While I enjoyed the rest of that weekend retreat, I had a cloud of questions haning over my head. The biggest question, the one that shook me to the core, was whether this early pre-menopause meant no more babies. That could be a book by itself, and I’m not even going to try to do it justice right now.

So… I went home, greatly shaken, to begin a learning journey that I never expected to take at this point in my life.

July 7-9, 2006, I had the joy of spending the weekend with a wonderful group of women who have a combined knowledge pool on women’s health issues that would blow you away. They are also a terrificly diverse group of dear friends, and this weekend retreat with them has been a life-changing event both years that I have gone.

On Saturday evening, I got up my nerve to ask about the things that were going on with my body. This roomful of wise women looked at me, then looked at each other. You know when folks look at each other like they know something you don’t know? Aggravating, isn’t it? Well, then they asked me how old I was (setting off alarm bells – yikes! It couldn’t be that!), and when I told them I would turn 33 at the end of the month, most murmured that I was too young. However, my dear friend Mary was in the back of the room, shaking her head, so I asked her what she was thinking.

Mary shared with me that she had been doing a lot of research lately, and was learning that it is becoming more and more common for women to be showing signs of pre-menopause early – even in their early 30’s! This is due in great part to the huge amount of estrogens and xenoestrogens (chemicals that act just like estrogens in our bodies) that are present in our environment. Indeed, my symptoms were typical pre-menopausal symptoms, and were probably due to an hormonal imbalance.

In May of 2006, we were down in NC to visit family, and I missed most of a day of precious fellowship with family because I was in such intense pain.

I was finally able to put into words some things that had been going on with my body for the last 6-8 months. It wasn’t cramps – I’ve known cramps for years. It was as if what my body had formerly done over the course of 5 days each month, it was now trying to do all in one day. It didn’t quite accomplish that; it took 3 days usually, but the intensity of that one day would blow me out of commission entirely.

I also began to grasp that something had to be going on. What, I didn’t know, and I didn’t know how to find out. Maybe I didn’t want to find out…