Peri-menopause: GIVE ME ALL THE DRUGS

Imagine you’re out walking. It’s a lovely sunny day. Most of the time. There are intermittent showers, but that’s ok. You’re humming along, enjoying the smells of freshly washed leaves. It’s not like you don’t have a care in the world. That’s not a thing. But you’re dealing with your cares quite well at the moment. You have been dealing with them just fine throughout your 40s. You think, “I have finally reached the age of maturity. The age of wisdom. I know nothing. And I know that I know nothing. I have dealt with the traumas of my past. I can now look forward to a future of (somewhat) inner peace.”

And as you’re walking, you see in front of you a gelatinous wall that extends across your path as far as the eye can see. “Huh,” you think. “That’s strange. I won’t be able to walk around this one. I’ll just have to walk through it until I reach the other side.”

You’re used to gelatinous walls crossing your path. You’ve dealt with them before. You have years of gelatinous wall experience in your pocket. So you don’t really think much of having to go through yet another one.

You start moving forward. The gelatinous wall is nice and soft. It allows you in immediately. It’s difficult to see but you keep moving. At first, you’re able to keep a steady pace. But as you move deeper and deeper into the wall, the gelatin becomes less forgiving. It becomes more difficult to hold onto your ‘age of wisdom’ attitude about the situation. You can’t walk. You can’t see. You can’t move. You can’t breathe. You can’t THINK. “At least give me that, you horrible wall!” you scream. “At least leave me my ability to think!!”

That’s what my peri-menopause feels like.

11 days on the Polish border with Ukraine

Two weeks ago, an American friend posted an appeal saying there was urgent need for volunteers in Medyka, a small village on the Polish border with Ukraine. A few days later, my husband Colin and I were on a plane to Poland. I had decided that I was not going to have expectations. I was going into the unknown. I don’t really know much about the history, politics or culture of the region. I don’t know anything about war beyond what I’ve seen in the media. I have never done relief work. But if someone thought I could be helpful, I really wanted to help.

The following 11 days were an enlightening experience, more regarding the functionings of relief agencies than anything else. By the time we arrived at the camp in Medyka, the movement of refugees out of Ukraine through Poland had slowed. By the time we left 11 days later, there appeared to be more Ukrainians returning home through that specific border (there are others) than there were leaving it.

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  The narrow street lined with tents leading from the border crossing at Medyka, Poland.

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  To get from Ukraine to Poland at this border, people queue in tents in front of the building for Ukrainian border control. When their passports are stamped, they walk through a no-mans land till they reach a second building where Polish customs and border security await them. When they get through that, they walk another 300 metres until they reach the refugee street in Medyka. They are then encouraged to quickly move on to other parts of Poland or the EU. If very tired or if it’s late, they are welcomed to spend the night in one of two refugee tents, one for women and children and another for anyone.

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  The “camp” in Medyka.

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  Feeding refugees rice and dahl before they queue in front of the Ukrainian border control

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  The long walk in no-mans land at the border with Ukraine.

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  I spent the first three days folding and refolding clothes in this little tent, then moved a large amount of them inside another tent to keep them dry and clean.

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  Ukrainian refugees queueing on the Ukrainian side of the border.

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  Some Chinese set up a tent for refugees in the camp. They were quite popular. You can see they don’t like the Chinese Communist Party very much. I assume they don’t live there.

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  This banner is on the Chinese tent for refugees spending the night.

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  My Egyptian buddy, Reda El Sayed, who took the initiative to help stranded Egyptians and Arabs leave Ukraine and find a safe place to stay. We became good friends in those 11 days and relied on each other for moral support.

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  Once out of these gates, the refugees have officially arrived into Medyka.

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  Look who I bumped into! My friend Daniela Ovadia. She is an Italian physician and science journalist who I hadn’t seen since 2011. I saw her post something on Facebook about being where I was so I rang her up and we found each other! I was so incredibly happy to see here and we spent about three days together in Medyka helping with the different organizations.

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  My husband and I spent much of our time serving Indian food to refugees and volunteers. This food truck has a story. It belongs to a nice Indian man, Nico, who also owns a couple of restaurants in Poland. When the war broke out, he up and drove it to the border to help out. He was later helped by United Sikhs to keep the van there. A cook made the food every day in a back tent. Our group of volunteers brought him water in the morning and helped clean the pots and then serve the food. This was the best job ever. We got to speak with lots of different kinds of people and saw many happy faces.

My work-life balance

Many of my conversations with friends and work colleagues over the past few months have revolved around the seemingly out-of-reach concept of work-life balance. This has become ever more so important during the pandemic, with people in some jobs working more than they normally would and with boundaries between our work and personal environments becoming almost non-existent.

