Confessions of a Perimenopausal Rich Auntie: When My Body Changed Before I Had the Language for It

I started my period at 10 years old.

For decades, my cycle was predictable. Five days of bleeding every 28 days, heavy cramping that eventually softened over the years into something barely noticeable. I was tuned into my body. I knew my patterns. I trusted them.

Then, around 44, things started shifting

Every 28 days became every 23 days. Then it was inconsistent — 23 days one month, 29 the next. Every December, like clockwork, my period would skip entirely. I wasn't sexually active, so pregnancy wasn't a concern. I noticed it, filed it away, and kept moving.

Then, in November 2024, my period lasted 8 days. Spotting before the flow. Spotting after. And my cycle had tightened to every 21 to 23 days. If you do that math, I was essentially bleeding every other week. I remember thinking, quietly: "Okay. It's starting."

What I didn't realize was that "starting" was about to become a full production

Over the next several months, I experienced what I can only describe as a domino effect of the most random, seemingly unrelated things happening to my body all at once. Individually, each one was manageable. Together, they had me genuinely wondering if something was seriously wrong.

It started with belly fat that wouldn't budge no matter what I did. Then brain fog and low energy that made even simple tasks feel like wading through wet concrete. Then my ear started itching in a way I couldn't scratch, with a constant feeling of water trapped inside. I started working out and what I thought was a shoulder injury turned into pain so unbearable some days I couldn't lift my arm.

I was getting dizzy during workouts. My legs started tingling. Then came the heart palpitations.

Heart palpitations??

I want you to sit with that for a second. Because when your heart starts doing things you didn't ask it to do, you don't think it's perimenopause. You think something is very, very wrong. None of these symptoms, on their own, pointed me toward the answer. And that's exactly the problem.

The clarity came from an unexpected place. I was listening to a podcast featuring Dr. Mary Claire Haver, speaking with Marie Forleo, when she mentioned that perimenopause involves not just the commonly known symptoms but over 100 potential physical and mental changes. One hundred. I had been operating as if perimenopause meant hot flashes and irregular periods. That was it. That was the whole list in my head.

The list of symptoms

I pulled up a full symptom list online and went through it line by line. The itchy ears. The dizziness. The tingling legs. The heart palpitations. The brain fog. The shoulder pain. The belly fat. Every single thing I had been experiencing was on that list. I sat there genuinely stunned. But even then, I told myself I was fine. It's not that bad yet. I'll wait.

It wasn't until my mood changed that I finally paid attention. I stopped caring about things I used to love. I felt completely flat. Not sad exactly, just nothing. I described it to my therapist as being BLAH, capital letters, because that's exactly what it was. I wondered if it was delayed grief from losing my mother the year before.

Grief doesn't follow a schedule and I was willing to blame it for everything. My therapist was the one who gently redirected me. She suggested it might be perimenopause. And that was the moment I stopped waiting and started advocating for myself.

If you're in that in-between place, here's what I wish someone had told me sooner

Learn the full symptom picture. Hot flashes are not the whole story. Dizziness, joint pain, brain fog, heart palpitations, mood changes, and even itchy ears can all be part of perimenopause. Knowing the full list helps you connect dots that otherwise feel completely unrelated.

Track everything, even the weird stuff. The symptoms that seem too random or too minor to mention are often the most telling. Write them down. Dates, patterns, frequency. That information becomes valuable when you finally sit down with a provider. Don't wait until it's unbearable. I kept telling myself it wasn't bad enough to address. That's a trap. You deserve support at every stage, not just when you've hit a wall.

Perimenopause has a way of arriving without introduction. It borrows symptoms from a dozen other conditions, changes the rules mid-game, and leaves you searching for language to describe something you didn't even know had a name. You're not falling apart. Your body is just starting a very loud new conversation. The sooner you learn to listen, the better.