I want to talk about something many of us do not want to talk about, because we are afraid that talking about it will make it real. That was how I felt, at least.
Aging is a strange experience. Physically, things begin to change. Internally, you still feel exactly like yourself. And I think what makes aging so difficult for so many women is that from a very young age, we are conditioned to associate youth with value. Youth means beauty. Relevance. Energy. Desirability. Visibility. Aging becomes associated with decline. With becoming less.
Less attractive. Less important. Less capable.
So of course people fear it. We have been taught to.
The difficulty is not really the physical changes themselves. It is the meaning society has attached to them. Especially when it comes to words that nobody, not even your doctor sometimes, seems comfortable saying out loud.
Perimenopause. Menopause.
Perimenopause can begin as early as 35. And society has framed it as this thing that happens to women, as though one day we simply become moody, irrational, emotional, forgetful. As though we are losing it. While there are real emotional and cognitive shifts that happen during this time, the framing has never been honest or kind.
My Story
For those who do not know me, I have always been very active. Movement has always been part of who I am. Whether it was dancing, running, training, or doing Spartan races with my sister, being physically active is how I ground myself. I trusted my body. I felt connected to it.
So when I started feeling more fatigued, more disconnected, I knew something was off.
There was a moment. I was training in kung fu one night, and my shifu was teaching a form that required a jump. And for the life of me, I could not do it. I had forgotten how to jump.
I know how that sounds. But I am serious.
In my mind, I knew exactly what I wanted my body to do. My body simply would not respond the same way. It felt heavy. Out of sync. Like my brain and my body had stopped communicating properly.
And that was the moment it really hit me. Because I had never felt that disconnected from my own body before. It was sad. A little scary, too. When you have spent your whole life feeling at home in your body, you notice immediately when something changes.
The symptoms are not always hot flashes and mood swings. Many women experience forgetting words mid-sentence, trouble with balance, walking into rooms and not knowing why, skin irritations, difficulty hearing, a sense of being out of sync with themselves. These are small things, individually. But enough of them together makes a woman start to question herself.
And nobody explains it this way.
What Is Actually Happening
Your hormones, particularly estrogen, begin to decline during perimenopause. And estrogen does not just affect your body. It regulates your brain. It affects memory, mood, focus, energy, sleep, emotional regulation, coordination, and balance.
This is a whole-brain and whole-body transition. Not a character flaw. Not evidence that you are losing your mind. A real, biological shift that your brain and body are working to adapt to.
When a woman says "I don't feel like myself," she is not being dramatic. Her brain is adapting to a real biological shift.
Dr. Maria Grace WolkThere is something important we have not talked about enough. Menopause has been deeply stigmatized for a long time. It has been framed as a point where a woman is somehow declining, losing something, becoming less. If you look at the history, there has been very little research focused on women's hormonal health. For decades, most of the medical understanding we had was not centered on women's lived experiences.
It is 2026, and we are just beginning to have real conversations about something women have been living through forever.
Of course it feels confusing. Of course it feels isolating. No one gave us a framework for understanding it.
Three Things This Experience Changed in Me
I am not going to pretend the symptoms are easy. They are not. Have you ever tried running a half marathon while navigating perimenopause. But there are three things about this experience that have genuinely changed me in ways I did not expect.
It forces you to finally listen to yourself.
For most of our lives, we move through the world expecting our bodies to keep up with us. We push through exhaustion. Ignore stress. Override what we feel. At least I did.
This phase has a way of forcing you to slow down long enough to pay real attention. To notice what gives you energy. What drains you. What your body has probably been trying to communicate for years.
There is something grounding about finally learning how to listen to yourself instead of constantly pushing past yourself. That kind of awareness changes you.
You realize you actually deserve support.
I want women to hear this part. You do not have to silently suffer through this.
There are treatments available. There are tools. Hormone Replacement Therapy can be life-changing for some women. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can help with anxiety, emotional shifts, and the way we relate psychologically to what is happening. Nervous system work, sleep support, strength training, nutrition, stress reduction. Options exist.
So many women have spent years believing they just have to tolerate feeling miserable and disconnected from themselves. You do not. Support exists. And understanding what is happening removes so much fear.
You stop defining yourself by what you can produce or perform.
This one has been the hardest for me. I have always been someone who pushes through things. You train harder. Work harder. Keep going.
But eventually your body starts asking something different from you. And it forces you to really think about who you are underneath all the productivity and pressure.
I found myself asking: if I am not constantly performing, who am I.
There is a grief that comes with realizing you cannot keep relating to yourself the same way you always have. For a long time, many of us survive by becoming who we think we need to be. Strong. Capable. Productive. Needed. Somewhere along the way, we get so used to performing strength that we lose touch with who we are underneath it.
When your body changes, slows down, stops responding the way it used to, it does not just challenge your routine. It challenges your identity.
Maybe this phase of life is not asking us to become less of ourselves. Maybe it is asking us to stop abandoning ourselves just to keep up with who we thought we had to be.
What I Want You to Know
Maybe this is where something deeper begins. Not becoming someone new. But finally allowing yourself to be fully human.
If any part of this resonated with you, I hope you know you are not alone in it.
The conversation is just starting. And it is long overdue.
