I was exhausted in a way that sleep could not fix. I was grieving. I was parenting. I was working full-time. I was trying to build something. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, my body started doing things I could not explain.
"One night I cried and laughed at the exact same time and genuinely thought I was losing my mind. I thought, they're going to take my son from me. I thought, something is deeply wrong with me."
Nothing was wrong with me. My hormones were shifting and not a single person in my life, including my doctor, had prepared me for that. I had to bring it up myself. I had to ask the questions. I had to do the research at midnight when I could not sleep.
We spend so much energy educating young women about what not to do that we never get around to preparing them for what is coming. No one talks about the months of irregular cycles before the diagnosis clicks. No one talks about how perimenopause can start in your late 30s. No one talks about collagen and vitamins and the things you should have been doing earlier that nobody told you about.
This section exists because I refuse to be the last woman who finds out too late. Whether you are in it right now, heading toward it, or raising a daughter who will face it one day, this is for you. You are not crazy. You are not alone. And you deserve actual information.