Tag: Perimenopause

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Finding Peace and Joy Again by Kitty Bucholtz

January 9, 2026 by in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz, Writing tagged as , , , , , ,

It’s been a rough few years for me. Burnout, butt-kicking perimenopause, then menopause that didn’t “pause” my symptoms much. I’ve felt broken. And every January, I hope and pray that this year will be better. This New Year’s, I barely let myself consider the idea for fear that I will be disappointed yet again.

And yet…

A friend of mine has been urging me for months to read some of the materials she’s found on ADHD in adult women. I’ve resisted, feeling these diagnoses are yet another fad created by Big Pharma to increase their profits at our expense. But I finally listened to one of the audiobooks over Christmas vacation. I felt as gobsmacked as when I took the CliftonStrengths test a year or so ago!

Suddenly, it seemed a light turned on in my head showing me what I already knew about myself but with a lot more depth and clarity and understanding. Both times, it was like I could see things I knew were there (like the living room couch, the TV stand, the window covered with blackout curtains) but now I could SEE them! The couch is red and has thick, soft cushions. The TV stand is small, made of pale wood, but the TV is quite large. And the window is bigger and lets in more light than I realized when it was curtained.

What a difference!!

Personality traits that I have been both comfortable with and frustrated by now appear to be different than I’d thought. Maybe I wasn’t actually broken; maybe some of my tools had broken. The tools I’d used to cope with life (we all have them, whatever our personality traits) stopped working as well when hormones and stress blind-sided me. But the books I’ve been reading have reminded me that I am not broken and I don’t need to be fixed. I’ve just been shoved, hard, off course and need to catch my breath and remind myself how to get back up again.

I have no interest in getting tested for ADHD by a psychiatrist or psychologist, but I am very interested in improving my toolbox: sharpening old skills, developing new ones, perhaps letting go of mechanisms that no longer work as well for me. And I think this is going to make a big difference in my writing.

I’ve just started reading The Artist’s Joy by Merideth Hite Estevez, and The ADHD Advantage by Dale Archer, M.D. Both are blowing me away and making me feel — I’m not the only one who feels this way!! (The book that I first read on my friend’s suggestion is A Radical Guide for Women with ADHD by Sari Solden, M.S.)

If you’re feeling overwhelmed with life, or lacking joy and passion, perhaps some of these books or other similar titles will help you get a better handle on what’s not working and how to get back on track again. I’ll continue writing about this in the future in case it’s helpful!

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Planning for Peace by Kitty Bucholtz

December 9, 2025 by in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz, Writing tagged as , , , , , ,

Everyone who knows me knows I’m big on planning. That’s because my brain gets all stressed out if I don’t know what’s going on, whether I have time to say yes to something, or when I’m afraid I’m missing out on something. That’s why I already know where we’re spending Christmas (with friends a few minutes away), what I’m bringing for dinner (a homemade chocolate pie, homemade cornbread, and drinks), and what I’ll be wearing (embroidered jeans, a lightweight knit shirt, and taking both a sweater and sweatpants for warmth and comfort later). All that in the first week of December! Woohooo!! And now I’m not stressed at all about Christmas. (Yup, Christmas shopping already done!)

But when it comes to still trying to balance the changes menopause is having on my brain and my energy with the goals I want to achieve in 2026…well, planning in a way that will bring me the most peace is critical. One of the things I learned is that cortisol, the stress hormone, can make menopause symptoms worse. So if I’m feeling stressed by how I’m feeling (or by how it’s keeping me from achieving my goals!), the stress actually makes the symptoms worse.

Not to mention the fact that unused cortisol (if there are no tigers to run from or I don’t walk it off quickly) gets stored as fat. Great. Talk about insults and injuries.

I bought a one-year subscription to MasterClass.com last Christmas because Halle Berry hosted a 90-minute “class” with interviews with several doctors and women going through menopause. Here I am two weeks before my subscription expires and I finally finished watching it and taking notes. There was a lot of good information in the class, but let me give you a few bullet points that fit with my topic of planning for peace.

