So…about perimenopause
I began writing on the internet over twenty years ago. A few years into that, from time to time, I started to write instructive pieces. Sharing how-to or tutorial type posts based on what I was learning or what I was into/doing/experiencing.
Those posts covered terrain such as homeschooling, vegan eating and cooking (our family had a solid 15 years of a plant-based diet), “simple, natural, and green” living, gardening and herbs, and outdoorsy stuff.
Some of my blogging peers from those early mommy blogging days went on to start businesses around their niche topic—selling their own products and services and advertising for others (affiliates, sponsorships, etc...). During my two decades long online writing tenure whole blogging empires, based on these niche topics, have risen and fallen.
I was never successful at capitalizing1 on all that opportunity. I couldn’t niche down because what I’m motivated to write about is what’s happening at my growth edge, my recent or current life experience. And this changes.
Although we all know blogging is no longer what it was (here we are, at Substack because of that), I have noticed that one of the trendy niches for women writers of my age is all things perimenopause and menopause. (Even women ten years younger than me—late thirties, early forties—are pumping out content about this.)
The “all things peri and menopause” zeitgeist feels a little trendy to me and reminiscent of the blogging trends of old.
A small aside about cultural trends.
The movement of trends (rising, cresting, falling) through a community or culture makes me wonder: which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Does the phenomena create the trend? For example, does a critical mass of women being vocal about perimenopause create the perimenopausal/menopausal content trends? Or, does the trend feed the phenomena? For example, when I was 39 the word perimenopause wasn’t in circulation like it is today so I would never have attributed what I was experiencing then, which was a full-on early midlife crisis, to perimenopause.
If I had the language 11 years ago that I have now I might have understood and explained my experience through a perimenopausal lens. But I didn’t and so “perimenopause” wasn’t part of understanding my experiences at that time.
Point is, I wonder if having language and cultural awareness increase an individual’s experience of a physiological phenomena. I’m sure there’s research on this.
But that’s not what this is about.
This is about how I don’t want to be a perimenopausal/menopausal writer, “Renee lives in Nova Scotia and writes about menopause and midlife….” Hard pass.
However, as a person who publicly reflects and writes about my life, I cannot avoid contributing my lived experience to the discourse. Because, boy oh boy (woman oh woman) I am ever perimenopausing these days.
My body has gone through some notable changes in the past few years. But it’s been difficult to pinpoint those on perimenopause specifically, because of other factors.
In my mid to late forties I gained 20 to 25 pounds. This happened during the pandemic. So was it my fluctuating hormones or everything else about that time? (Like the increase of rich, comforting foods to make life more enjoyable during lockdowns?)
I can’t specify exactly how much I gained because I’m not sure about my pre-gain weight. It was only recently that I stepped on a scale to fill-in a medical form of some kind (can’t remember the context - see below about memory). Prior to that, it’s been at least a decade since I’ve weighed myself. (The only season of life when I was regularly checking my weight and knowledgeable about such biometrics was during my three pregnancies in my twenties.)
In recent years I’ve also experienced brain fog and a subtle, but discernable-to-me-change in my cognition. But again, these changes started during the pandemic and are concurrent with a time of destabilizing geopolitics, declining democracy, worsening economy, etc… Wouldn’t all this have its own “fatiguing” effect on the body and mind?
And although I never tested for it I must have gotten Covid somewhere in there.
I notice this cognitive change specifically in my writing which has more grammatical errors than it used to, words missing, misspelled or repeated in the text. (My paid work has a lot of writing so this matters beyond what I publish here.)
I catch these errors by reading all my published writing—marketing copy for clients, important emails, Substack posts—out loud. Maybe all writers do this?
It feels like my errors used to be more obvious to me, now they only show up if I really pay attention.
More obvious and clearly attributable to hormonal changes are the fluctuations in my libido (up, down and all around), and like I wrote in this post, irregular periods.
Which brings us to the present and the point of this post. I am now experiencing an undeniable perimenopause symptom—hot flashes. And although my internal thermostat has been running on the hotter side for a few years already, this is next level.
Shit’s getting real, throwing off the covers multiple times a night, window wide open to the sub-freezing outdoor temperature, desperately trying to cool down.