The office / launderette / turbo training centre

I have a tendency to feel personally offended when I find people close to me overloaded with work to the point of burn out. Do line managers not realize that an employee on the edge of burn out will be significantly less productive? Where is the business sense in overloading people to that extent? Also, how much of burn out is down to the employer and how much of it is down to the employee themself? Am I overloading myself with too much work because I feel that’s the only way I can prove myself? Is it a personality thing? Is it an ambition thing? Or is it a cultural thing? I’m convinced that part of it is that we now live in an era where we’re told we need to be super successful; we have to be extra unique. Normal or average is no longer acceptable. We have to fulfil our full potentials. And so we think we have a duty to push ourselves more and more and more.

I’ve been working hard for many years to make sure I balance the work and personal aspects of my life. I think I’m successful most of the time. So I thought I’d share some of my experience with this.

Rolling with it: Hotel quarantine days 2 to 7

I don’t know what it is or how long it will last, but I’ve been dealing with adversity much better than I had been in recent years.

Going on a daily walk in the car park.

Is it the therapy sessions I’ve been having? Has my anxiety been reduced because of the hormone replacement patches I’ve been wearing for the past few months? Or do I finally just get it: that I won’t always have control over my circumstances and that sometimes it’s better to just be accepting and to roll with it.

I’ve been in hotel quarantine now in the UK for about a week; I arrived last Sunday. The first couple of days were a bit of a shock to the system, but I’ve eased into it quite well. I have my own little routine and I’ve been able to build little things into my day and week to look forward to. It really is the little things that make all the difference. I go on three walks a day round and round and round the hotel car park. I love those walks now. When I saw our hotel car park that first morning I was really disappointed. The space is so small. Its perimeter is only 180 meters long. But I now love going on my runs and walks around it. I enjoy watching other people as I go round and round. I love seeing the little kiddies play. I wonder where that person is from and what brought that person back to the UK.

Hotel Quarantine Diary: Days 0 and 1

On June 3, I left the UK for Egypt. I hadn’t been back to my home country since before the pandemic and hadn’t since seen two of my four children. I could not avoid the trip: my daughter was getting married and another daughter and son were getting engaged.

My room at Radisson Red Heathrow, which I’ll be quarantining at for the next ten days, unless my stay is extended by a positive COVID test on days two or eight.

Before I booked my trip, I made sure I was going to be double vaccinated first. I wanted the protection, as I had insider information that Egyptians weren’t nearly as strict about COVID-19 as most Brits were. I also told my children that I would not be able to participate in their events unless they were held outdoors and the numbers were kept to a minimum. Since I have the best children in the world, they obliged and were very kind and respectful of my concerns.

The day I left the UK, Egypt was on the amber list. That was the same day a review of the green, amber and red lists was to be announced. There wasn’t even the slightest rumour about Egypt getting changed, although there had been a couple of low profile news stories about a new variant appearing in Thailand that had allegedly originated in Egypt.

As soon as I landed I got the news: Egypt was now on the UK’s red list and I’d have to enter a hotel quarantine upon my return.

I can’t say I was disappointed. I’m a firm believer in the importance of hotel quarantines for people arriving from certain countries. I know that many people aren’t as strict as they should probably be about home quarantines. And I know that it’s almost impossible to enforce their strict observance 24/7 for ten days. I also think that it’s important to limit travel from countries that aren’t taking COVID-19 restrictions seriously. In the UK, we’ve been through hell and back to reduce the numbers of cases and deaths to what it is now. We should have been stricter with incoming travel all along. Later, though, is better than never.

An immigrant’s sense of belonging

I’m going to need to make a mindshift happen that I think I’m going to find very difficult.

The road I’ve been running on since I arrived in Egypt.

I don’t feel like I belong. Anywhere.

I know that I felt this as a kid growing up. But it wasn’t a problem then. I didn’t need to feel that I belonged. I was fine with how things were. I grew up in America. My Egyptian father made a point of letting it be known that I was not American; I was not one of “them”, even though I was. I didn’t know anything else other than what I was told. It had no real meaning to me anyway. I was a child. Things were simple.

I need to find a way to get my brain to think that way again.

Shit figure-outers: Reveal yourselves

For most of my life, I was certain I’d have shit figured out by the time I reached my 50s. The older generations always appeared to have their shit together in my eyes. Now I realize that they were either great actors and wanted to protect us younger folk from the realities of life, or I was just extremely naïve. It was probably both.

What am I doing in my 50s without the slightest idea about what I want to do when I grow up, who I want to be, or where I want to live? This can’t be normal. Oh, but it is, the wiser, less naïve version of myself responds.

I’ve long felt that my father, in his final years, felt disappointed with how his life turned out. There was a look in his eyes that I felt I could read. He was thinking, “This is it? This is all I will ever be? All I will ever accomplish?” I think, in many ways, he was heartbroken. My father was an academic. He was a professor of kinetic chemistry. He loved his job and he loved his students. He also loved research, something he wasn’t able to do much of once he moved to Saudi Arabia, where he spent some 30 years of his academic career. My father knew his own potential. It was thwarted and he knew it.

