So, I’m not getting younger. Ha!

But I don’t want to be mad about it. I don’t want to buy into the narrative around me that middle aged means done, old, shrivelled. I wouldn’t trade the solid ground I’m on for the angst of my youth.

That said, peri-menopause is kicking my butt. My doctors say I’m in very early stage, but I think, based on my symptoms and what I know now, that I started this almost 8 years ago.

The aches, the autoimmune flares, the exhaustion, the brain fog. Its all been just under the surface for years.

What’s made it worse… the stress. The burnout. How do we keep marching on and do the little things that bring joy, notice the beauty around us, when it feels hard to just get out of bed.

I’ve been reading some books lately… “Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation” by Anne Helen Petersen, “The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina – Separating the Myth from the Medicine,” by Jen Gunter, “The Serviceberry,” by Robin Wall Kimmerer, “Half-Arse Human: How to Live Better Without Burning Out,” by Leena Norms (this is over a year, again, burnout)…

I’m still nowhere. They tell me its hard. They tell me to sit with it. They tell me little steps are good. That life is bountiful. That swimming against the stream is hard.

In a world that is currently saying “move fast and break things” loudly, it is so hard to be still and present…