When it first started I thought it was the flannel sheets. So I changed those but the hot flashes did not go away they just became more bearable.
Maybe it was the mattress? Earlier this winter we decided to temporarily move our recently-purchased, guest bed mattress to our bed. Partly to test its purported-comfort for our ourselves (it is comfy), but also because as we experience various midlife aches and pains we wonder “would a different mattress help?” So we switched it out for our tried and true futon mattress.
The guest bed mattress is one of those bed-in-a-box foam types, which are known to retain body heat. Maybe that was the cause? But nope, changing back to our usual mattress did not solve the problem. (Although the switcheroo was a good time to give the mattresses and bedding a good clean and at least that part felt great.)
Was Damien the cause of my nocturnal heat? (And I don’t mean the sexy kind, my libido is currently in a trough.) A couple nights spent sleeping on our extra single mattress on the living room floor concluded that no, he wasn’t to blame.
Testing the variables, I determined that it was in fact my body causing the hot flashes. Not the bed, not the bedding, not the person sleeping next to me.
It also can’t be blamed on a pandemic, cultural conditions, changed habits, or stress.
So far, I haven’t had clothes-drenching nighttime sweating. Thank Goddess. What does happen is a flush of heat through my body, requiring me to lie uncovered for a bit until the sensation passes and I can re-cover (and recover), and go back to sleep. A cycle that repeats though out the night.
At first, the newness of the experience itself was keeping me awake after having a hot flush. Thankfully, now that I recognize the pattern I’ve been able to fall back asleep easier. Fingers crossed this remains.
I’ve been having daytime hot flushes for a couple years already, but as of this past late winter they’ve increased in frequency to be a daily, multiple times per day, occurrence.
Oh goody.
All of this is really messing with my cozy vibe.
Warm and cozy is my decorating, clothing, and just overall life aesthetic. And I love nothing more than snuggly under the covers for nighttime sleep or afternoon naps. Now when I hunker down I am anticipating the moment when warm and cozy becomes hot and oppressive. 😭
My approach to perimenopause and menopause has been to take it as it comes. I’m not pre-gaming my research and problem solving. I haven’t read the “what to expect” books. With social media you don’t need to.
I have a friend (same age) who’s been researching all things perimenopause for a while to help her deal with unwelcome changes in her body. And even though she has a doctor specializing in hormones (or something like that, I don’t recall the exact designation, see above re: cognition), my friend has gained the most knowledge by participating in Reddit forums where women are doing citizen science—observing, testing, learning and sharing their results with each other. This is what we do while waiting for the medical establishment to catch up.
Welcome to the frontier also known as women’s health.
I hope I can ride on the coattails of her knowledge and experience since I’d rather research plants and gardening.
Relatedly, if my perimenopausal symptoms start to negatively impact my quality of life (which is an inherently subjective measurement, based on how I experience things), I may reach out to work with a clinical herbalist.
I can grow and buy herbs, make medicines. But I think having someone guide and direct what to grow, buy and make, and recommend dosages, would be helpful.
So far, my quality of life hasn’t been diminished.
In fact, my late 40s and the start of my 50s are the best I’ve felt emotionally in probably fifteen years. And this emotional stability provides a buffer for the physiological changes.2
So I’m fine. I’m better than fine. But I am hot and bothered (and forgetful) some times.
And such is my contribution to the discussion of all thing perimenopause by a midlife memoirist writer.
Funny how it’s only been in recent years that I’ve recognized the root of that word as capitalism and now I find myself loathe to use it.
My sense of emotional wellbeing is attributable to several factors. My environment—both our home and living surrounded by beauty and nature; the sense of community, connection, and resiliency (the daily warm fuzzy feelings) I feel being in a secure and satisfying marriage and now living next-door to my parents; and the increased stability of our finances at this life stage. All of this is no doubt triggering a cascade of hormones and neurotransmitters that takes the edge off uncomfortable physical perimenopausal symptoms.
The part about catching writing errors by reading aloud, and noticing that the errors are subtler now, is such a specific observation. That kind of fine-grained self-monitoring is often the first thing cognitive fog affects, and it's almost invisible to everyone except the person doing the work.