Perimenopause…“Why didn’t anybody tell me it would be like this?”

I hear these words often. They come from women who are strong, capable and educated. Women who have navigated careers, relationships, motherhood, loss and everything in between. Yet when their bodies begin to change, they find themselves bewildered. Lost. Angry even.

“Why didn’t anybody tell me it would be like this?”

There is a seething anger in the question, but there is also grief. Because the truth is, women used to know. They learned by sitting together, listening to and watching the women who had walked this path before them. They knew what to expect, not because someone handed them a pamphlet, but because stories were shared over cups of tea, beside fires, while tending children or gardens, or food.

That thread of shared knowledge passed from elder to younger, from experience to curiosity, has been quietly lost, shamed and made taboo.

The silence between generations

When I speak with women in their 40’s and 50’s, many describe feeling unprepared. Their mothers never spoke of perimenopause or the years that lead up to it. Their grandmothers didn’t either. It simply wasn’t done.

In most families, menopause was private, something to endure quietly and move through without complaint. The focus was on coping, not understanding.

As a result, we have generations of women entering this stage of life without a map. They arrive in the middle of night sweats, brain fog, emotional surges and physical changes, desperately wondering if they are the only ones who feel this way.

The silence has cost us dearly. It has left many women feeling isolated in a transition that was never meant to be walked alone.

We were meant to learn by watching

For most of human history, women did not need to ask “why didn’t anyone tell me?” because they had already seen it.

They had watched their mothers, aunties, sisters and elders move through this transition. They witnessed the shift in energy, the turning inward, and the wisdom that deepened. They understood, through story and observation, that this stage was natural and necessary.

Through the seasons of womanhood, menopause was not a diagnosis or a list of symptoms. It was a transition, one that marked a shift in role and perspective. Women moved from caretakers to teachers, from giving to guiding. Their community recognised the value of that change, and celebrated it.

Now, in a world that moves quickly and prizes youth above all else, that kind of observation is rare. Many women are surrounded by peers but disconnected from their elders. The red thread of shared experience has been broken, and the result is confusion, where there once was clarity.

The return of women’s circles

As women gather in Circle again, something ancient is reawakening.

There is no hierarchy. No one comes as an expert. We come as women, each at a different point in our herstory, each holding a piece of the red thread that is asking to be rewoven, a reflection of another and ourselves.

In that space, we remember what we have forgotten. 

It is there in our sisters' faces,

It is there in our stories,

It is there in our bones and our blood,

Our bodies re-member.

A woman in her 60’s might speak about the relief of no longer needing to please everyone. A woman in her 40’s might speak about the exhaustion of doing exactly that. Another might share how she navigated the anxiety, the sleeplessness and the shifting identity that menopause brought.

These conversations are not clinical. They are deeply human. They create belonging and reweave sisterhood. They remind us that we are part of a lineage, not an experiment.

When we listen to each other, we learn in ways that textbooks and lab results cannot teach.
We learn that what feels confusing is often common. We learn that wisdom comes through experience, not avoidance. And we learn that being witnessed, truly witnessed, is profoundly healing.

Rebuilding connection through story

In Circle, one story becomes many.

The woman who arrives feeling alone, begins to see herself in the faces around her. She realises she is not broken or behind. She is simply changing, as she always has done, and as countless women have done before her.

This is the power of shared experience. It does not erase the discomfort or the symptoms, but it reframes them. It turns fear into understanding. It replaces shame with empathy.

Something else happens too, younger women begin to listen. They start to understand that what lies ahead is not something to dread, but to prepare for. And in hearing the stories of older women, they gain language, tools and trust in their own bodies.

This is how the silence begins to lift.

The medicine of being together

There is a kind of medicine that only exists when we sit together with other women in community. It is not found in a bottle or a supplement, though those also have their place. It is found in laughter that breaks tension, in tears that are received without judgement, in the collective sigh of relief when someone says, “me too.”

In Circle, the nervous system softens. The need to perform or to fix, dissolves. We begin to lean into truth. We see that healing is not always about doing more, but about being met where we are.

These gatherings remind us that wellbeing is not only a solo pursuit. It grows in relationship with each other, with nature and with ourselves.

Reclaiming what was lost

The question of “why didn’t anybody tell me?” carries the ache of generations. It speaks to a world that values independence over interdependence, productivity over presence. But it also points the way forward.

Because once you recognise that silence, you can choose to end it. You can begin by speaking openly with friends, sisters, aunties, daughters or mothers. You can join or create spaces where stories are shared again. You can become the woman who tells others what she wished she had known.

When women remember how to sit together, something shifts collectively. We reclaim wisdom that was never truly gone, only quietened. And in doing so, we create a different inheritance for the next generation - one where knowledge flows freely, where transitions are honoured and where no woman has to ask why she was left unprepared for any stage of her womanhood.

The conversation continues

If you have found yourself wondering why no one told you what to expect, consider that you were meant to hear it from other women, not in whispers, but in deep, held and loving connection. 

Find a Circle. Start one. Share what you have learned, even if your voice shakes. We need your voice. There is power in your story and another sister is waiting to hear it.

Because the real work of perimenopause is not just in understanding our hormones, but in restoring what we have lost - our community and the language and the deep self-acceptance that comes from being seen.

Kerri Alexander ~ Naturopath & Herbalist
Supporting women through all stages of womanhood - in clinic, in circle and in community.