  • Decluttering — I knew this was not a time-waster or procrastination technique!! But I’d let people convince me it was, and my mess has been stressing me out all year. It’s gotten to the point, I don’t even like to spend much time in my office. Several items on my to-do list now have to do with sorting papers that are currently piled everywhere, filing the important must-keep stuff in boxes I just bought, and throwing out as much as I can. I need to let go of all the old plays I wrote a million years ago…even though I don’t really want to. I never look at them, won’t use them again, and don’t have room in our small apartment to keep writing only for nostalgia’s sake. (And no, for those about to leave a comment about scanning them or taking photos, it would take me weeks to do that! I have a lot of old writing!)
  • Have a “launchpad” where you keep your keys, your wallet, your purse, your phone/charger, etc. I’ve never called it a launchpad, but I get the idea. I have a bowl I made in pottery class in college where I put all those things. It is so stressful when I’m rushing out the door for the train and realize one of those items did not make it to the bowl and now I have to look “everywhere” for it…because right now my brain can’t remember.
  • Prioritizing tasks on your list before you begin. Many days I only have a few hours of functioning brain time, so I need to be sure that if I can only get one thing done today, it’s the right thing. And if I can get 2 or 3 things done, they are things I’ll be happy or relieved got done. Much as I want to watch the last episode of The Beast in Me on Netflix to find out how it ends, that is not the best use of my limited brain-time right now! And because limited brain-time has made me perpetually behind in all my goals, when I have a good day (like today!) and can get a dozen things done, I want them to be the things I desperately needed to have done last week and the week before.
  • Organizational Skills Therapy — one of the doctors mentioned this and I have no idea what it is, but it sounds awesome!! I’m totally Googling it later!

So those four items are now on my list of tools I want to use to plan for peace in 2026. I have no idea what to expect next year. My brain seems to maybe be working better, but I’ve thought that in the past right before a new wave of menopause hell bowled me over. At least with these tools, I can get a few of the most important items done and choose to be satisfied with it, not stressing about what I can’t control.

I hope this is helpful for you as well! Whether you’re in need of this information or know someone you can share it with, it’s always good to have some reliable tools in your author — and life — toolkit. I hope you plan for a peaceful and joyful end of 2025 and that it spills over into all of 2026. God bless you! And Merry Christmas!

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Do You Have Time to Write? by Kitty Bucholtz

November 9, 2025 by in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz, Writing tagged as , , , ,

I’ve always been one of those people who’s trying to get more done, looking for ways to be more efficient so I can do more in the same amount of time. I even taught a time management class for writers for over ten years, sharing everything I learned so people could try new ways to get more writing done. It worked delightfully well for me for years.

Until it didn’t.

Stress and burnout and perimenopause collided a few years ago, and it felt like I got hit by a train. I struggled to get writing work done while I tried to realign my health. Now on a good day, I’m working for 4-6 hours (down from 10-14 five years ago); a bad day might give me 30 minutes. It can be depressing, and that adds to the stress, which messes with my hormones, which clouds my brain even more.

But I’m still the same Kitty, wanting to share what I learn so that I can help others. So I’m writing two nonfiction books right now. One is on perimenopause and menopause for writers. I’m taking everything I’ve learned and all my resources and compiling it all, aimed at writers. I’d love to add more stories from other women writers who have gone through mental and physical health issues, especially related to menopause. Please contact me if you’d like to share your story (kitty at kittybucholtz dot com, and put “Menopause for Writers” in the subject line).

The other book is called Going the Distance: Time and Project Management for Writers. I’ve taken ten years’ worth of my lectures and broken them down into the core elements, and then I’m updating all of the material as well as adding new tips. I’ll start blogging about it soon, but I just finished the outline and I wanted to share it with you.

