At what age did you start feeling old?
For me, it crept in a few months before I turned 40 late last year. One day you’re 23, convinced you can do anything, eat anything, stay out until 2 a.m. and be fine by morning. Then you wake up and your body feels like it belongs to someone else. You notice those little crinkles at the corners of your eyes and the subtle way gravity is taking its toll. The days that take a little longer to start.
I started seeing it in my friends, too. Conversations that used to be about carefree weekends are now about body aches, health metrics we need to track, and changes none of us quite had names for yet. We still joke about getting older, but it hits differently when you actually are. (Funnier sometimes, honestly. But different.)
Most of us millennials don’t look our age. We know this, we say it to each other, and we mean it. But we can feel it. And somewhere along the way, I made peace with that. Because aging means I get to keep going—for myself, for my family, for my kids. That realization, more than anything, is what changed how I approached turning 40.
And that feeling, it turns out, has a name.
I first really understood the word “perimenopause” last year when work led me to Claudine Viquiera, menopause coach and founder of ProAge. At the time, I was months away from turning 40—and she was the first person I told about my fears of hitting that number. For those unfamiliar: Perimenopause isn’t menopause itself, but the transition leading up to it. For most women it starts in their 40s, though some begin earlier. And with it comes a whole set of changes—physical, emotional, mental—that most women aren’t warned about until they’re already in the middle of them.
I didn’t think I was in perimenopause yet. But after learning the symptoms—heightened mood swings, increased anxiety, disrupted sleep—I started to wonder. I even texted my mom to ask when she went through menopause. She said 50. I figured I had time. But that wasn’t really the point.
The point was what Claudine said to me: “Don’t be scared.” Because now, more than ever, there is support for women navigating this stage—real support, clinical and communal, that previous generations simply didn’t have. Knowing that made me breathe easier. Not because the changes aren’t real, but because we don’t have to face them uninformed and alone the way so many women before us did.
It’s also why we’re doing this. The Beauty Edit hosted another series in UN/CONVENTION/AL, a Peri/Menopause Forum, and we’ve turned those conversations into the stories in this special Women’s Month issue. We’re calling it The M Word. And we’re saying it out loud: menopause.
This issue is for you—whether you’re already in perimenopause and looking for answers or approaching midlife and wanting to be prepared. It’s not meant to frighten, and it’s not a checklist of things going wrong. Think of it as the conversation a well-informed friend would have with you—one who happens to know a gynecologist, a wellness coach, a skincare founder, and a nutritionist, all with something honest and useful to say.
And if you’re in your 20s or 30s and this doesn’t feel urgent yet, read it anyway. For your mother, for your sister, for the women around you who may already be in it and not saying so.
Every woman will go through this. You deserve to go through it informed, supported, and anything but alone.