In some ways I find myself with similar thoughts about my own life. This is it? This is all I will ever accomplish? All I will ever be? I know I have accomplished some things in life. I realize that I have lived a rich life, full of adventure, love, loss and achievement. I know that. But there’s a weird feeling residing inside of me. I’m conflicted. I want to be more. I want to do more. At the same time, I’m tired. I just want to settle down and get out of the way of other humans. I’m tired of being rebellious and wanting to change the world. And I’m upset that I don’t have the energy anymore to be rebellious and want to change the world.

Where Is My Tribe of The Unrooted?

What’s the question? That’s what I’m trying to figure out.

Is it:

When do I retire?

What do I do when I retire?

Who am I when I retire?

Who am I period?

That last one makes me stop.

Who am I? I think that’s a large part of it. Maybe if I figure out who I am, I can answer the other questions? Even that is a question.

Is it normal to have so many questions at this stage in my life? Or do I have so many questions because of who I am and the circumstances I’ve found myself in?

How do I find the answers to all my questions? Do I find them in the experiences of others or do I find them within myself? Or maybe it’s a little bit of both?

I find myself at the age of 57 living in a city in northern England where so many people appear to me to have been born here or nearabout, grown up here or nearabout, and live here as adults, with their lives very settled and their trajectories very clear to them. They have families close by or near enough and friendship networks and activities that sustain them. Friendships and activities they have had, in many cases, for decades.

As I near the age where I must begin to think about “what next”, I find myself surrounded by these people, observing their what nexts, and not seeing myself at all in them.

This has been disconcerting. Destabilizing.

Beginning a New Year With Renewed Optimism

Every time I have sat down to write a public post in the past year, I’ve stopped myself. One reason has been that I haven’t been sure how healthy it might be for me to do that. You see, I’ve really struggled with my mental health in 2024. And I’ve needed to step away and give myself time to figure things out, find a semblance of peace, and in many ways just survive.

I’m actually pretty proud of how I have handled it all.

I went back to basics. I stripped everything down to what my most basic of priorities are, focused on those, reached out for professional help, leaned on my husband for support when I needed it most, and reached out to a very very small circle of friends – tentatively and delicately – to make sure that I continued to feed my soul with love and attention from people who care. No one but my husband and maybe one or two friends have a comprehensive idea of what I’ve been going through. I haven’t needed to share beyond that small group. And I haven’t needed to share all. I still don’t need to share all.

But because 2024 was a genuinely difficult year for me, I feel like I want to end it and start a new year on a strong note. I want 2025 to be different. I’ve given myself a whole year to waddle through whatever it was that I was waddling through. I’ve given my feelings the chance to be felt and heard. By me. I’ve learned that I’m afraid of feeling. Well, I’ve probably known of my fear of feeling for a long time. But I’m working on allowing the feelings to be felt and heard because I now know that that is my route towards stronger health.

My perimenopause frustrations

I’ve been going through perimenopause for God only knows how long. I’ve been surprised about how little I understand about this process despite having a medical degree and considering myself generally well read on the topic. I wanted to know what to expect when the time came. So I thought I was going to be prepared.

I have experienced symptoms for years that I’ve thought might be because of changing hormones. But then, when it comes to things like anxiety or restless nights, how do you know if it’s down to a hormone imbalance or if life and its stresses are just fucking you up?

I’ve been complaining about anxiety for several years. I’ve told my doctors, I’ve gone through therapy, I’ve learned coping strategies. If someone were to tell me that the anxiety that I developed in my thirties was down to life’s fuck-ups, I can believe them. But the anxiety I developed later on in my late 40s/early 50s felt different. Sure, life’s fuck-ups are still there and probably still need to be dealt with. I swear to God I’m working on it as best I can. But I can tell there’s something else. I know there’s something else.

You know what upsets me? It’s how difficult it is to get someone to listen. You go to the doctor as a lady in your late 40s and tell her time and again that you have anxiety, and you’re told to try to get in touch with a counsellor or, “Here. Take this pill that will give you the worst brain fog you’ve experienced in your whole life and fuck being able to work.” You mention potential symptoms of perimenopause and you’re met with a blank stare.

The misplaced gods of Egypt

I had a most interesting conversation yesterday that really resonated with me. It’s given me much food for thought.

Mahmoud is a fellow Egyptian revolutionary who has also found himself going through difficult times while based in Berlin, Germany. I first got to know him in 2009, in those early days when there was only a handful of Egyptians posting on Twitter. We had a little community of Egyptian bloggers/micro-bloggers going for ourselves. Twitter had given us space to make our voices heard. We had a lot to say. And, for the most part, we felt we had a lot in common. Someone organized a couple of tweet-ups for Egyptian tweeters, which I joined. That was probably how I met Mahmoud first in real life. We stayed in touch over the years the way people do through social media. And our paths crossed a few times in Tahrir Square during those fateful days in 2011.

Mahmoud read my previous blog post where I was expressing confusion about what to do next in life. He wrote me a comment on Facebook saying that we had to talk. We eventually caught up with each other yesterday on a phone call.

“We’re misplaced gods,” he explained to me. “We’re misplaced gods stuck in mediocre places with mediocre people who don’t appreciate who we are. And it’s affected the way we see ourselves.”