When people talk about menopause, they always seem to mention the same things.
Hot flashes.
Night sweats.
Weight gain.
Brain fog.
Maybe a joke about suddenly needing a fan everywhere you go.
I expected all of that.
What nobody warned me about was the depression.
Not the “I’m having a bad day” kind of sadness.
The kind that quietly moves in, rearranges the furniture in your brain, and convinces you that you’ve somehow become a completely different person.
That caught me completely off guard.
I’ve never been what anyone would call overly emotional.
In fact, if you asked the people who know me best, they’d probably describe me as pretty stoic.
I’m the person who handles a crisis, makes a plan, and keeps moving.
If something hurts, I usually make a self-deprecating joke about it.
Humor has always been my preferred coping mechanism.
Why cry when you can make everyone laugh instead?
It’s probably not the healthiest strategy, but it’s worked for me for fifty-plus years.
Until menopause.
Suddenly, I wasn’t making jokes.
I was crying.
A lot.
Not because something terrible had happened.
Not because someone hurt my feelings.
Not because life had fallen apart.
I would simply… cry.
Sometimes I’d be mopping the floors.
Sometimes I’d be driving.
Sometimes I’d be standing in my kitchen wondering why I had walked in there in the first place.
The tears would just show up without an invitation.
My poor husband probably thought he’d accidentally married a Hallmark movie.
He’d ask, “What’s wrong?”
And I’d honestly answer, “I don’t know.”
The only emotion I could identify was sadness.
Not grief.
Not anger.
Not frustration.
Just… sadness.
Heavy, confusing, unexplained sadness.
It was one of the strangest experiences of my life because I couldn’t connect it to anything.
There wasn’t a reason.
There wasn’t a problem to solve.
There wasn’t a life event causing it.
It simply existed.
And that was terrifying.
Then came the guilt. Not because I was crying, but because I couldn’t seem to snap out of it.
Poor Mark never stood a chance.
I’d get irritated with him over something completely insignificant.
He’d ask me an innocent question.
He was vacuuming the floors too often. (As if that could possibly be a problem.)
He’d breathe a little too loudly.
I’d hear myself saying something unnecessarily sharp and immediately think:
Why did I just say that?
A few minutes later, I’d be apologizing because I knew it wasn’t really about him.
He became the emotional equivalent of the closest exit during a fire drill.
The safest place for my hormones to explode.
Thankfully, he’s incredibly patient.
I’m fairly certain he’s earned some kind of lifetime achievement award.
The hardest part wasn’t the crying or even the irritability.
It was feeling like I wasn’t myself anymore.
I remember thinking something that felt almost impossible to admit out loud.
I’m not suicidal…
…but I understand.
That realization shook me.
Not because I wanted to die.
I didn’t.
I wanted the emotional pain to stop.
There’s a huge difference.
For the first time in my life, I understood how someone could become so overwhelmed by hormones they didn’t even recognize themselves anymore.
That thought broke my heart.
Especially because so many women suffer in silence, convinced they’re somehow failing.
We’re not.
Our brains are being flooded with hormonal changes that affect far more than our ovaries.
The more I researched, the more I realized estrogen doesn’t just influence reproduction.
It affects serotonin, dopamine, sleep, stress, memory, and mood.
In other words…
The hormones were driving the bus.
My brain was just sitting in the back wondering why the driver had apparently lost their license.
Realizing that changed everything.
It didn’t magically fix me.
But it helped remove the shame.
I stopped thinking I was weak.
I stopped thinking I was “losing it.”
I started recognizing that my body was going through a massive transition that deserved the same compassion I’d offer anyone else.
Eventually, I decided I needed help.
For me, that included starting Zoloft.
I also began my hormone replacement therapy journey after realizing I needed more than willpower and positive thinking.
And somewhere along the way, I reluctantly became one of those people who says things like, “Moving your body really does help.”
Trust me.
I hate being that person.
I wanted the solution to involve sitting on my couch with chips and Bravo.
Instead, I started taking intentional walks and listening to music or podcasts.Â
Nothing fancy.
No marathon training.
Just putting one foot in front of the other when everything inside me wanted to stay on the couch.
It improved my sleep.
It quieted some of the anxiety.
It gave my racing mind somewhere else to go.
It reminded me that my body was still capable of getting stronger, even while it felt like it was betraying me.
Some days that walk was all I accomplished.
And that was enough.
If you’re reading this through tears you can’t explain…
If you’ve become someone you barely recognize…
If you’ve snapped at people you love and then cried because you feel guilty…
Please hear this.
You are not crazy.
You are not weak.
And you are definitely not alone.
Menopause can affect your mental health just as much as it affects your body.
We need to talk about that more.
Because if someone had warned me about menopause depression years ago, I would have recognized it much sooner.
Instead, I spent months wondering what was wrong with me.
Now I know.
There wasn’t something wrong with me.
There was something happening to me.
And those are two very different things.
If sharing this helps even one woman realize she’s not alone, then every uncomfortable word was worth writing.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take a walk, give myself some grace, and then let Bravo remind me that other people’s lives are far messier than mine.
Balance is important…and so is giving yourself permission to ask for help.
 **If you’re experiencing persistent depression or thoughts of harming yourself, please talk with your healthcare provider or someone you trust. Menopause can contribute to depression, but you don’t have to go through it alone. There is help, and there is hope.
