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When my sister and I were teens, my dad essentially had a different heart procedure every other year, and my mom was going through menopause. Mommy saw a psychologist, took long solo car rides, and she took over a room in our house and put a lock on it so no one else could go in. In my teens, my mom and I fought often.
I remember storming down the unsatisfying short staircase of our split-level, telling her to go to hell, and she standing at the top of the steps saying she'd see me there. I thought she was so selfish and unsupportive; I had no idea.
Once, when I was 16, I went into her closet while she was at work and tried on this silky slip thing I found in the back and had never seen before. I thought it would look cool in a vintage way with a leather jacket and jeans. It didn't give the desired effect, and instead of being smart and putting it back where I found it, I left it strewn on my bed and headed to school.
When my mom came home, she found it. When I came home, I found in place of the discarded négligée my beloved navy satin sleepshirt, cut into dozens of pieces. I thought she was the worst parent ever; how could she damage my possessions like that? Such disrespect, amirite?
My mom continued seeing her therapist, and she also got on hormone replacement therapy (HRT). As a very empathetic and selfless teen (yeah, right), I didn't see the correlation or really care. But things improved. My mom didn't spend as much time locked in the den, for instance. And we didn't fight like cats and dogs-well, not nearly as much or with so much ferocity.
My mom stayed on HRT until 2018 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Over the years, doctors encouraged her to wean off of HRT, but she refused. She remembered what it was like before, and she didn't want to go back. But after her surgery, her oncologist forbade her, and every other doctor backed her up.
My mom had a partial mastectomy to remove the cancer; no need for additional treatment. She recovered well... until she went off HRT. Now that she is no longer here to read this, I can write this... it was if she aged a decade in a month.
Over the following year, she began getting those bruises older individuals get so easily and so intensely from minor bumps or scratches. She hunched over. She would seriously injure herself from activities she used to enjoy. She needed naps and had less of an appetite. And it affected her emotionally.
When she passed, we found a file folder on her laptop of essays she wrote for a memoirs class she took. We found a quick recap of a 2006 trip to Africa, an essay written in 2015, as well as assignments from 2020-2024. The writing of the 2015 person sounds as though it's written from a different person who wrote the pieces in 2020. Sentence structure, tone, style... it got simpler and it got more... glass half empty.
I took my mom to her doctors' appointments. At the end of each appointment, they'd ask if she had any questions or anything else she wanted to discuss. And each time, she'd ask if she could get back on hormones. The doctors chuckled and, as though she was some silly, senile old woman, would gently tell her no, she had breast cancer, she was too old for hormones, and they wouldn't even work at this point.
Driving home, she'd tell me she didn't care. She'd risk getting breast cancer again to have the vitality from her HRT days. I thought she was being melodramatic, and I exhausted a lot of hot air on those drives, trying to talk her off a ledge. But now I am almost 50 and have been on HRT for a year, and I totally, completely get it.
Menopause and Me
I don't know when I began experiencing perimenopause. To this day, I don't know if the issues were due to Lockdown, COVID, financial concerns, the crash after a pretty personally fantastic 2019, being stuck in a not-large home with two not-small humans, ripples in my relationship, or "The Change." But I started unraveling.
The first thing was sleep. My mind was racing; I couldn't go to sleep because I was constantly thinking of what I needed to do, what I forgot, what I couldn't forget, the lyrics to that song, the relationship between two characters in a book or TV show, what we need from the grocery store and the ever-present ideas for a future blog post or essay. I found some relief from Equilibria CBD and Peloton-guided sleep meditations, but I still often found myself staring at the ceiling for hours.
Then, I began to have night sweats. I could have the perfect day, not eat late and not look at screens late and work out and no alcohol and no caffeine and plenty of water and greens and I'd still wake at 3 am in a pool of sweat. My husband bought me an Embr Wave as a Christmas gift, he was so concerned with my hot flashes and night sweats.
My husband was driving me batty. His breathing would send me into a murderous rage. We would be in the middle of an argument, and it was like I was watching it from above, seeing how I was in the wrong, but I kept fighting my position, and I couldn't stop it. Libido was gone, and I felt like a stranger in my body, shocked by my reflection, never sure how it was going to react or act or change or disappoint.
