“Kids, can you grab me the thing to do the thing? The one behind that thingy over there!”
I’ve become my mother.
I distinctly remember teasing her about her lost nouns once she hit her 40s.
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I’m a writer, so I felt safe from that particular fate. But despite the fact I generate words all day for work, it’s happened anyway.
I’ve hit 43 and like many women in mid-life, I’m starting to feel the symptoms of perimenopause – the 2-10 years before menopause, sometimes starting in your late 30s to mid-40s.
It’s different for every ovary-owning person, but there are often themes that run through the change for many of us – noun loss and brain fog being one of them. Libido changes being another.
Usually libido loss is talked about for mid-life, but many women actually experience the opposite in their 40s.
For some of us, the surging hormones of perimenopause, and the events that are common in mid-life, can increase your sex drive, at least temporarily.
Riding the hormonal highs.
My libido seemed to increase when I hit 40, just after my divorce, and I’m not the only one. I spoke with several women who found the same thing, including Rebecca who hit perimenopause at 48 and menopause at 50.