The Fool’s Blog
First-draft thoughts on the road of empowerment.
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I always tried so hard to become the woman I wanted to be.
The negative self-talk in those moments wasn’t great. I would feel like a loser because I was choosing safety and the need to feel comfortable over starting my day and choosing possibility. It always felt that stark.
Perimenopause exacerbated this dynamic to no end.
I would wake up BEFORE the alarm with that first hot flash of the day, feel alert and would think I could start my day. But the need to feel content and safe was overwhelming. I would lay there nestled in my comforter and anxiety would ramp up. Crazy, non sequitur anxiety. The doom and gloom just served to reinforce my need to stay still and quiet for as long as possible in my bed before I had to deal with things and manage people.
Stop pretending.
You are going to say this is just too weird, too out there. What is the cost of pretending you don’t get it?
Well, it’s the cost of finally letting go of your fears, your self-imposed barriers and boundaries that hold you back and keep you comfortable. It’s the cost of admitting you are the one holding yourself back.
![A Perimeno[PAUSE].](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/63d1d198f751613733f585e5/1777042088038-IWI8N9N1L4VIAVO3HO4N/20260424_073023.jpg)
A Perimeno[PAUSE].
Start by dipping your toes into the cool pool underneath the waterfall and soon your entire body will be immersed in the healing waters. Pure joy can be soaked up like a sponge when it manifests in this form
Open Palm.
It’s a marvel, this perimenopause experience. I’ve made the intentional choice to see it as a rich and wondrous journey and keep that palm open. I can smile more. I can find gratitude more. I can enjoy more happiness moment to moment.
Struggle. Ease. Grace.
Yes, it’s real. No one needs that confirmation. The form of it all might change, but that reality remains.
I had another morning that makes it impossible to ignore that mornings like these are my new normal. Wake up too early, hours before the alarm, have hot flash spread throughout my body, feel incredibly tired but also strangely alert, lay there pulling out all my tricks to just get back to sleep, refuse to check the clock again because seeing that an hour has passed in this limbo would be too disappointing. The next moment (it seems) the alarm is waking me out of a deep, dream-filled sleep. I think, I should have moved the alarm to later just in case this happened, that way I could get more solid sleep! I re-set the alarm, get nestled in the covers again. That’s where the actual struggle begins.
POWER.
Underneath the rocky terrain I’ve been traversing, there’s a bubble of what? I mean, could it be? Nooooo. How in the heck… I can’t deny it any longer, I have to name it for what it is. Swimming steadily and strongly beneath the turbulence is what only can be described as “WOOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOO!”.
love, love, love, love
What helped with accepting I was in perimenopause? Bouncing on my toes in front of the mirror naked and delighting in my new heaving bosom.
Bring it.
Waking up has never been easy for me. There are stories of how I had to be held when waking up from a nap as a toddler until I was ready to face the world again. I didn’t like the transition back to awake. I still have this challenge. Perimenopause has only exacerbated something that was already there.
I’m aware now that it was 5 years ago that my symptoms first started.
That feeling before a leap.
Driving away from the post office, I felt a fire in me. I had dropped off my passport application and I was heading home. Driving the same car on the same highways and it all felt monumental and new. My passport expired in 2015. I hadn’t used it since…2005? I forgot to check what my last trip was before the post office employee put it in an envelope and sent it off. That was a lifetime ago. I was living in NYC and traveled for work and for play to Hong Kong and Japan. Epic trips made by someone else. I live in a different city on a different coast, have different people in my life. And though I feel like I’m traveling the same internal roads that catch me like tires in a rut, I know that I’m actually on a spiral staircase moving forward and onward. I’m worlds away from who I was before. I know I have grown. I feel it in my belly.