You’ve heard of menopause, but have you heard of its unpredictable, disorienting, and often perplexing sister, perimenopause?

There comes a moment in a woman’s life—after years spent wishing for a quiet house, an absence of crying babies, rebellious teenagers, and never-ending domestic cycles—when she finally gets what she wishes for. However, this vision of peace and silence arrives not in increments, but All. At. Once. The kids move out, the marriage (if it lasted that long) may have run its course, and the question of what to do next, once so distant, now sits squarely on the kitchen table.

For decades, motherhood has operated as a centripetal force, pulling everything toward it. “Honey, have you seen my keys? My wallet? My glasses?”—because the household lost-and-found is, by default, a maternal jurisdiction. “Mum, did you remember to pack my lunch?”—as if a child’s sustenance relies less on personal responsibility and more on maternal telepathy. Even the ever-recurring “What time is my doctor’s appointment again?” is inexplicably directed at her, despite the existence of personal calendars, reminder apps, and, presumably, basic memory.

But when that force slackens, when the children chart their own trajectories, it leaves an unfamiliar gravitational field in its wake. Now that she has it all to herself, could she make herself a new home? And what kind of home would it be, with just one solitary woman living in it?

In the hush of an empty home, the question rings in her ears: what kind of woman would I want to be for the rest of this life?

But… just as the possibility of self-definition finally comes into view, the body stages its own quiet revolution.

It begins with minor betrayals: a dysregulated internal temperature manifesting in an inexplicable chill, then somehow followed by a heatwave radiating from the ribcage. A menstrual cycle that once operated with precision every 28 days now appears and disappears, and the hair thins as if retreating in protest.

This is perimenopause—the hormonal prelude to menopause, a process that can last anywhere from a few years to a decade, depending on what fresh hell your endocrine system decides to impose.

In common parlance, menopause has been framed as both an ending and a reinvention. It is either an elegy for lost youth or a slow, sultry strut into an era of unapologetic selfhood—see Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder, Want by Gillian Anderson, Mary by Nat Cassidy.

But while menopause is a singular event in which the ovaries stop producing eggs, perimenopause, however, is the meandering, surrealist novel that precedes it: unpredictable, uneven, prone to sudden and inexplicable shifts in narrative.

And it is far less talked about.

The symptoms are, frankly, a mess. Body temperature becomes a roulette wheel. Joints creak as if issuing a warning. Libido fluctuates between insatiable and nonexistent, leading to hushed marital diplomacy: “it’s not you, it’s me,” but this time its true; because God knows how many times we’ve heard that before.

Oh and by the way, that wine and cheese pairing you once loved? Now a one-way ticket to acid reflux and existential regret. Even more perplexing is the cognitive fog, where words hover just out of reach, sentences trailing off like forgotten dreams. I’m here to tell you that you are not crazy, but hell, you might as well be.

There’s a certain wicked humour in all of this, of course. The female body—meticulously surveilled, disciplined, and contorted to meet every new iteration of desirability—eventually decides to opt out. And when it finds itself caught in the crossfire of its own biology, desperately searching for an answer, the world shrugs.

The beauty industry scrambles to market “solutions”—collagen powders, stem cells, high-tech lubricants like snail secretions—while pharmaceutical companies, having spent billions studying erectile dysfunction, have only recently begun addressing the physiological complexities of female ageing.

Consider this: as of 2019, research into erectile dysfunction—which affects 19% of men—outpaces research into premenstrual syndrome, a condition that affects 90% of women, by a factor of five. The discrepancy isn’t just medical; it’s ideological.

So call me cynical, but it’s hard to ignore the pattern. The commercial exploitation of female aging and the systemic neglect of women’s health in medicine exist in tandem with the entrenched prioritization of male sexual function over female well-being.

In the end, all the roads lead back to the one conclusion that we hear so often: once a woman’s body ceases to perform for others, it ceases to deserve attention, research, or care.

But what if this quiet mutiny is the key to something else? What if this moment of invisibility is where the most significant transformation begins?

If menopause marks an ending, it also marks a frontier: the point at which a woman, freed from both reproductive obligations and societal expectations of youth, can finally claim the autonomy that has so long been deferred. It is not merely about shedding old selves but about constructing new ones—not in service of children or partners, but for oneself.

And so, the question remains: in the absence of prescribed roles, who do you become? If girlhood was about potential and motherhood about sacrifice, then this—this uncharted territory—may be the rarest thing of all: the moment a woman is allowed to exist, fully and freely, without explanation or apology.