Why perimenopause makes it harder to ignore what is no longer working

Yesterday afternoon, I got bitten by a dog.

Before you worry, I am okay. I am sore, annoyed and temporarily less mobile than I would like, but okay. Naturally, I have also already turned the whole thing into a life lesson, because apparently even a peaceful mountain bike ride now has to become material for my work.

The weather was beautiful, and I have become slightly obsessed with mountain biking this summer, so I set off on my usual loop. I was climbing up a grassy path leading out of my village when a woman with a large dog came towards me.

As I always do, I slowed down, made eye contact with her and said hello. She held the dog by its collar, so I assumed it was safe to ride past.

It was not.

Everything happened very quickly. The dog caught my leg, I screamed, and then almost immediately became so fucking angry. When I looked down, the wound was streaming with blood. The woman seemed to be in shock too. She was worried I might faint and took me back to her house so we could exchange details and clean my leg.

What made me so angry was not only the pain or the shock. It was the instant recognition that my day had changed. Possibly my whole week.

When you already know what comes next

I knew I had to go to the emergency room. I knew I would probably sit there for hours because the wound needed proper attention but was not life threatening. I knew it would have to be cleaned thoroughly, and I knew that cleaning it would hurt.

I also knew that allowing them to cause some pain now was the sensible thing to do if I wanted to avoid an infection and much more pain later.

Honestly, I hated the thought of all of it.

I tried to resist it and talk myself out of going. You know the conversation. It will probably be fine. It does not look that bad. I have washed it. Maybe I am making too much of it.

But underneath all the negotiating, I knew exactly what had to be done.

So I went home, washed the wound again, sat down for a while and felt very sorry for myself. Then I did the sensible thing and went to the emergency room.

While I was sitting there waiting, it was not lost on me how often we do this in other areas of our lives.

The problem is not always that we do not know what needs to change. Quite often, we know long before we are ready to admit it.

We know when a relationship has become too small or too painful. We know when our work is draining more life from us than it gives back. We know when a commitment has become a burden, when a habit is harming us or when the version of ourselves we are trying to maintain no longer fits.

We know.

What we do not always know is how to act on that truth without causing disruption.

Perimenopause lowers our tolerance for pretending

Perimenopause has a way of making this knowing much harder to ignore.

For years, many women have been very good at functioning around what is not working. We adapt, compensate, carry more, explain things away and quietly rearrange ourselves so everybody else can remain comfortable.

Then something begins to shift.

Our energy changes. Our patience becomes thinner. Our bodies stop cooperating with the life we designed twenty years ago. Things that once felt manageable begin to feel unbearable, and we can no longer summon the enthusiasm required to keep pretending everything is fine.

This is often treated as a problem. We are told we have become difficult, emotional, unreliable or intolerant.

I think something more interesting is happening.

Our tolerance for self abandonment is disappearing.

The body begins telling the truth before the mind has caught up. It refuses the pace, the relationship, the expectation or the constant availability that we may have accepted for years.

We often know what needs to change, but we also know that changing it may hurt.

It may disappoint someone. It may disrupt the family pattern. It may affect our income, our identity or the image other people have of us. It may require us to admit that something we worked very hard to build is no longer right for the woman we are becoming.

So we bargain with ourselves. We tell ourselves it is not that bad. We decide to wait a little longer. We hope the discomfort will disappear without asking anything from us.

Sometimes it does.

And sometimes we are simply postponing the cleaning of the wound.

The painful step may prevent the deeper pain

There are moments when doing the right thing feels deeply inconvenient.

We know the conversation needs to happen. We know the boundary needs to be set. We know the work needs to change, the pace needs to slow or the commitment needs to end.

We also know that taking that step may cause pain, for us and perhaps for other people too.

That does not automatically mean the step is wrong.

Sometimes the discomfort belongs to the healing. Sometimes the short term disruption is what prevents the deeper damage. Sometimes the thing we are avoiding is not the pain itself, but the admission that our life cannot continue in quite the same way.

This does not mean making reckless decisions or burning everything down in a moment of frustration. It means being honest about what you already know and stopping the endless search for an answer that feels easier.

The truth is, we often know long before we are willing to act.

Perhaps the work is not finding more information, another expert or a better reason. Perhaps it is becoming willing to trust the answer that has been quietly sitting inside us all along.

Where in your life are you currently trying to convince yourself that it will probably be fine?

With so much love & respect,

Sharonah x