Elegant & Masterful Through Change:

The Peri- and Menopause Newsletter

Hi, my name is “E”. In 2024 I turned 50. My last period was more than 180 days ago. I started having my peri-menopause symptoms at around 38.
This means by now I have 12 years of experience. It also means that I have 10 years and 10,000 hours of “deliberate practice”, so I’ve gained mastery!
I invite you to become a reader and possibly find help, support, and somewhat clarity on how not to allow this change to consume your life.

The best part of menopause?

Finally understanding the phrase: ‘I can’t even…’

How could this newsletter offer you some support?

I have been personally suffering from health anxiety since my late twenties. I have had ups and downs with it: in my early 30s it got baddish, but in my 40s, it improved to be barely noticeable. When I started having various peri-menopause symptoms in my late 30s, I had no idea what those symptoms meant, which propelled my health anxiety to higher levels. During this unsettling decade I also found that reading dry medical articles, that simply stated symptoms, and made “scary” warnings, was not working for my mental disposition. What surprisingly helped me was reading and learning from experiences of other women. I compared them to how I felt and it made me feel better!

It took me some time to learn about each symptom, what it meant and how approach it mentally and master seeing it as a normal change. I am a long-time participant and avid reader in several menopause forums. By “learning each symptom”, I mean not only reading about it in an official medical source, as this is always the start, but also reading and understanding how it is actually experienced by real women.

What is my goal in starting this newsletter? It is to help my readers to feel better about each peri- or menopause-related symptom, not to feel defeated and anxious but to be able to change or even simply adjust their attitude toward it as being normal, non-threatening, and therefore learn to just ride it out with almost elegance!

To achieve this I decided to try to cover every aspect of this transition and share my personal experience with it. I collected dozens of quotes and answers by various women, during my visits and research inside menopause forums. I also came up with the idea to have a Soothing Corner, where I am creating a short article about each symptom or annoyance caused by peri- and menopause symptoms. The goal is to look at these symptoms from a calming, “ride it out and let it pass” perspective. So, if you are overwhelmed by a feeling or a symptom you can find an article about it in my Soothing Corner, read through it to calm yourself down and feel better.