If somebody had told me in my thirties that at 42 I’d have hot flashes and mood swings reminiscent of menopause, I would surely have laughed at them. You can only truly understand perimenopause when you experience it. But then you really can. I didn’t have another choice but to learn more about it.

I don’t want to seem arrogant, but I think I can proudly say that at the age of 44 I’m living the life I’ve always wanted to. I’m enjoying the protective love of a happy marriage; we don’t have kids. But we do have two dogs and a cat entertaining us, and maybe we entertain them too sometimes. We live a carefree life in our own beautiful house, and we have a busy social life. We travel a lot and like gardening; we always find ourselves something to do both around the house and away from it. You could say that we’re always on the go, even when we are not working.

I work as a project manager at an advertising agency, and before that I was a communications advisor. I like to be around people, talk to them and make them talk. Being in people’s company is what recharges me the most; they inspire me. And then there is of course modern art, which is a passion we share with my husband. We often go to exhibitions, concerts and dance performances together; we find a few cultural events that seem interesting almost every week. We have a lot of friends, so dinners and other social events are also common, and we also receive guests in our home a couple of times a month. This isn’t important to us only because of the encounters, but also because this way we are guaranteed to have the opportunity to try new recipes regularly. Cooking relaxes us both, we complete each other nicely in the kitchen as well.

I was 42 when I experienced the first symptoms in the form of hot flashes and mood swings. I didn’t think much of them because I thought anything could cause them: stress, lack of sleep, or the irregular eating due to all the dinner invitations. Since the symptoms appeared regularly, not just on occasion, I felt the need to do a more thorough internet research. Perhaps others had similar experiences, which might point to a more serious disease. When it was time to renew my driver’s license, I told my primary care physician about my physical symptoms too, but when she found my laboratory test results satisfactory, she considered the issue resolved.

Although the symptoms didn’t disturb my everyday life significantly, they still caused me some discomfort. I was worried that I didn’t know what was behind them, so I continued my research. This is how I accidentally stumbled onto a women’s group where I came across the concept of perimenopause, the definition of which described exactly what was happening to me. I’d never heard of it before, but I was interested in every scientific viewpoint and advice in connection with it, so I deep dove into the topic. I talked about it a lot with my friends, both men and women, because I wanted to see how much they knew about it. It turned out that, just like me, they knew very little about it. It was interesting to realize how little we know about the way our bodies work and how much we distance ourselves from the changes associated with aging, even though they are just as much a part of our lives as fertility and childbearing for example.

I would be a hypocrite if I said that I accepted the fact of perimenopause immediately, because it wasn’t easy at all. “Bam, that was it, at the age of 42 I can soon say goodbye to my period, and with that maybe my femininity as well,” I thought. Through a twist of fate this happened at a time in my life when I’d come to an important point in my journey to self-awareness. I felt that after so many years I was finally using my feminine energy well. And right then it was going to come to an end. I couldn’t let that happen.

I surrounded myself with women who had an attitude to and outlook on life that was similar to mine. Not only did we have the same energy levels and social needs, but we had also all entered into the period of perimenopause. I set up a support group that anyone who’s interested can join, and its membership has been growing ever since. Although I’ve read a lot about the topic, I’m still a layman, so I strive to invite and involve experts who can help members with information that anyone can understand.

Besides creating and managing the group, I introduced certain changes into my own life as well because at first I trusted that the positive effects of changing my lifestyle would ease my symptoms too. I started taking dietary supplements, I exercised more, and I also changed my diet. There’s no secret to this, all I do is pay more attention to myself. This approach seems to be working for me for now; I believe everyone needs to find their own solution. In the long run I’m not against pharmacological treatment options either, and this flexible and open approach is what I encourage in our group as well. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring, but I find comfort in the supportive community that I am surrounded by and whose members I can always count on.