La Kōnenki, A Second Spring
seeing perimenopause with new eyes
I’m going to get real honest here with you. The nitty gritty that has been snipping at my mind, body and soul for a good while now. About peri, meno, the pause. Perimenopause. Womanhood. Femininity and the collective idea of what it means to be an aging woman. A changing woman. A woman in her natural unfolding. And I’m going to do it in letter form because an invitation has recently awakened and I want to include you.
it’s called La Koneneki, what Japanese use for this time and it’s viewed as a natural “biological promotion”, a renewal, a new season.
Here we go:
dear hermana,
For the past year, I’ve been in it. Deep in it and rolling around messy and frenzied, while beating myself up in the process. I’ve been in this mindset work for so long, I’ve forgotten that I’m living in a human body. A sacred temple. A body with real biology that shifts and changes on my commands, my words, my thoughts, but only in the way I desire if those commands, words and thoughts are aligned and pure. I forgot that even in the most relaxing and restorative of circumstances, my body is still structurally changing and shifting. The truth is, despite how many ideas I have about maintaining ‘youth’, my ovaries have a finite, aging follicle supply. And after 2024, only one ovary’s declining supply. As they do, in all women, naturally, chemically or surgically.
And by in it, I mean crazy, chaotic, peaks of mania, depths of depression, stories of disappearing forever, evil thoughts, confused, enraged, foggy minded, forgetful, anxious. Overall flat faced, flat mood, flat life.
I’ve been a rebel all my life, conformity was rarely my thing. But in this season, I’ve acquiesced. The “I just don’t feel like myself”, has taken over and the single most common expression of perimenopause has become, this girl.
But like most autists and people pleasers, the mask was on. I’ve played this song of “everything is working out for me, even when it doesn’t seem to me”, over and over enough, I’ve convinced myself its true. And those around me see and witness it too.
You, my reader family, probably have also experienced this in my words, my prose. A life of rainbows and butterflies this girl lives. And I do. Most of the time. Most of the time my life is a great dream, a following of breadcrumbs from my soul, a freedom many work towards their whole life.
However, for about a year now, something has been off. No matter how many times I tap into my toolkit, which isn’t as often as is best, I still end up inflamed and inflammatory. This is fine and well in isolation, I can get through it. And when I can’t, my guides and spirits walk me back off the cliff. But when I’m out there in the world and the flames start to hit and hurt those I love, something has to change. Something has to die. And so we go, into the medicine inside. Literally, dive into and attend to the tissues, organs and systems within and let them do their jobs as they do, naturally and on autopilot. While I pull out a level of self-care that I’ve not known for a while. A service to myself to make the change and the pause less of a fight and force and more of a reset. An anchor to the waves that will inevitably rise and fall, come and go.
Let’s break it down. The science, the medicine.
We have progesterone, our natural valium, our primary cycle regulator. It stabilizes the uterine lining every month and promotes chill thru GABA receptors in our brains. That’s psychoneuroendocrinology, Dr. Candace Pert type intel, nervous system insight. Not just thoughts become things, words become worlds type mindset work that I’ve depended on the last couple decades. Real biological, physiological stuff. My body is truly and structurally changing. And during the past year and probably for the past few years, my progesterone has been declining.
Side note: this very real viscerally felt experience coincided with the end of an era for me outwardly too. We sold our house, our roots, our structure, last year. The only place Micah has called home. The house my husband built with his parents, their hands, their hearts and the hands of professionals. The place where my husband and I fell in love, out of like and deeper in love. Where we held Micah and our sweet community for the first seven years of her life. My home sweet sanctuary home, my white sectional, my teak table, my bar office, my tortilla making factory. Closed and done. In physical space and structure.
This time last year, we were literally in paradise. Living in a luxury cottage in a little fishing town, the gateway to the Wild Atlantic Way in Ireland. We could walk to the park, gorgeous hikes, delicious food and hot cocoa with horses aa our neighbors. HORSES! My favorite! Daily I could sit and let them take everything off my shoulders and return it back to mama earth. Almost every single wish I had in my heart was unfolding in real time. Dreams were here.
And yet, I was miserable and going insane. Laying on the coziest bed, covered in the richest linens with fever, body aches and a fire so hot I couldn’t get comfortable. I remember my husband sitting on the bed while I yelled and blamed him for everything I was feeling. Everything on the outside was the culprit. Then a breakout all over my skin. “Why do you have so many dimples, mom?” The beginning of my lower lip cold sores, a rash on my body and a mind that would NOT. TURN. OFF.
Both my inside and outside structures shifted. Everything was amiss. Nothing felt secure or solid. Because nothing on the outside was.
And as my outside continues to shift and change as we live this semi-nomadic lifestyle called worldschooling, I finally recognize and acknowledge that my insides are too.
Back to the body.
While progesterone declines, estrogen dances wildly up, down and all around. For me, I shifted from bleeding with la luna, every 28 days to every 24-25 days. And just recently every 19 days. I know! My boobs have been voluptuous once in my life, during the first three years of Micah’s creation and landing as they filled with sweet honey of the gods. Now they get nice and juicy one day and back to the itty bitty titty club the next.
Sleep. Do you remember that? I do. It’s something I’ve had in bounty my whole life. Both my husband and I sleep so well and consistently, our daughter, who has been sleeping through the night since she was a year old, literally says “I love sleep so much!!”
Never a day with insomnia (maybe after costa rica gun assault number two, but I took drugs for that and it only lasted a couple months). Never had a hard time falling or staying asleep. My sleep is usually restorative and I wake up ready to crush the day, stoked about this vida loca. Now, I’ve become Ben Franklin with my segmented sleep cycles, waking at one or two and staying up until four. Sometimes writing or reading, but usually doom scrolling until I shut it down for the next round.
Mood swings. Swings makes it sound gentle, nice, in flow of life. It’s more like Dr Dooms Fearfall, that drops you from 185 feet in the air. But the 185 feet in the air is my joy, excitement, happiness, peace which lasts a couple seconds before the fearfall takes over and I become the family bully while declaring divorce or disappearance at least once weekly. It may sound like hyperbole, but its the worst of the worst and has become a very present monster. Strange manifestations of who I am and who I know myself to be. My highest self is just looking down at me big-eyed, nodding her head in disbelief. I can mindset and mantra myself all day, but this is the real deal holyfield in material form. And I’m unwell. Especially because it involves hurting the people I love the most. I thought PMS was bad, this is a fucking nightmare.
All of this has done a number on me, a tug-of-war, because my whole life is The Medicine Inside. I believe and my whole mind, body, spirit believes, that nothing outside of me can affect me as long as my insides are straight and aligned. Ok. Fair. But that’s where its become tricky. My insides are far from aligned. They’re chaotic and crazy in the best most naturally organic way. The way that I was built. There is nothing to fix, just attend to and love on. Ignoring the changes because I’m afraid of facing it and prefer the ‘butterflies and rainbows’ narrative, is actually giving it immense and terrifying power in my subconscious.
What we resist, persists.
Cultural Conditioning
And finally, the collective story, the paradigm that reigns in our time right now. Especially as the peak of the patriarchy lives loudly and burns brightly (this is before the collapse, the extinction bark phenomenon). Where an aging woman is invisible or dismissed ever so quickly if seen. Unless of course, she’s productive and successful as her male counterpart, then maybe the aging woman is worth a glance.
I don’t truly believe that, but I do feel that at times. And I live a pretty charmed existence in the world, so if I feel that, I know you do too.
Anthropological research shows that when a society values aging over youthfulness, women report fewer physical symptoms, especially hot flashes. Famous cross-cultural studies by medical anthropologist Margaret Lock showed Japanese women rarely complained of hot flashes or night sweats, the “classic” Western symptoms.
Hot flashes, night sweats, inflammation, fire in the body in a hustle, work hard, be productive, high-stress culture. Makes sense to me.
It’s time to chill out, mami!
Being Latina, I hold onto the idea of my female elders as queens. A cultural mindset that frames aging as a graceful, natural shift rather than a disease. But in practice, it doesn’t always look like that. Especially since my mama is the baddie of the baddest and would rather die than accept help from someone. So at times I forget she is my elder and forget to treat her and her wisdom for the gold that she is. And I realize that’s on me. I dream about it, but in practice, she’s my peer, my buddy, my friend. So until I change that (and my mission is to change that with her), the world will reflect all the other misconstrued realities I still see.
The culturally conditioned lens of collective. Its a doozy.
I don’t know, hermana. I realize this is all part of the metamorphosis that is happening. The collapse and death of the old so the new can birth, but joder! It’s hard. And what makes it so much harder is the absence of discourse through this very important conversation. Talking about this is still so taboo, I know. I wouldn’t breech the subject for a long time.
Historically, the majority of studies and research is from middle class, white women age 45-55. Which is why medical anthropologist Dr. Yewoubdar Beyene was groundbreaking in her study with Maya women. She found that even though Maya women in the Yucatan had low levels of blood estrogen, they didn’t experience menopausal symptoms in the same way that women from the Western cultures do. She interviewed 107 Maya women and none of them had any of the symptoms that we talk about. The only symptom they all experienced was no more periods. Their diets, lifestyle, community were the key difference. Also, the Maya women had higher rates of fertility, very little time in their life with regular peaks and valleys of estrogen.
Dr. Beyene, a pioneer, provides a light at the end of the tunnel. In medical anthropology, there is something called biocultural plasticity. This means that while a human biological process has a universal foundation, like my declining egg production, the actual physical expression of the process can be heavily shaped by culture, history, lifestyle and diet. [1, 2, 3]
Woohoo!! This is the golden ticket. Dr. Beyene broke the cycle through her research that medical system, the collective, most of us assumed, for decades. The idea that menopause is a uniform, universal disease.
It’s not, it’s a natural part of a women’s life. A beautiful, somewhat strange stage and season that we get to embrace not band-aid up.
So first, the low estrogen. This one is theoretically impossible to mimic now at this stage of my life. According to the study, Maya women are traditionally fertile and don’t have the spikes of estrogen that we do every month because they’re either growing babes or breastfeeding. We, in the Western world, have the ups and downs throughout our life, especially if we’ve never been pregnant or breastfed. So the drop feels heavier, deeper, more complex.
Our cells have estrogen receptors (the "locks"). Real human estrogen is the perfect "key" that turns them on fully. Phytoestrogens look similar enough to fit into the lock, but they only turn it on partially, so they can act as natural stabilizers. Since my estrogen is spiking throughout this second spring, the weaker, partial turn estrogen can block the receptor, calming the peaks down. If the estrogen drops to very low, certain foods can fill the empty receptors and give my body a gentle, baseline hum of peace. I trust.
What do these phytoestrogens look like?
tofu, soy, edemame, tempeh in moderate intake daily
lentils, black beans, pintos
nuts and seeds
cruciferous veggies- broccoli, brussels, cabbage,
And if you’re like me, hermana, bronzy skin coming of the Americas south of the U.S., we’re going to do some traditional foods like corn, squash, sweet taters, chaya and black beans. We’re going to take out as many of the inflammatory foods that disrupt the process like processed sugars, dairy, animal meats. The meats, particularly red and processed meats, have high amounts of saturated fats and pro-oxidants. When digested, they can trigger low-grade, systemic inflammation. In good ‘ol America, we’re addicted to the meats and that’s why we’re so inflamed and full of chronic illness in our society. Even my husband wakes up with the meat sweats when we indulge in Texas BBQ.
In the WAVS Study (Women’s Study for the Alleviation of Vasomotor Symptoms) put the Mayan and traditional Asian plant-based diet to the test. [1, 2, 3, 4]
The Method: They placed postmenopausal women suffering from daily hot flashes on a low-fat, vegan diet (completely excluding meat, dairy, and eggs) and added a half-cup of cooked whole soybeans daily. [1, 2, 3]
The Incredible Result: In just 12 weeks, moderate-to-severe hot flashes dropped by 84% to 92%. Nearly 60% of the women became completely free of moderate-to-severe hot flashes altogether, without using any medical hormone therapy. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Three months of veganism and they created the environment to move through the waves sans hot flashes.
What?? Come on. Let’s do this!!
Mind Over Matter & Matter That Feels Aligned
My mindset work has served for a long time. Still does. Though I tried to override the idea that inflammatory foods will not affect me because I’m an alchemist turning burgers into broccoli in my body, lately I haven’t fully been on board. I FEEL a change when I eat pasta and meat for days. I notice a difference when I eat breakfast first thing instead of fasting in the morning as I’ve done the past few years. Plus I’m certified in anti-inflammatory nutrition, that imprint is deep in there. I can still be an alchemist, but instead of working on the food, I’ll work on transforming the elements of the perimenopausal experience into gold. Not the garbage the current paradigm has fed us and we’ve adopted.
I could continue focusing on the ‘bad’, the clinical definition of perimenopause, what we know to come out of the sickcare world. I can continue to read the symptoms and corresponding biological changes and check the boxes as mine. I can collapse my infinite potential and limitless being into a ‘particle’ of decline, physical symptoms and aging. I could join the masses and play the victim, fall into this moment as a deficit. That’s the easy road, right?
I could conform to the madness of menopause
Or I can dive into the magic.
This quantum latina will stop observing the limitations of the medical world, something I did a long time ago. Instead of looking at my body as a machine that is breaking down and in dysfunction, I can see it as a fluid energy field. See myself and my body as vital, thriving and beautifully unfolding on a natural path. Energy flows where attention goes.
I can collapse my physical reality into one of health and renewal. I will focus on creating the balance within from without. I flow into this new season, a second spring, and reframe and rebuild what I want to see and experience. And what I want for the girls and women of the world to see and experience too.
In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), the end of our reproductive cycle is truly seen as a rebirth. The Qi, life force energy, and blood get redirected towards spirit, soul and true renewal. It’s a time to nourish and take care of ourselves in a way we’ve not before.
Quantum entanglement states that once two particles are connected, they remain deeply linked, instantly influencing each other across any distance. Using my tools, I will connect my mind to the frequency of my highest, most vibrant self. Here, I do not wait for my body to feel good to change my mind. Instead, I’ll entangle my current awareness with the energy of Kōnenki, Japanese for ‘season of renewal, the transition years’. By feeling that radiant vitality in the present moment, I will pull that future reality into my current biological expression.
The hardest part in all of this is a sort of chicken or egg scenario. When I start feeling blah, fatigued, exhausted, irritable, my tendency is to reach for carbs, comfort food, rich foods in sugar, gluten and inflammation. I stay in bed and rot into a mushy mess. I told you I’m going to get really honest here and its not easy, especially since my prose has historically been so much about overcoming all the ‘mehs’ and ‘blahs’ of modern life. But my future depends on it. Breaking the cycle depends on it. Staying alive and truly living my fullest depends on it, so its one of my goals for the next six months, to completely transform how I do this perimenopause thing with all the tools I have built in and the devotion to my highest timeline.
Meditation as Medicine
The arc of all my research, studies, practice, brand and life has always been around meditation. Walking meditation, yoga nidra, shaking meditation, dance meditation, sitting meditation, dish washing meditation, meditation of life. Being able to be the observer. What one of my teachers called “above the bumper cars” in the chaos. To detach myself from the crazy and clamor and return to center. And breathe. Deeply and fully.
This has always been my number one medicine. Every time I commit to a meditation practice, everything shifts and transforms for the better. I’m also a vata in Ayurveda, which means grounding is integral to my survival. Vata is like the wind, all over the place, quick metabolism in mind and body, onto the next idea before the first is complete. I’ve dealt with a hyper-reactive nervous system my entire life. Energy wise, when I was in gymnastics or walking the camino, I was the most calm. Movement and motion fatigue my brain so I can finally be chill.
So meditation calms that wind and turns it into a cool breeze that moves fast when we need it, but mostly, just more of a flow.
And because I’m vata, I need moving meditations. Or yoga nidra, sleepy/psychic yoga. Mantra meditation also works wonders on me. Adding in essential oils or a flower essence, an intention and maybe be outside is the cherry on top.
The PeriPlan
Ok, hermanas, this is what we’re doing. This is where we’re going. Baby steps to big cambios.
First, a mission statement based solely on perimenopause and the woman I’m becoming. Meet her in the end. Neville Goddard style. From the statement, I will write down identity phrases that match the main character I’m playing. For example: I take three breaths before reacting to the moment that feels like an emergency. I will visualize before leaving bed what I want to experience through the day.
Then, meditation. I’ve done my yoga nidra today in place of a nap. It was great, I felt high afterwards, that’s what we’re going for and what is simple to achieve with consistency. Choose your meditation flavor, whatever it may be. Stick to it, build up from five minutes to twenty, then beyond. Guided meditations are usually easier to start.
Next, movement, move my body from the moment I wake or start to have those silly thoughts. Bridge pose will help boost estrogen. Legs up the wall and childs pose will calm me. I will hold poses that build up the lower part of my body and help rebuild my core. Tree pose. Chair. Warrior.
Or dance. Move those hips and shake your body. Hips hold so much trauma, let it out!! Put some latin beats to uplevel your mind and go at it.
Next, food. I’m going to bulk up on phytoestrogens in the forms above. Less processed food or none at all, no matter what I feel like. Chisel the sweets down to a minimum. Make more snacks that are nutrient rich and nourishing. I’m still modeling for a little one and though she’s invincible and the most powerful of alchemists, she too has a body and we’re devoted to feeding it good stuff as long as I can.
We’re going to talk to our cells, our body, our muscles, our bones, our ovaries, our heart. We’re going to tell them we’re here to build an environment that serves them and in return they’re going to serve us. When our body says to go outside and be in nature, we’re going to follow. When our body says ‘this room/person/space doesn’t feel good’, we’re going to leave it. Not forever, but for however long it needs to feel safe. No more people pleasing and also, no more blaming others for what’s going on within.
We’re empowered reinas. Queens who take control of their destiny. We have boundaries and we hold them fiercely. No shade, just words and action. Step away if the other isn’t listening.
It’s only been a few days since a new calm took over. Simply naming the pink elephant in the room has been enough for me and my husband to breathe in sync again. The past few days, I started with breakfast way earlier than usual, protein rich and I feel a difference.
I’m also realizing that I need to have a lot of alone time or with my babe in rest and restoration. This ‘not knowing’ who I am is also discovering who I am anew. I’m irritated by the smallest things and its fine when I’m alone, but not so much when I’m not. Obviously. It’s typical for me to beat myself up about it and feel guilty, but that doesn’t belong here anymore. Mom guilt is a thing of the old paradigm. The fuses are still short right now, but we’re building them up as we go. To become longer and more adaptable, to walk the path of the flowers rather than the dying weeds. Laying down new circuitry that bends instead of erupts. Again, nothing is f’d here, we’re just learning new skills and judgement has no place.
The biggest takeaway and inspiration from the Maya women is their excitement to return to the spirit of childhood, to be happy and free and feel like ‘a young girl again’. That’s how they see menopause. And this is the magic I’m returning to as well. Because as Shakira says, “the only reason we are here is to celebrate!”. Vamos!!
This feels complete, almost like a manifesto or maybe a perimanifesto. Ha! It’s probably not. A bunch of ideas flowed in last night about endocrine disruptors, microplastics and geomagnetic disturbances and the massive impact they have on our health, but that’s for another piece. This is enough for now.
Thank you for reading. Thank you for being here. I love you.
big xo,
erica
p.s. I’ve thought about starting a snail mail club called La Kōnenki for perimenopausal women. It would include a message from my body to yours, a note from our abuelas (taken from the cosmos), a ritual, an art piece, a playlist and other nourishing goodies to support mis hermanas on the change. Let me know your thoughts and if you would like to be included. It’s an invitation to slow down and put your hands on something other than this rectangle toy.