Perimenopause

HOPE'S STORY:

I thought I knew what to expect from perimenopause. My mother had gone through it, my older sister too. But when it started happening to me, I wasn’t prepared for how much it would affect the way I felt in my own body.

The anxiety seemed to come out of nowhere. I had always been calm under pressure, the person everyone leaned on. Suddenly I was lying awake at night with my heart pounding, worrying about things that had never bothered me before. I felt unsettled in a way I couldn’t explain.

I had seen Angela years earlier when we were trying to grow our family, so I reached out to her again. This time I needed help understanding what was happening physically and why I no longer felt like myself.

Angela helped me understand the connection between the hormonal changes I was experiencing and how overwhelmed my nervous system had become. Instead of treating the anxiety as something separate, we worked with what was happening in my body and with the patterns that had kept me in overdrive for years.

Gradually, I started sleeping better and feeling less reactive. I learned how to recognize when my system was becoming overwhelmed and what actually helped me settle. The anxiety no longer felt mysterious or frightening.

I feel grounded again. I recognize myself now, and I have a very different relationship with my body than I did when this started.