Thread by @monaeltahawy

I am 4 months away from 12 months without a period and becoming post-menopausal.

I swear, if it comes back and I have to start this fucking clock again, I WILL DESTROY MANY THINGS.

One of the hardest things about this menopausal transition is anxiety. What the actual fuck?

Menopause is a transition, so I know things won't suddenly change as I emerge through peri and into postmenopause .

I was never an anxious person & I had no idea that anxiety would hit me so hard.

Now, it's a good day if I don't wake up with a crushing sense of impending doom

I realise now that when I wrote this in Nov 2020, I was referring to my anxiety:

"my mind felt like a car that was trying to drive with the hand brake on. And there was nothing to do but sit with it, screeching and all."

feministgiant.com/p/essay-fallin…

I don't remember what I used to be like and I don't know what I'm becoming. That describes my perimenopause and the pandemic.

I refuse to emerge as if unscathed. I insist that we all be scathed, that we refuse to be the people we were at the start of the pandemic/perimenopause.

I've been traveling quite a bit lately. Seeing friends for the first time since the pandemic has been a lot of catching up and when they ask me how I am, I tell them honestly that I'm perimenopausal and the anxiety is really hard.

And that I'm looking for a therapist.

Perimenopause and pandemic together has been fucking shit.

Who isn't waking up with a crushing sense of impending doom? And who hasn't been affected by grief and loss? My Beloved's father and 5 members of my extended family have died. I wrote this

feministgiant.com/p/essay-some-o…

And is it any wonder I see menopause allegories everywhere?

For example, in the wonderful and splendid Everything Everywhere All at Once because THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT PERIMENOPAUSE IS! It is everything, It is everywhere. And it is all at once. feministgiant.com/p/essay-the-me…

It is enough for me that Evelyn gets to beat people up AND have a breakdown of sorts because fuck, yes please!

That is the essence of my perimenopause on any given day.

The rollercoaster of a film that is @allatoncemovie is the 1st time I feel someone has heard and given voice to the flood of “what if’s” that perimenopause has brought as well as the physical and emotional changes we are squeezed through to emerge as the superheroes we need to be

The multiverse might not need us to save it, but our internal multiverse needs us to have a similar reckoning, to stand in the power of a self that has made it through the perimenopause and everything it threw at us, and to emerge as our own superheroes. feministgiant.com/p/essay-the-me…

For all things menopause, I'm editing the anthology #BloodyHell for @unbounders.

Help us to crowdfund it and receive a copy of the book as soon as it comes out as well as other goodies unbound.com/books/bloody-h…

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feministgiant.com

I've even implicated Nefertiti and Bruce Lee in my menopause transition.

feministgiant.com/p/essay-perime…