exactly what to expect here. I did this twice. TWICE! Both times, I felt a “no” in my body and took the posts down.
Eventually I realized I was repeating an old pattern, I was trying to have everything figured out before giving myself a chance to discover what it wanted to become.
So I took a step back and started paying attention to my inspiration, the “yeses” and “nos” in my body and, especially, my conversations with you in the comments and DMs.
And bit by bit the shape of this space started getting clearer.
I’m giving myself permission to let Alchemy & Ash keep evolving, but for now, these are the conversations I want this space to hold.
Sacred Initiation 🔥
The inner journey of the perimenopause years
The void between who we were and who we’re becoming, when identities like the “good girl” or the successful business owner begin to fall away.
The marriage and relationship changes nobody warned us about.
Doors that closed before we were ready and grieving paths not taken.
Inherited stories and patterns and what it takes to put them down.
A body that’s changing and asking us to listen to what it needs now.
The rage that surfaces after years of abandoning ourselves.
Losing our motivation and direction when we used to be so clear about what we wanted.
Everyday Alchemy ✨
The real-life rituals and resources that support who we’re becoming
Health
Beauty
Food
Books
Movement
Meditation
Plant medicine
Nature
I experiment with a lot of things and I’m always excited to share when I find something magical. You’ll be invited to share what’s supporting you too!
Creative Reinvention 🦋
Bringing who we’re becoming into the world
Using our voice to speak our truth and honor our needs.
Choosing relationships and communities that fill our cups.
Redefining success around what matters now.
Slowing down and living more creative, intentional lives.
Following sparks of inspiration and seeing what they want to become.
Turning our lived experience into meaningful work that expresses who we’re becoming
Turning our lived experiences into a meaningful Substack publication
Creating brands and businesses that express who we’re becoming
One thing I didn’t mention yet, but if you’ve read some of my other posts you know, is that before this I spent almost 2 decades as a brand strategist for women entrepreneurs.
When perimenopause stripped away that identity, there was a point when I didn’t think I’d ever return to it. But during the time I stopped trying to force what this space would become, my first client on this new path entered my life.
She messaged me and said …
Long story short, when we got on the phone, she asked me to be her Substack writing coach. She said she had a story that she wanted to share too and was inspired by my vulnerability in my posts.
At first I wasn’t sure, I never imagined offering Substack coaching. I’d only been on this platform myself a couple months.
But then I realized, I’ve been coaching people on their writing for 17 years. And I developed an entire body of work around helping my clients find their truth and express it clearly through their websites, social media posts, talks and webinars.
So I sat with the request for a couple days and felt into how it landed in my body … and it was a full body yes! I absolutely adored this woman and loved the idea of helping her get her story out into the world.
Working with her has felt like an answer to a prayer.
In my meditations I’d been asking to be shown the simplest, most joyful and fulfilling path to being of service in my new business (I have a history of waaaay overcomplicating things) and then SHE reached out to ME about something I hadn’t even considered offering.
She showed me how my past experience could be used in this new direction in a way that totally lit me up - supporting midlife women in getting their voices into the world … in sharing their stories as a way to process and heal from their experiences while helping us all feel a little less alone.
So that’s why under the Creative Reinvention list above, you see “turning our lived experiences into a meaningful Substack publication” and “creating brands and businesses that express who we’re becoming.”
Because purpose becomes increasingly important as we go through our perimenopause years. For many women, myself included, part of that is feeling called to take what we’ve lived through and use it in a way that helps others.
And it just so happens that the work I did for 17 years gave me a lot of experience helping women find their voice and bring more of who they are into their work.
But I want to swing back around to the beginning of this post and remind you that you don’t have to be ready to create what’s next to belong here. Alchemy & Ash is for the unraveling and the not knowing too.
The branding and Substack conversations are simply one part of Creative Reinvention, for those of us who are starting to come out the other side and feel the spark to create again. Wherever you are in this process, I want us to be able to talk about all of it here.
The experiences and identities I bring to our conversations
Our experiences and identities influence the way we see the world, so I want to share a little bit more about what I bring to this space so you can decide if being connected with me resonates with you.
