A personal reflection on perimenopause, women’s health, and navigating hormonal change with greater awareness, support, and self-compassion

I turned 44 this July and have found myself arriving at a new chapter of womanhood, hello, perimenopause.

My desire to write and share my words around this often-taboo subject is simple: to acknowledge perimenopause and menopause with more openness, less shame, and deeper support. This transition is not something women should feel they have to navigate alone.

Through the various chapters of my life, I have been full of questions, wonder, fear, confusion, disconnection, surrender, breaking down, breaking open, reconnection. Oh, there she is… this glimmer of my heart knowing, my innocence, my power, my sensitive ways, my strength my soul essence.

I continue to meet new parts of myself, that is… new to me and yet she, my essence, my soul (Ellie) is ancient, wise, a force to be reckoned with. I am interweaving my relationship with my soul self with my humanness of me.

I am and always have been a sensitive and emotional child, adolescent, and adult. When I was younger I sensed my emotions to be a lot for others, not so much myself as I didn’t know any difference.