I pedaled out a lot of my aggression on the Peloton bike we coincidentally ordered the week before Lockdown. I used to weight train at a gym every weekday morning, and now I was getting up before the sun and sweating out 30, 45, 60 minutes or more with Christine, Denis, Tunde, and Cody.
Then I tore my meniscus, and I was off the bike for weeks. Once it healed, I hurt my back. Once that healed, I injured my Achilles and could hardly walk.
When I could workout, I'd need two days off, it took so long to recover. I'd wake and barely be able to walk, my back was stiff, my feet hurt, my ankles struggling to move. I was slathering myself in CBD lotion and using my TENS unit almost every evening.
I'm not married to a "Huberman Husband," but if there was a similar cutesy name for Rich Roll, he'd fit the description. My husband was plant based, athletic, hadn't had a drop of alcohol in years, was curious and open-minded, a certified yoga instructor who goes to bed watching documentaries about archaeology and history.
He would send me podcasts where Dr. Stacy Sims and Dr. Lisa Mosconi would discuss perimenopause and ways to manage it. They taught me a lot and sent me down a perimenopause rabbit hole on Google, Tiktok, and YouTube.
I did cold showers, fancy breathing, teas, tinctures, pills, powders, shakes, supplements, weighted blankets, brown noise, binaural beats, CBD, THC, , going plant-based, , cutting out alcohol, cutting out caffeine, magnesium spray and castor oil in my belly button and I could go on but SEO does best with shorter paragraphs. Tl;dr nothing really gave me enough relief, and it was affecting my job performance and my family.
I began researching HRT. I learned how that one inaccurate study caused the fear of HRT causing cancer. I learned how hormones have advanced since my mom started them in the early 90s. Pills and patches and pellets and creams... I decided to try. I was willing to try anything to save my sanity and my marriage.
I went to my gynecologist to discuss a prescription for HRT but ended up with a prescription for Wellbutrin XL, a suggestion for couples counseling, and a book on assertive speaking. I kept researching, found a local provider who is part of the North American Menopause Society (NAMS), and . It has been a year.
HRT helped greatly. I no longer felt I was in a battle with my body. I was getting more sleep, and per my WHOOP, that sleep was higher quality. My periods got more regular, and I no longer had cycles where it felt my uterus was cleaning out her attic. I didn't feel so dry, my joints stopped hurting so much, and I needed less time between workouts to recover.
HRT alone didn't save my marriage; each of us seeing our own therapist also helped greatly and continues to be a benefit. My therapist questioned if Wellbutrin was helping and if I would maybe benefit from medication for my ADD.
I was referred to the practice's psych evaluator, who increased my Wellbutrin and added , which didn't turn me into a focused phenom but helped me see the world isn't all gray, and I could accomplish things to completion. And this combo got us talking, respecting how we are both and together going through change, and we reconnected.
One Year on HRT
I am not who I was in 2019. But I feel my current cocktail of chemicals and counseling has made life pretty damn good. This body may not my bestie, but she is again a friend. And so is my husband. We've been together on this planet longer than we've been apart, and this experience feels like we completed a flight of stairs and have been awarded with a better view.
My estrogen is in the patch form. I started with the bigger patch that was changed weekly, but the adhesive sucked. I switched to gel, applied each morning, but that was a pain in the ass and a lot of waste (individual daily foil packets). I am now on the smaller patches switched out every few days, but I suck at staying on the schedule and end up keeping one in my bag in case I realize middle of the day that I was supposed to change it out yesterday.
My progesterone is little white footballs that are so smooth and small I don't need water to wash them down. I take one each night after brushing my teeth.
My testosterone is cream in a plastic tube. Three clicks applied to my left calf or thigh one morning, the right the next. My other morning meds are a tiny white disc of Wellbutrin XL and a larger white pill of Lexapro that needs a handful of water to be washed down.
I still take a lot of supplements, and I'll get into that in a future piece. I don't know if they make enough of an impact on perimenopausal symptoms to include here (except sea buckthorn, which is the best for itchy ears). My mind has quieted enough to see how my actions and choices affect my comfort and to see my mom in a whole new light of respect, empathy, and understanding.
