It starts as a whisper, a barely perceptible shift in the rhythm of your being. A skipped beat of your cycle. A heat rising in your chest that wasn’t there before. A deep fatigue that no amount of sleep seems to quench. Perimenopause doesn’t come crashing in like a storm; she arrives in flickers, asking for your attention.

The science is clear: perimenopause is the time when ovarian function begins to change, often unpredictably. Oestrogen soars and plummets while progesterone (the gentle, steadying force) gradually fades. It is not the slow and linear decline that some would have us believe; rather, it is an experience of extremes. A recalibration. A metamorphosis.

Your first sign might not be what you expect.

It is not always the hot flushes, though they may come later. It is often something subtler:

• Your once-predictable cycle begins to shift. It might come too early, or too late. It might arrive in a flood, or in whispers of red that stretch over days.
• Your sleep becomes fractured.
• Your mind begins to fog over.
• Anxiety becomes more pronounced.
• A new sensitivity emerges. Lights become brighter, sounds seem louder, life’s edges amplify.

But this is not an unravelling. This is a becoming.

Your body is rewriting its story.

Western medicine often frames perimenopause as a problem to be managed, a disruption to be medicated. But what if we saw it for what it truly is? A sacred threshold. A call inward. A profound realignment of who you are and who you are becoming.

As progesterone wanes, the gentle buffering it once provided to your nervous system softens. Emotions rise to the surface, demanding to be heard. Not as irrationality. Not as weakness. But as truth.

What have you been suppressing? What have you been tolerating?

Perimenopause doesn’t just change your hormones, it changes the way you think, the way you feel, the way you move through the world. It is a shift in perception, a thinning of the veil. You may find yourself less willing to bend, to placate, to perform. What once felt tolerable -people pleasing, overextending, ignoring your needs- now feels impossible.

And this, though unsettling, is a gift.

You are being initiated into a new way of being.

This phase is not a death, though parts of you will die. The woman who stayed silent. The woman who put everyone else first. The woman who ignored her own body’s wisdom. 

And in her place? A woman who listens to herself first.

Lara Briden speaks of perimenopause as second puberty—a time when your brain, rich in hormone receptors, undergoes a complete restructuring. And we are reminded that these shifts are not signs of decline, but of recalibration. Your body is not failing you; it is leading you into something new.

Perimenopause is a reclamation.

If you feel like you are coming undone, know this: you are not breaking. You are unbinding. You are shedding. You are being called to tend to yourself in a way you never have before.

• Nourish your nervous system. Your body is doing deep work. Rest. Create stillness.
• Honour your emotions. They are not symptoms; they are signposts. What are they asking you to see?
• Seek rhythm, not rigidity. Perimenopause is unpredictable, but your body still craves structure—gentle, intuitive, fluid structure. Sleep, movement, nourishment, love.
• Connect with others. This is not a path to walk alone. The wise women before you have walked it too.

One day, your cycles will cease, and you will step into the full bloom of your power. The wise woman. The sovereign. The one who no longer bleeds, but who holds the deep, ancient knowing of all she has lived.

This is not the end of your vitality. It is the beginning of your freedom.

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