The Question Perimenopause Forces You to Ask
Are you living your life as your true self — or as the person you think you should be? Or as the person your partner, your children, your colleagues, or your mother expects you to be?
Most of us have never really stopped to answer that question honestly. And then perimenopause arrives — and it forces the question whether we are ready or not.
Perimenopause is not just a hormonal event. It is an identity event. The women I work with describe it in remarkably similar ways: “something has shifted, not just physically, but in how I see myself“.
The strategies and roles that once gave us life structure and meaning are starting to feel hollow. You feel like a dimmer version of yourself — or worse, like someone you do not quite recognise.
This is not a symptom to be managed. It is an invitation.
In Chinese medicine, the years of menopause are called the Second Spring — a time not of ending, but of beginning. A season in which a woman sheds what no longer belongs to her and steps into something truer, more powerful, and more herself than anything that came before.
But to get there, she first has to stop. To look inward. To ask the questions she has been too busy to ask. This preparation is a task of perimenopause.
Here are five ways to begin.
1. Hold Space for Both the Difficult and the Good and rediscover the fullness of your nature
Perimenopause brings a lot of difficult moments. Sleep that will not come. Moods that arrive without warning. A body that feels unfamiliar. It is tempting to focus entirely on managing and fixing — this being in constant problem-solving mode is a very masculine way of approaching perimenopause.
Regardless of gender we have both masculine and feminine aspects to our psyche. Masculine aspect is about perfection and structure, it is organised. Feminine aspect is about completeness, about allowing all to be present, including chaos and unpredictability. Feminine is free- flowing and creative. If you are interested in this perspective read about how I discovered tantric practices and what benefits they offer to perimenopausal women
When we are too focused on what is going wrong with our bodies during perimenopause, we may miss the bigger picture of life — which is inevitably full of both: the good and the bad, the pleasurable and the painful, the beautiful and the ugly. As women we naturally feel more relaxed and “at home” just being, instead of doing. Although the fast pace culture in which we are currently living forces us to be in a constant doing mode, to be more in our masculine.
Lack of support at home, and employers’ expectations that our output will be steady and structured like from male colleagues ignores the fact that in our nature we are not “linear” or predictable. We are naturally cyclical. During perimenopause our cyclical nature often becomes disrupted, and life that seemed to have a certain rhythm can get chaotic at times. This is just part of our nature and our physiology and we should not try to fix it for the benefit of others.
To connect with our true nature we need to make space for all. Authenticity does not only live in the hard moments. It also lives in the small, beautiful ones that we rush past because we are too focused on what is going wrong and trying to fix it.
One of the most powerful things you can practice right now is allowing both to exist simultaneously. Acknowledging what is difficult — genuinely, without minimising it — while also deliberately noticing what is still good. What still brings you pleasure. What still makes you feel like you. Regardless if those around you like it or not. Only you can know and feel what is truly you. But first you need to stop and hold all of it in your awareness, without trying to fit in or please (a habit that most women I work with have without even realising).
Focusing on the good and pleasurable in the midst of perimenopausal chaos is not toxic positivity. It is about balance. And it is one of the most underused tools for navigating this transition with grace.
Try this:
At the end of each day, name one thing that was hard (painful/ disappointing/ frustrating) — and one thing that was good (pleasurable, beautiful, relaxing, authentic). Not to cancel each other out. Just to hold both in awareness. That practice, over time, changes the lens through which you see your life.
2. Let Your Inner Knowing Guide You
We live in a world that tells women to look outward for answers. To Google symptoms. To ask doctors. To compare themselves to other women going through the same thing. And while information and community are valuable, there is something that external sources cannot give you.
Your own inner knowing.
Perimenopause is — among many other things — a time when intuition often becomes louder. When the things that no longer fit become impossible to ignore. When the life you have been living starts to feel too small, or too loud, or simply not quite right anymore.
Learning to listen to that inner voice — rather than dismissing it as hormonal — is one of the most important skills you can develop during this transition. Mindfulness and meditation create supporting conditions for that deep inner listening. Not by emptying the mind, but by quieting the noise enough to hear what is already there.
Journalling is another direct route to your inner knowing. Writing — without editing, without an audience — allows thoughts and feelings to surface that daily life keeps buried. If you have never kept a journal, there is no better time to start.
Try this:
Have a notepad or journal near your bed and straight after waking up write down the first few thoughts that come to mind. This will be a mixture of snippets from your dreams, some emotions you wake up with thinking about the day ahead, perhaps some reflections in the past day interactions or insights about what is coming up. Let the sentences flow freely, don’t censor yourself. No one else will read it, this is just for you to start making sense of your inner world and learning the language of your intuition. Things that don’t make sense today may make perfect sense in a few days/weeks time. Go over your notes once a month to see if your unconscious was warning you against certain actions or decisions. This is a great way of connecting to your inner knowing.
3. Release What No Longer Serves You
Perimenopause has a way of making certain things impossible to carry anymore. Relationships that drain you. Roles that no longer fit. Guilt you have been holding for years. A version of yourself that was built for someone else’s approval.
This is not comfortable. But it is necessary.
