My perimenopause journey has been a hard one. Never before affected by hormones much at all, suddenly everything was upside down, topsy turvy and I wasn’t coping with the basics even. And I talked to friends the same age and so many of us weren’t coping. Relationships falling apart, work cancelled, people having breakdowns, crying, raging, not sleeping, hideous brain fog, sweating, begging doctors for help, being told way too often that we need anti-depressants, that we can’t have HRT, that it isn’t safe, that we are too old, too young, we don’t need it. The stories are heartbreaking. And so unnecessary. We don’t have to put up with feeling like this, with not coping, with struggling. 

My work has suffered, I felt so overwhelmed so often, I walked away from some of the parts of my business (cat feeding, quilt repairing) so I could at least do the main bits. This was about a year ago, summer 2022. Luckily Amy kept the quilt repairs ticking over until I found myself completely involved again. And after a short break from cat feeding I am back on it. In fact I have more energy and clarity now than I have done in years. But it took A LOT of time and adjustments and sadly it seems the only way I can cope with life and work is to be single (which those of you that know me well is not anywhere near as sad as it sounds!) 

And I wanted to start a dialogue, to make it public, to show I am not going to hide how I feel, how hard it has been, how much it has affected me, my loved ones, my working life, how much joy has been sucked out of the last 1.5 years, even on HRT. 

Yet I also feel that the menopause is a process that is valuable, some of the things I could not live with any more I should have probably never lived with, and some of the cleaning up, of the house keeping, will stand me in good stead for the years that follow this time. I feel I am designing the rest of my life, streamlining it. I am strength training too, to make sure I go in to the rest of my life a strong old lady! 

But the process is not kind and not fun and not easy and I wanted to open up about it all. I want to make peace with my perimenopause.