Perimenopause as a Portal: What Your Symptoms Might Be Telling You
A couple of weeks ago, I shared the idea that perimenopause is a portal—an initiation into a new phase of life.
In this week’s video, I go deeper into what that really means—and how a Chinese medicine perspective can help us orient to this transition with more insight, agency, and compassion.
The Stories We're Told About Perimenopause
If you’ve been online lately, you’ve probably noticed:
Perimenopause is having a moment.
It’s being talked about more openly, and that’s a good thing.
But what I see missing in many of these conversations is nuance. What I hear—over and over again—is a kind of adversarial relationship with our bodies, and with this season of life.
The story is often some version of:
“These symptoms are terrible. My body is betraying me. Make it stop.”
And I get that—because the symptoms can be rugged.
They can seriously take us out.
But I want to invite in a different kind of story. One rooted in curiosity, self-awareness, and even transformation.
A Chinese Medicine View: Life Leaves an Imprint
From a Chinese medicine perspective, perimenopause is not random. It doesn’t arrive without warning.
Instead, it calls our attention to the ways we’ve been living that no longer work for us—and in many cases, never did.
By the time we find ourselves in this perimenopausal window, we’ve got some solid life behind us. And that life—every part of it—has left its imprint on our bodies.
We’ve lived:
The life we were given (our constitution, genes, family systems, the culture and environment we grew up in),
And the life we’ve shaped (our work, our relationships, our coping strategies, our food, our beliefs, our movement, our boundaries—or lack of them).
All of that now lives in our tissues, our chemistry, our nervous systems.
And now, the buffer of youth is fading.
Our once-abundant reserves of Qi and Jing—the core energies that sustain us—are declining as part of a natural process. And that decline exposes what hasn’t been sustainable all along.
Symptoms as Messages, Not Enemies
What we often call “perimenopausal symptoms” are not just about hormones.
They’re also our bodies trying to get our attention.
“This way of living, this pace, this pattern—it’s not working anymore.”
The hot flashes, sleep issues, anxiety, irritability, fatigue, brain fog—yes, they’re hormonally driven. But they’re also reflective of deeper imbalances in how we’ve been nourishing ourselves (or not), in every dimension.
And so the invitation becomes:
Can we be curious?
Are we interested in asking: How did I get here?
Can we allow these symptoms to teach us something about how we’ve been living—and how we want to live moving forward?
Because there’s no going back. Perimenopause is not a detour or a traffic jam. It’s a portal into a phase of life, a new phase of being.
The Trouble With the Status Quo
So many of us understandably want to just fix the symptoms so we can get back to how things were.
But here’s the truth I see all the time in the clinic:
The status quo is often a big part of what’s making us feel so badly in the first place.
When we focus only on symptom suppression without any reflection on the ins and outs of our daily lives that led us here, we risk missing the deeper opportunity of this transition.
That doesn’t mean we don’t treat the symptoms—of course we do.
Hormones, acupuncture, herbs, supplements—they can all help.
But let’s also listen first.
Let’s allow these symptoms to be messengers, pointing us toward the changes our bodies (and maybe our lives) are asking for.
Perimenopause Is an Initiation
This is not a breakdown.
This is a crossing-over point.
A transition not just in hormones, but in identity, purpose, capacity, and clarity.
The question becomes:
How will you move through it?
And who will you become on the other side?
📺 Watch the full conversation here
Thanks for being here.
Alexa
