Cassiey, 52. I can start to take care of myself now.

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Brain fog and hot flashes

I started noticing some things, but I never thought it was perimenopause or menopause. It started with my thinking—like, I can’t hold a thought in some of my meetings. I’ve never been like that, but I just thought “OK, it’s just because I’m tired.” Then all of a sudden we’d be outside working and I’d just get so hot, I just blow up. That usually doesn’t happen to me but we’re outside, I’m working, I’m getting hot.

And then over the last couple of weeks, I start waking up in the middle of the night and I’m on fire. I have to take off my clothes. I have to stand in from of the air conditioner. I look over and my husband’s sleeping and I think “How did I get so hot? I must have had too many covers on.” I kept making up all these excuses.

Menopause hit quickly

It felt like it hit in the middle of the night. Versus, you know, feeling like “I’m going through some stages here, I’m going to go out and investigate and come up with a plan.” It didn’t go that way. It went from nothing over two weeks. I didn’t know that was possible. I’m going to see my family physician in a couple of weeks and they’re probably going to say “You’ve been having symptoms, you just didn’t know that you were.” But to me it was like nothing happened until really two weeks ago.

This doesn’t feel like a journey

So when it hit me, I tried to think of every other reason it could be happening versus thinking it could be related to menopause. When I was getting woken up in the middle of the night, I was pissed about it because it was waking me up. I wasn’t realizing this is the next step of my life—I just felt like, “I can’t do this. I have a full-time job. I have to be on tomorrow, I have to look nice tomorrow.” It was more of a thing being done to me than part of my journey.

I can start to take care of myself now

My youngest daughter moves to college in exactly two weeks. So that’s been my excuse for my weight gain. Not eating well because, you know, I have to fix something different for the family. That’s my excuse for not having time to work out. So my excuse is leaving. I need to sit down and really figure out how I’m gonna build some of this stuff into my life because my kids have been my convenient excuse to not take care of myself these last five years.

On seeing my last child leave the house

I hate to see the kids go, a little bit, but I really like to see the kids go because I want to see them be successful. I want to see them have families. I want them to see life, figure life out.

I want to experience being an empty nester. It’s been so long since I’ve been there. I don’t know if I know what I’m supposed to do, you know? So I’m really looking forward to that. I’m looking forward to going and visiting my kids versus having them live with me. I think that’s going to be awesome. Getting some time where if we want to go on vacation in the middle of February, we can because the kids are doing their own thing. So looking at that next step is exciting.

I can cook whatever I want

I’m looking forward to being able to cook SPAM fried rice if I want to and not have the kids say, “Gross. I can’t eat that.” You know, I think that part is going to be fabulous because right now planning meals is just—I want to choose for myself sometimes. If I want to have a bowl of cereal for dinner… That would be fabulous. So, I’m looking forward to all of this.

It’s harder to take good care of yourself when life is busy

Up until the age of about 40, I was what I would consider very active—bicycling, playing volleyball, all kinds of stuff. We were just outdoor active. About the time I hit 40 my kids became overly involved in school. They were in all the sports.

So we developed this habit of: working all day, immediately going to the ball field, spending 23 hours there. We’re starving. We grab something on the way home and then we do homework and go to bed.

So we created some really unhealthy habits because it was easy. It was convenient. And we’re still in it. I’m still in it. We usually plan our meals at night for the next day, so we eat a healthy dinner but it’s all that other stuff. I don’t sit down on Sunday and plan out my lunches for the whole week like I see people doing.

It’s like you go into a restaurant and you get a menu that’s five pages long and there are too many choices. I feel like that’s kind of how I’ve developed some of my bad habits—there are so many easy choices that you have to be very dedicated to pick a non-easy choice. And I can admit it. I would go for the easy choices during the week.

And so, I didn’t use up my weekends doing exercise and I just got out of exercising, so my muscles deteriorated a little bit. I put on weight and now it’s three times as hard to get going again because I’m carrying around extra weight. It’s just a habit.

Coming to terms with my changing body

You now have to learn how to deal with these new parts of your body that are bone spurs and arthritis. It’s like, “Who are you?” Mentally, I’m not old enough to have this. Physically, it’s a different story. So I’m learning how to get through that and not have it limit my life negatively.

That was some of the cognitive behavioral stuff I went through. I had some lower back pain and thought, “I don’t want this, I want it gone.” They had to teach me it’s not going to be gone. This is part of your life going forward, we just need to make it not impact your life. Here are the exercises you need to do and here’s how you do things differently.

So, learning that your body is changing is probably the hardest thing. Last time my body changed, I got boobs—that was awesome. Now, my body’s changed and now I’ve got bone spurs and arthritis. Not awesome.

My body image has taken a hit

My body changes are super destabilizing to me. My husband doesn’t agree with that, though, thank God. But I haven’t figured out how to be happy with myself in this period of my life, I guess.

The good part of midlife is also the bad part

You realize life is limited, right? You’ve always known life is limited you start thinking, “Am I going to live another 50 years?” Probably not. So, what is most valuable to me now? What do I want to do? How do I extend my years?” I don’t want to be gone at 60. So I think that is the good part of this. How do I stay around to see my grandchildren?

The bad part of it is realizing I’m not going to live another 50 years and that adds more stress because I’m still working full time. My husband’s still working full time. We know where we want to be when we retire, but do we need to be there? We don’t need a ginormous house. We don’t need a new car. We don’t need to keep up with the Smiths. How do we really enjoy life?

I think hitting 50 was kind of like, “Cool, we’re here.” It’s great. I’m looking forward to the next 50 but at the same time it’s like, “Oh shit, we’re here.”

No more period party

I’m OK not having a period. When that thing stops, I’m all over it. That’s going to be a celebration right there. I may have to invite my friends and celebrate.