Perimenopause, Menopause, and the Christian Woman

“And I asked my daughter to clean her room, and she looks at me and goes, ‘I said later, okay?’—and I just—I saw red and I never cuss and I just…I…I cussed!”

“My ears just itch all the time.  Literally all the time.  I never even though about my ears, and now they itch all the time.”

“I don’t know when this happened.  One day I was just—I’m making eggs, but my knee also hurts?  Why? Why does everything just hurt all the time now?”

“I just started crying in the middle of the store.  I had no reason.  I’ was just…existentially sad or something. I’m so sad, and I have no reason to be.  I’m not sure.”

“My husband banished himself to the couch.  He said I heat up the whole bed.  He said I was being ridiculous when I asked to turn the thermostat down to sixty.”

“I’m just…done.  Everything has changed, but nothing has changed.  My whole life has changed, or I’m ready to change it.  I’m anxious non-stop about everything, and nothing. Nothing feels right.”

All of these comments, with slight identifying changes, were made by women my age and women I know well in a recent discussion on perimenopause.  Someone grew bold enough to mention the word, a brief silence settled—and then the dam broke.

Weird aches.  Emotional surges of profound grief or profound anger or profound apathy.  Sleeping pattern changes.  Ear itches.  Temperature swings.  A restless desire for change, or to create, or to start something new.  Renewed frustration over old irritations. Anxiety. Depression.

Welcome to perimenopause and menopause.

These were not terms I knew as a young women.  And even when I heard about the concept later on, it never came up as biological process but as the umbrella term for a series of quirky behaviors:  the reason one of my school teachers emerged from her classroom and walked right into a near-blizzard to cool down or why my uncle kept the thermostat on 62 for his wife.

But I am now forty-three, walking into “peri” myself, and I am thinking about what this means for me as a Christian woman. 

For those who may not know, menopause is when a woman’s menstruation stops: it’s a natural change that occurs over a period of time, and involves other changes in hormones, body fat, skin, and bone mass.  Perimenopause is the transitional period into menopause, marked by some of the initial shifts in hormones and symptoms that result. 

Both of these make for a tough time.  Not just because of what they represent—the end of fertility and, consequently, aging—but because of the symptoms that hormonal changes and bodily changes can cause. A friend of mine joked recently that everyone expects teenage girls to be moody, but we’re much less prepared for it from middle-aged women.

And I’ll be honest: nothing I learned in church ever prepared me for it.

As a young woman, my sexual education in the churches I attended could be summed up with the phrase don’t have sex.  I learned about modesty and chastity and the dangers of fornication; my mother took care of the details surrounding my period; health classes helped me understand what was actually going on in my body.  And then after I got married everything just sort of stopped, as though—having made it to the goal without having gotten pregnant or had premarital sex—I had graduated from those earthly concerns. 

So no one, except the women I knew who discussed it in whispers when I was young and frank conversations as we all hit the same milestones together, told me about perimenopause or menopause or what any of it might mean.

Knowing matters.   The rapid changes in hormones and in the body impact everything: our moods, our attitudes, how we understand ourselves and our families, our faith, all of it.  My therapist tells me that 70% of her new clients are women in their forties to sixties, overwhelmed by a surge of feelings they don’t know how to handle: anger, heightened anxiety, deeper sadnesses, irritation.

And that’s not all of it.  Women can struggle with forgetfulness and discomfort during these times.  Temperature changes and bodily aches and lack of sleep can change how we’re able to show up and frustrate us when we want to show up.  Minor irritants we used to overlook can seem huge and glaring, and tempt our patience and godly perseverance; we don’t know how our body is going to impact us on any given day.

I would also argue that this is a time of great spiritual possibility and temptation for women.  We find ourselves grappling with questions about legacy and impact: what we’ve done, what we want to do, what we wish had or hadn’t happened.  Old patterns and relationships may not feel comfortable as we adapt and develop.  The things that always seemed to work (or sometimes the things we merely tolerated) no longer work or we lose our tolerance for them; feelings of longing and restlessness can prompt creativity and generative work.  These shifts and fluctuations can inspire a lot of positive change, help bring us closer to God and to others.  They can also do the opposite, if we’re not mindful or thoughtful about what’s going on with us.

During this time, my solace has been in other women who understand.

We are all women of faith.  We have all found, in our churches, no real material or guidance on this topic.  And so we get together and talk and, as a part of our normal conversations, trade tips and tricks and what we’ve learned.  We ask about estrogen patches and interrogate those who have tried them; we compare brands of melatonin gummies; we talk about techniques to combat anger and insomnia; we quietly pass on therapist’s names. We emphasize the importance of strength training and good foods and staying flexible; we help each other start new ventures or remain stable through fraught periods with spouses and children. We talk about how to pray and we pray for each other; we find Scriptures that help; we laugh our way through the weirdness.

If you are a Christian woman going through this, you’re certainly not alone.  And it’s not distinct from your faith walk, as though whatever’s going on in your body has no bearing on your soul.  It all matters.  Even if churches don’t necessarily have the resources to address this time in your life, that doesn’t mean there are no options.  The women around you, who are your age, are sharing the same experience.  Reach out.  Retain a sense of humor.  Ask some questions.

Caring for the spirits of women matters as much in their midlife years as it does in their early ones.  Naming that need, and meeting it, is a vital ministry.