I prepared for the fire. I got something much weirder.
For years I had a very specific picture of what menopause would look like. I would be hot. I would be fanning myself dramatically at the dinner table. I would throw the covers off in the middle of the night while Remo slept peacefully beside me, wrapped in blankets, completely unbothered, which is honestly the most realistic part of that whole fantasy.
Except Remo and I sleep in separate bedrooms, which is probably the best decision we have ever made as a couple. I say this without a single drop of irony. It is genuinely one of the pillars of a happy marriage and I will defend it to anyone who raises an eyebrow. I sleep with both dogs instead, which has turned out to be a perfectly reasonable arrangement because dogs are warm, loyal, and they do not steal the blanket with intent.
I was ready for the hot flashes. I had mentally prepared. I had a plan. A good fan. A very specific way I was going to describe it to people so they would understand what I was going through.
Instead I am cold. All the time. I wear a sweater in July. I sit in my sunroom most days with two blankets on me like a person who has forgotten what season it is. I have a sauna, which is genuinely good for me and I use it regularly, but I will be honest with you: half the time I go in there just to feel like a warm-blooded mammal again. The only warm things in my life at 2am are two dogs who have arranged themselves on top of me like a weighted blanket with opinions about personal space.
I am on Mounjaro, which I believe is responsible for the cold situation, and I am not complaining about it because the alternative was apparently being a human furnace. But the point is that my menopause looks nothing like what I was told menopause would look like. And the symptoms I do have are the ones nobody seems to want to talk about.
So I am going to talk about them. You are welcome.
My sister is two years older than me and is having a considerably worse menopause than I am. We talk on the phone almost every day. At some point these calls stopped being regular conversations and became something closer to therapy sessions where we take turns reporting symptoms, complaining loudly, and reminding each other that we are not in fact dying, just hormonal and deeply inconvenienced. It is the most useful relationship I have right now and I highly recommend finding your person for this specific purpose.
The Brain Fog
I want to start here because this one caught me completely off guard and also because I cannot remember what I was going to say next.
I am kidding. Sort of.
The brain fog is real and it is strange in a way that is hard to describe until you experience it. It is not forgetting things. Forgetting things I understand, I have been forgetting things my whole life, that is just personality. This is different. This is standing in the middle of a sentence and watching the end of it just float away. This is walking into the kitchen with a very specific purpose and arriving there as a complete stranger with no memory of the mission.
I have started a notes app on my phone. I have started narrating my intentions out loud. I walked down the hall the other day saying “going to get my glasses, going to get my glasses, going to get my glasses” like some kind of tired mantra, and I still got distracted by the dogs on the way.
The glasses were on my face.
This is my life now and I have made my peace with it mostly.
The Joints
Nobody told me my knees would have opinions. My knees did not used to have opinions. They were knees. They did their job quietly and without complaint. Now they have things to say about stairs. About sitting too long. About getting up from the floor, which has become an event that requires planning and occasionally a hand to hold.
My hands have joined in. My shoulders. My hips on certain mornings feel like they belong to someone older and considerably less optimistic than me.
Interestingly this is one area where Mounjaro has helped, which I did not expect and am deeply grateful for. The inflammation that apparently comes with the territory has quieted down considerably. I mention this not to sell you anything because I am absolutely not qualified to do that, but because when I was in the middle of it I would have given anything to know that it could get better and that there were different ways to get there.
It got better. Your version of better may look different from mine. But it gets better.
The Hair
I am going to say this plainly: the hair situation is not fun and anyone who makes it sound like a gentle transition is either lying or very lucky.
I noticed it in the shower first. Then in my brush. Then everywhere, constantly, in a way that made me do math I did not want to be doing about how much hair a person can reasonably lose before it becomes a problem worth panicking about.
I have not panicked. I have bought better shampoo. I have taken the supplements. I have had several stern internal conversations with my hair about loyalty and the years we have spent together.
