Dear You (with the sweaty tits),
It's 4:17 AM as I'm writing this. Not by choice. My body decided that 3:45 was apparently a perfectly reasonable time to be wide awake, sweaty, and contemplating the ceiling fan like it holds the secrets of the universe.
Sound familiar?
If you're reading this at some ungodly hour because your body has forgotten how sleep works, welcome to the club nobody wanted to join but somehow half the women over 38 are card-carrying members of.
Perimenopause is like having a roommate you never invited who keeps changing the thermostat, rearranging your schedule, and generally making everything more complicated than it needs to be.
And the worst part? Nobody prepared us for this shit.
I remember my mom mentioning hot flashes and mood swings around menopause, but somehow the memo about the YEARS of chaos leading up to that got lost. The way your period becomes as unpredictable as Texas weather. The way you can go from freezing to tropical vacation sweaty in thirty seconds. The way your brain feels like it's running on dial-up internet some days.
The way sleep - sweet, precious sleep - becomes this elusive thing that your body apparently forgot how to do properly.
My doctor calls it "sleep maintenance insomnia." I call it "my ovaries being dramatic."
Here's what I wish someone had told me when this all started: perimenopause isn't one thing. It's like a really long, complicated journey with different stops along the way, and each stop has its own special brand of "what the hell is happening to my body?"
Early perimenopause feels like your body is playing pranks on you. Your cycle gets weird - maybe longer, maybe shorter, maybe you skip a month and panic that you're pregnant at 42. You start waking up occasionally at 3 AM for no reason. Sometimes you feel a little more anxious or irritable than usual, but you blame it on work stress.
Mid-perimenopause is when shit gets real. The night sweats start showing up uninvited. You wake up looking like you just finished a hot yoga class in your own bed. Your energy crashes harder and at weird times. That brain fog everyone talks about? Yeah, that's real. You'll walk into a room and completely forget why you're there. You'll lose words mid-sentence like they just evaporated from your brain.
Late perimenopause is when your ovaries are basically on their farewell tour, giving sporadic performances that nobody can predict. Periods might disappear for months, then show up like an unwelcome surprise party. The physical symptoms get more intense, but weirdly, sometimes you start feeling more like yourself mentally - like you're finally understanding what's happening.
And through all of this, you're supposed to just... keep functioning. Keep showing up to work, keep taking care of everyone else, keep pretending that your internal thermostat isn't completely broken and your sleep schedule hasn't been hijacked by hormonal chaos.
Here's where movement comes in - not as a fix-all, because honestly, fuck anyone who suggests that exercise will cure hormonal upheaval. But as support. As a way to work WITH your changing body instead of against it.
Those 4 AM wake-ups? Sometimes gentle movement helps resettle your nervous system. Not jumping jacks or intense cardio - that can actually make sleep worse when your hormones are already stirring up your stress response. But gentle stretching, breath work, or restorative poses can signal to your body that it's still nighttime, still time to rest.
The mood swings and irritability? Movement helps regulate the stress hormones that are already being stirred up by fluctuating estrogen. It's not about "burning off" emotions - it's about giving your nervous system a healthy outlet for all the extra activation it's dealing with.
The weight changes and muscle loss that nobody warns you about? This is where strength training becomes crucial, not for vanity but for maintaining bone density and muscle mass as estrogen levels decline.
But here's what I've learned matters most: flexibility. Not just physical flexibility, but life flexibility. Some days you'll feel like your old self and can handle your normal routine. Other days you'll feel like you're operating on half battery power and everything needs to be scaled back.
Both are okay. Both are normal. Both are part of navigating this transition.
I used to fight my changing energy levels, push through the brain fog, ignore the sleep disruptions. Now I work with them. I schedule important stuff for my high-energy times. I give myself permission to move gently on low-energy days. I've learned that some nights my body just isn't going to sleep normally, and that's not a personal failing.
If you're in the thick of this transition, please know: you're not losing your mind. You're not suddenly weak or broken. Your body is going through one of the most significant hormonal shifts it will ever experience, and it's trying to figure out how to function in this new reality.
Be patient with yourself. Be curious instead of critical. And maybe invest in some really good cooling sheets, because apparently we're all going to be running hot for a while.
We'll get through this. Preferably with more sleep eventually, but we'll get through it either way.
Normally I’d say thanks for being here, but it’s late… who wants to be here right now?!!! (Sorry, I forgot to mention the rage that is also now present. More on that from the podcast later.)
