If you’re in your late 40s or early 50s and wondering whether you’ve completely lost your mind, let me assure you—you probably haven’t. You’re probably just in menopause.Nobody prepared me for menopause.
Not my mother.
Not my doctors.
Not health class.
Not the stack of women’s magazines that promised to reveal “what every woman should know.”
Apparently, the plan was for me to figure it out through trial, error, and the occasional emotional breakdown in the Costco parking lot while talking to my sister on the phone.
The hot flashes?
I expected those.
Forgetting my own thoughts mid-sentence?
Not so much.
I’ll be having a perfectly normal conversation and suddenly the word I’m looking for vanishes into another dimension.
It’s gone.
Not hiding.
Not almost there.
Gone.
Sometimes I stand there pointing at an object like a confused game-show contestant.
“You know… the thing. The thing that does the thing.”
Nothing.
My brain has apparently clocked out for lunch.
Then there are the well-meaning comments.
“It’s normal.”
“Every woman goes through it.”
“Try meditation.”
To which I would like to respond:
Yeah… like I need to sit quietly with my racing thoughts right now.
My brain is already running like a hamster on a squeaky wheel.
Let’s get the hamster off the wheel first, and then we’ll talk about meditation.
Why are we acting like suffering is a requirement?
One of my biggest frustrations was discovering how little individualized treatment exists for women.
For a while, I tried the estrogen patch.
It wasn’t my favorite experience.
Instead of feeling amazing, I felt bloated, gassy, achy, and generally annoyed.
Which, to be fair, is not the glowing transformation I had been promised.
It felt like a one-size-fits-all solution for a problem that clearly isn’t one-size-fits-all.
What finally helped was comprehensive blood work and finding a provider who actually looked at me as an individual human being.
Not a statistic.
Not a checkbox.
Not “another menopausal woman.”
An actual person.
The combination of estrogen and testosterone that was tailored to my needs made a huge difference.
That doesn’t mean menopause magically disappeared.
I still occasionally forget words.
I still open the refrigerator and stare into it as if the answers to life’s greatest mysteries are hidden behind the mayonnaise.
But now I sleep through the night.
I don’t have hot flashes anymore.
And that alone feels like winning the lottery.
And here’s what menopause has taught me:
Every woman over 50 deserves a medal.
And a nap.
And significantly more research dollars devoted to women’s hormones.
We’ve made incredible advances in healthcare, yet so many women still end up trying to piece together menopause through internet searches, Facebook groups, and conversations with friends.
The good news?
The conversation is finally changing.
Women are talking.
Sharing information.
Comparing notes.
Helping each other.
And honestly, that’s why I wanted to write about this.
Because if one woman reads this and realizes she’s not losing her mind, then it was worth it.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go find… you know…
The thing.
The thing that does the thing.
