Welcome to the Perimenopause Confusion Decade

I still catch glimpses of her sometimes, the girl from my twenties and early thirties. She was energetic, quick-witted, and could stay out until 5 AM, only needing a strong coffee to recover. Now, the thought of staying up past 10 PM makes me physically tired, and if I push it, I need 3 to 5 business days to recover. This current version of me, the one staring down the barrel of 42 next week, is a stark contrast to that vibrant person I still feel like inside.

Then, I try to find the word “refrigerator” and draw a complete blank. Or a completely normal situation causes a sudden, blinding spike of anxiety. Or I find myself staring numbly at the wall, wishing the planet would just stop spinning for a minute, possibly so I could finally locate the glasses resting on top of my head. That’s when I realise: that girl is currently living under the heavy, confusing, and frankly rude influence of an uninvited guest whose name, perimenopause, I only learned about two years ago.

Here is the part that genuinely infuriates me: For all the sex-ed, health classes, and women’s magazines I’ve consumed over the past four decades, why did no one mention the Decade of Confusion? We hear about menopause, the grand finale, but virtually nothing about the prolonged, messy, and utterly unpredictable warm-up act. It turns out, your hormones don’t just sail off into the sunset at 50; they spend ten long years throwing a temper tantrum, creating chaos, and generally making your life a surprise party you never asked for.

I’m in my early forties, managing what feels like a decade’s worth of life events condensed into one year: we are planning a wedding, deep in the middle of planning a house-build project, and constantly striving to keep ourselves financially stable amidst all the chaos. And of course, there are the ten dogs…(don’t ask!). I should be sharp and emotionally stable for all this. Instead, I am trying to direct a build-out while my internal IT department is MIA. My brain is running on a literal potato, and the social energy I once possessed has been entirely reallocated to the vital task of standing up straight. I just want to be home, doing absolutely nothing, draining all my energy just so I can avoid having to find the word “refrigerator” in conversation.

The contrast is dizzying. I have multiple degrees, qualifications, fellowships, and years of experience leading school teams and whole institutions as a Headteacher. My professional life requires peak leadership, strategic thinking, and crystal-clear communication. Yet, here I am, sometimes forgetting the names of my own team members mid-sentence or staring blankly at a complex budget spreadsheet. The brain fog doesn’t care about your qualifications.

And if I don’t recognise myself, I can only imagine how confusing I must be for my poor fiancé. He wakes up next to the woman who is usually organised and calm, only to spend the day with a strange amalgamation of a moody teenager, a forgetful pensioner, and a very short-fused project manager. One day, I’m gripped by crippling anxiety; the next, I am swimming in thick, impenetrable apathy. My gratitude for his patience is enormous, because there must be days where he doesn’t recognise me, or even worse, he has to deal with the person who recently freaked out about a suspiciously long cycle and bought a multipack of pregnancy tests just to confirm I wasn’t adding an eleventh dependent to the house-building circus. (Spoiler: I wasn’t. Just hormones having a laugh.)

Here is my greatest question amidst this messy journey: Why is this transition treated like a personal secret? If this is something that profoundly impacts our cognition, our emotions, our relationships, and our sanity, why do we enter it completely blind? We are expected to navigate this 10-year hormonal marathon in silence, shame, and confusion, thinking we are going crazy.

I don’t know how to reconcile the vibrant person I feel like with the tired, foggy person my body is manifesting. I am still learning, but understanding that this isn’t me “going crazy,” but rather a normal biological transition, the perimenopausal surprise, has been the most powerful step. I am learning to grant myself the grace to be confused, to be tired, and to say no to everything except staying home with my partner (and my ten dogs).

Ultimately, the only way through this chaos is patience, both for my body and for myself. There is a deep, strange comfort in knowing that this wild ride is temporary, and that the core of who I am – the leader, the partner, the capable woman – is still here, just temporarily submerged beneath the fog. I am actively trying to find a quiet kind of peace in this confusion, acknowledging that sometimes, the most profound act of strength is simply allowing yourself to rest.

The only way we get through this decade of confusion is by breaking the silence. We need to normalise the struggle, the strange symptoms, and the sheer absurdity of trying to run a school while you’ve forgotten where you put your phone for the fifth time today.