Is This Normal?!
(Spoiler: Yes. And Also, WTF.)
Let’s start with the question we’ve all typed into a search bar at 2am, heart pounding, symptoms we can’t explain:
Is this normal? Or is something seriously wrong with me?
This week’s community voices hit different. Because sometimes perimenopause doesn’t look like a hot flash or a missed period. Sometimes it looks like a three-day headache that convinces your brain you have a tumor. Sometimes it looks like a mystery heat sensation on one exact spot on your leg. Sometimes it looks like an aura migraine out of nowhere after years of nothing.
And sometimes it’s all of that at once.
You are not losing your mind. Let’s get into it.
Community Voices: “What Even Is This?”
Real posts from real women inside the Perry community.
“My mind has me thinking I have a brain tumor.”
What are your headaches like i have had an off again on again headache for three days I am on my period but I have felt a little off balance also do any of you experience this my mind has me thinking I have a brain tumor
👉 Read the thread and share your experience
“Is it possible to have a hot flash in just one small part of your body?”
Is it possible to have a hot flash in just one small part of your body? This is the weirdest thing but I keep getting a rush of heat on the lower part of my left leg on the outer side above my ankle. Like an 8 inch area. It’s been happening for over a week. Multiple times a day. Same spot. Since Its only a small area it’s not to bad but if this is what a whole body hot flash feels like then holy moly I’m not ready for this.
“I haven’t had a migraine in years. And then came the aura.”
I’m on day 4 of my cycle and just experienced an aura. I haven’t had a migraine in years and normally they are preceded by a blind spot in my vision, then a mild headache. This came with a blind spot that changed into a ring of colors on my left side. Now the headache. Totally freaked me out. Anyone else have auras like this?
If you’ve experienced menstrual migraines or cycle-linked auras, this thread is for you.
This is why community matters. Because when your doctor shrugs, when Google spirals you into worst-case scenarios, when the people in your life just don’t get it — these women do.
Not in the Perry community yet? Come find your people →
Big News from Perry Academy: Now Accredited for Health Coaches
We have an announcement that genuinely made us do a little dance.
The Perry Academy Perimenopause Certificate is now accredited for health coaches.
That means if you’re a National Board Certified Health & Wellness Coach, a functional medicine health coach, or a certified nutrition coach — you can now earn 11.5 CEs credits while becoming one of the most perimenopause-informed practitioners in your field.
This is the training that fills the gap no medical school, no certification program, and no textbook has filled. Built from the lived experiences of over 500,000 women. Led by physicians, nurses, therapists, dietitians — the whole care team.
👉 Get certified — Perry Academy for Health Coaches
And we want to introduce you to one of the people who helped make it happen:
Meet Jill Foos, NBC-HWC
Jill Foos is a National Board Certified Health & Wellness Coach, Certified Functional Medicine Health Coach, and Certified Integrative Nutrition Health Coach. She’s a Respin Head Coach, a member of MINT (Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers), Co-Founder of the Chicago Menopause Collective, and host of the Health Trip Podcast.
Jill teaches the health coach track at Perry Academy — and she built it to actually meet coaches where they are: not prescribing, but powerfully supporting women through one of the most confusing transitions of their lives.
If you’re a health coach who has felt the limits of your training when a client starts describing brain fog, heart palpitations, rage, and insomnia all in the same breath — Jill’s masterclass was designed for exactly that moment.
👉 Meet Jill Foos and explore her masterclass
Know a health coach? A wellness professional? Someone who works with women in midlife and wants to do it better? Send them this link. And if you refer them and they enroll, you earn 15% as a Perry Academy affiliate.
New Podcast Episode: Perimenopause & Policy
Perimenopause WTF? — now streaming
This one is bigger than symptoms. This one is about systems.
In our latest episode, we sit down with Claire Gill, Founder of the National Menopause Foundation, and Dr. Jayne Morgan, cardiologist and VP of Medical Affairs at Hello Heart — to talk about what it actually takes to change women’s healthcare from the inside out.
We’re talking research funding. Legislative advocacy. Cardiovascular health — the number one killer of women, and one that’s deeply, dangerously entangled with the perimenopause transition. And the question nobody asks loudly enough: why has it taken this long?
This is the conversation that makes you realize your frustration isn’t just personal. It’s political. And it’s fixable.
28 minutes. Worth every one of them.
One More Thing
If you have a provider, nurse practitioner, health coach, a wellness practitioner, a nutritionist, a therapist, or a fitness professional in your life who works with women — forward this to them. Tell them about Perry Academy. Tell them about our accreditations.
Because the more providers who actually understand what we’re going through, the fewer 2am Google spirals we have to survive alone.
You’re not crazy. You’re not dramatic. You’re in perimenopause, and you deserve care that gets it.
— The Perimenopause WTF Team
Perimenopause WTF is brought to you by Perry — the #1 perimenopause app and community. Download the free Perry App on Apple or Android.