The Rage Years: A Mom's Apology Tour

Hormonal rage, mom guilt, and the meltdown that made it all make sense.

The sad reality? My journey to menopause was long. Like my boobs (buckle up, my long-boob blog post is coming soon).

It wasn’t smooth. It wasn’t cute. And it started creeping in at 37, right when I was trying for Baby No. 3.

Thanks to a sweet workplace benefit and one successful IVF round, he joined our family just before I hit 41.

From that point on, everything, my life, my body, was wildly unpredictable.

I was hospitalized twice in six months, once for an infection and another time for a pesky tumor near my uterus.

So there was that.

I had debilitatingly heavy periods with gut-wrenching cramps and raging headaches.

Some months, I would bleed for 11 days straight. Other months, I’d skip the bleeding altogether.

Back then, it was easy to rationalize it all away. I had a demanding job, three kids, a monster commute, and a body still sustaining life.

I was wrecked. Physically. Emotionally. In so many ways.

I justified the mood swings, the exhaustion, the short fuse. I chalked it up to being overworked, under-supported, and stretched beyond thin. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired, but I didn’t name it for what it really was.

Fast forward four years. My divorce was finalized. It ended in relative calm after an exhausting marriage.

But menopause?

Oh, she wasn’t done with me yet.

My periods came just often enough to tease me that I wasn’t through the tunnel.

I’ll never forget the day I bled through a tampon, a pad, my jeans and onto the car seat. A literal bloodbath.

Around that same time, a younger colleague (humbling in itself) sent me the book The Wisdom of Menopause, by Dr. Christiane Northrup. It came with a sweet card about how her mom swore by it.

I was horrified.

I shoved the giant book on a shelf, catching glimpses of it over the years, refusing to pick it up because doing so felt like admitting defeat.

And I kept losing patience everywhere. At work. At home. With my boys.

The smallest things set me off.

A glass in the sink? Instant rage. (It’s funny: I’d give anything to see a sink full of dishes now. t would mean my boys are home.)

My sons’ normal brotherly bickering? I’d lose it. I’d slam doors, cry ugly tears, rage hard, then see the confusion and fear in their eyes.

I knew I was the cause. I was the one who normally comforted them. Now, I gave them chaos.

One dinner sticks out. I’d taken the boys on a drive to the beach to eat at a family fav Mexican restaurant.

We sat down. One didn’t want to eat there. Another was whining about something. The third sat silently.

Even before I could order, I’d had it. I threw down my glass, told them to get up, and we left.

No food. Just me, unraveling in front of them.

The car ride felt like it lasted for days. We got home, and I directed them to get ready for bed. If they were hungry, fine–have cereal. I had no takers. They all walked into their rooms: no mayhem, no banter, no nightly wrestling matches.

Silent, stoic marches right to bed.

I can’t believe how long I missed the signs. I thought I’d dodged the mood-swing bullet because of my long, slow lead-up to menopause. I thought it was just another life transition.

But around 47, I finally pulled that book off the shelf. And for the first time, I saw how much of it was devoted to rage. I read those chapters end to end in one sitting. I ugly-cried (so not the cute kind) through the night, replaying every scene at home and at work where my rage had taken over.

The gut punch was that my boys had borne the brunt of it. They had no frame of reference to understand what was happening to me or why their mom, the steady one, had become someone else.

Yes, we had love, good times, and laughs. But they lived through the worst of my rage.

I always apologized when my rage subsided. I always tried to smooth it over.

But until that point, I’d never understood why it happened. And if I didn’t, how could they?

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Calm Down? Sure, Right After I Completely Lose My Shit

I remember once when my Aussie and I were in California. We’d just moved into the second home I’d purchased post-divorce.

We had done some light improvements (cosmetic stuff) but I was already in that familiar fear spiral, mentally tallying every dollar spent and feeling overwhelmed.

While we were settling in, he insisted we needed to buy blinds for all the windows. Of course, I wanted to cover the damn windows, too (I’m not a savage) but I’d just paid to replace every single one of them.

I needed a minute.

I wasn’t ready to throw more money on top of the mountain I’d just climbed.

He pushed: “Let’s just have someone come out and measure.”

Fine. Whatever. Let’s.

The guy my man recruited showed up, walked through the place, and dropped the number: $2,500.

The price point wasn’t a huge deal in the grand scheme of things. But in that moment, in front of both of them, I cracked.

I walked down the hall and called out to my man.

