“You can't stop me, I'm a modern day mum”

Unlikely lessons in life from 'The Gingerbread Man' and perimenopause

Before we begin: Did anyone else sing the title of this piece to the tune of the Gingerbread Man? Go ahead and try it if you didn’t …

Catchy, right?

I can’t not sing those words above, to that tune. It may just be that I have a four year old, who often sings that song, as he runs & plays joyfully in our home. Or, perhaps it’s that I’m also seeing some hidden parallels between that children’s story, and my own life - the plight of the modern day mum.

Okay, so we were clearly not baked into existence by a lonely, elderly woman - No, it is not the origin story of The Gingerbread Man that parallels our lives. But the story of his eventual demise possibly does …

Before I start, I want to acknowledge that this is a slightly longer read than I intended it to be, so I’ll start by providing a road map of where I’ll be taking you, and you can decide to join me the journey if it sounds intriguing:

First, I do a quick recap of the Gingerbread Man story - So, if you’re familiar with it, you can skip ahead!

Secondly, I reflect on my sense of the parallels between us as modern mothers and the Gingerbread Man, as well as the parallels between the ‘help’ we are offered by the modern-day wellness industry, and the crafty, devious fox.

Thirdly, I give an overview of my experience of my most recent ‘crumbling in the river’ experience in my life: Perimenopause.

Finally, I share the first stage of how I moved from crumbling to thriving again, still very much in perimenopause, but no longer at the mercy of it.

Ready?

Let’s start here:

“Run! Run! As fast you can!”

Yes, that sounds very familiar! We are, as modern day women and mothers, definitely all running: Trying to keep up, to compete, or get ahead - at work, at home, in parenting, in our relationships, in our self-care. In every area of our life.

And, for at least some of the time, many of us are feeling pretty cocky, just like that little Gingerbread Man… We are doing it! No one can catch us! Look at us go!

In the story*, the Gingerbread Man wants to keep running and cross a river, but he also knows he will crumble & melt if he gets into the water. An opportunistic fox sees his plight, and offers to ‘help’ him - “Climb onto my back” he says, as he promises to keep The Gingerbread Man dry and get him to the other side. The Gingerbread Man, who is only focussed on ‘keeping on keeping on’, and who has his eyes fixed on the other side of the river, accepts help from fox.

Phew - he feels pleased - He is safe from the water. And he’s still moving forward towards his goal. He feels smug … Then the water begins to rise. He begins to climb higher & higher on the fox, towards the fox’s head. He clings tighter & tighter to the fox, as the river water creeps ever closer…

And then, when the attention of our Gingerbread protagonist is entirely focused on the threat of the rising water, he is suddenly & unceremoniously: Gobbled up. Eaten. Devoured.

Devoured by a threat that he had not even seen coming.

Gobbled up by the very same entity that had promised to be his saviour.

A fable for our times?

Since I’ve started singing the title of this piece to this tune, I can’t shake the feeling that we are, in some ways, just like The Gingerbread Man. So many of us are constantly running and crumbling - We are exhausted, we are burning out, and more & more of us are beginning to reluctantly admit we need some help, if we’re going to keep going in the direction we are running in.

And perhaps that opportunistic ‘fox’, could well be a metaphor for the modern-day ‘wellness industry’… praying on our collective vulnerability as mothers?

When we are struggling the most - In comes the ‘wellness-industry’ - Promising us that we can keep going, that we don’t need to stop, slow down, or rethink our plans. We are promised that we just need to buy what they are selling, and that will help us keep going, without ‘crumbling’ on the way.

We love this idea, it feels like a life-raft. So we sign up, we pay our money and we climb on …

At first we feel relieved, and we feel a little better. We’ve done something for ourselves, we’ve signed up to some ‘self-care’, and we feel somewhat ‘held’, as we continue on our merry way. And we haven’t had to stop, or even slow down really, so this is surely the answer we’ve been craving? Amazing!

And yet … The water continues to rise, all around us … we begin to worry. The buzz of having bought that promise of wellness has worn off. We realise that despite our brief moment of feeling better, we are still not safe on this journey. Suddenly we don’t feel so ‘held’. We’re still on our way, we’re still moving forward, but it feels more treacherous than before, and the threat of us ‘crumbling’ looms ever larger…

Additionally, to add insult to injury, now as well as feeling exhausted, overwhelmed and burnt out - we also feel like a failure. We blame ourselves that we can’t even benefit from self-care & wellness in the way that we’ve been sold we ‘should’.

