Note to readers: This piece contains honest discussion of menopause, body changes, intimacy, and emotional loss
Some changes announce themselves loudly, and then there are the ones that arrive quietly and take everything with them.
This is the kind you feel first in the small moments. In the way your body feels when you wake up. In the hesitation before getting dressed. In the pause before you move, wondering if today will be easier or harder than yesterday. It lives in the background at first, an ache you can’t quite name, a discomfort you tell yourself you’ll deal with later, a sense that something familiar has shifted without asking your permission.
Menopause doesn’t knock.
It settles in. I take that back. It takes everything without permission.
It changes how your body holds itself in the world. How you walk through a room. How do you relate to your own skin? It’s the quiet awareness that your body is no longer operating on the rules you’ve known your entire life, and no one sat you down to explain the new ones.
You start paying attention to things you never had to think about before. Fabric against skin. The temperature of a room. How long can one sit still before needing to move? You notice the weight in your chest when you try to talk about it…and don’t, you can’t. The words stall somewhere between your throat and your heart because you don’t know how to explain what you’re feeling without sounding dramatic, broken, or ungrateful for a body that is still technically “working.” It’s knowing you need to be vulnerable, to be able to get it out so you can breathe, but that vulnerability can’t get past the padlock that no longer has an accessible key.
On the outside, you look the same. You show up. You smile. You keep life moving forward. From a distance, nothing seems wrong.
Inside, you’re navigating something deeply personal and profoundly destabilizing, alone.
There is grief here. So. Much. Grief. Confusion. A quiet panic that comes from realizing you are losing parts of yourself you didn’t know were fragile. There is the fear of being misunderstood, dismissed, or not believed if you say the wrong thing or say anything at all. Especially when you’ve tried to express it, and it has gone nowhere, or you are dismissed or told that you are wrong or lying. There is a growing awareness that this isn’t just physical. It reaches into identity, relationships, confidence, and the way you see yourself as a woman.
This is not an easy thing to write about.
It’s not an easy thing to live through.
But silence has a cost.
And before I talk about the most intimate parts of this experience, the parts we’re taught to just accept, I need to say this first: if you’ve felt disoriented, ashamed, disconnected from your body, or quietly terrified of what these changes mean for your life, your marriage, or your sense of self, you are not imagining it.
You are not alone.
And you are not failing, even though nearly every day makes you feel that you are.
You are standing in the middle of something that deserves language, compassion, and understanding, even when it’s uncomfortable, and though I can write this for other women who have nobody to talk to about this, I’m also talking to the husband, the partners, the people who are supposed to be by your side.
I am writing this from a place that I still can’t talk about, but it is taking everything from me. As it’s falling apart before my eyes, the key seems to have burned and melted, and no matter how many times I open my mouth to become vulnerable, I just can’t do it. So this is for all of you, and I hope you end in a better position than I’m in.
And then there’s the body.
Not the abstract idea of it, but the daily, intimate reality of living inside skin that no longer feels like your own. This is where the words get harder. Where your throat tightens even as you try to be honest. Where humiliation creeps in, uninvited.
The pain doesn’t announce itself politely. It fucking hurts. It burns. It stings. It feels raw in a way that makes you aware of yourself every second of the day. The labia hurts, not occasionally, not mildly, but constantly, as if the skin itself is fragile and cracking, like earth that hasn’t seen rain in far too long. Dryness so severe it feels like living in a desert you can’t escape. Like the Sahara, but inside your body, while sandpaper takes its nasty turn on you as well. It feels very sadistic.
Underwear hurts.
Movement hurts.
Existing hurts.
You learn quickly that you can’t just “push through” this. You find yourself applying lubrication more than once a day, not for intimacy, not for pleasure, but simply so your clothes don’t rub your skin raw. Just so you can function. And even that feels degrading in a way that’s hard to name. You try to hide it, tucking it away, carrying it with you everywhere, secretly applying it at home because the other lubricants that are supposed to work don’t. It’s a joke. This isn’t something you were ever taught how to talk about. This isn’t something women casually share, and writing about it makes my throat tight, like I’m doing something wrong by being blunt about it. But since I can’t speak the words, I’m writing them, like someone once encouraged me to do, because they know I struggle with vocalizing when everything gets locked up.
So you just don’t.
And intimacy, once a place of connection, closeness, ease, becomes something else entirely. Pain replaces anticipation. Your body tightens instead of opening. You brace. You flinch. The friction reminds you of being a kid and getting an Indian burn from your peers. You mourn the version of yourself who didn’t have to think about any of this.
Libido doesn’t slowly taper off.
Sometimes it just disappears. Especially in surgical menopause, where it’s ripped away from you without giving a damn how you’ll cope…or don’t.
One day it’s there, woven into who you are, and the next it’s gone without warning, without explanation, without any concern for how deeply that loss cuts. Desire doesn’t respond to effort or logic or love. You can want to want. You can miss it desperately. And still, your body remains silent.
That silence is devastating.
It takes with it your sense of femininity, your confidence, the part of you that once felt alive and embodied. And with that loss comes shame. Deep, quiet shame. The kind that makes you feel defective. Broken. Like you’re failing at something fundamental.
So you try in secret.
