It took one afternoon in Franklin, Louisiana, and a stillness I couldn't ignore to see the patterns moving through my family. Where do your ancestors' influence end and your own beliefs begin?

For a long time, slowing down felt like something other women did. Women who had more margin: more money, more time, more certainty about what next month looked like. Not me. Not now. Not with everything happening.

So I kept going. And somewhere along the way, I stopped being able to tell the difference between getting through the day and actually living it.

What I didn't quite embrace then is that the exhaustion I was carrying wasn't just mine. And the idea that I had to wait for the world to settle before I was allowed to tend to myself? That was costing me more than slowing down ever would have.

Read on…

I walked into perimenopause without a map. My mother and grandmother both had hysterectomies before their symptoms hit, which meant I had no story to draw from — and the worst possible timing. I was freshly divorced, rebuilding my business from scratch, studying, moving, and running as fast as I could to make up for lost time. I didn't have time for perimenopause. I was busy.

And then Mother Nature took me by the scruff of my neck and used her outdoor voice.

Pay attention, sis. I'm not playing around here.

What happened next changed everything — not just my body, but my relationship with myself. Read the full post to find out what perimenopause was really asking of me. And what it might be asking of you.