In late 2019 I began suffering from some quite alarming symptoms, brain fog, widespread pain everywhere, mind bending headaches and migraines, fatigue so bad I would have to stop my car and take a nap during my working day, I would wake in the night and not be able to feel my arms. I was terrified!

My employer at the time was not impressed with my decline in performance, I was a sales consultant, a highly pressured role that required a set number of client visits each day and obviously results! For anyone that has worked in sales you will understand the pressure, the targets, the possible micromanagement and general lack of trust in your abilities to work self-directed.

So I did what I needed to and took time off sick, and so began months of tests, words bandied around like MS and ankylosing spondylitis. Blood test after blood test, MRI scans on virtually every part of my body, seeing neurologists and then rheumatologists. Finally just as Covid 19 was hitting I got a diagnosis of Fibromyalgia. A little understood chronic health condition, I was fortunate that I had a specialist who acknowledged it existed as some professionals still don’t believe it is real.

The NHS describe Fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) as “a long-term condition that causes pain all over the body.” It’s a frustratingly unpredictable condition meaning you can feel relatively ok one day and unable to get out of bed the day after. Many sufferers find the condition totally debilitating, with other chronic conditions existing alongside each other, depression and anxiety are common and quite honestly unsurprising as it’s hell.

I remember sitting in my specialists office and asking if my symptoms could be related to the menopause, he told me I was too young. Now 4 years later I wonder if I do have fibromyalgia after all, I am definitely perimenopausal now, I have a prescription for HRT to prove it! However the more I make changes to my lifestyle, the more I learn about hormones, the more I begin to doubt if it wasn’t perimenopause all along.

HRT has been a game changer for me, it has alleviated most of the symptoms I would have associated with my fibromyalgia. Don’t get me wrong, some days the fatigue still bites but that debilitating fatigue I experienced in 2019-2022 has gone.

My reason for writing this and telling you a little about me isn’t to proclaim that I am cured, far from it. I am still unsure about whether I have fibromyalgia, I certainly have the predisposition for it given my childhood/life history; but rather to explore the option that these two conditions can co-exist, or that the onset of perimenopause can exacerbate the symptoms of fibromyalgia, or that maybe it is perimenopause alone that has triggered all these symptoms for me.

This has however prompted me to do my research, what started out as reading about nutrition and ultra-processed foods has led me down a rabbit hole to the female body and our wonderfully complex hormones. I’ve discovered the hierarchy of hormones that women uniquely have, that the queen of these is Oxytocin, closely followed by Cortisol and boy does that create havoc when it is out of control.

My intention is to begin to share what I have learned and to build a community, to empower women to realise how wonderful we are, the amazing process our brain goes through at various stages in our lives and how this makes us super heroes. Menopause used to fill me with dread, it sounded a death knell for life as I knew it, the beginning of the end; but this is far from the reality, so lets learn to embrace the female body and celebrate it’s journey through the life course, for us to be fearless.

As Mary Shelley so eloquently put it “Beware; for I am fearless and therefore powerful.”