The We Do Not Care Club (#WDNC)
(we’ll get back to our regularly scheduled “Create Happiness” series next week)
I’m 45 and officially in the perimenopausal season of life.
- Brain fog? Check.
- Mood swings? Check.
- Hot flashes? Yep—especially at dusk…like a vampire, or maybe a werewolf.
- An unyielding need to crawl into bed by 4pm? Every. Single. Day.
- And my disrespectful bladder? Don’t even get me started.
This, friends, is my perimenopause. It’s the reason why #WDNC (We Do Not Care).
Perimenopause…she’s puberty’s bad-behind cousin, the one you were never allowed to let borrow your toys because they’d end up broken or you’d never see them again.
Perimenopause is the hormonal rollercoaster women experience before menopause officially begins. As I understand it, menopause begins once you have missed your menstrual cycle for 12 solid months. Perimenopause is the purgatory you’re in before then, which for most starts as early as your 30s and picks up in your 40s. It can last for years before you hit that 12 month “no period” milestone of menopause.
There are hundreds of peri-/menopause symptoms which vary for every woman, making it difficult to pinpoint or predict. This condition is a strongly uniting force that all women face as it does not discriminate. For me, perimenopause has included:
- Brain fog so thick I abandon conversations with the promise to resume once – or if – the thought returns
- Hot flashes that start as a burning sensation inside my core, quickly radiating outward (while my husband shivers beside me)
- Mood swings ranging from “That’s fine” to “Get out of my face.”
- Exhaustion that makes 4pm feel like 4AM.
- Sleep disrupted by bathroom breaks* so often that I’ve started limiting liquids after dinner.
*The irony? During the day, I don’t feel the urge to go to the bathroom for hours. But at night? My bladder decides to be the most disrespectful organ in my body. And the exhaustion that follows? It’s not your typical “I stayed up too late” tired. It’s soul-deep fatigue—the kind that makes you feel like you’re going to fall asleep in the hallway before you even make it into the bed.
Why I Joined #WDNC
There came a moment in my life when I realized that I was done pretending. I was done pretending like I could push through the day. I was done pretending that I wanted to “go grab dinner with a client.” I was done pretending to care about others’ well-being over my own. I simply didn’t have the interest or energy for any of it.
Enter: the #WDNC Club.
Founded by Melani Sanders of @justbeingmelani, #WDNC stands for “We Do Not Care”. WDNC is not about being indifferent to others or neglecting anything. Rather, it’s about reclaiming space for yourself. It’s about no longer over-apologizing for having needs, limits, and changes that come with the particular season of womanhood brought on by perimenopause or menopause (or, in some cases, a rough bout of PMS).
To be clear, the WDNC movement is not about being rude or disrespectful…that is NOT the Seasoned Life way, nor is it the WDNC way. Instead, we handle our responsibilities with grace and – more importantly – we have started to generously grant ourselves the grace we’ve always needed but may have never had.
The WDNC club has become a legit movement, establishing community around a life phase that is frustrating and often lonely. What’s beautiful about this club is that it highlights the fact that NONE OF US CARE, and in the best possible way.
By starting #WDNC, @justbeingmelani brought perimenopausal and menopausal women together in a wholly uniting way. We hold our banners high with self-appointed chapters across the country, proclaiming that we don’t deny the needs of everyone else, but…
…unless you’re physically on fire, we probably do not care.
(I’m a self-proclaimed member of the Charleston Chapter of the WDNC Club.)
The #WDNC club gives permission we didn’t know we needed to (1) stop caring about the things that don’t serve us and (2) to focus on what actually matters – health, rest, joy, boundaries, and our people.
I love WDNC because it’s not about giving up. Rather, it’s about letting go of the unrealistic expectation that we can do it all when we are hot, tired, probably hungry, and definitely annoyed. Trust me, we did not choose to be this way. Yet, here we are for the unforeseeable future – managing all the responsibilities of our own life, our kids’ lives, our home life, our work life, our spouse’s/partner’s lives, our aging parents’ lives, and everything in between.
