I slightly thought I was going mad
| Published date | 19 March 2024 |
| Publication title | Huddersfield Daily Examiner |
"I think I sometimes underplay how awful I was feeling at the time. I slightly thought I was going mad," says Cherry, now 43.
"Because I didn't understand why I was waking up at four in the morning, and it really affects your confidence in every way - it affects your mental agility, your joy, it affects everything when you're not sleeping well.
"And I just thought, what the hell is going on, am I having a bit of a breakdown? Not a major one, but where's this going to go?"
While there's now much more awareness around menopause and perimenopause (the years leading up to when periods fully stop) and the wide-ranging ways it can impact people due to the hormone changes associated with it, one of the big difficulties is that symptoms can be vague and creep up slowly.
Cherry considered herself quite well informed when it came to women's health, but it still took her unawares at first. She recalls not realising she was experiencing perimenopausal symptoms in 2022 - "even though I was making a Channel 5 show called Women's Health: Breaking The Taboos.
"I thought menopause was when your periods stopped, and then the fun would start," admits the mumof-two (Cherry has a daughter, Coco, 14, and son, Bear, ten, with ex-husband Roly Allen). "But actually there's perimenopause for [up to] 10 years before that happens.
"And it's like you have a piece of music with an orchestra and some of the main instruments stop playing in tune.
"It can be very subtle, so you don't always notice it, a lot of women go through symptoms without realising it's perimenopause, and I was one of them.
"Mine started with sleeplessness, and I'm a very good sleeper normally, and anxiety - and I do not suffer from anxiety as a general rule. I get nervous about things, but I wouldn't say I'm anxious without context. But I was anxious for no apparent reason. It would start with an hour, then it was two hours, then it was half a day, and then it was whole days.
"And I just didn't understand it, it wasn't me. Waking up at 4am, bolt upright, having what I think is a panic attack and thinking my life was a mess. It's very insipid, it doesn't happen in one big go."
Things are much better now, which Cherry - who hosted E4...
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