Ida Tin’s “Dear Men” Series: Part 24 of 29 – When Periods Stops

Dear Men, this is post 24 for you about what it feels like to live in a woman’s body, this time about the big changes that happens when periods starts stopping.

The menstrual cycle is a constant ebb and flow of a handful of hormones regulating maturing and releasing eggs, building the blood lining in the womb that could feed a fetus and shedding it again when there is none. It impacts our body temperature, our vision, how we build muscles, our digestion, mood, sex drive, how social we feel, our appetite… in short, it is tremendously important in our lives. Physically, emotionally, socially. We go from girls, then we start getting breasts, we someday know we could make a baby inside our bodies, maybe we do, we bleed, and then gradually, almost unnoticeably our cycles start to change.

When these changes cannot any longer be written off as the usual variation, and it isn’t caused by some ailment, then a woman is gracefully – or maybe struggling, transitioning from the fertile age to perimenopause. Thats’s the time before the cycle stops entirely, known as menopause (what a hopeless name).

For some this is a welcomed relief, for others it feels very strange. Like some foundational skeleton to life, is morphing. No more rhythm of a monthly cycle. The orientation that many develop over years to understand her changing body day for day, her mood shifts – all of that is now a mess. Mood and body in an unpredictable new-jazz flow that is hard to navigate. Her identity is reshuffling. Will her sense of being a woman change? Will her intimacy with her body feel different? There are a bunch of new questions while she again is trying to figure out her body.

Ovulation makes us more interested in sex, as if desire sits closer to the surface. An energetic kick that propels us every month. How will we go about life without this monthly high?

There are many stories of the horrors of menopause, will my bones wither, my hair fall out, the nights be awake and will hot flushes burn me 100 times a day? Will my brain be foggy and my mood erratic, will anyone still like being around me, or even find me attractive?

So my periods start to not come and this is what lies ahead?

Or is it?

This is a time of change, and yet again a woman will have to get to know how to take good care of herself.

I welcome your story too, what was perimenopause like for you or those around you?

Artwork by Kyle Leuck

-This post by Ida Tin is shared on LinkedIn and is republished here with her permission. The SheSight Team has not made any changes to the content.