Ep. 10 I Thought I'd Sail Through This (A Perimenopause Reckoning — Somatic Perspective)

I'm a former naturopath and current somatic practitioner. I should know this body inside and out. And yet. This episode is me speaking from the messy middle of perimenopause - not from the other side, not with a protocol. We talk about pain, irritability, cravings, and how stress hits differently when your body is in a hormonal season. The inner work doesn't make us immune to being human. This episode is about listening, stabilizing, and honouring where you actually are.

Book 1:1 here

Transcript

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Hey, I'm Leslie Turner. I'm a mom, a somatic practitioner, and an intuitive coach. This is the Intuitive Drop. Short conversations about emotional truth, the nervous system, and living from your intuition in real life without losing your mind along the way. Let's drop in. Hi, everybody. I want to start by saying I almost didn't record this episode. Now it's not because I didn't have anything to say, but because I'm kind of in the messy middle, I suppose, of something that's going on with my body. And I don't have clean answers yet. There's a part of me that really likes to come to you once I've integrated things, once I've figured them out, once I can wrap them up in a tiny little bow with insight and aha's. But unfortunately, that's not where I am right now. I want to be honest about something I didn't even want to admit to myself. And I didn't think I'd struggle like I am. So for now, I'm going to pretend I'm talking to my best friend. Kind of think a part of me believed that I could sail through this specific phase of life because I've done so much inner work because I'm very intuitive and body aware, well trained as a former naturopathic doctor. And maybe the harder parts, I was hoping that the harder parts of perimenopause wouldn't really apply to me. Now, even saying that right now feels pretty humbling because with my training as a naturopathic doctor and now a somatic and intuitive practitioner, there's this quiet pressure, I suppose, that I've put on myself that I should have the answers, that I should know what's happening in my own body, that I should be able to read it clearly. And yet, I still didn't want to admit that I wasn't doing great, or I'm not doing great. Just this past week, it kind of all landed for me. It was a normal day. Nothing really dramatic happened other than I had taken an Advil because I was going to my son's birthday, where we were going to do laser tag and do bowling and, you know, be on with six other six-year-olds. And an anti-inflammatory was is what allowed me to function in that. And so I felt, okay, I was present, I was laughing, I was engaged, I was there for hours. And part of me was like, hey, see, you're totally fine. And then later, my body crashed. And that's when it kind of hit me that I'm not actually okay. I'm simply managing. There's a big difference. Another thing I started to notice was how cyclical this all was. There were very specific days of my cycle where I felt very reactive, shorter tempered, more irritable, days where I'm quick to snap at my husband, at my son. And I'm almost watching myself do it, thinking, wow, that wasn't proportional to the experience. And it's not that I'm suddenly this unreasonable person. It's that my body doesn't respond to stress the way it used to. When estrogen drops and cortisol is higher, everything feels louder. Stress hits harder. Sleep doesn't restore the body as well. Pain shows up in places it never used to. And my window of tolerance shrinks. Things that I could previously regulate myself through now feel like you go straight to overwhelm or hyper-arousal. And that is very disorienting. I've also noticed this really clear resistance in my body. And it's not a resistance to healing, it's a resistance to more, taking more supplements, put it being put on more protocols, more workouts, more clean eating. And every time I hear you should add this, you should, you should lift heavier, my whole system just tightens. And it's a no in my body. Not because I'm lazy, it's a no because I'm tired of being optimized. Those sugar cravings, holy smokes, they have been loud and persistent and not subtle. And the pain, the pain is very real. So those workouts that everybody tells you you should do about lifting weights, I physically can't do them right now. I can walk. So I've been spending a lot of time in the trails. If you follow me on Instagram, you already know that. But that knowing what you should do and knowing what you can do creates this inner negotiation between my mind, because my mind thinks I should be capable of something, and then what my body is actually willing to do. I've gone down a few deep dives into following other people's perimenopause accounts on social media. And, you know, they're talking about cortisol and inflammation and exercise intolerance and weight gain. All of it's valid. All of it is something I'm experiencing. And yet my intuition is still whispering, God, this feels very 3D, three-dimensional. And honestly, I don't usually live in the three-dimensional. I'm a 5D girl. I like it there. What I'm realizing though is that when your body hurts, when symptoms are new, when suddenly you don't recognize yourself, you don't always get to live in those higher consciousness levels. You drop. You drop into your body. You start tracking things and Googling and monitoring and trying to understand what's happening. Now I know it doesn't mean that I've lost my intuition. It means that my nervous system is asking a very reasonable question. Am I okay? Because this is so foreign. I don't think people are talking about this enough, the people that came before us. You know, there was shame attached to perimenopause and the changes you went through, and you kept it quiet from yourself and your husband and your friends because you thought maybe you were alone in this, but no, you're not. So this week I'm staying in the 3D a little bit more and I'm doing blood work. I'm doing a mammogram. And it feels like kind of a surrender. Not because I don't trust my intuition, but because I can't right now intuit my way out of uncertainty. Now, there's a big part of me that knows tests will not tell me definitive answers. They certainly won't tell me who I am, and they will not explain why my identity feels shaky right now. But what they will do is give a sort of safe containment. And containment is what allows intuition to come back online. This season has really humbled me because inner work does not make you immune to 44 years old, unfortunately. To my dismay, it doesn't exempt you from the hormone changes and the pain and the cravings and the need for objective support. And I can't bypass the very human everyday work of living in a body in order to stay kind of in that woo-woo esoteric space. Okay. I'm not sharing all of this because I want a flood of advice coming at me. I'm not asking for your protocols or you should try this. I know what is meant for my body will come find me, or my intuition will lead me there. But I am sharing this because I know I'm not the only woman quietly managing and wondering why it feels harder than it used to. If you're listening and you feel really stuck in those physical symptoms right now, you're tracking things. And instead of stepping into expansion, you're like, man, I feel stuck. Well, I gotta say, you're not failing at life because you feel this way. You are responding. And sometimes the most intuitive thing we can do is stop trying to transcend the body and actually listen to it. I don't have a neat ending for this. Just blunt honesty. And if you're in this season too, you're not alone. And you're absolutely not doing it wrong. If something in this landed for you, I'd love to support you further. Whether that's through private sessions, ongoing containers, or simply listening to another episode, trust what feels right. All the ways to work with me are linked below. There's no pressure, just options. Thank you for being here and for doing the quiet, brave work of listening to yourself.