Nobody handed us a manual or helped us out on this one either.

Like always, we just... figured it out as usual, the way we GenX’ers always do. I guess, it’s the same deal now. Except now the subject is estrogen, and the classroom is the most unlikely place… TikTok.

Here's what actually surprised me digging into this: it's not the hot flash that gets us. For most women in perimenopause, it's the exhaustion, the kind that doesn't go away no matter how much you sleep. And then there’s the brain fog that seems to pop up when you walk into a room and just stand there, blinking, trying to remember why you're there and what you wanted to do. It’s disturbing. 

For a long time there wasn't really anyone or anywhere to say out loud and have someone go, "yes, that's real, here's what's happening to you." Older women just did not talk about menopause. So no real help there. If you asked, they just told you it was something to “woman-up to” and that you would get through it. And  up until recently, most doctors would just prescribe an antidepressant and a birth control pill, pat you on the head and send you home. For most women, this did not do much to help peri-menopause symptoms. It just medicated them, so no one had to deal with them. 

So now, we built a place for ourselves. And honestly, it's not that anyone was ignoring us on purpose, peri-menopause and menopause didn’t seem that important to the medical community. After all, it wasn’t a disease or condition. So it was put on the back burner. But now, science is scrambling to catch up to how many of us are suddenly asking questions at once, and wanting answers. We as GenX ladies do not sit around and wait. We make it happen. None of us were going to sit around forgetting and tired waiting for an update. So we started comparing notes, and we started talking. A real conversation about the unmentionable topics that our mothers and grandmothers were embarrassed or afraid to talk about. With social media we have world-wide platforms to communicate openly without shame or embarrassment. 

The Pepcid + Claritin thing. You've seen it. Women combining two regular drugstore antihistamines and swearing it helps with the anxiety and sleep trouble that shows up during perimenopause. Turns out there's real physiology behind it, early hormone shifts can trigger a histamine release that messes with your sleep and mood. That doesn't make it a replacement for actual hormone treatment, and it's not something to just start stacking without knowing your own health background. But it's a good snapshot of what's really going on with this whole trend: women aren't randomly guessing. We're pattern-matching against real biology faster than the system around us can keep up. 

Search on TikTok: Pepcid and Claritin or Pepcid Claritin Perimenopause

Black cohosh, Vitex, and the whole herbal aisle, really. Also everywhere right now. Decent evidence for some symptoms, shakier for others, and , as always,  "natural" doesn't mean "safe to mix with everything else in your cabinet." Look into it before you buy it, and research if it is right for you. 

The "We Do Not Care Club." Not a treatment. More like group therapy dressed up as a comment section, women showing up every day to publicly announce what they've officially stopped caring about. It's a vibe, nothing more. But it says something real: we'd rather laugh through the chaos together than white-knuckle it alone. She’s one of my favorites and I love how her WDNC has unified everyone. 

Her TikTok handle is: JustBeingMelani

Here's the part that matters more than any single TikTok hack. We're the generation that operated like “little adults”. We let ourselves in after school with the key on a shoelace, vacumed, fixed meals, biked to the 7-Eleven to pick up cigarettes for our parents, with zero adult supervision, and figured out how to be adults without anyone’s help. We were self-reliant, it's just how we were built.

So when the information we needed about our own bodies didn't show up after asking our moms and doctors. We didn't sit around waiting. We went and found each other instead. Which is what we usually did anyways. Our friends were always there for us, helping each other along the way. That's not a knock on doctors though, it's just what happens when a big, slow-moving system runs up against a few million motivated women trading real information in real time. And we are, as always, extremely motivated, we take care of ourselves and our friends… and get sh*t done. 

Remember…not everything under #perimenopause or #menopause is solid gold on social media. Some of it is genuinely useful, but some are a placebo and kind of full of sh*t with excellent marketing, you have to judge this. Look at the comments and go to the reviews. Heads up on the reviews though, if there are only a few, they may have paid for them. And then some products just needs an actual conversation with your doctor before you try it at home, especially if it sounds sketchy or you’re just unsure. 

Sharing is Caring ~ Sending you GenX love, 

Inci 💖

Here's a sentence that would've meant nothing to us at eight years old: "screen-free summer."

We didn't have screens to be free of. We had a screen door, and it slammed behind us around 8 a.m. and didn't open again until the streetlights came on. That was the whole plan. Nobody texted us a check-in. Nobody knew exactly where we were, ever, for roughly twelve straight weeks. And somehow we all survived it, mildly sunburned and full of gas station candy.

You know the rule even if nobody ever technically said it out loud: when the streetlights flicker on, you go home. That was it. That was the entire supervision system. Not a phone call, not a location pin, just a bulb on a pole doing the job an entire generation of parents apparently outsourced to the city.

And somehow it worked. We showed up. Mostly on time. Mostly not bleeding.

Remember this one? A literal public service announcement, on television, reminding parents to check in on their own kids. Not a joke. A real thing that had to exist because apparently enough parents needed the nudge that a whole ad campaign got built around it.

Picture that airing today. It wouldn't be a PSA, it'd be a viral clip with three million comments about accountability and generational trauma. Back then it just ran between sitcoms and everybody nodded along like, yeah, fair point, better go check if the kid was home. 

Here's the twist: this exact nostalgia is trending again right now, and not just for us. Parents online are deliberately building their kids a "90s summer" sprinklers, board games, bike rides, zero itinerary, and setting it to music because they want to build a memory. A therapist who studies this said it plainly: people doing this aren't only trying to give their kids something, they're chasing the version of themselves that got to be carefree and actually present in their own life. Sounds like a great way to live and experience your summer. 

Which one? We're not romanticizing the unsupervised part because we think it was safe, nowadays this is not okay. We're romanticizing the part where nobody was watching, so nobody was managing us either. We just existed. Outside. All day. That's a pretty rare feeling to get back as an adult, let alone hand it to a kid.

A few more that belong in this pile:

We're not trying to bring back the part where nobody knew where we were for six hours at a stretch. Even though it was fun at the time, I’m not sure it was safe then or now. We're trying to bring back the part where that was fine to not have a plan. Where a whole day could pass with no plan and no one managing it, and it still counted as a good one. Sometimes the best days were napping in our room listening to music, daydreaming.