As autumn blows into town and a new season starts, it feels fitting to be thinking about natural cycles.
Autumn is a lesson in releasing, in letting go. The trees don’t try to hold on to their magnificent flame-coloured leaves, the earth doesn’t cling to its swelling produce. Everything is let go, with confidence that it will all grow again. But new growth can only come if space is made for it - we have to let go of the old to invite the new.
And I shall keep telling myself that, as I plunge headfirst into perimenopause.
Change feels very much in the air right now. Nature is shifting all around me, as the air turns colder and the leaves pool at my feet. I’m hurtling towards my fortieth birthday, which feels like a huge transition into a different phase of my life, and knowing that I’m also moving into a new phase as a woman makes it feel even more poignant.
Here’s fun five symptoms I didn’t realise were menopause-related
I’m not sure how long I’ve been perimenopausal, because it kind of snuck up on me. We hear a lot about the big changes - hot flashes, sweats, brain fog, and, of course, irregular periods - but none of those have hit me yet and, on researching it further, I discovered they might not show up for years. Unlike the noise and flashing lights of the menopause show, the warm-up act of perimenopause is much more subtle. It niggles at you in small ways that seem harmless in their mundanity, but that chip away at you slowly and incessantly, and, since they’re rarely acknowledged, make you feel like you might be going out of your mind.
I didn’t know that these things were symptoms of menopause, so you might not either, and I would like for less people to worry that they’re crazy. So here are five things I’ve learned are perimenopause’s fault:
Intolerance to red wine
I don’t blame you if you think this one sounds crazy, because I did too. It was my biggest symptom of perimenopause, but the one I never remotely suspected of being related. I used to enjoy a glass of red wine with a meal - I’m half Italian, for goodness’ sake - but in the last six months or so I have become unable to drink any at all. Even a few sips of red wine make me feel incredibly nauseous. I was Googling “can you become allergic to red wine” for a while, in abject confusion (which of course you can, you can become allergic to anything, but a red wine allergy usually results in a skin rash, which I wasn’t getting), until three different people told me that the same thing had happened to them when they started menopause. The reason doesn’t seem to have been widely studied (a lack of research into women’s health? Shocking!), but various possible explanations are that red wine is thought to decrease estrogen levels, that menopausal women have lower levels of a key enzyme that breaks down alcohol, and that higher levels of sulphites and other chemicals exacerbates menopause symptoms. Whatever’s going on, I think I’ve now quit drinking.
Neck and shoulder pain
Hormones affect pain transmission, so we’re more sensitive to pain all round at this time (what fun!), and wear and tear around the neck and shoulders increases during menopause.
Joint pain
Estrogen helps to reduce inflammation and maintains necessary levels of joint fluid, so, when our levels begin to drop in menopause, we’re more likely to find knee, hip and finger joints becoming painful. I’ve had pain in my fingers that seemed completely weird and inexplicable for months until someone mentioned that they’d experienced the same thing.
Headaches
Estrogen withdrawal causes headaches, apparently. Who knew? On the plus side, if you had especially high levels of estrogen prior to menopause, that might have been causing headaches so you might see an improvement during menopause. I clearly did not have particularly high levels of estrogen pre-menopause.
Bruising
Lower levels of estrogen reduce the skin’s elasticity and its ability to retain water, which means we bruise more easily. It’s just non-stop fun around here.
Making peace with my cycles
My hormones have been driving me crazy since I was ten years old. It seems ridiculous to me now, but I vividly remember being desperate for my periods to start. I wanted to be a grown-up, a real woman. I wish I’d known what a pain it would be, quite literally - I wouldn’t have been in such a hurry. But hindsight is a wonderful thing and I was overjoyed to start at such a young age. The novelty wore off pretty quickly.
Over the last 29 years, I’ve suffered from painful cramps, drastic mood swings, sensitive skin and a range of other weird and not obviously related symptoms that made me feel like I was going crazy. It seems to be a common theme of being a woman that you’ll experience all manner of challenging health issues that no professional will be particularly motivated to diagnose. You’ll spend a while thinking you’re going out of your mind, until you finally bump into another woman who’s had the same experience and can point you in the right direction. My experience of the healthcare system is that I can’t rely on it to help me, I have to rely on networks of other women to tell me what the issue is so that I can inform the professionals within the system and demand they help me. It’s happened on more occasions than I care to think about.
So after all that, I am a little relieved to be leaving the world of menstruation behind. I’m definitely looking forward to not having to deal with the logistics every month. I’m done with having kids, I don’t need to have these painful and inconvenient periods anymore. It’s a good thing.
And yet.
Moving to something new means letting go of the old. There’s a sense of letting go of my youth. In the stages of the Triple Goddess, I’ve cycled through from maiden to mother, and now I’m starting the transition towards crone. (Incidentally, we need a better word than crone, don’t we?! Wise woman? Matriarch? Queen?!) That means accepting that I’m ageing, but also that I won’t be having any more children. I don’t want any more children, not really, but there’s still a sense of grief in the possibility being taken away.
Getting older isn’t something that’s exactly celebrated for women in our culture, and as much as I know that that’s fuelled by patriarchal commodification of women, it’s hard not to be influenced by the lens of the society I’ve been raised in. Age brings wisdom, it can bring confidence, it brings personal growth and greater understanding (of oneself and others), but it does also bring vulnerabilities and challenges. For starters, I refer you to my fun list of symptoms above.
There’s a process for me to embark on now, of making peace with what I’m leaving behind and opening to what’s to come. Of celebrating what’s been good in the past, and also recognising the less fun stuff that I now get to release. My biggest job, at this gateway to autumn, is to embrace the cyclical nature of my body and of life, and to know that what’s lost will make way for future possibilities.
Setting a new course
I’m not there yet. I’m excited about the next stage, but also terrified of the trials my body will face and the impact on my sense of self of both the ageing process and the overwhelming sense of change.
But I also know that growing older, shedding some of the restrictions of previous cycles, offers freedom to follow a new path. Many women say that mid-life brought with it a call - to adventure, to self-discovery, to a new way of living outside the boxes they’d been forced into.
We tend to think of motherhood as the fertile, creative point in a woman’s life, but for many women the movement to Queendom (I’m going with that as the new word and you can’t stop me) opens up far greater creative possibilities. This is a chance to write a new story, express a new identity, build a new way of being.
I’m not done with the motherhood phase just yet - my children are still little, they’ll still need me for a few years to come. And I’m not done with periods yet either - I might have another decade left to put up with them. This is just the start of the transition.
But it is the start of the leaves beginning to fall. And an opportunity to ponder what I might want to grow next.
Thanks for reading. I am really excited because on Saturday I will be releasing my first seasonal creative calendar for paid subscribers. I’ll be providing monthly calendars showing you all the key natural dates along with relevant journal prompts, and each one will land just before the first of each month so you can be prepared. Then every Sunday, paid subscribers will get my seasonal reflections as well as daily creative prompts for the whole week to enable you to follow a creative practice that’s in alignment with nature. If that sounds like something you’d be into, upgrade to a paid subscription now.
My daughter dreaded her "transition to maiden" so much that she spent 2 years calling herself non-binary, as if that hold her hormones off. Now that the transition has happened, she has settled back into a female identity.
I think that being part of her experience has better prepared me for menopause. Her terror of all things female has made it easier for me to look forward to giving them up.
That said, when I read that the bark of the guelder rose plant helps with menopausal symptoms, I planted 275 of them!