As a 43-year-old woman, I am coming to the full realization that this is officially midlife, and it happens when you least suspect it.

Literally, all of these random symptoms started creeping in right around the time I turned 40, and I honestly never thought it would happen to me so soon. It felt like someone flipped a switch overnight, and suddenly my body didn’t feel like my own anymore.

As I navigate these tumultuous, unpredictable, up-and-down waters of perimenopause, I’m having to learn how to nourish and treat my body all over again. I can’t eat like the teenager I used to be and still get away with it. Ever since COVID, my weight shifted. While I’m still relatively small, I’m not as slim as I used to be or as I sometimes wish I were, but at the end of the day, I am deeply grateful for my health and what my body carries me through.

Perimenopause does a lot to a woman, physically, mentally, and emotionally, that so many people just don’t understand. In fact, a lot of women don’t even fully realize what’s happening to them until they are right in the middle of it.

And to the men in our lives: please understand that perimenopause is not some made-up phrase. Just because the term wasn’t widely thrown around years ago doesn’t mean the experience didn’t exist. Our mothers and grandmothers may have suffered in silence because society expected them to, but I refuse to do that.

When I’m not feeling like myself, I am going to speak up, not to complain, but out of basic respect and communication, so you understand what my system is going through. I’m not just “in a mood.” My body is going through a massive biological rewrite.

If society can give teenagers grace, patience, and understanding while their hormones rage and shift, why can’t we offer that same empathy to women navigating menstrual cycles, perimenopause, and menopause? Why are we expected to just tuck ourselves away and pretend everything is fine when our bodies are forever changing?

If the expectation is for women to quietly endure this transition without a word, consider this my official notice: I shall not suffer in silence.