How Perimenopause Taught Me to Stop Waiting For Permission

Welcome to Permission Slip: A Gen X-ennial woman’s guide to telling the truth, taking up space, and rewriting the script in midlife.

"Am I dying or just in perimenopause?"

That was me many nights last year, sweating through another set of sheets, frantically Googling symptoms while my cat judged me from the foot of the bed. Plot twist: It wasn't a rare deathly plague! (Touch wood, ptoo, ptoo) Nope, just the joy of hormones deciding to throw a rager in my body without sending an invitation first.

At first, I thought perimenopause was just about the night sweats, the anxiety, the brain fog that made me forget why I walked into a room.

But I’ve realized it’s something bigger. Perimenopause is a midlife reckoning — a hormonal coup that refuses to let me keep playing by the same rules.

Perimenopause has illuminated a truth I'd been gaslighting myself about for decades: I've spent my whole life trying to meet expectations that were never mine to begin with.

Sound familiar? I thought it might.

I don’t know when this first started. Maybe when I was a little girl who got praised for being agreeable. Maybe when I learned that being “too much” — too loud, too sensitive, too demanding — could get me labelled as difficult and punished for it. Maybe when I first learned that my worth was tied to how good I was at making others comfortable.

If I could just tame my hair, fix my face, be less ethnic-looking, perhaps I’d look like a Laura Ashley model worthy of a good Armenian boy.

For years, I didn’t even realize I was waiting.

Waiting to be chosen.
Waiting to be liked.
Waiting for someone to tell me I was good enough, smart enough, lovable enough.

There wasn't some big cinematic moment of empowerment. My awakening was a slow burn over my 40s — a series of realizations stacked on top of each other until the weight of them finally cracked something open.

Then, a few months ago, I got a painful and cruel rejection from someone I thought knew my heart. My instinct was to mentally beat myself up. Who was I? Was I really the awful person they made me out to be?

Perimenopause was already breaking me open. My hormones weren’t having it anymore — no more people-pleasing, no more pretending. And then came the rejection. The kind that lands in your body like a punch. The kind that, in my 30s, would have sent me scrambling to explain, to overcorrect, to prove my worth.

But I didn’t have it in me anymore.

And that was the turning point.

I’d spent months — maybe years — trying to mold myself into a version that would win this person’s approval. But for what? They had already made up their mind about me. It was out of my control.

What a waste of my precious energy and time.

And there lay the truth:

👉 I could keep waiting for permission to be loved and accepted as I am — or I could give it to myself.

Turning 50 means I’m fresh outta f*cks. So, let me introduce you to Permission Slip — a blog, a manifesto, and a reminder that you are not too old, too late, or too much. Think of it as the midlife woman's cheat code for finally saying:

"I'm doing this my way — deal with it."

What Permission Slip Is About

This personal realization didn't just change how I saw myself — it gave me a front-row seat to how so many women experience midlife.

I cannot tell you how many times I've started a sentence in the last year with, "You're allowed to…"

Even the most confident, accomplished women I know still wrestle with that ingrained need for external validation. It shows up in careers, relationships, parenting, creativity, self-worth — everywhere.

Which is exactly why I'm relaunching this newsletter as Permission Slip.

If you've been here a while, you'll notice some changes. And if you're new here, welcome!

When I launched my Substack in 2022, I called it I Heart Stories. It suited me then — a big-hearted, earnest, emo, neurodivergent single mom trying to find her voice after years of writing to someone else's word count.

But in the years that have followed, I saw a pattern in the women who came to me for coaching, friendship, or advice.

Many of us seem to be waiting for someone else's stamp of approval before making our moves. Unlike dudes, who just take the opportunity or say the thing — qualified, accurate, or not — we women are waiting for permission.

• Permission to slow down.

• Permission to change their minds.

• Permission to take up space.

• Permission to feel their feelings.

• Permission to stop hustling.

• Permission to prioritize pleasure.

• Permission to want more.

I was guilty of it, too. And the worst part? I’ve passed this need for external approval and permission onto my teenage daughter.

The loud response to my post on Nicole Kidman’s movie Babygirl and women’s desire sparked something. We don’t need permission. Not to drink a full glass of milk, nor to ask for the kind of life we want to have. But sometimes, we need someone to hand us a slip of paper that says, "Here. Go do the thing. You’re allowed."

For years, I’d been able to override my own needs — to be agreeable, to play small, to twist myself into versions that would win approval. But now? The hormones aren’t having it. I don’t have the energy to perform anymore. And that’s terrifying. And freeing.

We've been raised in a world that teaches women to see themselves through the eyes of others — whether it's parents, bosses, partners, or society at large. From an early age, we're given unspoken rules about how we should look, act, and succeed based on factors like beauty, race, and class.

We're taught that permission to be who we are — bold, ambitious, messy, complicated — must come from someone in power (looking at you, Sky Daddy). But what if we stopped waiting for approval and started defining our own lives instead?

Midlife isn’t a crisis — it’s a plot twist. It’s when we start to recognize that we don’t want to be a supporting actor, but that — as a generation raised on romcoms and HBO shows — life can be better if we’re the ones writing the script. And it’s about time we move through the world claiming that Main Character Energy.

This is what Permission Slip is about.

The essays will be honest, sometimes messy, and always real. The themes? Midlife reinvention, boundaries, relationships, and reclaiming our own narratives. The goal? That we move — not with defiance, but with steadiness. Not with "I'll show them," but with "I'll show myself."

So what now?

I know that breaking lifelong patterns isn't easy. So I made something for you.

🎟️ Download Your First Official Permission Slip Here 🎟️

Print it. Sign it. Stick it on your fridge. Or don't. But let it be a reminder that you don't need permission from anyone else to take up space. Not in the boardroom nor the bedroom, not in relationships, and not in your own damn life. No shrinking. No apologizing.

Don’t worry, we’re going to practice together.

If that feels uncomfortable, good. If it feels exhilarating, even better.

This is just the beginning. I'll be sharing weekly(ish) essays and insights about the messy, beautiful process of reclaiming ourselves in midlife — from perimenopause symptoms that made me think I was losing my mind, to career transitions, relationship shifts, and untangling all those "shoulds" we've internalized.

This is what perimenopause is teaching me: No one is coming to give me permission to slow down, to want more, to exist on my own terms. The only person who can do that is me. The truth is, no one's coming to tell us it's time to prioritize ourselves. We have to do that for ourselves. And I’m hoping we can help each other along the way.

Welcome to your plot twist. You’re the main character now.

Permission granted.

Drop a comment below (or hit reply on your email to DM me): What do you need to give yourself permission for today?

I'll go first: I'm giving myself permission to be inconsistent, to create on my own schedule, and to stop apologizing for taking the time I need.

Your turn.

— Nadine