And Just Like That....I stopped sucking it up.
How I stopped letting my hormones drive my life and my big feelings about And Just Like That.
Hello, I’m Mia Freedman and this is my newsletter about pop culture, modern life and being Gen X in a Gen Z world. If someone sent this to you, you can subscribe via this button
“I’m so fat and old,” wailed my friend theatrically when I saw her for the first time in a while last week. She was joking but she also wasn’t. In the way I’ve noticed Gen X women so quickly do in this life stage, we cut straight to the chase. She didn’t want to have sex with her husband or in fact anyone else, ever again. She could barely remember what it felt like to want sex. It seemed strangely unimportant to her despite it once being a driving force in her life.
But on the list of things about herself she no longer recognised, her sex life was nowhere near the top.
It was a long list. “I always used to be skinny and now I’m fat,” she said. “It’s not like I want to fit into skinny jeans but I just don’t recognise my own body anymore.”
“Oh welcome,” I replied. “Obvioulsy it’s peri. Are you taking HRT?”
Her face sagged with resignation and she waved her hand dismissively. “No, I just have to wait until it passes.”
I hear this a lot. Women say it out loud and they say it to themselves. Suck it up, sweetheart. It’s not that bad. Every woman goes through it.
I said these things to myself for a long time until my friend who is a doctor told me I was an idiot. “Why suffer when you don’t have to?”
This is the same friend who ‘gave me permission’ to stop breast feeding my second child after eight bouts of mastitis in seven months.
When she gives me medical advice, I always listen.
Sometimes it feels like we internalise the idea that as women, our pain or discomfort is something we must endure and that to seek relief is a cop-out. For pussies. Whether it’s the valorising of a drug-free birth or the idea that the chronically debilitating and often distressing symptoms of peri-menopause are just part of life, we are encouraged to be martyrs for reasons I’ve never been able to understand.
HRT may not be the answer for everyone but what every woman should do is find out what her options are. I felt sad after seeing my friend. She no longer recognised herself in the mirror, her marriage was under huge strain and the joy had been sucked out of her life at a time when she should have been leaning into the freedom of being in your early 50s.
A few weeks later, a friend in her early forties told me she'd just had a blood test to ‘check her hormones’. She thinks she might be peri-menopausal but her GP looked at the results and declared she’s not.
This isn’t necessarily true.
There is no blood test that can tell you if you’re peri, a period of time that can last for 10 years when your ovaries begin to wind down. Pack it in. Shut up shop.
This is because they don’t switch off like a light.
Remember puberty? Remember how it took a while? It’s not like you woke up one morning with boobs, your period and pubes.
The time in your life leading up to menopause is like that but longer. A blood test will simply measure your hormone levels on that particular day. The next day, they could be wildly different. And it’s that fluctuation that’s the signature of peri-menopause and why it feels so disorienting.
Menopause is easier to diagnose and can be measured by a blood test because it’s when your ovaries have stopped spluttering and decide to officially call it a day – and have stayed that way for one year.
Welcome to menopause.
Peri, though? Well, that’s a whole other bag of tricks.
I know this because for a long time, I thought I was going a bit nuts. I was forgetting things. I felt intense bouts of rage. I cried most days. I gained weight around my middle. My boobs grew enormous. I didn’t recognise my body in the mirror. I didn’t recognise my thoughts or my emotions. And because I hadn’t had my period in years thanks to my IUD, my period (or lack of it) was no barometer of where I was at with my cycle…
My Complex Feelings About And Just Like That…..
It’s season two of And Just Like That and had I written about it after the first two episodes, I would have said “I HATE THIS SHOW WITH THE FIRE OF A THOUSAND SUNS”.
And yet. By episode three I was coming around. And by the end of episode 4 this week, I love the shit out of it. Yes, it’s been quite the journey.
I’ve written about it for Mamamia Subscribers who can read it right now and if you’re not, you can also subscribe via the button below…….
One More Thing I Have To Tell You…
Because peri can be a very weird, confusing and often very lonely experience to go through, we hunted down the best experts in the world, interviewed them and created The Very Peri Audio Series It’s your all-in-one survival guide for getting through perimenopause, with the most up-to-date advice. There’s are 10 short episodes covering everything from HRT to hot flushes; sex, weight gain, mood swings and alternative therapies - and it’s available right now via the button below……