The other morning, a long and alarming groan came from our apartment. I ran and found my 12 -year -old daughter sitting in front of her closet surrounded by a mountain of clothes. “I have nothing to put on!” She cried from the fetal position. “Everything looks, so Baaaaaad! I can’t leave the house like that!”
Reader, the girl has a lot of “good” clothes. New clothing and my hands of very great teenagers in our orbit. But this was completely inside, nothing worked in his growing body today. And, like many things with preteen, today he felt an emergency.
In an attempt to help, I took the article after item – this? this? – And she simply shouted: “It’s ugly!
My first reaction was, of course, a nuisance. We had a place to be. “Use what you used yesterday!” I wanted to shout. “You liked yesterday! It is still fine. “
But I had a secret that I couldn’t share: my bed was also full of rejections. T -shirts, blouses, jeans, monkeys, dresses, all the things that had tried that morning that did not work either. I was also in the state of hating every garment I possessed, of not recognizing my body in them. I also felt that everything looked and felt absolutely horrible and bad. Nor did I want to leave the house.
Puberty, comply with perimenopause.
***
Both transition states remember my favorite saying of the Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön: “Suddenly it is the result of many graduals.”
I am 47 years old now, and for years, I have been calculating small changes in my body: my periods have become heavier and more frequent; I am finding strange points on my face, I need the dermatologist to freeze; My weight has dragged; I have such an intense cerebral fog and a forgetfulness that, until all my friends told me that they were as poor in memory as I was, I worried I had early starting Alzheimers. (I recently asked a group of brides: “What do you put on the table during a dinner to serve water?” A jug? “One of them provided useful).
Everything was vaguely comic until one day, apparently out of nowhere, nothing fit. Not the denim monkey I had been using for years, or the shirts in which I spent most of my days. The jeans that had just bought were too tight. My bras pinched everywhere. Had something changed about my eating or exercise habits? No. They were simply my changing hormones that came for my wardrobe.
And there were other strange and inexplicable changes: my skin was tender; my scalp with itching; My sore breasts seemed to be growing (!?). I was incredibly tired, even when I had slept a full night. My cholesterol retired. I felt in less control of my emotional landscape than ever: my need to hit the doors was as strong as it had been in the most scary months of blocking.
My body, my whole being, in fact, felt completely out of my control, as my daughter did with her. And everything at the same time!
Much has been written about puberty, of course. My daughter and I have read the whole collection of Judy Blume several times, the vast Baby Sitters Club, as well as all those The care and maintenance of IT books. We have talked about breasts and periods, and she has a small bag prepared in her backpack for when that moment comes. Every time my daughter has been found in a pile on the floor, crying for God knows what, we have talked a lot about how hormones can hurry through her body and how it is normal and will happen. I am trying to make the whole trip feel so ordinary and transparent, as it can be.
Of course, there is much less known about the slide of our fertile years. That said, I feel greatly fortunate to go through perimenopause when it has been firmly planted in the cultural spirit. My social media feed has been flooded by doctors who specialize in the transition, and I have heard an absurd number of podcasts and read one billion books: the new menopause, the adult woman speak, how menopause. I follow Dr. Jen Gunter, Dr. Amy Shah, Dr. Kelly Casperson and many others on social networks. I am eating my protein and lifting my weights; I am adding fiber and limiting alcohol. I have made an appointment with my ob-ginn to talk about hormonal replacement therapy. Like my daughter, I am learning to live in this new era of my life.
I thought that going through perimenopause while my daughter was going through puberty would help make my compassion and patience stores grow for her: I could directly relate to hormonal waves, with the rarity of living in a changing body, with humor changes! But in reality it is working backwards: she He is helping me. Seeing her getting confused in inevitable changes reminds me that what I am happening is also real.
Unlike our own mothers, who were told to smile and endure the suffocation, night sweats, cerebral fog, weight gain, fury and lack of sleep, I am learning to treat my own transition with so much respect, curiosity, attention and medical attention, since I want my daughter to treat yours.
I am also adapting to my changing body. I also occasionally find myself crying without reason. I am also mourning for the end of a part of my life, making babies! – And bravely entering the following. I am also afraid to age. My face, breasts, hips and belly look and feel different. My feelings feel bigger. And I am learning to tell myself that this is as normal as it was when it happened to me, 35 years ago.
When I look at my daughter who enters this new stage of her life, it is obvious for me the monumental, difficult and beautiful that is to become a woman. I want her to walk through their own sand and love and patience. And she is also teaching me to love that for me.
Abigail Rasminky is a writer and editor based in Los Angeles. Teach creative writing in the Keck School of Medicine of USC and write the weekly newsletter, People + Bodies. He has also written for Jo’s cup on many issues, including marriage, preteens, loss and only children.
PS Perimenopause: The board game and welcome to its chronity. In addition, 11 pressing questions for an ob-ginn.
(Photo by Anna Malkova/Stocksy).
