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Don't wait until there is an 'eruption'!
- Menolink all things menopause
- May 6
- 3 min read
My Name and Age
Anon 54
My MenoJourney Story
At my friend V’s urging, I’m sharing my menopause journey in what she promised is a judgment-free space. I hope she’s right!
I live in Essex with my husband of 28 years, a heating engineer, and our two kids—a 19-year-old daughter and a 16-year-old son. I juggle life as a school secretary and run holiday classes at the local leisure centre during school breaks. Our family is the typical whirlwind of chaos, with endless tasks and never enough hours in the day.
Perimenopause was kind to me physically, and I powered through without much trouble. Now, two years into menopause, my body’s holding up fine. But what caught me off guard was how my resilience—my ability to just keep going—started to crumble. A thousand tiny stresses piled up, each too small to name but heavy in aggregate, until they led to what I now call “the incident.”
It was February half term, and the day had been a nightmare. Work was chaos with a medical emergency, my car got badly scratched in the supermarket car park, and when I got home, I found cat vomit smeared across our duvet. As I scrubbed the mess, my family stormed in, ravenous and griping about dinner being late. I whipped up pasta with sauce, only for everyone to complain about that too. That’s when I snapped.
In a flash of fury, I grabbed two plates of pasta and hurled them at the wall, unleashing a torrent of screams and curses. The shock on their faces was almost comical, but I was too far gone to laugh. I let loose everything I’d bottled up—grievances about my surly teens, my husband’s grunts and expectations of a perfect home, the relentless cost-of-living pressures. It wasn’t my finest moment, and the profanity wasn’t strictly necessary, but it felt good to say what needed saying. I capped it off by telling them all to disappear, and they scattered.
Unlike some celebrity meltdowns, there was no comforting hug from my husband. Instead, I got two weeks of stony silence. My daughter decamped to her boyfriend’s for three days, and my son could barely meet my gaze. They all thought I’d lost my mind, calling me unreasonable. So, I left. I stayed with my mum for a week, took rare sick days from work, and let them fend for themselves. I hoped they’d see how much I do, but I returned to a house in shambles and had to lose it all over again.
Now, I’m wiser. I pay attention to the small tremors of frustration, knowing they could build into another earthquake. When I feel taken for granted or treated like a servant, I issue a calm warning about a potential “pasta incident” sequel. We’re not quite at the point of laughing about it—though my girlfriends found it hysterical—but I’m sure we’ll get there one day.
My Symptoms
Mood swings
What Worked
Products or Advice That Worked
Product Name | ? out of 5 | Buy Here |
|---|---|---|
type name | insert star rating? | insert link to shop |
type product name here
What Didn't Work - Beware
Products or Advice that DIDN'T work
Ignoring it, doing nothing and just getting on with it.
I wish I'd known....
Don't let things build up to an explosion. Don’t let things get on top of you ladies - get on top of things!
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