And yet we also know that we cannot give up. There are people on the other side of that river expecting us! People who need us, and who have a list of tasks ready for us to do, and who have arranged various places for us to be… We must keep going.

So we do the only thing we know - We financially invest more in our ‘wellness’ - we cling even tighter to the fox. We clamber further and further away from the river that threatens to ‘crumble’ us - without realising that we are headed for the sharp teeth and drooling mouth of that very same ‘helpful fox’…

We don’t get physically gobbled up of course, but metaphorically I believe we do: Our money certainly gets gobbled up, and so does our sense of agency in our own wellbeing. Emotionally and financially, too many of us are devoured by the so-called wellness industry - Forever pouring more time & money into our ‘wellness’, and yet forever feeling that actual wellness feels more elusive than ever.

And so we remain trapped, in the metaphorical belly of the fox, circling endlessly in this vicious cycle of struggle & shame … Unless we do something different.

Perimenopause & the crumbling of my life

I’m certain that it’s the stage of my life that I find myself in now - in my mid 40s, very much in the throes of perimenopause - that inspires me to write this piece right now.

Perimenopause has very much forced me to ‘do something different’ - in fact, it’s forced my hand to change a lot of things in my life.

Perimenopause came into my life gradually, but full of destruction - It came like an invisible wrecking ball, and began destroying aspects of my life & identity that had felt like solid ground before.

At first, parts of me starting quaking, then they began being chipped away … slowly over time, whole pillars of my ‘self’ started crumbling to pieces, and I barely recognised myself. For those of you who know this reference: It honestly felt exactly like the destruction of all of Riley’s ‘personality islands’ on one of my favourite films ever: Inside Out. It felt devastating, totally destabilising, and really scary.

The real kicker was its invisibility. I didn’t know perimenopause was even a thing, let alone that it had come to visit ME. NOW.

All I knew was that I was in my late 30’s, running faster than ever, trying to look after myself more than ever, and that previously foundational aspects of my life were crumbling to the ground around me, and from beneath me, and even within me. I felt bereft, panicked, alone, confused and honestly - Scared, desperate and genuinely really unwell.

At first, I did what I knew, to stop the crumbling: I amped up my previously useful ‘self-care’, and ‘wellness’ investments, and added a few more in for good measure. I clung to those old habits, desperately trying to stop the ‘old me’ crumbling away. I bought all the candles, the yoga sessions, self-help books, fancy creams, organic supplements, retreats, and bath salts. I clung to all the ‘wellness’ and ‘self-care’ on offer, and while doing, so I tried to stay my course - I tried to keep running & crossing that metaphorical river.

And yet I continued to crumble. In fact, the crumbling intensified.

I found everything harder. I was more quick to anger than ever before. I felt exhausted daily, and yet I couldn’t sleep. I was catching every single sickness bug going around, and they were hanging on for weeks at a time. I was experiencing more anxiety than ever, and had a near-constant wired feeling in my chest. I had gained a signficant amount of weight. I had frequent heart palpitations, dry skin, restless legs, brain fog, itchy skin, achey joints, and an upset stomach more days than not. I also had some spotting mid-cycle, and hormonal migraines (that use to pop up only when I had my period, but had started coming on at any random time in my cycle). I was cranky nearly every day. I was overwhelmed easily - the slightest change in plans would send me either panicking, raging or wanting to throw my hands up in despair and give up. This went on for years …

About a year ago, I remember sobbing over Zoom, to my therapist at the time: “I am doing ALL the self-care, and I still feel terrible! I literally don’t know what else to do!”

I felt helpless, hopeless and totally disempowered. I had been the (self-proclaimed) ‘queen of self-care’ in my early 30’s, yet now… No matter what I did to stop myself crumbling, I always seemed to end up feeling totally gobbled up by life anyway.

Awareness unveils the gifts of perimenopause

I’m somewhere very different now - Still in perimenopause, yet many of those physical symptoms have disappeared, and the others that persist are either far more manageable, or they are happening far less frequently.

