Yesterday my 50-something daughter asked me if anyone had ever recommended HRT to me when I was in perimenopause.

I had two immediate reactions, one unspoken. The unspoken one was, “What is HRT?” For you to appreciate the absurdity of that, you have to know I am a high functioning 78 year old retired professor of behavioral and public health sciences. So for me not to recognize the acronym HRT speaks to how thoroughly I had wiped it from my repertoire.

The second thought, which I shared with my daughter, was that when I was in my 40s and 50s, perimenopause was not the common term it is now. Like autism, ADHD, neurotypical and atypical, like PTSD outside of a post-combat situation, like so many psychological and pseudo psychological terms and diagnoses that social media has made widely accessible, perimenopause and HRT were diagnostic and treatment terms used almost exclusively in professional contexts and carrying a certain stigma.

Especially for women who, like myself, called themselves second wave feminists and built a large part of their identities around having the knowledge and strength to resist masculine stereotypes of the hysterical and menopausal woman, and masculine “cures” like HRT for “female problems.” Especially since evidence suggested that HRT increased cancer risks.

So no one suggested, through the years when I was blowing up my life repeatedly, that I was perimenopausal overlaying chronic anxiety. Just like no one knew that in childhood I was a high intelligence, high functioning autistic (or what would now be labeled autistic). I was just an intensely shy loner who always felt like an outsider, wondered how others could talk so easily, preferred life in books, daydreamed a lot, and always got As in school.

Until I was a raged filled teenager and young adult who tuned in, turned on, and dropped out. And protested. And became a feminist. And then a mother. Then a wife. Then a mother again. Then a single parent. Then a grad student. Then a professor. All while moving country 3 times. Remarried along the way. Stepchildren. Widowed. Grandchildren. 13 years on my own. Remarried again 10 years ago, just as I retired.

 Lots of problems along the way with almost everyone I love because of rage and hurt and withdrawal and misunderstandings beyond my comprehension and confusion and hopelessness and sleeplessness.

Counselors and psychiatrists, faith groups and good friends, eventually an antidepressant/anxiolytic prescribed by my PCP and daily low dose marijuana prescribed by me but with the knowledge of my PCP. And marriage to a man capable of holding my anxieties and needing me as much as I needed him. A partner, finally, right for me. Along with the right meds and the right kind of contemplative prayer group for me.

But no one, friend or physician, ever said “perimenopause” or “HRT” back in my 40s-60s. And I would have rejected it had they suggested it.

Because it was not within my understanding of feminism. Once, just a few months ago, as I railed against the patriarchy, a good friend turned to my beloved husband and said, “She does know you’re a man, right?”

I have always supported LGBTQA+ rights but I admit to being less than enthusiastic about trans-women’s participation in women’s sports. We fought so hard…

And so I am led to think of our princesses who became generals. Leia and the Bride. But General Organa and Carrie Fisher are dead; Rey and Wonder Woman lead the fight forward. And it is probably better that I leave the fight for inclusion of trans-women in women’s sports to third generation feminists while keeping my mouth shut about that and making sure my younger cis-female friends know about perimenopause and HRT. My daughter tells me HRT was/is a game changer for her.