And then I gave up and booked hair extensions because I simply cannot take it anymore and life is too short to mourn hair when there is a solution available. I am not ashamed of this decision. I am in fact very pleased with this decision. Sometimes the answer is not acceptance, it is extensions, and that is a completely valid path forward.
My sister, for the record, is in a worse situation than me on this front and our daily phone calls have included at least three separate conversations about hair alone. We are getting through it together, one complaint at a time.
What I will say is that this is the one that hit me emotionally in a way I was not prepared for. Hair feels like yours in a particular way and watching it thin is a specific kind of grief that is small but real. I am allowed to say that and so are you. And then go book the extensions. Mine is booked for June, I can’t wait!
The Emotions
I cry now. At things. Many things. Things I would not have cried at before. Commercials. Songs that come on in the car at an unexpected moment. Anything involving a dog in any capacity whatsoever.
I cannot watch movies with dogs in them anymore. I do not mean sad dog movies. I mean any movie where a dog appears on screen for longer than thirty seconds because my brain has decided that all dogs are in peril and the appropriate response is immediate tears. I had to stop watching a perfectly cheerful film recently because a golden retriever ran across the background of a scene and something in me just broke open.
I have banned myself from dramas entirely. Anything with a sad storyline, a difficult relationship, a sick character, or music that builds emotionally is completely off limits. My viewing diet is now essentially cooking shows and reality television about people decorating houses and I am genuinely fine with this because my nervous system cannot handle anything else right now.
I asked my doctor about this and he said the emotional volatility is completely normal and related to fluctuating estrogen levels. Which is useful information. It does not stop me crying at the dog food aisle when there is a picture of a cute beagle puppy (we used to have a beagle) on the packaging but at least now I know why.
The Tiredness
Not regular tired. I want to be very clear about this distinction because regular tired I know. Regular tired is solved by sleep. This is a different category of tired that exists independently of sleep, does not respond to coffee the way it used to, and seems to arrive at completely random intervals with no warning and no apology.
I can sleep eight hours and wake up and need to sit down. I can have a perfectly reasonable day with nothing strenuous in it and hit 3pm like I have just run something I definitely did not train for. The dogs at least understand this. They are available for napping at all hours and do not judge the frequency.
What I have learned is that fighting it is pointless and resting is not weakness, it is just information. My body is doing something enormous under the surface, hormonally and chemically and in ways I do not fully understand, and the tiredness is a side effect of that process. It is not a character flaw. It is biology.
I repeat this to myself often. Some days I even believe it.
The Cold
I promised to come back to this one. I am cold. Permanently, inexplicably, medically improbably cold. The only warm things in my life are the two dogs who sleep on my bed and they take their responsibilities very seriously. One is a full body situation pressed against my legs. The other is exclusively interested in the pillow area. Between the two of them I am adequately heated through the night, which is something I never anticipated needing from a dog but here we are.
I want the women going through the hot flashes to know that I see you and I understand why you look at me with a very specific expression when I mention the sweater situation. My sister is one of you and she calls me from the parking lot of a grocery store some days because she needs to stand next to the frozen food section just to feel like a normal temperature human being. I listen. I sympathize. I am wearing a cardigan while we talk.
What I Actually Wish Someone Had Told Me
Menopause is not one thing. It is a collection of things that are all slightly different for every person and that do not necessarily look like the version you were expecting. Some women have hot flashes. Some have cold. Some have the brain fog so thick they could cut it. Some have the joint pain. Most have the tiredness. Almost all have the hair thing to some degree. And almost none of us were given a complete and honest map before we got here.
Find your sister, your friend, your person, whoever she is. The one you can call and say the real things to and who will call you back from a grocery store parking lot at 4pm because she needed the frozen food aisle and also someone to tell. That relationship is worth more right now than any supplement or any article or any list of tips from someone who has not been in it.
Get the bloodwork done. Talk to your doctor. Be honest about what you are experiencing even when it feels embarrassing or dramatic or like something you should be able to handle quietly. You should not have to handle it quietly.
Get the extensions if you want them. Cry at the dog commercial. Wear the cardigan in August. Sleep with the dogs.
And call your sister.
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