I thought I understood hormones.
After all, I have spent the better part of the last 17 years trying to understand what was happening to my own body during perimenopause and menopause. Like many women in midlife, I have often felt as though I was navigating uncharted territory. Hot flashes, disrupted sleep, mood changes, weight gain, brain fog—these symptoms can make it feel as though hormones have suddenly taken over a body that was once predictable.
Or so I thought.
A recent trip abroad with my 23-year-old niece reminded me of something important:
Hormones didn’t suddenly start affecting us in midlife.
They have been influencing our lives all along.
Remember Puberty?
Before puberty, most of us moved through childhood blissfully unaware of estrogen, progesterone, cortisol, insulin, or metabolism.
Sure, growth hormone was hard at work helping our bodies develop, but for the most part, life felt relatively simple.
Then puberty arrived.
And if we’re being honest, puberty wasn’t exactly graceful.
For some girls, it meant painful periods. For others, acne, mood swings, bloating, headaches, or emotional ups and downs. We all experienced the same biological transition, but the symptoms looked different for each of us.
I remember having painful periods but not much else.
One of my closest friends experienced dramatic mood swings.
Another struggled with bloating and heavy menstrual cycles that seemed to last forever.
Back in the 1980s, however, we didn’t talk much about hormones.
We certainly didn’t discuss cortisol, insulin resistance, stress physiology, inflammation, or how hormones influence nearly every system in the body.
Life was stressful, but stress was considered temporary.
You worked hard.
You pushed through.
You dealt with it.
Nobody connected headaches, stomach aches, poor sleep, acne, anxiety, or fatigue to hormonal fluctuations.
Those were simply part of life.
Watching My Niece
My niece Kate recently completed an intense five-year master’s program.
Like many ambitious young women, she spent years balancing academic pressure, deadlines, expectations, uncertainty, and enormous personal growth.
There were tears.
Moments of self-doubt.
Questions about whether she was capable.
And ultimately, tremendous resilience.
She graduated successfully and should have felt relieved.
Yet as we traveled together, I noticed something familiar.
The stress didn’t disappear simply because the degree was finished.
The uncertainty about what comes next remained.
Questions about career, purpose, relationships, finances, and the future still occupied her mind.
And her body was responding.
This year, she developed stress-related acne.
Her sleep has been disrupted.
She worries about the next step.
She feels anxious at times, even while experiencing incredible success.
As I watched her, I suddenly realized something.
Her hormones are every bit as active as mine.
They’re just telling a different story.
Two Different Chapters. One Common Thread.
Researchers have long recognized that puberty and perimenopause represent two of the most significant hormonal transitions in a woman’s life. In fact, researchers writing in the journal Women’s Midlife Health describe puberty and perimenopause as the beginning and end of the female reproductive life cycle, noting that both transitions involve significant hormonal fluctuations and psychological adaptation.
Dr. Betty Raney, an OB/GYN, explains it this way:
“From an endocrine standpoint, the two most difficult points in a woman’s life are puberty and perimenopause.”
I had never considered that before.
Because when I thought about it, she was absolutely right.
Puberty introduces fluctuating hormones for the first time.
Perimenopause introduces fluctuating hormones all over again.
The symptoms may differ, but the underlying experience feels surprisingly familiar:
Who am I becoming?
Why do I feel different?
Why is my body reacting this way?
When will things settle down?
Hormones Never Stopped Influencing Us
Somewhere along the way, many of us developed the belief that hormones only matter during puberty and menopause.
But hormones influence every stage of life.
They affect:
Energy
Sleep
Mood
Focus
Skin
Appetite
Motivation
Stress resilience
Recovery
Metabolism
Hormones are not simply reproductive messengers.
They are communication signals that influence nearly every cell in the body.
During our twenties and thirties, those signals often become more predictable.
We settle into a rhythm.
Then life happens.
Careers.
Marriage.
Parenting.
Financial pressures.
Aging parents.
Major decisions.
Losses.
Achievements.
And through it all, our hormones continue responding to both our biology and our environment.
The difference is that when we are younger, we rarely stop to notice.
A Little More Compassion
Watching Kate reminded me of something else.
When I was 23, I didn’t know what I was doing either.
I worried.
I questioned myself.
I lost sleep.
I felt overwhelmed by uncertainty.
The only difference is that nobody called it hormonal.
Today we understand far more about the relationship between stress hormones like cortisol, reproductive hormones like estrogen and progesterone, and the nervous system’s response to uncertainty.
What we once dismissed as “just stress” was often a hormonal response to stress.
And perhaps that realization offers an important lesson for women in midlife.
Maybe menopause isn’t the first time hormones have disrupted our lives.
Maybe it’s simply the latest chapter in a story that began during puberty.
A story of adaptation.
Growth.
Change.
And learning to work with our bodies rather than against them.
Final Thoughts
As my niece and I sat together on our trip, separated by three decades but connected by biology, I couldn’t help but smile.
She is entering adulthood.
I am entering a new season of womanhood.
Her hormones are surging.
Mine are recalibrating.
Yet both of us are learning the same lesson:
Hormones have never been the enemy.
They have always been part of the conversation.
The goal isn’t to silence them.
The goal is to understand what they’re trying to tell us.
How Can I Help You?
If this article reminded you that hormones have always been part of the conversation, perhaps it’s time to understand what they’re saying now.
Many women spend years wondering why they feel different, only to discover that hormones are quietly influencing their energy, sleep, mood, focus, and metabolism.
If you’re curious about your own hormonal patterns, I invite you to take the Menopause Hormone Clarity Tool. It may help you connect the dots and better understand what your body is trying to tell you.
Because clarity is often the first step toward feeling like yourself again.