“Can you come here please?”

Then, I burst into tears in the bedroom, sobbing, almost hyperventilating.

It was the first time he’d seen me like that. The look on his face said, “What language is this woman speaking?”

As I pulled myself together, I explained: My reaction wasn’t just about the blinds. It was the pace, the pressure, the lack of control over a decision I wasn’t ready to make.

Instead of wrapping me in his arms or saying, “We’ve got this,” he looked me dead in the eye and said: “I don’t know what’s going on, but you need to talk to someone.”

Honestly, “Calm down” would’ve landed softer. But instead, to me, it felt like he served up the emotional equivalent of, “Bitch, you need help.”

Fast forward seven years to the present, and these moments still happen, usually about money.

I get anxious. I cry. I get loud.

But now, I see it coming. I hear myself.

If I’m spiraling hard, if I taste metal in my mouth, if I sweat (not the hot-flash kind), and if my chest gets heavy, I know what’s happening. And my man has learned to engage with me in those moments more productively; his ‘you need to see someone’ response is a now a joke.

Here’s the thing no one tells you: Even post-menopause, the hormone waves don’t exactly retire. They shift, they flow, they can sucker-punch you out of nowhere.

Sometimes, they fuel sexy time. Other times, they dive straight into ragey meltdown mode.

But it’s no longer a surprise. I recognize it. I name it. And more often than not, I wrangle it before it takes me down.

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Dear Family: This Isn’t a Love Letter; It’s a Translation Guide

To my three sons: There are so many things I wish I could say, explain, or help you make sense of. I am beyond proud and blessed to be your mom. Each of you brought something different into my life, something I didn’t even know I needed.

Jack, you made me a mom. You opened up my heart so wide with a love so intense it still stops me in my tracks. You’ve always been emotionally connected, to yourself and the people around you.

You look a lot like me (sorry!).

You’re kind, forgiving, stubborn, sometimes quick to anger. You like things your way. You follow the rules or make them up. We don’t call you “Mr. Boss Man” for nothing. I want you to know that I’m sorry for those times during the years after the divorce when I was quick to anger, when I lost my shit, when I didn’t show up as the mom you needed. I didn’t always pay enough attention to you and to what you were going through.

I will never forgive myself for how hard those years were. My body and emotions were at war inside me in a way I didn’t fully understand. Please forgive me in ways I’m still learning to forgive myself.

JB, my little “old man Smalls.” You got that name as a toddler thanks to those big brown eyes and those luscious lashes. You always took everything in like you’d lived it before.

You watched. You absorbed. You carried things you shouldn’t have had to carry.

I know it was hard to see me angry. I know you felt it deeply, and still do. I wish I’d had the right words back then to explain that the chaos wasn’t your fault. It was mine.

I’m sorry for the fear, the confusion, the times when I was a hurricane when all you needed was calm. I am still sorry for the fact that I haven’t always connected with you in the ways that matter most–not to me but to you.

I am sorry for not always being the safest place to land, to vent, to share the emotions that I know you feel deeply at times. I can only imagine how scary life became after the divorce, how little things felt the same or even safe. And I wasn’t always present enough to actually sense this and to just be what you needed me to be when you needed it most.

Please forgive me for the mistakes I made and still do: for when I came on too strong or not strong enough, and for the times when all you needed was to be by my side which now at 6’3’ I’d give anything to relive again.

And JJ, my little wild one. You probably don’t remember all the moments when I lost my shit, but I know you see it now. You are so much like me: dedicated, focused, a hustler.

You love big. You feel everything. You worry. You want to make people around you feel loved, safe, and proud of you.

You show people how much you care with your actions and your words. You smile with your entire face. You have my eyes, only in a lighter shade of blue that makes me melt.

You have the strength to handle what comes your way.

But unlike me, you can feel all the feelings when you’re in them, you can name them out loud, and you can share them. I’m sorry for all the rushed bedtime stories. I’m sorry for the times when you wanted me to lie down with you a little longer and I opted to tackle chores or prep for the next day. I’m sorry for all the times I told you to hurry up so much that I’m shocked those weren’t your first words.

Now that it’s often just you and me, I’m sorry for the times my frustration still takes over. For when it makes you confused, scared, and overwhelmed. I’m sorry for when it becomes bigger than what you are feeling and if that makes you feel small.

I’m so grateful for your huge heart, your forgiveness, and for your ability to see me not for my worst moments but for who I really am.