I’m an only child and childfree by choice (although trusting that choice took me a very long time).
I’ve been married to a wonderful man for 16 years, together for 19 years. Our relationship hasn’t always been easy, especially over the past few years. We’ve both shown up and worked really hard to change patterns and improve our marriage.
My relationship with my mom has been the greatest challenge and greatest teacher of my life. It’s a topic that still carries a lot of grief and anger and it’s something I feel called to explore more here, but I’m also grappling with how to do that in the best way.
I know what it’s like to love people who are neurodivergent, as well as people with addictive and narcissistic patterns, and what it takes to begin untangling yourself from the roles you learned to play in those relationships.
In addition to being in perimenopause, I live in a body with a complicated collection of conditions, including lipedema, hypermobile EDS, MCAS and endometriosis.
I’m fascinated by psychology and the human experience. I can lose myself in conversations for hours about why we are the way we are and how our pasts shape who we are today. Internal Family Systems especially resonates with me and has helped me understand my own patterns with more curiosity and compassion.
Open my Spotify and there’s a good chance you’ll find me listening to a podcast about astrology.
In case you’re curious, I’m a Virgo sun, Gemini moon and Aries rising. And in Human Design, I’m a 3/5 Emotional Generator.
I’m not religious, but I am spiritual. You better believe that my office is filled with crystals, tarot cards, palo santo, candles and lots of plants!
Plant medicine has been a huge ally on my perimenopause journey, helping me shed old patterns and come home to myself.
I have a campervan that me and my husband designed ourselves and we love taking it off grid to reconnect with ourselves, each other and nature.
All of these things will inevitably find their way into what I write here because they influence how I see the world and the conversations I want us to have.
Finding my rhythm here
One thing I’m not ready to do is promise you a new post every Tuesday at 7am.
I spent many years building my life around productivity and pushing myself to keep going regardless of what my body was telling me. I don’t want to work that way anymore.
I’m learning that I do my best work when I give myself room to experiment and follow my inspiration rather than deciding ahead of time exactly how everything needs to go.
But that doesn’t mean I want to throw structure out the window.
Over the past few years I’ve learned how to be in flow and embrace my feminine energy, which was a huge shift away from how I’d always shown up in my life and work before. And now I’m ready to bring a little structure back in, without recreating the conditions that burned me out in the first place.
So I’m still finding my rhythm.
I know that I love writing early in the morning when my brain is fresh and ideas flow naturally. And I know that I want to share something new with you every week.
For now, you’ll mostly hear from me through written posts and notes, but I’m also excited to play with podcasts and lives and see what we enjoy together most!
Eventually, I’d love for Alchemy & Ash to have a paid tier too. One where our community and connections can feel a little more intimate. I tried to create a paid tier when I first got here because I thought I was supposed to have one, but nothing I came up with felt quite right. So rather than creating something just to create it, I’m giving it time to show me what it wants to become.
I’m giving myself permission to try things out here. I’m done letting old patterns of perfectionism get in my way, so I’m practicing writing without editing myself, publishing before it’s perfect and taking messy action to discover what resonates the most.
And I’m done thinking I have to have all the answers, too. I don’t. I’ve learned a lot over the past few years about this whole perimenopause experience and I’m still figuring things out as I go. I might say something one day and change my mind the next and I’m giving myself grace with that. Actually, I’m choosing to celebrate that because it’s a reflection of my openness and willingness to grow.
More than anything, I’m really excited to share this space with you and to see what grows from all the conversations we’re going to have here.
OK, so now I’d love to hear from you
Where did you see yourself in this post? And of everything I shared, what are you most excited for us to talk about together?
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✨ 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.
Thank you for writing about this. Perimenopause is so strange and caught me unaware in so many ways! And it seems to be so different for each woman, too.
The strangest thing going through this time where I couldn't stand being touched, including by my husband.
There are several things here that resonated with me. The two things that stood out the most were losing all future focus. That was me for quite a while and it was hard because I love dreaming about possibilities and making them a reality. The second was that you put the question out there and the answer found you in a way you didn't expect. That's a good reminder. I keep trying to see the path forward, but forcing it isn't the way. Allowing it is. :-)