What Perimenopause Has Taught Me About Power, Rage, and Permission
When the body says, “We’re not doing it this way anymore.”
When the body says, “We’re not doing it this way anymore.”
I first knew I was entering perimenopause not through a lab result or a Google search, but because I felt foreign in my own body.
Stress didn’t make sense anymore.
My nervous system felt constantly hijacked.
My thoughts looped in ways I couldn’t control.
My body—this body I had spent years learning to trust—suddenly felt like a stranger.
But it was the rage that truly startled me.
It came in fast, unrelenting waves. Small things, harmless comments, dishes left out, unmet expectations, would send me spiraling into a kind of fury that felt ancient. Primal.
And often, beneath that rage, was fear.
People I once felt safe with started to feel threatening.
I couldn’t trust myself, and I definitely couldn’t trust others.
And even in those moments, when I was spinning, spiraling, dissociating, I knew:
I wasn’t protecting myself. I was losing myself.
Here’s what the world teaches us about aging, especially as women:
Age “gracefully” (don’t look old.)
Be “young at heart.” (don’t be too serious)
Keep moving. (Don’t let it catch up to you.)
Aging is fine. (unless you’re a woman.)
Because if you’re a woman, aging is synonymous with becoming less:
Less fertile.
Less desirable.
Less relevant.
Less valuable.
Your body becomes something to joke about, fix, or mourn.
No one teaches us that perimenopause is a rite of passage—one that cracks you open; one tells you that it might be the first time in your life that your body says, “Enough. We are not doing it this way anymore.”
I’ve come to understand that the rage isn’t the problem.
It’s the messenger.
It’s the built-up grief of a lifetime of over-functioning, of putting myself last, of nodding along when I wanted to scream. It’s the unspoken contracts I made with perfectionism, politeness, and performance. It’s every time I smiled when I wanted to walk away.
Perimenopause didn’t create the rage.
It just took away my ability to ignore it.
It revealed the places where I was still betraying myself.
And in that way, it has been less of a crisis—and more of an initiation.
I used to think power looked like pushing through.
Black coffee. Three hours of sleep. A full calendar. No complaints.
Now I know:
Power is in the pause.
Power is softness.
Power is saying no before you’re on the edge of collapse.
Perimenopause has forced me to stop pretending.
To be honest about my needs.
To rest without guilt.
To grieve the identities I’ve outgrown.
To remember that tenderness is not the opposite of strength, it’s the birthplace of it.
And maybe the biggest revelation of all:
This softness? This honesty? This reclamation?
It was never just for this season.
It was needed all along.
If you're here—somewhere in the in-between, raw and disoriented—I want to offer you this:
You are not falling apart.
You are shedding.
You are remembering.
You don’t have to earn rest.
You don’t have to justify your boundaries.
You don’t need to be palatable, agreeable, or put-together.
You get to take up space in all your contradictions: powerful and soft, angry and clear, grieving and growing.
This is your becoming.
With care,
Sahar
If you’re interested in learning more about the impact of perimenopause, and what we can do about, you can join me for an in depth workshop in June. Learn more and register here.