To my man: You’ve seen me at my best and helped me to realize just how badass I am. You’ve also seen me at my absolute worst: the rage, the anger, the sadness, the fear, the anxiety, the worry.

You lead with humor, and some days, I rip you apart for it. Other days, I lean into it.

I know that being with me must feel like crossing a raging river on a rickety bridge: You never quite know which version of me you’ll get. (And sometimes, you get all of them in one conversation.)

Thank you for reminding me it’s OK to pause, to take a breath and return when the noise quiets and the emotions settle. I’m deeply grateful for the steady way you show up, for being my anchor and my safe space. And most of all, thank you for the quiet, intentional work you do behind the scenes, building the systems that help us catch what’s shifting, learn from what’s real, and grow into something stronger. That’s not just support. That’s devotion. And I feel it, every single day.

For the first time, I’m not constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop.

You don’t drop. You stand beside me, behind me when I need it, always ready to catch me when I fall or at least to make sure I don’t smash my face.

I love you. And I’m sorry for the times when my emotions knocked you down, and for the times I didn’t show up as strong for you as you always have for me.

To all four of you, who’ve seen me at my angriest, my most depleted, my most unrecognizable: I am sorry. I wish I could say it was all me, but it wasn’t. Some of it was me, some of it was you, some of it was us, and a whole lot of it (most of it, really) was life.

But for the times when I lost control and you suffered, please forgive me. And remember, I’m not always the lunatic you’ve seen. Not all the time, anyway.

I can’t erase the hardest parts. But I can own them. I can learn from them. And I can keep showing up: louder, bolder, messier, but always real. Because that’s the woman, the mom, the partner I am. And that’s who I hope you’ll remember.

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A Clogged Toilet, a Near Meltdown, and The Surprising Moment I kept My Cool

Look, it’s not all doom and fucking gloom. Sure, I joke about needing an Apology Tour T-shirt. But sometimes, my rage hits and I move from exasperation to laughter pretty damn fast.

Like the other day.

One of my boys (I’ll spare him the public shaming) over-wiped (yes, that’s a thing) and clogged the toilet.

The house had been clean for, oh, maybe 20 whole minutes. Yet here we were again.

He calmly walked out and asked for the plunger. I could feel my blood pressure rise, picturing turds doing laps in my freshly scrubbed bathroom floor. But instead of losing it, I smiled sweetly, pointed him to the plunger, and waited.

From the kitchen, I could hear him gagging as he battled his own mess.

When he proudly reported he’d “unplugged it,” he beamed over the fact that, unlike in a similar situation at his dad’s house, we had a plunger.

He didn’t have to scoop poop out of the toilet and into a trash bag using an old sand toy.

I handed him bleach and a towel and said, “Great. Now scrub it so clean I could eat dinner off that floor. Figuratively. Not literally. Let’s not get weird.”

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The Hardest Person to Forgive Is Me

There isn’t a single time when, as I look back, I don’t wince a little with shame and regret at those hard, angry, impatient years. I can be tough on myself for how much of an emotional steamroller I was and for how out of control I felt inside my own body.

To be honest, I was straight up baffled over who I was and about what was happening.

I try not to dwell on grief or my mistakes, even though I do come from a long line of expert worriers and agnonizers. It’s especially hard, though, to reflect on the times when I know my boys–who, let’s be real, saw and felt the brunt of it–must have been confused as hell by my rapid-fire mood swings and the chaos of those post-divorce years.

Their whole world was upended, and I couldn’t always be the steady, unshakable mom they deserved.

But here’s the truth I try to hold onto: No one is that mom 100% of the time. It’s not realistic. And honestly, looking back on my own childhood, some of the hard moments shaped my grit, my fight, my survival instincts. Maybe those moments did the same for my sons.

Now, when guilt or embarrassment creeps in (because they do, sometimes both at once), I try to pull myself back to the present and remember: I can’t rewrite the messy chapters, but I can decide how I show up now.

When I screw up (because I still do), I name it. I own it. I tell them how I’m feeling, I apologize when I need to, and I’m hopeful that in doing so, I’m teaching them to do the same.

Maybe I’m also helping them sharpen their own spidey senses because boys, hormones are like a fine wine or a ripe French cheese: the longer they age, the funkier they get.

So for all the lessons we’ve learned together, my sons, good, bad, and somewhere in between, that will hopefully make you better partners and simply more empathetic humans, I say: thank you.

And: You’re welcome.

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