Navigating the High Seas

...of Perimenopause and the "Shift"

Photo by Conor Luddy on Unsplash

In perimenopause there is an unexpected “shift”. Staying up past midnight on a weeknight doesn’t have the same bounce back the next day no matter how much coffee is consumed. Not moving the body begins to have consequences like stiff joints and flabby mom butt. And then there’s the repercussions of drinking one too many causing blood sugar spikes, night sweats and middle of the night ruminations. Sometimes just eating pasta too late one night can bring on heartburn! Is this perimenopause or pregnancy?

There is a moment in a woman’s life when something not quite tangible, shifts. This moment or series of moments happens during the transition from Summer life phase(early 20’s-late 30’s) to Fall Life phase (late 30’s to 50’s) . It is quite a dramatic transition for most women. When asked when they noticed this “shift”, they may not always have an exact moment in time to refer to, just that, “what used to be just isn’t anymore”. This happens somewhere in the late 30’s to early 40’s. That may seem vague and perhaps it is vague. But that’s the “shift”. Vague, yet powerful.

Over the last 4 years I have been studying the 4 menstrual phases and how it affects women on every energy level, physically, emotionally, sexually and socially. Each of these phases is reflected respectively in the life phases of women as well. I am going to attempt to break down the “shift”. All I really have is my own story to tell you. After telling my friends, there have been a handful of nods and several comments on how it is so damn hard to articulate this “shift”, but it is important to talk about it.

I’m not talking about “the change”: menopause. That space of 12 months without a cycle must feel like a squall, an unnerving space of an abyss of not knowing what is on the other side, much like the day between Fall and Winter crossover. A complete undoing. I haven’t reached that phase yet. It’s still on the horizon. Menopause is a whole other bag to open up and as I navigate that, I’ll be sure to study more in depth and report back to you. No, what I’m talking about is a shift in energy life phases.

Here’s a metaphor

You are cruising down the interstate going 65 mph and all of a sudden the driver throws the vehicle into 1st gear and slams on the brakes and you hear all sorts of godforsaken noises and smell smoke and hear gears grinding and think, what in the holy hell is happening? As you start to adjust to crawling along the interstate in 1st gear, suddenly the driver shifts to 4th gear and the engine revs but without increasing speed and now you might sputter out. Then the driver finds 3rd gear and the vehicle engages and now you are cruising along, then 4th gear, then 5th and all seems normal again. *I want to note that the whole time you have stayed on the interstate. I believe that menopause is when the driver takes a sharp right onto the cow pasture and into the woods. Anyway, back to the interstate. You are back to cruising speed with the other vehicles and you think, what the hell was that? “That” is the shift to perimenopause.

My “Shift”

The “shift” happened to me when I turned 40. I remember as I approached 40 that I felt I had a decision to make. Did I try to run from 40 and pretend I wasn’t heading into midlife or did I run at 40 and plan for it. I waffled for a few months leading up to it. I intuitively knew it was going to be a shift. I just had no idea how big. I planned my own adventure to celebrate and took two friends with me in a large canoe and we floated down the river all day cutting up and acting like fools with no cares in the world. I embraced the Wild Woman that was showing up that day. No longer holding on to what others thought of me. Remembering what I enjoy and then going after it. The pinnacle of the outward phase had been reached and now I saw the top and knew there was a long winding labyrinth to go back down. This river trip would come to mind many times as I entered perimenopause. Having female friends sharing the journey is necessary. Also letting go of expectations of how the trip will play out and land is a lesson I’m still learning.

After the adventure and summer of turning 40, I found women’s cycle awareness and none too soon. As I began tracking, I realized how out of balance my hormones were. Tracking and matching them to the themes of the phases showed me where I might be unhealthy and I learned a lot about hormones and all that they do to harmonize my health. I found herbs, acupuncture, bio-identical progesterone cream and cycle awareness tracking, which brought my cycles from 29-35 days to now 26-30 days. My night sweats have diminished noticeably and my endo cramps don’t last 7 days anymore. Sleep still evades me for a few nights before my bleed but nothing like it was. I went from despising my Winter phase to tending my Winter phase. Of course, this is perimenopause. Just when I think I’m on to something, another thing changes and I throw some darts in the dark in that direction.

The Breakdown

Early Life phases:

• pre-menarche (germinating phase before puberty and the first bleed),

• after menarche (Spring phase around age 12-early 20’s)

• young womanhood (Summer phase ages early 20’s to late 30’s)

These are all outward energy phases of life. This is a time of growing, maturing, learning, nurturing, giving, doing, loving, expressing, which are all outward energy forms.

Late Life Phases:

• perimenopause (Fall phase: late 30’s/early 40’s to early 50’s or whenever menopause hits)

• menopause (Fall winter transition: the day that marks 365 days without a bleed)

• postmenopause (Winter phase: after the 365 day marker of no bleed, typically late 40’s to mid 50’s and on…)

These are all inward energy phases of life. We have grown, matured, gained wisdom, and given everything we've got and now this is the life phase that is receding inward. Outward to inward beauty. There is a real craving for time and space to be alone. Inward energy can be creative, reflective, introspective and healing.

I don’t know if you can see this graph, you might need to zoom in. Basically it shows childhood, teens, reproductive years, perimenopause and menopause or postmenopause and their subsequent hormone fluctuations. Perimenopause is the erratic rollercoaster at the end. Note that the teens section is also erratic, hence why I am calling perimenopause second puberty.

