NFLM

Not Feeling Like Myself/Now Feeling Like Mona

2023, 2019, 2012. Photos: Robert E. Rutledge

First published as a Wonder Chronicle on Oct. 9, 2024

This is part of a running series. Read the previous Wonder Chronicle: On Menopause

Not Feeling Like Myself (NFLM). Symptom or gift of the menopause?

In a study published in May by The Journal of the Menopause Society, researchers say a google search of “I don't feel like myself” and “perimenopause” yielded 5.3 million results. They quote patients telling physicians  “I don't feel like myself — when do I get my life back”? And “I don't feel like myself. I don't know who I am. It's like an out of body experience.”

And 63.3% of participants in the study reported NFLM 50% of the time or more over the previous 3 months. NFLM was associated with anxiety/vigilance, fatigue/pain, brain fog, sexual symptoms, and volatile mood symptoms.

My menopause transition included all of the above and, had the researchers asked me, I would’ve been among the 16.7% who said that they did not feel like themselves all of the time in the past three months.

I would also have described NFLM (Now Feeling Like Mona) as one of the greatest gifts of my menopause. 

Menopause kicked my fucking ass AND (because it’s not a but) it has also set me free. And this Menopause Awareness Month, it is thrilling to see how many more voices are joining the growing conversation on menopause AND (because it’s not a but) we need to share what we gain, not just what we’ve “lost”, during the menopause transition. 

I would also have described NFLM (Now Feeling Like Mona) as one of the greatest gifts of my menopause. 

Now that I’m on the post- side of menopause, I know that the transition was designed to force you to confront what you thought was the very essence of you, what made you you, and to let it go. 

Because even if you don’t let it go–can’t, won’t, don’t want to–it will let you go, set you adrift, make you pause; pause to wander–in the ellipses that separate who you thought you were and the you that is yet to come, pause to wonder–who the fuck am I now?

What a gift!

The self is not a static point in time, but rather an evolution of selves, an evolution of Mona’s that brought me to where I am now and said “Go! Live! Live well.” And I thank them for that evolution. 

Because when you wander and wonder, you will meet previous iterations of you, and they will excitedly ask “What have we become? Show us!” (see photo above)

Tell them who they led you to become, the way stars once led explorers, thank them for bringing you this far, for forming the constellation of you, and let them go. 

The self is not a static point in time, but rather an evolution of selves, an evolution of Mona’s that brought me to where I am now and said “Go! Live! Live well.” And I thank them for that evolution. 

The theme of this year’s Menopause Awareness Month is hormone therapy, which I began at the end of January, about 14 months into my postmenopause.

I did not start hormone therapy to “go back to normal” or to “be myself again.” 

I think of hormone therapy as my accomplice along the journey to Now Feeling Like Mona, whatever she’s becoming.

Wander, and wonder, towards your self!

My goal: that you are found by wonder.

My wish: that you intensely live. 

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Mona Eltahawy is a feminist author, commentator and disruptor of patriarchy. She is editing an anthology on menopause called Bloody Hell! And Other Stories: Adventures in Menopause from Across the Personal and Political Spectrum. Her first book Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2015) targeted patriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa and her second The Seven Necessary Sins For Women and Girls (2019) took her disruption worldwide. It is now available in Ireland and the UK. Her commentary has appeared in media around the world and she makes video essays and writes a newsletter as FEMINIST GIANT.  

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