When people talk about menopause, they always 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 become a completely different person.
That caught me off guard.
I’ve never been what anyone would call overly emotional. If you asked the people who know me best, they’d describe me as pretty stoic. I’m the person who handles a crisis, makes a plan, and keeps moving. If something hurts, I make a self-deprecating joke about it. Humor has always been my coping mechanism. Why cry when you can make everyone laugh instead? It’s probably not the healthiest strategy, but it 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 mopping the floors. Sometimes driving. Sometimes standing in my kitchen wondering why I’d walked in there in the first place. The tears showed up without an invitation.
My poor husband probably thought he’d accidentally married a Hallmark movie.
He’d ask, “What’s wrong?”
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. He’d ask me an innocent question. He’d vacuum the floors too often, as if that could possibly be a problem. He’d breathe a little too loudly. I’d hear myself say 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.
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 understand why menopausal women commit suicide.
I’d catch myself wondering if Mark and my kids would be better off without me. Then I’d snap out of it and think, this is crazy, this is the sadness talking. But I couldn’t make the depression make sense, and I couldn’t explain why it was there.
That realization shook me. Not because I wanted to die. I didn’t. There was no plan. It was a fleeting thought, gone as fast as it showed up. But I know myself, and I knew something was wrong. 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 recognize themselves anymore.
That thought broke my heart. 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.
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 things. It didn’t fix me. But it removed 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 told my doctor exactly that: I have no plan, it’s just a fleeting thought, but I know myself enough to know this isn’t right. That’s when I started Zoloft. Those thoughts disappeared.
The hormone side took longer to sort out. I started on the patch first. I had negative side effects, so that was out. Then a topical cream formulated specifically for me, which worked for a while, until I had to switch doctors. The new doctor kept me on Zoloft, but I ended up seeking hormone replacement therapy out of pocket rather than wait on the system to catch up. Now I submit blood work every quarter to keep my estrogen and testosterone levels where they need to be, and I give myself the shots.
It took several doctors before I found one who actually listened. If yours brushes past what you’re describing, find another one. 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 walks and listening to music or podcasts. 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. 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. You are not alone.
Menopause can affect your mental health just as much as it affects your body. We need to talk about that more. If someone had warned me about menopause depression years ago, I would have recognized it 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. Those are two very different things.
If sharing this helps even one woman realize she’s not alone, every uncomfortable word was worth writing.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take a walk, give myself some grace, and let Bravo remind me that other people’s lives are far messier than mine.
Balance matters. So does 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. Call or text 988 to speak with someone immediately. There is help, and there is hope.
