Your Period Will Play Hide-and-Seek (And Other Truths About perimenopause)

Little-known fact: Menopause lasts for just 24 hours. It's the days, months, and even years leading up to it that can profoundly affect your mind and body. Not willing to quietly grimace and bear the changes, Gen X is bringing about a refreshing reframing of what this time in your life can be like. Our girlfriend's guide, with advice from women who have been there, will help you manage, because you've got options and a whole lot more life-including this time of life-to enjoy.

- LESLIE GOLDMAN

IN A RECENT EPISODE of The Michelle Obama Podcast, the former First Lady recalled a hot flash she had on Marine One that left her looking like she'd just finished a 10K. Her guest, friend Sharon Malone, MD, a Washington, D.C.-based ob-gyn and certified national menopause practitioner, brought up symptoms like insomnia, painful intercourse, "screwy periods," and "murderous rage." The word discharge was used.

Such frank public discussion would have had Jackie O. clutching her proverbial pearls. But thanks to boundary-pushing moments like this, people today are opening up about menopause unlike ever before, finding support and answers in each other. Communities of inthe-throes women, women-identifying people, and nonbinary people are springing up online in forums like Facebook's Menopausing So Hard and the Peanut app (essentially Tinder for finding perimenopause buddies). “We're all spilling the tea right now," says Omisade Burney-Scott, 55, creator of The Black Girl's Guide to Surviving Menopause podcast and project, who remembers when her ob-gyn first told her she was in perimenopause, in her early 40s.

"I was like, 'Wait, peri-what?' I had certainly heard the word menopause before, but I had no sense that [it] was a spectrum." Now we're in an amazing cultural moment of clarity about menopause, including what it actually is.