Perimeno-PAUSED
A little over a week ago, I lost my job.
It happened on a Tuesday afternoon. We were asked to vacate the building for a plumbing issue, and about half an hour later we watched as, one by one, each of us was cut off from our systems, like Apoc and Switch being unceremoniously unplugged from The Matrix.
At first, I felt relieved.
When I thought I was getting laid off the week before, I’d made all these exciting plans for what to do next, so when it didn’t happen, I was a little disappointed. Turns out I didn’t have to sit with that feeling for long.
And before you think me crazy for being excited about getting a break from having a job, please understand this. Friday, January 16th was my first day being unemployed in almost 29 years. It’s exciting to feel like the master of my own destiny.
Yes, I’m relieved that I no longer have to go into an office more than 50 miles from my home to work for a man who has too much money and is solely motivated by greed and an addictive personality. (Had I found out who he was sooner, I would have had to quit, and then I’d be ineligible for unemployment.)
But along with the relief comes the feeling that something is missing. Or rather, that I am missing something.
I wake up every morning thinking I’m late for a meeting, or panicked that I’m somehow unprepared for my day.
Twenty-nine years of leadership, motherhood, and a life focused on care for others has left me dysregulated and unfamiliar with this new sensation of freedom, which could easily be mistaken for a lack of purpose and become a real drain on my motivation.
Which is ironic, because I have a Monday.com board full of shit to do.
This newfound freedom arrives at the same moment my relationship with myself, the world, and society is already shifting in a deeply significant way. I’m approaching middle age and moving through the second puberty of uterus-havers known as perimenopause.
Everything our Boomer mothers taught us about menopause could fit in a Dixie cup. We thought it meant the end of periods plus hot flashes. We figured we’d drink a lot of iced tea, start wearing personal fans, and call it good. Perimenopause never entered the conversation.
But now, looking back, it explains a lot. Why some of our mothers, as they entered their forties, started doing things that seemed out of character. Or maybe even a little unhinged. They weren’t crazy. They were just fiending for estrogen.
Now our Gen Z kids are teaching us how to lean into one another for support, and we have a lot to say.
Like how, for the first forty or so years of our lives, society groomed us to be beautiful, capable mothers, perfectly happy to take on the invisible labor of caring for a home, raising children, maintaining harmony at work, staying desirable partners, remaining interesting humans, and actually doing our jobs. Doing more with less. And we did.
Women continue to rise to the occasion of increasingly impossible expectations. And once those expectations become the standard, our bodies begin to revolt. We stop sleeping through the night. We lose control of our temperature. Chemical changes in our brains trigger wild mood swings. We experience anxiety. We lose hair. Our appetite changes. Our skin changes. Our monthly cycle goes from a gentle stream to a torrential river. Our weight fluctuates. Our sex drive changes.
On and on and on.
We’re not crazy.
We’re relearning who we are and finding a new normal. And we’re not going to be made invisible while we do it.
We are survivors and sages. We know ourselves well enough now to understand what we will and will not compromise. We choose what nourishes us. We cherish the relationships that matter, and we release the ones that require us to abandon ourselves. And we give ourselves permission to rest.
This season comes with challenges, sure, but it comes with superpowers too.
We are wiser. Our bullshit detectors are finely tuned. We’ve learned how to let go of what isn’t meant for us and attract what is. We are that woman in total control of herself: the village crazy lady, the siren, the soothsayer, the mystic.
And yes, we are changing. But I’m not going to blink out of The Matrix because someone else has decided I’m no longer useful.
I’m going to rewrite the program.
I’m going to slough off the cells that no longer serve me. Strip away the outdated code and write something new. Because this is the most powerful time, the time when we still have agency, still have capability, still have health, still have strength. And we know who we are, or at least we’re brave enough to be figuring it out.
The world is deeply unprepared for how we will show up when we show up in mass. History makes that clear.
I’m not going to sit idly by and watch myself be unplugged from The Matrix. I’m going to become the master of my own destiny and rewrite the code.
First, I’ll be like Trinity and download a few new experiences.
First, I’ll be like Trinity and download a few new experiences.
Then I’ll be like Neo.