WDNC is not an attitude problem. It’s a wellness strategy.
–Live the Seasoned Life
WDNC means we let go of caring about certain things so we can focus on caring for ourselves. This means letting go of:
- The need to explain why I’m not staying for “just one more thing” after work.
- The need to explain why I don’t want to go out tonight (or this afternoon).
- The guilt of not cooking a full meal every night.
- The pressure to say yes when my body is clearly saying no.
- The shame around not “bouncing back” to my old body at any time, for any reason.
You see, WDNC is not an attitude problem. It’s actually a wellness strategy. It’s a way for us to self-preserve in a crazy world that expects us to do it all for everyone, leaving no time for us to get anything done for ourselves.
What does WDNC look like in my life?
For so many years, I believed that if I just pushed through harder, if I drank enough coffee and stayed up later, if I worked out harder or if I approached everything with a manifestation smile, I could get ahead and beat this thing. But you don’t beat perimenopause or menopause. The most you can do is move with it, adjust, rest, and seek community that understands and gets you without an explanation. And, you can listen to what your body actually needs.
So, how does it show up in my life? How thoughtful of you to ask!
I hit a wall at 3pm every single day. Yet somehow I have to pull myself together for kids getting home from school, dealing with homework, sports practices, and the like.
I eat dinner at 4pm almost every day. Yes, that’s early, but WDNC. If I’m hungry for dinner at 4pm, I eat dinner at 4pm. The rest of the family eats closer to 6/6:30pm.
I turn on my bedroom ceiling fan before I get in the shower at night so the room is nice and chilly for me when I get out. My hot flashes start in the evenings and can last through 11pm, so I keep it cold. In fact, I have an active rule that if you’re not physically in the bedroom for an extended period of time, you are not allowed to touch the fan. And if you’re are in the room that long, grab a sweatshirt.
Summer is here, and bikini season is upon us. In past years, the months leading up focused on hitting the gym to get “bikini ready.” Now, WDNC about being bikini ready. My goal is bikini reasonable, and bikini reasonable by my own standards. Why would I even want to compete with a 20 year olds’ waistline? Ridiculous.
Perimenopause Isn’t the End—It’s a Beginning
It’s easy to see perimenopause as the beginning of the end…the start of the proverbial ‘little old lady’ look with the spinal bend, wrinkles and gray hair that we know all too well.
Don’t get it twisted, sometimes it does feel like the beginning of the end, but if you look carefully, you’ll realize this is merely a powerful transition into the seasoned superwoman we are all becoming. This superwoman is wiser, more grounded, intentional and less performative, and she’s realistic. I don’t know about you, but that’s the kind of superwoman I want to be; bring it on!
Yes, perimenopause is messy and at times ghetto. But perimenopause is an invitation to start prioritizing you.
So, to my fellow woman in her 30s/40s/50s who’s exhausted, confused, annoyed, or you’re simply “done” with the foolishness, I see you.
You are not crazy.
You are not weak.
You are not invisible.
You’re just adjusting to a body that’s shifting in ways no one warned you about.
And you are still that girl that woman.
We need this community. We need the group chats, the voicemails, the “same, girl” replies, the honest blog posts (like at livetheseasonedlife.com), and the memes. We need not suffer alone or in silence.
(…but, if you invite me to leave my house for dinner or a coffee, I’ll probably decline…because WDNC. :-))
And if there’s someone who doesn’t like that we’ve stopped overextending, over-explaining, or over-committing? Guess what?
#WDNC
We. Do. Not. Care.
Comment below – what does WDNC look like in your life?
Are you following @justbeingmelani? Let me know in the comments or tag me on IG with your story—I’d love to hear how you’re navigating this life season too. 💛
And let’s stay connected. We need each other.
Stay seasoned, stay soft, stay you, and stay taking care of you.
— Shauna