There’s a very specific moment in a woman’s life where a door opens and she can suddenly see herself. The patterns she ran to be liked. The over-giving. The holding-it-all-together. And once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it. That moment often gets labelled as “I’m falling apart”. What if it’s actually the start of your upgrade?

When awareness arrives, the old can’t stay

Awareness is rarely polite. It doesn’t say, “Whenever you’re ready, we can stop people-pleasing.” It flips the light on and shows you, clearly, “This way of living doesn’t match your truth anymore.” And because we can’t change 20+ years of conditioning in an afternoon, we dip. We feel low, emotional, tired. That’s not weakness — that’s your system trying to reorganise around a truer version of you.

Your body knows the pattern – dip → leap

We see it in children all the time: they get unsettled or sick right before a big milestone. First steps, first words, a new level of independence. Their body is upgrading. Perimenopause works the same way. Hormones shift, emotions surface, identities wobble — not because you’re broken, but because your body is saying “we don’t run the old programme anymore”.

The tower has to clear for you to lead

Midlife isn’t the end of your influence — it’s the beginning of your real one. But you can’t guide others, your family, or your community into the future from an overworked, under-nourished, people-pleasing self. So life creates a “tower moment”. Things that used to work stop working. Relationships change. Your tolerance for nonsense drops. That’s the clearing. The question to hold is: what is this season trying to make space for? Because the answer is usually: you. You, centred. You, in your power. You, resourced.

If this is the season you’re in, don’t rush to “fix” it. Name the pattern. Let your body recalibrate. And choose to see perimenopause as the sacred breakdown before the breakthrough. And if you want to talk about it, I am here to listen. 

Much love

Sharonah x