The 10-chapter book will include the following topics:

  • Chapter 1: Your Story — Looking at the successes in your past, how does your brain create the best environment for writing?
  • Chapter 2: Mastering Self-Talk and Cultivating Joy — Creating attitude habits that increase your creativity.
  • Chapter 3: Dreams, Goals, and the SMART System — Turning goals into dreams is more than just will power; it requires systems to make it happen.
  • Chapter 4: Prioritizing to Conquer Fear — What to do first and what to do next seems easy at the beginning of the day, but how do we keep working on what’s truly important to us while living in the real world?
  • Chapter 5: Finding Your Available Days — One aspect of reality is that for most of us the answer to “How many days do I have to write this year?” is not 365. So how many days do you have?
  • Chapter 6: Translating Goals into Word Counts — This is where we take the real number of writing days and figure out how much we can write or, vice-versa, figure out how much we need to write to hit our goal for the year.
  • Chapter 7: Habits and Rhythms — All of us have our good days; it’s the rest of the time that gets us down. So how can we create an environment for more good days?
  • Chapter 8: Flow and Energy Management — So many things can help us get more done in a shorter amount of time! We’ll look at commitment, daydreaming and white space, physical and mental health, distractions, prewriting, and more.
  • Chapter 9: Organizing Your Writing and Your Workspace — The crucial organization needed to avoid stress and wasted time.
  • Chapter 10: Progress, Rewards, and Reassessment — Sustainability is the name of the game here! What’s the perfect amount of writing work that keeps you moving forward long-term without burning you out?

If this sounds interesting and helpful to you, let me know! In my post here in December, I’ll start sharing some of my tips and ideas so you can plan for a good writing year in 2026. It’ll be worth it!

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Menopause Rage Can Be Funny by Kitty Bucholtz

November 9, 2024 by in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz, Writing tagged as , , , ,

A year and a half ago I finally found out what was wrong with me. Problem: middle age womanhood. Bigger problem: this part of life is apparently such a freaking big secret that no one except ONE friend bothered to say a word about it! Not my mom, not my grandma, not my older sister. I literally thought I was losing my mind. In fact, the GP I finally went to see immediately wrote a prescription for HRT (hormone replacement therapy) and another one to make an appointment with a head doctor.

Great. That’s just…great. I guess she was covering all bases.

I’m better now, but partly because now my craziness has a name. Still, I feel like a lunatic half the time. I don’t want to leave my apartment. I don’t like to go to church. (Used to be one of my favorite things, but now there’s just way too many people and too much putting on a smile when I want to say, “That song sucked,” because it probably didn’t suck and I shouldn’t rain on other people’s happy moment.) I do still like going to the library — whew! — but I’m eating too much and drinking too much and swearing way too much.

And even though my problem has a name and I’m trying to find better solutions for me, turns out a lot of my friends don’t have nearly as many problems as I do. That definitely makes me feel alone. And stupid. And like I’m not a nice person because I just want to yell F*** a lot!!

So when my friend and fellow author Maggie Nash told me about a new book that was on sale on Amazon for 99c (it’s still only $2.99!) about a woman going through menopause, I bought it without even reading the description!!!

I just finished it last night. It. Was. Marvellous!!! Even though I’m not divorced and don’t have kids, I felt like I completely related to the main character, Heidi, who almost gets herself fired in the first chapter! I normally don’t like many books with women my age as protagonists because their lives are so unlike mine as to have nothing in common.

But Hot (Not Bothered) by Harper Ford is a super fun book I think you might love!

One other book about a middle-aged woman that I immediately pre-ordered book two the minute I finished book one is Tess Gerritsen’s The Spy Coast. I don’t want to say too much but she’s a retired spy who gets sucked back in!

Some of my friends know I’ve been wearying of writing about 20-somethings falling in love. I’ll finish the two series I started, and maybe I’ll get my mojo/joy back as I do. But the two books above are making me feel like “people like me” aren’t at all boring, and maybe I should write something like that! I’d have to get a pen name if I want to write f*** half as much as I’ve been saying it lately, but it could be worth it!

