You don’t have to join a club

Perimenopause is not second puberty. Both physiologically and socially, it does none of us favors to make false equivalencies. In terms of how we learn what we might encounter, you may have heard many voices around you when you started getting your period. Whether it was from an older relative, sibling, or friend, to some extent, you could choose what voices to hear and learn from. Since then, few people have decades of anecdotes from grandmothers or mothers talking to us about perimenopause. It doesn’t mean these things didn’t happen, but due to stigma or the assumption that they had an unusual experience, many experienced or suffered changes in comparative silence. Ill-trained doctors, rare asymptomatic examples, and countless other anomalies exacerbated the gaps in information.

Today, much of that stigma is gone, but the situation is not solved. Some groups are viewing this as not only destigmatized, but even trendy. It is certainly real and needed and should be treated on its own terms, but instead into this vacuum there have rushed several clubs or encampments of perimenopause narrative:

1. First, a purity culture based in anti-establishment medical skepticism. To some, the only thing that matters is nutrition and exercise, and you can behave your way out of symptoms. In this dogmatic approach, anything other than that means you are choosing a suboptimal strategy. I can offer clarity on how behavioral strategy and your thinking are all things with value, but it makes little sense for you to throw out incredibly helpful medical interventions.
2. Second, a club focused on renouncements. Some identify with saying “we don’t care” and there is a nugget of truth: it may be good you are allowing your priorities to shift, that you are able to leave expectations and assumptions that you didn’t feel the ability to resist during prior adult years. But this “club” approach is rooted in language of giving up, becoming less attractive to yourself and others, and it is negatively defined, through what you are not doing, and you may not be a person for whom announcements or renouncements expresses your values. .
3. Third, you may not feel aligned to either of these or other trendy narratives, so you may opt out of acting or pursuing such thoughts. Your symptoms remain, but the motivation to seek guidance is not consistent enough for action.

I know these feelings and changes, and can confirm: You do not need to announce things to anyone. You can acknowledge the uncertainties without being obligated to join one of these societal narratives. I have a messy bun as I am writing this but I also love taking care of my hair regularly. Use YOUR values, not those of your neighbor or coworker, or the biggest gaping mouth around you. If you align your decisions with your values you will get through this feeling more, not less, of yourself.

Unlike the onset of puberty, this is likely a long road, it could be many years. We all have to take this trip but we don’t have to take it in a group tour bus or a cruise ship, unable to make midcourse corrections when adrift or stuck. You may need your own convertible or just need a walking companion on this road. You may change your approach partway along, and you can choose what you do care about, not what you do not. You can care about protein and fiber without counting macros. You can have camaraderie without club membership, but you need at least one well-informed voice who can guide you as an individual.