A recent Flo Health study revealed that 34% of U.S. women aged 35+ were unsure of their reproductive stage, and uncertainty peaked at 42% among women aged 40 to 44.

A 2023 survey of women over 40 found that most women felt uninformed about menopause before age 40, and over 80% had no menopause education at school. That same study found 57.5% of postmenopausal women said menopause was difficult or very difficult.

I had seen my mother sort of go off the rails when "early menopause" hit in her early 40s. And I knew that in less developed cultures, menopause was considered less of a medical transition and more of an end to bleeding, which technically it is. In these cultures women became the wise elders, and garnered more respect in their communities.

Here it seems to be spoken about in hushed terms, as if we should be ashamed of the changes that our body goes through and the new needs that are often required of us. And if you don't listen to those needs - watch out!

A woman is in menopause when she has ceased to menstruate for 12 months. I went 11 months without bleeding, had one period and then stopped again. I've not bled for nearly 18 months, and weirdly I still kind of miss it.

Not the actual bleeding part, but my cycle, the changes that occur during your monthly rhythm. The increase in energy after you bleed, the flourish of ovulation, combined with the lovely glow in your cheeks, a time when I scheduled all my presentations as I knew I would be a bit more articulate, animated and energetic. Then the slow descent into a few quieter days before the bleed began again.

I had discovered scheduling my life and work via cycle syncing decades before and it changed my world. Now I have no monthly rhythm, so I had to "fabricate one". I'll share more on that another time.

There were things I noticed changing in my body, things that I had no idea were about menopause at all.

As someone who had always been able to go with the flow, I lost that capacity to just roll with the punches.

I didn't fully recognise it at first, I just felt annoyed or irritated when my family wanted to change things at short notice.

Then there was the lack of sleep. That really is a special kind of torture, isn't it. Falling into bed exhausted and then bing, awake at 2am and so bone tired, with sleep being completely elusive for the rest of the night.

That exhaustion became a daily weight to carry as I leaned on coffee to get me through, and I'd only ever drunk one coffee a day, but slowly that one coffee a day became another insomnia trigger. If I had any more than a decaf in a week, that guaranteed that I wouldn't sleep. I could feel it in my nervous system, even though I'm genetically a fast metaboliser of caffeine.

The changes that never screamed menopause

Someone who never really felt overwhelmed, feeling it all the time.

My skin changed, seemingly overnight. Histamine issues I had never really had before became a transient problem. They come and go, come and go, and quite frankly I wish they would just f off. My tolerance for the unexpected has collapsed. I noticed I respond to things differently than I used to.

Why we do not talk about it

I acknowledge there is more conversation than ever before about menopause, but why is the story around our hormones so full of shame?

We whisper about it to our friends, the weight gain or puffiness that we suddenly can't shift on our own. We push through the changes in our body, treating all the different symptoms as a different issue, never realising that we need to put them all together into a holistic mind map of oestrogen leaving the building.

We might notice the skin on our neck and chest and one day we just wake up going, WTF happened. We don't even recognise the woman looking back at us in the mirror, and all the while we're caring for our family, building businesses, trying to stay married, and I don't know about you, but I felt SO ALONE!

I tried to have a conversation with my husband about it one day, but it was hard to admit that I didn't even know who I was anymore, and I'd just launched into it and we got interrupted by one of the children. I've never been able to open up to that conversation again.

We treat our hormones as something to manage or medicate and never talk about what a mind fuck it can be.

And that secretive silence is exactly why so many women reach this point convinced something is wrong with them, or that ageing is just a never ending slide downhill, rather than something is changing in them, and their body and nervous system needs them to live differently, and NOW!

When my mother went through her early menopause in her 40s, her lifelong struggle with alcohol tipped over the edge around the same time. For years I did not connect the two. Now I am fairly sure I understand why. Because at times I felt like I was going mad, and I'm overall a pretty freaking healthy human!

And if you are not near menopause yet, I've got great news for you

This series might be the most useful thing you read all year.

Most of what I have learned would ideally be put in place from your 30s onward. The women who move through their Queen era with the least disruption are usually the ones who started tending to their body long before their body screamed at them to change. You cannot go back and start early, but you can start now.

This is not a "woe is me" of everything that goes wrong.

Pulling all of my weird and wonderful symptoms apart to work out what was happening made me more connected to my body than I have ever been. And as a reformed people pleaser, I will also tell you my boundaries have never been better.

This is the real story of one woman's peri and menopause. The version I needed and could not find.

Even though I'm still embarrassed about some bits of it, I'll share it all, and the things that helped, and hopefully give you a laugh along the way.

The next Chronicle is coming soon. Follow along and join the conversation, if you dare.