You know how I like to say two things can be true at once? Well, what if perimenopause is actively trying to ruin my life, but also trying to rebuild a better me at the same time? Honestly, this feels like it’s got some legs, especially after I saw something that said “women spend the first half of their lives becoming who they’re supposed to be and the second half becoming who they are.” I think God knew that it would take a GREAT shakeup to get us to listen. I think He also knew that we would drag our feet and want to stay in what felt familiar rather than what we could be, so He sent Peri to give us the push none of us wanted.

 

Hear me out on this because I’ve had some time to sit with it – you know, at 3:00 AM when I wake up in a puddle of my own sweat with my heart racing and I can’t go back to sleep. I think Peri (yes, she’s getting a cuter nickname because we’re going to get closer and I refuse to keep calling her by her government name) has been quietly handing us gifts this whole time.

 

I should tell you, I’m bad at receiving gifts. Somebody hands me something nice and my first instinct is to deflect, downplay it, or immediately start planning how I’ll pay them back. So, the fact that it took me this long to notice Peri was giving me anything positive checks out. In all honesty, they’re still terrible gifts, full of hormonal outbursts, fluctuating body temperatures, and other humiliating things, but gifts nonetheless.

 

Let’s dig in…

 

We see blinding rage, but what if she sees just enough rage that finally gets us to actually say no to the things we don’t want to do or entertain? What if it’s just enough rage that when we say no, we also throw any guilt that we’d normally feel out the damn window? Can you imagine it? Peri isn’t asking. She’s just handing us a new policy – “Here’s your boundaries. You are no longer polite to those who do not acknowledge them.”

 

We feel the hot flashes, but what if she’s giving us the perfect excuse to pause and recalibrate? Those things usually hit at the absolute worst times, am I right? Maybe she’s giving us the chance to give ourselves a little time out from whatever we’re doing to go grab some fresh air, take a deep breath or two, and gather ourselves. Personally, I know there have been too many times that I just kept pushing through whatever I was going through that ended badly, but if I had just given myself a little break it would have done wonders for me and the situations, even with those hot flashes.

 

We notice our lack of patience, but what if she noticed what people who drain our energy are doing to our nervous system? Maybe she has given us no patience for small talk, fake people, or draining situations to protect us. What if she has given us the sweetest gift of the limited time we have left on this earth back to us?

 

We recognize how often we are forgetting things. This one feels a bit harder to defend, but what if she has silently given us the gift of forgetting to feel certain things like guilt, embarrassment, resentment, or expectations. What if, for the first time in a long time (or ever) we forget to feel guilty about something because we forget the thing exists in the first place? Maybe it’s not a coping mechanism. Maybe it’s just biology and hormones supplied by Peri doing us a favor?

 

We experience the “I don’t care what you think of me” energy and this a the BIG ONE. This is definitely a Peri gift because on a personal note, I know I didn’t just wake up one day and was magically emotionally healed and mentally more wise. I think Peri smashed the crap out of my give-a-damn meter to the point that it may just stay broken because why fix what ironically seems to be working. You know?

 

I don’t know, guys. I’m starting to feel like this all might be happening for us rather than against us. I mean, this could just be Peri doing her thing again, causing confusion, and wreaking havoc on our hormones, but it could also be a blessing. What if underneath it all – the rage, the uncontrollable sweating, the zero patience, the memory that makes me feel a lot like Dory, the emotional rollercoaster ride – is this weird and unexpected clarity about our lives? We have less patience and bandwidth than we used to. We are hurting some feelings along the way, but for once, that’s not keeping us up at night. We are more careful with who gets our energy, which seems to be working out for all of us.

 

We really do spend our twenties and thirties as everybody’s soft place to land and then Peri shows up and puts a stop to it. She doesn’t show up gracefully or expectedly. She just shows up and starts pulling the plug on people pleasing one hot flash and one skipped apology at a time.

 

She’s got me wondering if this was allowed the whole time.

 

So, say what you want about Peri (you already know I will). She’s moody, she’s unpredictable, and she has personally ruined most of my sleep, lots of my relationships, and a handful of what I thought was my most prized personality traits, but she’s also done something 44 years of biting my tongue never could. She handed me a hormonal permission slip to finally disappoint the people who’ve been enjoying my lack of boundaries for the last two decades.

 

Turns out becoming who you are was never going to be gentle. Peri just made sure I couldn’t sleep through it. What about you?