You don’t talk about it. You manage it quietly, desperately hoping no one notices. You try to wake your body up before you get home or your partner comes into the room. You use a vibrator, alone, hoping to stir something, anything, back to life, so you don’t feel like you’re arriving empty-handed into your relationship.
And when it doesn’t work, the despair is crushing. Again. Over and over.
Because now it’s not just about sex.
It’s about identity. The identity that you already feel is being robbed from you every day that your eyes open.
It’s about intimacy.
It’s about the fear that this is costing you more than just comfort.
How do you tell your partner any of this?
How do you explain that you’re trying, that you care, that you miss the closeness just as much as they do when the words feel humiliating, and the fear of being misunderstood is paralyzing? How do you admit that your body hurts in places that still feel taboo to name? That you’re exhausted from managing something no one prepared you for, while you know in your heart that you are constantly letting them down.
So you keep quiet.
You keep showing up on the outside. You smile. You function. You make life look normal. Meanwhile, inside, you’re carrying a weight that steals your breath. A heaviness in your chest that makes it hard to inhale fully because you’re holding so much grief, fear, and unspoken truth.
And with each silent day, you lose a little more of yourself.
Menopause doesn’t just change the body. It dismantles identity. It strains relationships. It isolates you in your own skin.
And the cruelest part is that you’re expected to navigate all of this alone quietly, gracefully, without complaint, because no one taught us how to speak about it without shame.
I don’t know how we’re supposed to carry this forever. I don’t know how long women have been suffocating under the weight of this silence.
But I do know this: none of this makes you weak. None of this is something you should have to endure alone. And even when you’re not enduring it alone, even when you finally speak, even when you do “the right things,” there’s another quiet betrayal no one warns you about.
Just because you’re wearing an estrogen patch doesn’t mean relief comes. It doesn’t mean your body responds. It doesn’t mean the pain stops. It doesn’t mean you feel like yourself again.
You stick it on your skin and wait days, weeks, hoping for some sign that this will be the thing that brings you back. And sometimes… nothing changes. Or only pieces do. Or the changes are so small they feel almost cruel. Like being offered a life raft that doesn’t quite reach the water.
You look in the mirror and barely recognize who’s looking back. Not because you’re older. But because there’s a hollowness there.
A shell of the person you were. The woman who laughed easily, wanted easily, moved through the world with confidence (well, that’s a stretch for me), desire, and certainty. And standing there, staring at your own reflection, you start wondering how long the people around you have felt this loss too. How long have they been grieving you silently? How long they’ve felt disappointed, confused, or let down, even if they’ve never said it out loud. And if they have, you’ve tried, but you just keep failing them over and over.
You wonder how long they’ll keep feeling that way. You wonder if they already think you’ve failed them.
That thought sits so damn heavy. It presses into your chest and stays there. Because you’re not just grieving yourself, you’re grieving the version of you that others relied on. Wanted. Expected. And the fear that maybe you can’t be her again feels unbearable because you know she no longer exists.
So you start searching for purpose in smaller and smaller places. You look for something, anything, that makes you feel like your life still has weight. Meaning. Direction. You pour yourself into tasks, routines, acts of service, moments of usefulness, gardening, walks, baking, simply going to the store to walk around, or playing music in your car to hopefully lift you, because without those, the silence is too loud.
Without purpose, you’re not living. You’re just existing. Quietly. Politely. Silenced by a body that won’t cooperate, and not only a world that doesn’t know how to hold this truth, but those closest to you.
And that might be the deepest wound of all. Not the pain, though terrible, not the loss of desire, though heartbreaking, not even the identity shift, but the feeling that your voice, your experience, your suffering has nowhere to land, so you stay quiet.
That you are carrying something enormous and invisible while trying not to collapse under the weight of it. And it can ruin your life. Your relationships. This is what no one tells you. Menopause can make you question your worth. Your usefulness.
Your place in the lives of the people you love. And still you keep going. Not because it’s easy. Not because it’s working, but because it isn’t. But because some part of you is still here, still searching, still refusing to disappear completely. Even when breathing feels hard. Even when purpose feels distant. Even when you don’t recognize yourself. And even when you’re completely misunderstood.
Some days, lying in bed is easier than facing the feeling of failure and not being able to use your voice. Being in bed is easier than facing accusations. And staying quiet seems like the better option than being vulnerable and still not being understood or believed.
If you’re here, reading this, nodding quietly, feeling exposed just by seeing these words, you are not imagining it. You are not dramatic. You are not broken. Though I feel all of these things, broken and so deeply misunderstood, being at the top.
I’ve stopped chasing a way to feel better. Appointments after appointments don’t matter. There’s always conflicting information. An immune-compromised body and numerous health issues make it even worse; everything is even more complicated and enhanced. Add undiagnosed ADHD until you were well into menopause, which is NOT used as an excuse, but a very real contributor. Pain is amplified in dramatic ways, and honestly? It really sucks. All of it.
Most days, I can push it off to the side, tuck it in my house of closed boxes with lost keys, but sometimes, sitting on the floor of the shower while the water falls over you like a waterfall until it turns cold, seems like the most effort you can give. And I guess an outsider would say that’s okay. To me, it’s just another thing to keep silent because in the end, it doesn’t change anything, and it truly doesn’t matter. You just quietly hope someone is around when you eventually come out on this other side of hell and hasn’t left you in this fight that seems like it’s stolen your identity.
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