Just like for Riley, in Inside Out - Once everything has been destroyed, we can always start rebuilding, bigger & better, with stronger foundations & structures than before…

I’ve made lots of changes over the last year, to get me here (which will absolutely be the topic of future Substack essays).

But for now, lets focus on this question; How did I break the cycle? What triggered this cascade of positive changes for me, from my rock bottom, towards a sense of relative wellness in perimenopause?

Awareness was the key.

Rather fortuitously, about a year ago, I had picked up a random fiction book to read**, in which the main character was a women turning 50 - The author painted a picture of this character’s life, which was all so familiar to me, and she was calling this picture: ‘menopause’.

Could it be? I was only 43 - Could I be menopausal? It was the spark of awareness that I needed to begin some research.

My fairly rudimentary research - done mostly on Google, Instagram & listening to podcasts, and done within snippets of time between reading or playing with son, nursery runs, and working -  led me to surmise that I was probably not menopausal yet, but that I was very probably ‘perimenopausal’.

I was definitely ticking a LOT of the boxes commonly associated with that decade or so (often starting at around age 35) leading up to menopause, during which hormones start to fluctuate and change, but our monthly cycles continue.

Becoming aware of that new word - perimenopause - and knowing that it did indeed apply to me, meant that I had a new lens, and a new framework, to look at my struggles through.

Like putting on a new pair of glasses, I could suddenly see these struggles, and myself, far more clearly. I could therefore now also very easily see new and creative ways forward too - I was no longer trapped in a cycle of doing the same things (that clearly were not working for me anymore) again & again, expecting different results.

Awareness of knowing I was in perimenopause freed me from the jaws from ‘the fox’ - I could now stop mindlessly clinging to the offerings of a wellness industry, based very much outside of me, with its own incentives for ‘helping’ me. And I could stop clinging to a version of me from the past - that felt I needed to keep running and river-crossing at all costs, and that just kept pouring money, time & energy into products & services that were promising to help me, yet were definitely NOT helping me.

I turned inwards instead, and to the maturing parts of me. I began to filter out the outside messaging, advertising and noise, and I began to tune into my body & soul, which was letting me know what I truly needed - Both from within (like, self compassion & more time resting), and from out there (like, more time in nature, and foods that feel good for my body, and less time doing activities that were draining me).

Yes, perimenopause, more than any other time in my life, has given me superpowers to see more clearly - or perhaps more accurately, to ‘feel’ more clearly - than ever before: To see what is working in my life, and what is not. To feel in my body what sparks joy, and what sparks frustration, disappointment or rage. To feel in my soul what aligns with my values, and what is a distraction from what is really important to me. And to discern what it truly helpful to me, from what is marketed to me as ‘help’ - but actually just drains me further.

I am therefore now more aware of exactly where I am, and I am being more honest with myself about how it feels in this place - Am I feeling content and calm? Am I thriving? Experiencing joy and connection regularly? Can I clearly see where I am headed, in all areas of my life, and am I steering my direction with intention and calm consciousness?

Some days, the answer is ‘yes’ to all of these. And its wonderful.

And when the answer is ‘no’, I know now - to stop running. To pause, and look around. To reassess.

Either way, perimenopause has truly been a wonderful gift. A brutal, challenging gift, but absolutely a wonderful one - I got past the brutality, and into the wonder, when I became aware of it - when I brought it out into the light for closer inspection - and when I was open to exploring the wisdom it had for me.

Now that I can see more clearly where I am, and that I can now be more honest with myself about how I got here, I’m far more likely to course-correct much quicker.

I know now that I can stop running. I can slow down. I can avoid some the crumbing rivers of life, and maybe choose a relaxing walk along the riverbank instead. And, on the occasions that I do decide to cross the next ‘river’ of demands & plans, I can now do so with less haste and panic, and I can consciously choose river-faring vehicles that will genuinely help me cross, to get me to where I want to be, without devouring me alive.

Jenny X

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Hi there,

Thanks so much for reading! If you’ve enjoyed reading this piece, and/or you think someone you know might also enjoy it, or may see their own experience reflected in it, please do share it, I’d be so grateful:

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* The adaptation of this tale that I’m most familiar with is this one on CBeebies: The Musical Story of The Gingerbread Man, with the BBC Philharmonic

** How Hard Can It Be by Allison Pearson