The “Shift” is like Day 21

The “shift” is equivalent to Day 21 (the transition between Summer and Fall) in the menstrual month. This shift can be very abrupt. I’ve been la-di-da-ing through Spring and Summer learning, doing, giving, loving and expressing and then one day I wake up and I have none of that in the reserves. All of a sudden I go from saying yes to everyone and everything, to wishing I had looked ahead and said no for today because I don’t want to “do” anymore. Yet, I don’t know what I want, just what I don’t want. It can be a very unnerving feeling. Now at this point (as I’ve said in previous posts) I should be asking myself, “what do I need?”. But in the past, I pressed on ignoring this inner voice that is saying, “no, don’t go, don’t do”. Instead I continue to nurture and insert myself and try to help others and do and give and this irritant begins to nudge and grate and finally I implode. Some women explode. I think it just depends on personality. And then I apologize or I victimize or I over analyze and wonder what the heck is wrong with me. This ends up straining relationships with friends and family. 

And it happens over and over, in a pattern that if we are tracking we will see most often starts during the transition days between Summer and Fall (around day 19-21) and then by day 25 or sooner, sh*t hits the fan. 

Now let’s take that one click back and zoom out to the life phases. When the Summer life phase transitions to Fall life phase the same thing is happening. Our Summer Mother energy is transitioning to Fall Wild Woman energy and that is going from outward life energy to receding inward life energy. You can see how on a large scale such as this, it’s about to get rocky. The overriding themes of Fall come into play in every phase of the month. This is perimenopause. And if we refuse to go with the flow of the Fall life phase, I believe the symptoms of perimenopause exacerbate.

What is the Fall phase of life?

Gleaning what I know about the Fall menstrual phase, this is a natural time for outward beauty to go inward. This is also a natural time for retreating from the Mother phase. It is a phase that demands that we listen to our intuition on a level that isn’t always comfortable. It is a phase of practicing saying “no”. The practice is to find healthy boundaries and hold them. And this life phase demands that we learn to “let go” of our expectations of ourselves and others.

There is a lot of hard internal work that happens in this phase. The archetype is called the Wild Woman for a reason. It feels like we are in the wilderness, an unknown territory of ourselves. We need other women more than ever to navigate these seas with us. We need to open the conversations about the nuances of the Wild Woman phase so that we know that we are not alone and we need reminders that it's okay and healthy to have boundaries and to say plainly, “no”.

Second Puberty?

The Fall phase, Wild Woman, perimenopause is a transitional phase not unlike puberty. In fact I refer to it as second puberty. The emotional rollercoaster and changing physical symptoms is a lot like puberty. Puberty is a transitional phase into childbearing years and perimenopause is a transitional phase into postmenopause. Both are equally turbulent. Knowing this, it’s no wonder perimenopausal women struggle with their teen children on a very intense level. 

This second puberty has all the ups and downs of hormones maybe even more so than puberty. On any given day month to month your hormones may not register the same. This is why it is so hard to test hormone levels and get and accurate picture. One month your estrogen may be sky high in the luteal phase, when it should be low, and then next month on the same day of the cycle it may be depleted. It is a bumpy landing to menopause for many women.

How do we go with the flow in perimenopause?

We try and ride the waves. Although from the chart above it looks like it’s a bit easier to ride the premenopause waves before it turns into a scrambled loop-t-loop. We can reach out to our friends and ask them how they are doing it. We can go for drives in the woods and hikes in nature or hit the gym and finish with some journaling. We can listen for the transitional days when it’s time to pull back from over-mothering and turn our attention to nurturing ourselves. We can find our boundaries and healing in our relationships. We can laugh (after we cry) at ourselves as we share stories with our girlfriends of how we are falling apart, hot flashes and brain farts and all. 

This is how I am learning to go with the flow in perimenopause.

Things we can do for our bodies

• Exercise: Cycle syncing exercise can do wonders at keeping some symptoms at bay. This involves matching your current menstrual phase with exercises that ligns up with that phase. Cycle syncing exercise is catching on in women’s professional sports. I.e. Spring phase- cardio, Fall phase-endurance training

• Nutrition: Cycle syncing meals and finding supportive supplements can keep hormones in harmony. This is like exercise. Matching the cycle phase with foods that nourish that phase, ie. Spring phase-fresh greens, flax seed, Fall phase-cruciferous veggies, milk thistle and dandelion root

• Tracking: Using a tracking app, calendar, cycle journal, or all three can reveal patterns in symptoms to keep an eye on and if needed to be able to show a doctor when seeking help. The more information you and they have, the better. If you want to read more on tracking check out my previous post here.

• Rest: This seems basic but we all live in a fast paced society that demands more than we can keep up with sometimes. And more often than not, those times are in the luteal and menstruating phases (Fall and Winter). Making the calendar as clear as possible (outside of the ‘must-do’s’) during those times is crucial to getting time and space to rest. Resting reduces stress. Lower stress reduces hormonal spikes and dips. Resting more than you are used to is just part of this life phase. If ignored, many symptoms become aggravated.

If you are in the throes of perimenopause, I would love to hear your story.

1. What was the most shocking thing you experienced going into peri?

2. What do you wish you had known going into it?

3. What have you found that helps you physically, mentally, socially etc getting through this “shift”?

4. How are you feeling about menopause coming on the horizon? Do you feel prepared?

5. Is there anything in this post that you would like to hear more about?

This life phase is not for the weak and weary. As usual, women step it up in many ways to get through. If there is one word that sums up what perimenopause requires, it’s “Grace”. Give yourself so much grace. Together, we will age gracefully because we are going with the flow using women’s cycle awareness.