I didn’t get to go through perimenopause the way most women do. After my cancer treatments, I went directly into medical menopause, so I had no gradual transition — just an abrupt arrival at a destination I hadn’t known I was heading to.
I learned everything about perimenopause in reverse, after the fact, wishing someone had handed me a map.
Which is why, when Dr. Mary Claire Haver published The New Perimenopause and framed the transition not primarily as a hormonal event but as a resilience challenge, it fully resonated with me.
Because the women I’ve worked with — the ones in their late 30s and early 40s who are clearly in the middle of something — aren’t struggling because their bodies are failing them.
They’re struggling because nobody prepared them for what was coming.
And almost always, they’ve said one of these three things first.
“Not Me.”
This is the first lie, and the most convincing.
It sounds like: I’m too young for this. It’s probably just stress.
Maybe your sleep has gone sideways. Maybe you’re more anxious than you used to be, or your PMS has taken on a personality of its own. You mention it to a friend or a doctor and come away half-convinced it’s something else.
Perimenopause can begin in the late 30s, a full decade before menopause officially arrives.
Early symptoms are easy to explain away:
- Brain fog blamed on a busy budget season
- 3am wake-ups blamed on a new project
- Anxiety blamed on everything except the actual thing
The lie of “Not Me” keeps you from naming it.
And you cannot build resilience around something you refuse to see.
“Not Yet.”
This one is quieter.
It sounds like: I’ll deal with it when I get there. My friends aren’t talking about this. I’m not ready to be part of this group chat.
There’s a particular loneliness to early perimenopause. You don’t quite fit the menopause narrative — that still feels like it belongs to someone ten years older. But you don’t fit the “totally fine” narrative either, because something has clearly shifted.
So you wait in no-woman’s land, hoping the ground steadies on its own.
The women who come through this transition with the most grace are, almost without exception, the ones who started building knowledge before they felt they had to.
Preparation isn’t something you do when you arrive. It’s something you do before the wolf knocks.
“Not Now.”
This is the one I’ve thought about most, because it’s the most visceral — especially when you’re working toward achieving a goal.
She’s not questioning whether she still wants what she’s been building in her career. She’s fully invested in climbing the ladder of success.
But in the last year, something has shifted.
- Words disappear mid-sentence
- She walks into a room and forgets why
- She used to be the person who never dropped a ball — now she keeps a list just to remember what balls exist
And underneath it all runs this quiet fear: I cannot afford to lose my edge right now.
What she doesn’t yet know is that the cognitive symptoms of perimenopause — the brain fog, the focus gaps, the memory glitches — are real and documented.
They have a name.
Understanding them is what makes them navigable, and understanding them early is what keeps them from derailing everything she’s worked for.
I know this woman. I’ve been this woman, just differently.
What We Can Learn from the Story of the 3 Little Pigs
They weren’t lazy. They just underestimated what was coming.
Not Me, Not Yet, and Not Now are the houses made of straw and sticks.
They feel like reasonable shelter right up until the moment they don’t.
The brick house isn’t built in crisis. It’s built before the wolf arrives, with the right knowledge, the right community, and the kind of honest conversation that most women in their late 30s and early 40s aren’t having yet.
I wasn’t prepared. I got a different, faster version of unprepared — but the result was the same: I learned everything I needed to know after the fact, wishing someone had reached me earlier.
This is me, reaching you earlier.
Before You Close This
Which of the three has been loudest for you — Not Me, Not Yet, or Not Now?
Write it down.
Then write one sentence about what you’d do differently if you stopped believing it.
The preparation starts there.