Welcome to AAC-PACK: African-American, Childless, Perimenopausal And Craving Knowledge
Even if you know the basics of perimenopause, has anyone told you menstrual cycles can last 17 straight days? Yeah. Me neither.
I had a conversation with my mother a few years ago that almost made my ears bleed. She mentioned that when you get older, sex can feel like “being a virgin all over again.” My mother telling me this particular observation wasn’t what made me uncomfortable. After all, this was the same woman who went to an adult toy store with me on my birthday before we headed to a movie in downtown Chicago.
(Side note: It was one week after Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election to Donald Trump, and we were trying to find anything to do to cheer ourselves up. Neither of us had ever been to an adult toy store and thought it would be comical. But when we got off the el (train), we ended up accidentally walking with a Hispanic group of activists, chanting “Si, se puede” — with me hollering the phrase the loudest because this was the one phrase I recalled from my eight years of studying Spanish. So much for getting our minds off the election results.)
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What made me cringe was not my mother’s honesty. I appreciated that she was the one to tell me about sex, how one loses their virginity and the basics of pap smears when I was a preteen. She’s never been shy about explaining how a woman’s body works. However, she is also married to my father (a little under four decades at that time), and there was no way to hear her stories without thinking of him. Ewwwww.
So when my primary care physician brought up the same topic and started talking to me about lubricant to avoid painful sex during perimenopause, I rewound back to that “Si, se puede” birthday. But the more my PCP (who was a week overdue for her own pregnancy) talked about ways to avoid painful sex, the more I wondered why we were having this conversation at all. That wasn’t the point of my visit.
I just wanted to get a pap smear to find out why on Earth I had been menstruating for 17 straight days. As a woman whose menstrual cycle appeared like clockwork every 25 days since I was 11 years old (the most terrifying ending of my all-day fun at Santa’s Village theme park), even being one day late was peculiar.
Childless on purpose
As a woman who has never wanted children and grunted at every woman telling me, “You’ll change your mind,” every last one of them learned I never did. Dog owner? Three times! Baby maker? Womanhood application I never filled out and ditched the interview (read: men who wanted children) every single time. But for the Zoes of the world (“This Is Us” podcast and TV fans know who this is), late menstrual cycles are especially alarming. Luckily, mine was timely — until now.
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25 days, where are you?
I recalled one eight-day-early menstrual cycle in 2023 and another eight-day-early period in 2024, but December 2025 was the first time it just didn’t happen at all. The new year kicked off, and it arrived with 2026 New Year’s resolutions like “Hey, girl, hey.” I rolled my eyes, assuming this was all stress related because I was really holding onto a grudge about something else entirely during the holidays.
Perimenopause was the absolute last thing on my mind. But a 17-day menstrual cycle made me Google’s best friend and prioritizing that dreaded pap smear (even if I thought I had three more years — of the usual five — to feel that cold, uncomfortable speculum again). My pregnant PCP suggested an estrogen test, an anemia test and a thyroid test. I told her to give me whatever test she needed to make sure I was OK. Considering how common it is for Black women to have fibroids, I wanted to check for that too.
After I left that appointment, I frantically read every perimenopausal blog I could find and noticed there were plenty about white women. But there seemed to be too few about Black women’s health in their 40s, who are learning about perimenopause while dealing with other common health concerns within the African-American community. That’s how “AAC-PACK: African-American, Childless, Perimenopausal And Craving Knowledge” (pronounced ack-pack) was created. Want to follow me through this transition? Want to share your own?
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IN THE NEXT POST, I’LL SHARE WHAT HAPPENED AFTER THIS EXAM.
Did you enjoy this post? You’re also welcome to check out my Substack columns “AAC-PACK,” “Black Girl In a Doggone World,” “BlackTechLogy,” “Homegrown Tales,” “I Do See Color,” “One Black Woman’s Vote” and “Window Shopping” too. Subscribe to this newsletter for monthly posts on the first of each month. Thanks for reading!