Trying to Make Peace With Peri-Menopause

I’m in the front hallway and it’s 8:45 pm on a Tuesday night. I’m about ready to get in my PJ’s. My daughter has woken herself from a power nap about a half hour ago. She puts on yoga pants, a t-shirt and her hair up in a messy bun. She dons running shoes, picks up her bag and kisses me goodbye. She’s going climbing. Cheap rates start at 9pm. I watch her walk out the door and down the path to the car. She is nimble, energized, unconcerned. I am struck at the contrast I suddenly recognize in a fully embodied way. I will never be able to do anything like that with such ease again.

This is mid-life, right here. I am fully conscious of the experience in this moment. I am tired, aching, knowing I have to conserve to perform. I am without the reserve that exists in my 18 year old daughter and that’s reality from now on.

Peri-menopause. “The Leadup to Menopause Can Be Very Uncomfortable and Poorly Understood“, read the headline of one of Sam’s #blogfodder posts on our community group. That post happened to go up on my birthday last Friday. I was smack in the middle of a massive mental break down for no reason. Sure, I had worked in the morning and sure, I had my mother coming over for dinner. But for godssake, my kids were around, the weather was beautiful and one of my two best friends was already on the train to come hang out while I cooked. All was well. Yet there I was, on my couch, hyper ventilating while my poor kid offered me water and I choked out the sentence, “It isn’t you, it’s my hormones”. I wanted to die. Instead, I took an Ativan from my dwindling supply.

What’s happening to me is deeply personal and physical and psychological. It is everything all at once. I am both worn and worn out. I am needy and needed. I am at the peak of my career and confidence and simultaneously challenged to justify my life. It’s a mess and the “failing ovarian function” is just one more frickin’ thing that I have to deal with in unexpected places.

I really struggle with the language of “treating” peri-menopause. Is it not after all, a natural part of life? Why should I have to treat it? On the other hand, declining estrogen is already affecting my heart and bones and I have too much I want to do and see before I retire to a rocking chair. I think back to that moment of watching my daughter saunter off at an ungodly hour to be intensely physical and I am so so so jealous of that ease. When I prepare to go out to do something strenuous, I spend my time prepping and unravelling my tired, stiff body, hoping that whatever I am about to do doesn’t break something, or at least not too badly.

“How was your ride?”

“I do not seem to have any undue injury.”

That is success now.

I am so very proud of what my body can do. I did my metric century two weekends ago and last weekend, I did a quick 40k before I went and stomped around the streets of Toronto for the Toronto Pride Dyke March. I was fine. I wasn’t even unduly sore. I have to make peace with the fact that every morning, likely for the rest of my life, I will have to unravel my aching body to face my day. No wait, “my STRONG aching body”. That’s better. My aching, strong, peri-menopausal self will get up, unravel, take the dog for a walk, fuel up with coffee and do what needs to be done because that’s what it needs to do. Ease will not be a part of that process in the way it is for my daughter, but grace can be. I don’t have the endurance of youth but I do have the sure knowledge of how far past the edge I can go without falling. This is mid-life, right here, right now.I think I’m almost ready.