The Fog, The Fury, The Fatigue

My name is Vanessa Ghigliotty. If you have followed along with my previous blog www.theshatteredpieces.com you'll know that a few years back, I genuinely thought I was losing my mind. I was crying constantly, snapping at shadows, and so tired I felt like my bones had been replaced with wet sandbags. I blamed burnout. Maybe another round of depression. My therapist suggested I “find a hobby,” my doctor handed me an antidepressant prescription, but not one person asked about my hormones.

 

Nobody warns you about perimenopause. We hear about puberty (awkward), and menopause (at last), but that sneaky in-between era? The one where your body starts staging a coup and your mind gets hijacked by a fog machine? Crickets.

 

At 49, I’d wake up feeling like my brain had been scrambled in the microwave. I couldn’t focus, couldn’t find joy, and felt this constant undercurrent of dread humming beneath everything. It wasn’t just stress. It was emotional whiplash on a loop: rage, tears, confusion - sometimes all before my first cup of coffee.

 

As a type 1 diabetic, I was used to sweating spells and fatigue. So when I started waking up drenched at 3AM, I thought it was just another low blood sugar. Juice box, back to bed. Repeat. But this time, my body wasn’t bouncing back. I felt like I was aging overnight, M. Night Shyamalan-style.

 

There was a grief in it too. Grieving the old me, the energy, the bounce-back, the version of myself who didn’t constantly feel like a human swamp. I felt invisible and unmoored.

 

When I finally hit rock bottom, I ended up in a treatment center in Thailand for my mental health and addiction. There, I met my “buddy,” another woman in her 50s who was also unraveling. We bonded over our “swamp-ass,” night sweats, and emotional implosions, and she was the first person to say it out loud: “Sweetie, this might be perimenopause.”

 

Cue the checklist:

 

Night sweats and hot flashes? Check.

Brain fog, insomnia? Check.

Rage, anxiety, random joint pain? Check, check, check.

Depression, grief, Double check.

 

WTF!?!?!?! It was all part of the change. The one no one talks about, and most doctors brush off as “just stress.”

 

After years of feeling broken and misdiagnosed, I started piecing things together on my own. Late-night forums, desperate Google searches, awkward chats in sweaty yoga classes. It finally clicked: my mind wasn’t betraying me - my hormones were.

 

Plus, when you’re raising teenagers while your hormones are planning a mutiny? No wonder I had a mental breakdown! It was like trying to keep a haunted house running during a hurricane. Nothing felt stable. Nothing felt familiar. And yet, I kept going; for them; for myself; for the chance that one day I might feel like “me” again.

 

If you’re in the thick of it - foggy, angry, sweaty, sobbing over commercials - please hear me: you’re not crazy. You’re not alone. You’re changing.

 

Find a doctor who listens. Lean on your girlfriends. Scream into the freezer if you must. You don’t have to do it in silence, or end up in Thailand (though the food wasn’t bad).

 

You deserve support, not shame.