Perimenopause, Dog Walks, and Lemon Fanta

Perimenopause, Dog Walks, and Lemon Fanta

Today has been strange.

I was up super early. Started work at 6:45am with a genuine spring in my step. Productive. Focused. On it. I even surprised myself.

We had a beautiful Wellbeing Wednesday session and Lydia from Riding the Trauma Train joined us. It was thoughtful, grounded, powerful. I felt connected. Purposeful.

Then I took Arthur for a walk.

And somewhere between the mud and the trees, it hit me.

The emotional weight of perimenopause.

I talk a lot about effort in life. The invisible effort. The kind people don’t see. Perimenopause feels like that, extra effort layered on top of ordinary life. I’ve got diaries and alarms everywhere. Fans for night time. Cooling sheets. Creams. Vitamins. Patches for day. Patches for night. Itchy skin. Foggy memory. Forgetfulness that makes you question yourself. Add ADHD into that mix, where executive function already needs scaffolding, and it’s amplified.

But what I hadn’t fully clocked was the grief.

The loss.

Menopause isn’t just physical. It’s a transition. A closing. A shift you cannot reverse. I’m not wanting more babies. My children are grown. I love that they’re grown. And yet, walking along today, there was this wave of realisation: I will never be able to have babies again.

Not choosing not to.

Unable to.

There’s something primal about that. Something beyond logic. My brain knows I’m okay with it. My body seems to be having a separate meeting without me.

Then the empty nest thoughts crept in. All I haven’t done. All I missed. Questions about identity. Am I even a woman anymore? Writing that feels dramatic. Slightly unhinged even. But those were some of the thoughts moving through me.

And then the guilt.

Thinking about women who desperately wanted children and couldn’t. Feeling their imagined pain and then feeling ashamed that I was emotional at all. All of this in a 45-minute dog walk.

I came home, made a drink, and for a moment felt ridiculous. How can you go from capable professional woman at 6:45am to existential hormonal spiral by lunchtime?

But here’s what I know, both personally and professionally: emotions move. They surge. They crest. They settle.

I chatted it out. I doodled. I moved my body. I put music on, a bit of Madonna for good measure, cracked open a can of lemon Fanta and within half an hour it was like the storm had passed.

That doesn’t mean it wasn’t real.

It was intense beyond words at the time.

This is a whole new era for me. One that will need navigation, learning, support, and probably more fans and moisturiser than I ever anticipated. I’m fortunate to have incredible women around me who’ve walked this road already. The empathy I received today was powerful. They just knew. No long explanations required. That kind of quiet understanding is gold.

If you’re experiencing this, the fog, the grief, the irrational thoughts, the identity wobble, I see you.

It’s real.

And if today taught me anything, it’s this: you can go from grounded to overwhelmed and back again in the space of a dog walk. That doesn’t make you weak. It makes you human. It makes you hormonal. It makes you in transition.

Sometimes growth looks like therapy rooms and training courses.

Sometimes it looks like lemon Fanta and Madonna in your kitchen, reclaiming yourself one song at a time.

This era might be different. But different doesn’t mean diminished.

Stay safe, stay connected and take gentle care,

Louise x