(Traduction en français à venir)

 

Living happily your perimenopause is definitely a matter of MINDSET and working WITH mother nature rather than against it.

Although I’ve been dissecting physiological functioning for quite a time this subject hadn’t been on my radar. Thinking it would happen in a far away future.

Hormones going bonkers

Perimenopause, then menopause hit me in my mid 40s. One severe symptom was losing my hair as if I was undertaking chemotherapy. This one totally freaked me out. It stays amazing how infinitesimal hormonal changes can have such huge and various effects. I went from GP, to dermatologist to GP, trying all sorts of treatments. I am an advocate of natural therapy but at this moment I would have taken almost anything to make this shedding stop. Later appeared these wonderful adolescent painful spots on my face, self-inflicted hammams, brain fog and the full court of other joyous symptoms. I just wanted to go and hide in a grotto and never come out.

At some point I was finally sent to the gynecologist, then the endocrinologist to get the sentence that my hormones were going bonkers. A year later, post-menopause was confirmed. The only suggested solution was HRT (hormonal therapy) with the recurring speech from everyone: “women’s hormones are a complicated matter and we don’t know much about it. Take HRT and all your symptoms will disappear”. Basically meaning take the magic pill and silence your body.

This was a physical crisis as much as a mental crisis

Seeing my appearance and capacities thrown into the abyss, my first reflex was to battle crazy against what was happening to me. Trying to eradicate the collateral damage and come back to what I was before. Meaning not accepting one bit of what was happening. As most women, I had only vaguely heard about the subject. Leaving me with this general perception of a disagreeable process to go through after 50. I was at that time totally uneducated and unprepared for such a thing.

100 % of women go through perimenopause and menopause

What leaves me absolutely speechlessness, is how little knowledge, consideration and support there is out there on this particular matter. Knowing that perimenopause is a process that generally takes years and that a 100 % of women go through it! This means that as you are reading this article, billions of women on the planet are experiencing perimenopause and menopause. So this is it? Women, suffer in silence, lock yourselves into your bedroom and wait for it to pass? Or take HRT.

The taboo around hormones

A few interesting intertwined points come to mind. The first one is how menopause is still pretty taboo in our society. Well, lets be honest. Anything around women’s hormones is taboo. I see it like a well kept conditioned veil of ignorance, generating suffering, shame and ostracization. Yet being a process that is natural, part of life and our fundamental physiology since the dawn of humanity.

The next point is the understanding that empowering women with knowledge over their bodies would literally withdraw billions of profit from the industry. Let alone empowering women as such, that has been worked against throughout times. A matter that I won’t develop here to avoid your reading taking hours.

Finally there is the conditioning of keeping the myth of the dark night of the body during that time. Magnificent priming of our minds to this upcoming so told terrible experience. Conditioning each cell of the body to behave that way when it happens. Fearing and rejecting the body’s changes rather than welcoming and supporting its transition.

Cut a long story short

To come back to the story, one certitude was that I wouldn’t take HRT for benefit risk reasons, on top of only postponing what had to happen at some stage anyway. I was thoroughly determined to find natural protocols to get my hormones back to their headquarters.

So here I went, buying books, surfing the internet and contacting natural therapists. Therapists that either hadn’t a clue on how to deal with what was at play. But they could at least help with what I had read about. I deeply know that nature provides all the necessary for women to handle all of this smoothly. Even though I believe that a lot of ancient knowledge about it, amongst many other subjects, has unfortunately been lost on the way.

I became my own rat lab with all sorts of supplements. After a while, my symptoms disappeared and I was back up and running. Surprisingly enough, tests showed that menopause had disappeared from the radar. Hormone levels were back to normal. As if nothing had happened.

All went well during the next 3 years. Then the same symptoms started again. Nonetheless, this time turned out to be a very different and smooth story. I don’t say it was painted with fairies and unicorns. However I knew what was happening for having had it before. This allowed a very different approach, mindset, handling and therefore experience. It took a couple of months for the symptoms to fade away. To date, except my hormones that display a menopaused status, I’m back up and running happily.

What is the difference that made the difference?

  • Welcoming the changes occurring in my body rather than battling against them.
  • Being knowledgeable rather than uneducated on the subject.
  • Seeing the big picture and navigate step by step rather than be in crash mode.
  • I was therefore able to be active rather than reactive.
  • Accompanying a natural process with what mother nature provides rather than trying to short-circuit it.
  • And finally supporting my body with care and love rather than beating myself up.

We are all different and there is not one and only miracle recipe. Yet, we all go through the same biological changes and there are many supporting recipes out there that do work. The magic ingredients being your mindset (remember your thoughts and perceptions impact as much your biology than the food you eat), your knowledge regarding your own biology, your knowledge on the subject itself, the impact of food and supplements.

I really hope seeing more women getting involved in this field in a near future. Educating each other before it all starts. Empowering each other by getting to know the way our bodies work. Making women’s hormones become a common talk around the table and in education.

Conclusion

Your body is an amazing technology of nature. It is perfect and knows what to do and when to do it. Love it, nurture it, support it and it will give it back to you a thousand times. Especially knowing that your physical body is without a doubt the one thing you will be stuck with during your whole life. Support and take care of it so it can be the healthy and beautiful carriage you live in. Perimenopause and menopause are part of your body’s natural transition at a point in time. It is part of nature’s evolution. It is the birth of an amazing and beautiful new you.