One of the gifts of this transition — and it is a true gift, even when it does not feel like one — is that it removes your tolerance for things that are not aligned with who you genuinely are. Your threshold for inauthenticity lowers. You become less willing to perform, to people-please, to shrink yourself to keep the peace.
This can feel like anger. Or grief. Or rage. Or a restlessness you cannot name. In my experience, it is often all 4 (at different times) and beneath them, it is clarity trying to emerge.
Try this:
To identify what is and isn’t aligned try sitting with following questions:
- What have I been carrying that was never really mine to carry? And what would it feel like to put it down?
- When am I saying “yes” while my body is secretly screaming “no”? In what circumstances, with whom, in what situations? (E.g: at home, at work, while shopping, at doctor appointments, in restaurants, with kids, parents, partner, work colleagues, friends? Etc.)
- In ideal world how would my perfect day look like for me to be in the flow? To feel relaxed and soft? To stop feeling I am constantly rushing and my to-dos are never-ending.
- What drains me and what nourishes me on a daily basis? Look at a typical week with all you commitments and responsibilities and identify what you need more or and what you need less of in your life.
4. Free Your Body — It Is Trying to Speak to You
So much of perimenopause is experienced in the body. The hot flushes. The joint pain. The exhaustion. The brain fog. The restless nights. It is easy to begin to feel that your body is the enemy — something to be endured, managed, or escaped.
But your body is not failing you. It is communicating with you.
One of the most profound shifts that can happen during this period if life is moving from a relationship of frustration with your body — why is it doing this, why can’t it just behave — to one of genuine curiosity and care. What does it need? What is it responding to? What has it been asking for, quietly, for years?
Movement that feels good — not movement done out of guilt or obligation — is part of this. Dancing, walking, swimming, yoga, stretching, lifting weights with intention. Finding ways to be in your body rather than managing it from a distance. Even things like going for a massage and being present instead of zoning out. Or self-massage with warm oil or body lotion.
Creativity belongs here too. Making something — music, food, art, writing, gardening, knitting, sawing — is one of the most direct ways to reconnect with the part of yourself that exists outside of roles and responsibilities. It’s about creating space to hear your own ideas, wishes and desires and let yourself be inspired to make something. Creativity is a form of self expression and it can flow only if we slow down and make space for it. And remember whatever you will create, it does not need to be good. It needs to be yours.
Express what is alive inside you. Whatever form that takes.
5. Practice Gratitude
I want to be careful here, because gratitude is often used in ways that dismiss real difficulty. This is not that.
Gratitude as a genuine practice — not a performance — is one of the most evidence-based tools for shifting the way the brain perceives experience. It does not make hard things easy. But it trains the mind to notice what it has been overlooking: the small kindnesses, the moments of beauty, connection, pleasure. the things that are still intact, the life happening perfectly around you.
In perimenopause, when so much feels uncertain or in flux, this matters. Not because you should pretend everything is fine. But because the mind has a natural negativity bias — it is wired to notice what is wrong — and gratitude is one of the few practices that deliberately counterbalances that tendency.
Try this:
- Write down 3 things at the end of the day. Specific, not generic. Not ‘I am grateful for my health’ but ‘I am grateful that my daughter called today, and that the coffee was good this morning, and that I managed to rest for twenty minutes without guilt.’
- Practice noticing “Glimmers” throughout your day. Program your brain to register moments that feel good, easy, spacious, light, loving, expansive, tasty, playful, spontaneous, etc. These are the moments when life is smiling at you and things just “sparkle”.
Over time, this practice does not just change what you notice. It changes who you are.
Perimenopause Is a Spiritual Transition
I say this to the women I work with, and I mean it completely: perimenopause is one of the most significant transitions in a woman’s life. Not because of what it takes away — but because of what it makes possible.
It is preparing you to become the woman you were always meant to be. The woman who you already are deep inside! — under the thick layers of societal conditioning, family expectations, pressure to please and /or conform. The one who knows herself. Who has stopped performing. Who leads from the inside rather than the outside. In many cultures and traditions, this woman is called the wisdom keeper — the elder, the one the community turns to. That is not a diminishment. That is an arrival.
Turning into such woman doesn’t take a “day” (marking 12 months since your last period), it takes a whole process of becoming. You have to do the inner work to get there. You have to be willing to pause. To look inward. To ask the questions that feel uncomfortable.
The five practices above are not a quick fix. They are an orientation. A direction to move in, consistently, over time. And they work — not because they are clever, but because they are true.
“Perimenopause doesn’t create problems. It just removes the blindfold.” — Dr Kamila Hortynska
If you would like to explore this transition more deeply — the physical, psychological, mental and spiritual dimensions of it then you should check my 5-week live online course that covers all of this in an intimate group setting. Or if you are looking for a more intimate and personalised container check 1:1 Exclusive Mentoring I offer.
🔗 LINK HERE — 5-week live programme
Or you can join my free monthly Q&A – Ask Dr Kamila: All your perimenopause questions answered in one place.
It happens every 3rd Wednesday of the month, and you can ask me anything related to perimenopause/ menopause. You don’t even need to be in perimenopause to attend. If you feel like something is off and you have questions, join here:
