I do not know exactly when I stepped into menopause.
What I know now is that it did not arrive like a door closing or a clear announcement. It felt more like wading into the ocean slowly at first, ankle deep, then knee deep, until one day I looked down and realised the water was already at my chest.

They say perimenopause often begins somewhere between 45 and 50. But wahine enter at different ages, from different directions, carrying very different loads. Some of us arrive with warning. Some of us are already swimming before we even know there is a name for what is happening.

This is for any wahine who has found herself somewhere in that water confused, tired, hot, emotional, aching, wondering when her body stopped feeling familiar.

This Body, This Season

I am not late.
I am right on time.

Right now, I am tending to this season of my body.

I wrote this to my friends, all over 50, all somewhere in this journey:

“Heading in for a bone density scan āpōpō. These body aches could be low oestrogen, inflammation, calcium shifts, or sciatica. The menopause grab bag, really.”

That phrase stayed with me, the menopause grab bag. Because that is exactly what it feels like. You reach in and pull out something new every week, and none of it comes with instructions.

There are lingering waves. The sweats arrive without invitation. The cool breeze needed to dry my skin and keep sweat from my forehead. Yes, I need a fan while I sleep. Yes, I carry one in my bag alongside a sweat cloth.

There is a tiredness that sleep does not always fix. A heaviness that settles deep, not sharp pain, but something older, slower, harder to explain.

Sometimes it feels like my bones themselves are asking for rest. My rib cage, upper back, shoulders, and neck stiffen without warning. My legs ache even when I have not injured myself. Recovery takes longer. My body feels as though it is constantly recalibrating.

I do not list these as symptoms. I hold them as experiences of mine, waiting to be understood and named in their own time.

What I do know is that I have had to learn to slow down. To prioritise rest, good kai, balanced cortisol, an emerging awareness of bone health, and overall wellbeing. To listen closely, even when there are many things still waiting to be done.

What We Were Never Told

Intergenerational silence is not absence.
It is often evidence of survival.

I am writing as an Indigenous Māori and Pacific wahine.

When I look back, I realise my mother, my aunties, my nannies did not talk about menopause. Not because they were secretive. Not because they did not care. But because they were busy surviving, working, raising families, feeding communities, holding everything together.

My mother was born in 1938. When she reached the typical menopause years, somewhere between 1983 and 1989, she had seven children. The youngest was still at primary school. Others were teenagers, working, leaving home, becoming parents themselves.

She was working full time, maintaining our māra, food sovereignty as a way of life shaped by her upbringing, deeply involved in community and mārae life, and welcoming her first mokopuna.

Within those same years, she spent two years in Samoa. Digging taro. Clearing land. Bathing in cold water outside after long, hot days. Learning how to survive and earn at the markets in a country that was not hers.

These were her menopause years too, though unnamed. A migrant adjusting to climate, culture, labour, and responsibility. There was no space to be unwell. No language for menopause. Life simply continued, layered upon change.

In her home, sickness was rare or quietly managed. Her māmā, whaea, and kuia carried Māori remedies. They worked the land, ate from the land, and were healed by the land. Being unwell was not something to build a self around. It was an interruption to life already in motion.

Menopause was never a cuppa tea kōrero. Never a table conversation. There were always more urgent things: whenua, whānau, hāhi, putea, children, mokopuna, obligations layered upon obligations.

My Years in the Same Waters

What follows is not a straight line. It is a layering of change, grief, responsibility, and bodily shift.

When I reached my own 45 to 50 years, I did not recognise perimenopause at all. I did not even know there was a prelude. I just knew I was tired.

Life was shifting. I wanted to pivot. Leave work that no longer fit. Move towns. Return closer to my parents.

My adult children moved in and out of home in a familiar boomerang rhythm, while I learned to loosen the expectation that I carry everything.

A mokopuna arrived as I entered this season. Three generations under one roof. Roles forming in real time: kui, parent, grandparent. My daughter learning to be a mother herself.

For the first couple of years, everything still felt explainable. Tiredness made sense. Anxiety made sense. Everything had a reason.  I stayed active, cycling, swimming, gym work. I was intentionally tending to my health and energy.

My ikura, my menstrual cycle, had already become irregular years earlier, light, brief, sometimes barely there. By the time I noticed they stopped completely, I did not mark it as menopause. I just kept moving.

Then, with the support of a female doctor willing to learn alongside me, menopause became something I could name and explore.

Not long after, the sweats came. Overnight at first. Drenched. Waking again and again. Then during the day. Napkins at meetings. Sweat cloths in public spaces.

I wondered if it was diabetes. Stress. Food allergies. Eczema. All of these were investigated, named, and managed, yet something deeper remained unnamed.

And then grief arrived. My parents lost their first mokopuna. The ground beneath me gave way. Floodgates opened. Six months later, my mother died.

I held space for loss, striving to remain standing, knowing solid ground beneath, even as my body stayed in constant wiri, a quiet internal shaking making me conscious of every step, wary of tidal waves.

Relationships shifted. I was a parent, grandparent, and partner. Roles overlapping. Then COVID arrived. I realised I was in full menopause, largely on autopilot, navigating a global pandemic.

When Menopause Is Not at the Top of the List

After sharing my journey with many Māori and Pacific friends, an awareness formed: menopause does not arrive into spaciousness. It arrives into fullness.

Looking back, I understand why menopause was never the first explanation for my mother or for me. There was always much happening: responsibilities, loss, care, life in motion.

When I did not know what perimenopause was, it did not even make my list of possibilities. And when I finally began learning about it, there was often little energy left to master the learning. I was already busy coping, already carrying.

This season has asked something different of me:
Less holding
Less proving
Less pushing

I have learned instead is to move with slowness. To close down unnecessary busyness, especially mental busyness so anxiety can soften. To tend to what truly needs attention when energy allows, and to ask others to carry parts of the load.

This is why I write now, not to explain myself, but to add to what was missing. So our bodies, our questions, and our transitions can finally sit at our tables too. This feels less like an ending and more like the beginning of another phase of life: my Becoming.

The Conversations I Wish I Had Heard

I wish someone had told me that I might feel as though I was losing myself, and that this would not mean I was broken.

I wish I had been given permission to name this phase of life as something real and influential. Something shaping my decisions, my pace, my desire to pivot out of work and old roles.

I wish I had known that confusion, heat, ache, and emotional swings could sit alongside competence, love, wisdom, and contribution, not cancel them out.

I wish I had known I could trust my instincts even before I had the language. That I could request care, not just ask politely. That I could say: something is changing, and it matters.

This is me, saying it clearly. 

Menopause did not arrive because I failed to cope. 

It arrived while my life was full, rich with responsibility, relationship, grief, care, and change.

Author’s Note

I am a Māori and Pacific wahine reflecting on menopause and midlife. This Becoming series is rooted in lived experience and cultural perspective. It is a conversation I am having with myself, shared openly, in the hope others may recognise their own becoming too.