The Wild Mare - Life Unbridled
Oct 7, 2026 · 35 min · 12 segments
Perimenopause, menopause and the Second Spring. An honest look at what happens when a woman begins to change, and why Chinese medicine sees this chapter of our lives very differently. Hosted on…
So this week we're talking about something I'm right slap bang in the middle of myself, perimenopause.
Although actually, I'm not sure this episode is really about perimenopause or the menopause because yes, my periods have started doing whatever the hell they like.
My body has softened without asking any permission, and my brain occasionally refuses to provide me with any perfectly ordinary word.
My sex drive appears to have packed a suitcase and gone somewhere lovely without me.
But there's something else happening too, and I don't think we talk about this nearly enough.
And I'm beginning to wonder whether some of what we call this midlife crisis in women isn't a crisis at all.
Maybe we're just reaching a point where we don't particularly want somebody else holding the reins anymore.
And that brings me to this week's wild mare, because what if we've got the whole idea of the older mare completely wrong? What if it isn't that nobody wants to ride her anymore? What if she doesn't want to be ridden? Now, considering what can happen to your libido in perimenopause, that analogy has worked considerably better than I had intended.
But I want to be really clear about what I mean by this, because I'm not actually talking about sex.
When I say the mayor doesn't want to be ridden anymore, I mean she doesn't want to spend the whole of her life being directed by everybody else's needs, expectations and responsibilities.
It's about agency, about finding her own feet again and having a say in where she goes next.
But there's actually something much deeper in this because Chinese medicine has this beautiful way of describing this stage of a woman's life.
And I love this because instead of telling us we're coming to the end of something, it asks us to consider that perhaps we're just beginning something else.
So this week we're talking about something I'm right slap bang in the middle of myself, perimenopause.
Although actually, I'm not sure this episode is really about perimenopause or the menopause because yes, my periods have started doing whatever the hell they like.
My body has softened without asking any permission, and my brain occasionally refuses to provide me with any perfectly ordinary word.
My sex drive appears to have packed a suitcase and gone somewhere lovely without me.
But there's something else happening too, and I don't think we talk about this nearly enough.
And I'm beginning to wonder whether some of what we call this midlife crisis in women isn't a crisis at all.
Maybe we're just reaching a point where we don't particularly want somebody else holding the reins anymore.
And that brings me to this week's wild mare, because what if we've got the whole idea of the older mare completely wrong? What if it isn't that nobody wants to ride her anymore? What if she doesn't want to be ridden? Now, considering what can happen to your libido in perimenopause, that analogy has worked considerably better than I had intended.
But I want to be really clear about what I mean by this, because I'm not actually talking about sex.
When I say the mayor doesn't want to be ridden anymore, I mean she doesn't want to spend the whole of her life being directed by everybody else's needs, expectations and responsibilities.
It's about agency, about finding her own feet again and having a say in where she goes next.
But there's actually something much deeper in this because Chinese medicine has this beautiful way of describing this stage of a woman's life.
And I love this because instead of telling us we're coming to the end of something, it asks us to consider that perhaps we're just beginning something else.
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