(Peri)Menopause: When Your Hormones Party at 3 a.m. and Your Soul Wants a New Life

Fatigue without any obvious reason. Waking up at three in the morning with a vague sense of anxiety. Or finally gaining clarity about an unbalanced relationship.

Welcome to perimenopause, the transitional phase before menopause. It can last for several years and for some women begins as early as their late 30s or early 40s. Some women experience significant symptoms, while others experience hardly any.

Perimenopause and menopause are not just hormonal transitions. They are turning points where parts of our identity often begin to fall away and no longer seem to fit. Physical changes meet a stage of life in which many of us start taking stock. Even our clothes can feel as though they belong to another version of us. You may find yourself wondering: How did I get here? How did I lose myself along the way?

What happened to the women who were once confident, creative and alive? The ones who had their driving licence at 18, earned their first salary at 20 and moved into their first flat at 21. Who rescued cassette tapes with a pencil and danced to house music in gay clubs from midnight until the early hours because that was where freedom and authenticity could finally be felt. They went there to dance, not to be chatted up.

The women who may have taken on far too much responsibility from childhood onwards. Who travelled alone, sought out life abroad, explored scenes and subcultures, carried the world in their hearts and always had some sense that life had to be bigger than what they had been taught since primary school. Women who dreamed, simply set off, worked and lived. All without a mobile phone, GPS or the internet – equipped only with intuition, common sense and an answering machine on a landline.

Our generation – the 70s girls, 80s divas and 90s explorers – learned to be everything: working women and career women with an extraordinary work ethic, fair partners, multitasking mothers, emotionally intelligent, spiritually awake, environmentally conscious, endlessly patient and effortlessly beautiful. All while remembering birthdays, waxing our legs, meditating and making sure to buy organic food.

No wonder some of us eventually sit there thinking: Hang on. Who exactly decided that I’m responsible for all of this?

Many became the CEOs of their families, carrying the mental load, the emotional load and sometimes even the financial load. Some took on tasks, responsibilities and emotional work for years that, in a partnership, should really be carried by two people. Three things at once really is asking too much. Even the Kinder Surprise advert knew that back in the early 90s.

What happens within a relationship as a result differs from couple to couple. But when a woman begins to recognise her own needs, boundaries and desires more clearly, it can become visible just how much she has been carrying, compensating for or keeping going.

And this is exactly where midlife can become uncomfortable. Because suddenly, some things that worked for a long time no longer work. Or because we are no longer willing to pay the same price for them. Perhaps we have spent years explaining, compensating, organising, mediating, waiting or seeing potential. Perhaps we functioned brilliantly and barely noticed how far we had moved away from ourselves.

This generation of women has lived enough, cried enough, adapted enough and been through enough dark nights of the soul to perhaps eventually say: I am ready to choose myself. Their tolerance is shrinking. Their desire for authenticity is growing. And then the soul really does speak up and say: “This next chapter has to be mine.”

Of course, an entirely new life does not have to begin at 50. But the time we have left no longer feels quite as theoretical as it did at 25. And that can set quite a few things in motion.

Clarification begins to feel unavoidable.What do I actually still want to experience?What do I no longer want to carry?Which relationships genuinely nourish me?Where am I simply functioning?What have I known for a long time, only to keep overriding it?And what still wants to be lived through me?

Menopause does not automatically answer these questions. Hormones are not spiritual oracles. But this stage of life can awaken a deeper felt awareness in which these questions – and especially our inner knowing – become harder to ignore. And perhaps there really is something initiatory in that. Not for every woman and not in the same way. But for some women, the physical transition comes with a much wider transition in life.

Are you one of them?

Perhaps you wake up at three in the morning because your hormones are having a party. But perhaps there is also something in your life that finally wants your attention. And perhaps it is both.

Menopause can be a pretty good opportunity to start taking yourself seriously again. And to look at what the next chapter of your life could look like – or rather, what it needs to look like if you want to remain true to yourself.

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Originally published: 25. November 2025 for Atelier Ananda Revised: 29. September 2026