I hope you check out both of these books! And remember, if you’re going through tough times right now due to brain and body chemistry, you’re not alone! Don’t despair! Talk to a friend, or even a stranger. I went off on a menopause rage rant about the disappearing messages at my credit union the other day and made the middle-aged woman answering laugh out loud, she told me in one of her replies. Yay! Two more women who know they’re not alone! Go read Hot (Not Bothered) and laugh instead of cry!

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Encouraging Words by Kitty Bucholtz

October 9, 2024 by in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz tagged as , , , ,

Some days you just need some encouragement.

Since that is one of my primary strengths/gifts, I wanted to focus on that today. 😊 And I hope you’ll feel like sharing encouraging words with the people you’re around today and this month.

If you’re writing, yay! Keep going! Enjoy what you’re creating. It never existed…until you wrote it. That’s amazing!!

If you’re editing, yay! You had words on the page and now you’re making them better. Your readers are going to love what you’re doing today!

If you’re marketing, yay! Keep going and don’t despair! John Wanamaker, U.S. business/religious/political leader, said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” 😂 So hang in there. Even people richer and more successful than you wish there was a better way to find your audience.

If you’re stuck…well, not yay, but…choose to take a deep breath, phone a friend, take a walk, write some nonsense, read a book, watch a movie, do something ridiculous for fun. And then, hopefully, yay! You’ll start to move again.

If you’ve got health issues…again, not yay, but I bet it could be worse. If you’ve got extreme health issues, I’m very sorry because that probably didn’t make you feel better. But there is always something to be grateful for. A friend’s brother fell in his assisted living apartment and was in the hospital for a week, and then has to be in a different care facility and can’t go back “home” to his assisted living apartment until he’s better. He’s very upset. Of course! But I couldn’t help but think, thank God he was able to afford an assisted living apartment where someone checks on you every couple hours. Thank God he had good enough insurance to get proper hospital care for a week. Thank God it will cover extra care for a while. Thank God he has friends and family in the same town to be with him and support him! Soooo many things to be grateful for, even though sometimes you really have to look.

My own health issues have improved — thank God!! But they bring about new problems I have to learn to deal with. My hormones have regulated (due to HRT, and probably less stress and better nutrition and exercise and rest) and I feel at about 90% of where I was ten years ago before it all started changing. YAY!! But now I try to push myself to 110% to try to make up for lost time. And then the next day, depending on how hard and how long I overdid it, I’m down to 80% or 50% or 20%. 😢 It’s hard to accept that I’m doing this to myself so I’m the one who has to change my actions. But I thank God that I’m paying attention enough to see what’s working and what’s not and keep trying to create a schedule that works for me.

By the way, did you know — October is Menopause Awareness Month, at least in the U.K. And October 18 specifically is World Menopause Day. The aim is to “to break taboo and improve women’s health and wellbeing by raising awareness about the symptoms of menopause and the support options available.” https://menopausefriendly.co.uk/world-menopause-day-2024/

I am thrilled to say there is a growing amount of support material — books, videos, groups, medical supplements and medications — far more than I could find no matter how much Googling I did a couple years ago. If you have any friends or relatives who seem particularly crabby or down and they’re the right age and gender, think of something encouraging to say to them today. Keep in mind, the vast majority of people still find the subject taboo and embarrassing, so choose your words with care. Let these women know you care and let them decide how much they want to talk about it with you. Maybe just send an email or text with the above link.

In any case, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, whatever you’re going through in life, good and bad, ups and downs, I wish you well! Find something to be grateful about today, and help someone else find something to be grateful for as well. Maybe you’ll laugh at feeling grateful for each other! And laughter is the best — and most fun! — medicine! I’m praying for you! Big hugs from Sweden! 😃

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