Are you there God? It’s me, perimenopausal Menaka

Perimenopause is clearly having its moment now, and long may it last. More and more women are talking about their symptoms, experiences, and how they’re charting a way forward.
| Photo Credit: Getty Images

Last week, I asked Google if itchy breasts were the result of wearing a poor quality bra, or perimenopause. Then I conducted an in-depth investigation into the ties between falling hair and falling estrogen levels. On Reddit.

Soon after, ChatGPT and I had a tete-a-tete about poor memory. Was I struggling to remember someone’s name because I wasn’t paying attention when we were introduced, or because of perimenopause?

‘Honestly, it could be either or neither!’ the chatbot responded. Very helpful.

I find myself asking the internet a lot of questions about perimenopause. It started last year, while working on a project that touched upon menstrual and menopausal health in the workplace. While the women on the team took great pleasure in schooling the men about menstruation, we quickly realised how woefully inadequate our own knowledge around menopause was.

And so, down a terrifying rabbit hole I went, reading about everything I could find that was menopause related: from brain fog and anxiety, to vaginal dryness and night sweats of biblical flood proportions. It seemed as if any and all horrific things a woman might experience with regards to her physical or mental health post the age of 35 might be because of menopause. Or, as the chatbot told me—it might not.

When All Fours blew up group texts

It was around the same time that I read Miranda July’s All Fours. Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize in fiction this year, The New York Times called it “the first great perimenopause novel”. It was being hotly discussed among select groups of urban women in their 40s back then, thanks to a newfound ease about sharing midlife experiences. The book’s protagonist is a 45-year-old artist who abandons her plans to drive from LA to New York solo soon after embarking on the trip, only to check into a motel room not far from her own home.

Miranda July’s All Fours.

In the first part of the book, she transforms the room into a jewel-like sanctuary, and then begins an affair with the decorator’s husband, a younger man who has dreams of becoming a dancer while working at the local Hertz rental. The novel is tender, deliciously dirty, and outrageously funny, raising questions around desire, libido, longing and freedom that were at times uncomfortable and at others, felt like a clarion call. But it was the second half that stayed with me, where the protagonist’s female friends shared their own experiences around perimenopause.

These were lived experiences that July herself gathered while writing the book. It echoed many of the women’s stories I’d read online on discussion forums. There was a real sense of pain, shame, anger, and often bafflement underpinning their experiences. ‘Why did no one warn me this was coming?’ many of them asked.

Midlife Margaret

Perimenopause is clearly having its moment now, and long may it last. More and more women are talking about their symptoms, experiences, and how they’re charting a way forward. And while there’s a slew of recently published books on dealing with menopause, the one that I’d like to read, would be a sequel to Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. Just as dear Margaret helped a pre-teen me find a safe space to grapple with topics like periods and bras, I’m sure her 43-year-old self is the right medium to comprehend just why my body feels like it’s on fire every now and then.

Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret

But since the likelihood of this is low, my Instagram feed is standing in as an often highly unreliable source of information. I do not recommend this unless you’re willing to wade through reels in which women dance, work out and chug protein shakes while offering up a certain kind of perimenopause related-content: seven top tips to stop night sweats, five supplements to ease perimenopause, the single exercise you need to do to lose weight and build muscle, why Japanese women have less pronounced perimenopausal symptoms and how you can copy them. Wait, is that cultural appropriation? Hang ne a second while I ask Google.

The writer is a children’s book author and columnist based in Bengaluru.