Your monthly menstrual cycle is part of the larger life cycle of your hormones.

As a young girl your hormones are a straight line.

During puberty your hormones take time to transition to a wave that continuously rises and falls for the duration of your reproductive years.

It’s not an overnight adjustment for the messages from the pituitary gland, which connect with the ovaries to signal the maturation of an egg, to become a smoothly flowing pathway.

Perimenopause comes at the other end of this life cycle. It’s the transition period when our hormones are moving back towards being a straight line.

Just like the wave analogy from my last post, perimenopause is the crescendo of this life cycle.

This is why perimenopause can be such a turbulent time for many - everything that’s unexpressed and has been buried for years is bubbling up for release before the wave crashes and becomes, post menopause, a straight line again.

If you don’t know what’s going on it can feel like you’re going crazy.

Navigation of both the puberty and perimenopause phases is much easier if you understand what happens before you’re caught up in the thick of it. And if you understand how to listen to the sensations, feelings and messages your body communicates with you. This requires plenty of time for quiet contemplation and self reflection.

It’s interesting that some traditional cultures don’t even have words for menopausal problems. In these societies females are educated and included in all aspects of feminine experiences (menstruation, birth, menopause etc) from a young age.

When you have witnessed, understand and know what is coming you can more easily relax and go with the flow.

When there’s no resistance to flow, there’s no pain either.

I wonder how many women would have a different experience of their transition phases of life if they understood more about how hormones and emotions interact?