Is There a Power we are Missing in our Peri?

My audience is stepping into perimenopause—just like I am—and the word on the street is that they want me to talk about it more, write about it more, and share more opinions on it.

I won’t lie, it’s not an area that particularly lights me up. Not because it’s unimportant, but because there’s already so much chatter about it. My social media feeds are flooded with posts linking every little thing to peri and telling me I should be scurrying off to get HRT.

Caveat: there is absolutely nothing wrong with getting HRT. No shade. I’m just really bored of the one-track narrative when it isn’t for me. It feels a lot like my 30s when everyone kept telling me to have children, even though I knew in my bones it wasn’t for me. To this day, I have zero regrets about that decision—maybe it’ll have health implications at some point because of my choice, but that’s not a valid reason to have a child, in my humble opinion.

Being the feminist killjoy and cynic that I am, I can’t help but see this as the next phase of the women’s health industry, neatly wrapped in a capitalist agenda. And I am especially fed up with men popping up in my feed, telling me what they think is best for my body. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, mate, but I’m perimenopausal, and your opinion is not welcome in my space.

What does interest me deeply, however, is the unravelling that happens in perimenopause—not just the anxiety, but the full-blown dark night of the soul. The reassessment of our lives, the breaking away from familial patterns, the realisation that we’ve been operating under the weight of childhood trauma and being in survival mode or daily dysregulation.

That. That is the piece of the pie I find truly fascinating.

I don’t see that conversation happening much. Maybe it’s just being drowned out by the endless noise of men telling me what to do with my uterus now that it’s supposedly starting to shrivel.

It doesn’t matter how you navigate these waters—whether with medication or without—but if you’re willing to look beneath the bonnet, there’s a richness here that no plant or laboratory medicine can match.

Something shifts in midlife. It’s not a crisis; it’s a cracking open. And not everyone is willing to take that journey. But for those who are—I see you. Brene Brown talks about this in her work. I thought I was already in the arena, but then perimenopause hit, and flaming heck, have I face-planted into it. I’m bloody dusty and have skinned my knees.

I’m meeting parts of myself I never knew existed or had long since forgotten. I’m shaking off deep rivers of pain and angst that were never mine to carry in the first place.

I don’t enjoy stepping into arguments—something that inevitably happens when you share unpopular opinions online. I don’t want to be part of some ‘Team HRT’ versus ‘Team Herbs’ battle. That whole set-up feels deeply patriarchal to me. While we’re fighting amongst ourselves, we’re missing the real, pressing issues that need our attention.

My love language? Having interesting, grown-up conversations. Bringing different perspectives to the table in a respectful way. But when I wade into the HRT debate, I rarely see that. People get defensive, and I can’t help but wonder if that’s linked to the unravelling—the deeper work that perimenopause seems to be calling us to do.

If you listen carefully, people will tell you everything about their internal world. And there is a lot of pain out there. Not all of it can be pinned on perimenopause, but perhaps peri is the catalyst—the gateway to freedom, if you will.

There is so much more nuance to this phase than just brain fog and hot flushes. Not to dismiss them, but like every stage of a woman’s life, perimenopause brings deep wisdom, growth, and learning.

But, as with all things related to women’s mental health, medicine still treats it as something esoteric, something ‘other,’ rather than bringing it to the table as a vital part of the conversation. The mask we all wear to not be labeled as emotional, sensitive or hysterical falls crashing to the floor in peri and I for one and here for that!