Perimenopause and menopause don’t just change the body — they can bring waves of hopelessness, stuckness, or feeling unable to flourish that seem to come out of nowhere. In my work, I’ve seen how much of this is the womb itself moving through its own transition and grief. This isn’t the end of your creativity — it’s a doorway to it.

When we enter perimenopause and menopause, it affects us psychologically – sometimes we feel hopelessness, stuck, not knowing how to flourish. If we recognize this is what is happening, there are some ways to navigate or negotiate these phases that we experience. During this time, the womb is going through a period of transition. The transition is that the womb is starting to feel not as fertile or not having the capacity to birth children.

When the people that I work with are in this transition and this phase, there are themes that arise in terms of our psychology. The themes are we feel like we don’t know how to flourish. We can feel stuck. We don’t know how to thrive. We might start to feel a lot of hopelessness and despair about our lives, about ourselves, about everything really. It’s almost like so much gets colored by what is happening in our wombs.

Now, it’s really important when we are going through this to start to recognize that some of our feelings of stuckness, of not being able to flourish or feeling hopelessness or despair, may be coming from our womb losing the capacity to birth children.

The womb, understanding this from a psychological-spiritual perspective, is not just here to birth children. It is a beautiful and incredible and magical gift that the womb has to be able to birth children. And, the womb is a force of creation that can create in all capacities. This is the womb.

So whether or not you’ve had any children, you might go into those psychological patterns, and the womb is what creates, let’s say, home. It has the capacity to create a home that feels like home. It has the capacity to bring our creativity in painting. It could bring our creativity in a research project.

That is really what we are driven by—to bring some change, some difference in this world. It has unlimited creativity whether we’re in perimenopause, menopause, before all of this. This is the capacity of the womb.

So the first thing to recognize, of course, is if you’re going into hopelessness, not feeling like you can flourish, feeling stuck, this may be the womb speaking. This may be the womb in this biological transition, whether or not you wanted to have children, want to have children, or already had children.

Allowing the Grief of the Transition

Now, it is normal to feel grief as the womb is transitioning or has transitioned. And many of us, we skip this grief. We intellectualize and say, “Hey, I didn’t want to have children anyway.” Or, “I already had children.” Whatever it is, we skip this process of grieving. The womb is grieving. Our biology is grieving. Oftentimes, we disconnect from it.

And it has become the norm to disconnect and intellectualize. So if you find yourself grieving, please know it’s normal and natural to grieve.

Creativity from the womb can happen in so many different ways—and the womb is here to create for your lifetime really. And the womb needs support and your intention to support what the inner womb speaks. Intention to listen to: What does it want to create? And to follow your creativity in the way that you feel called.

Connecting with the Womb Physically

Now, it’s not always easy to connect with what we want to create, with what’s being called forth from our wombs. And we also don’t know how to listen. One of the things that’s really helpful is to connect with your womb physically. What I mean by connect with it physically is that you bring your awareness into your womb and you feel it.

Many times when I work with people in the body, we hit layers of feeling the body. We hit the gross layers — the ones that feel dry, the ones that feel tense, the ones that feel burning, different unpleasant kind of feelings.

And often when we feel them, some of the content that we have—our beliefs, our thoughts, our traumas, our wounds—they arise and come to our awareness.

So, it’s not always easy doing the connection practice with your womb. However, even if you start to feel those layers, I encourage you to have some kind of a practice where you’re continuing to check in with your womb on a regular basis. And as you go through different layers, you will start to connect with its juiciness, with its aliveness, with its creativity, with whatever it has to bring for you.

Yes, you will likely go through grief as well, but this is generally the process. When I work with anyone in the body, we first feel the things that we took out of our consciousness and dissociated from. Then as we continue the practice, we release some of our issues, traumas, and wounds. And we start to connect with the richness of our bodies. Some of us have more access to the richness quicker; some of us have to go through some of those discomforts.

Yet, it is pretty much always mixed – both richness and our wounds and issues.

I am also here to support you if you’re going through this process. I know it’s not easy sometimes. And it’s really nice to have somebody to hold the space as you go through these different layers of feeling feelings, beliefs, issues, traumas, wounds – all of that.

Perimenopause and menopause is not the end, as it can feel sometimes biologically as the womb goes through this transition. It is a time where we can really come to our richness and our fullness and our creativity and whatever it is that your womb is here for. It may be difficult. However, it’s possible.

If you’re navigating perimenopause or menopause and finding it harder than you expected — emotionally, creatively, or in your sense of self — I’m here to support you.

I offer somatic psychotherapy for California adults and psychospiritual integration for women worldwide.

A free 20-minute consultation is a good place to start.

Book a Free Consultation →
Learn more about Somatic Psychotherapy →
Learn more about Psychospiritual Integration →

If this resonated, you may also find support in these reflections:

• Rediscovering Our Feminine Essence — a women’s group for coming home to your body and your inner richness
• Our Deepest Trauma Isn’t What Happened to Us — It’s What We Lost of Ourselves — on why healing means reconnecting with what got disconnected, not just processing what happened
• Why Healing Lives in the Body — on how the body holds what we’re not consciously feeling, and the practice of coming back into it
• Not Believing Our Thoughts and Feelings — on releasing identification with painful thoughts like “I feel hopeless” to reconnect with who you really are

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do I feel so hopeless or stuck during perimenopause?

When entering perimenopause and menopause, our bodies go through a profound biological transition as the womb shifts away from its capacity to birth children. Psychologically, this transition often stirs up deep feelings of stuckness, despair, or a loss of direction. Because we are so used to intellectualizing or bypassing these shifts, we often don’t realize that the womb itself is processing a major transition—and that unprocessed grief can color our entire emotional landscape.

Is it normal to grieve during perimenopause and menopause?

Yes, it is completely normal and natural to experience grief during this phase. Many of us try to intellectualize the transition by telling ourselves, “I didn’t want children anyway” or “I’m glad this part is over,” which causes us to skip the grieving process. But our biology and our bodies are transitioning. Allowing space to feel that grief, rather than disconnecting from it, is an essential part of coming home to your body.

How can I reconnect with my creativity and body during midlife transitions?

The womb’s force of creation is not limited to birthing children; it is a lifelong center of creativity, whether that means creating a home, pursuing a research project, or bringing new changes into the world. Reconnecting begins with bringing gentle, physical awareness back to your womb through somatic practice. Even when you encounter dry, tense, or uncomfortable layers along the way, regular check-ins help you move through those blocks and rediscover the aliveness, juice, and creativity waiting underneath.