The story behind Lemons or Lemonade
I didn’t know what was happening to me
I was in my mid-40s when I started turning into someone I didn’t recognize.
The anger came first. Not irritability. Actual rage. The kind that comes out of nowhere over nothing and leaves you standing in your own kitchen wondering what on earth just happened. My husband bore the brunt of most of it. He is a patient man. He needed to be.
Then came the anxiety and the depression. The kind that settles in like a fog and makes you wonder if this is just who you are now. I had days where I genuinely couldn’t stand living with myself, I can only imagine what it was like for the people around me.
I didn’t connect any of it to hormones. Nobody told me to. I just thought I was falling apart.
The system didn’t help much
When I finally went looking for answers my doctor tried. She referred me to gynaecologists more than once. Every request got turned down. She told me that was happening more and more often. Women being turned away from the specialists who are supposed to help them.
Her first suggestion was antidepressants. I’d been on them before and the side effects were significant. And they weren’t going to fix what was actually happening anyway. Antidepressants treat depression. They don’t treat the hormonal chaos that’s causing it. That distinction matters and most women never hear it.
What finally worked was HRT. But getting there required me to do a lot of my own research, walk into my doctor’s office prepared, and advocate hard for myself. My doctor was open to working with me and I know how lucky that makes me. Not every woman has that.
What I kept thinking about
I started talking to friends. Women my age, going through their 40s and early 50s. The same story kept coming up over and over. The mood swings, the sleeplessness, the brain fog, the weight that appeared from nowhere, the anxiety that made no sense. The feeling of becoming someone else.
Most of them had no idea perimenopause was behind it. Some had been told it was stress, some had been offered antidepressants, some were just quietly suffering and assuming this was normal aging.
I kept thinking about women who didn’t have what I had. The research skills, the stubborn streak, the partner who figured it out alongside me, the doctor who eventually listened. What happens to them?
That’s why I built this site.
About Lemons or Lemonade
Lemons or Lemonade is for Canadian women navigating perimenopause. The years of hormonal transition that can start in your late 30s and last well into your 50s. The years nobody really prepares you for.
This isn’t a medical practice and I’m not your doctor. What I am is someone who has been through it, who knows how to find and evaluate research, and who is genuinely frustrated that so many women are going through this without the information they need.
Every article on this site is written to be honest, evidence-informed and free of the clinical distance that makes most health content feel like it was written for a textbook rather than a human being. You’ll find the science here but you’ll also find the real talk. The stuff your friends say when nobody is being polite about it.
No judgment. No shame. Just information, a little humour, and the occasional reminder that you are not losing your mind.
About Laura Berg
I am a professor of communications and a researcher with a Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies, specializing in Psychology and Gender Studies.
My career has always been about taking complex information and making it accessible to real people. My education gave me the tools to find research, evaluate it critically and translate it into something actually useful. Those skills turned out to matter a great deal when I started researching my own perimenopause journey and discovered how little good information exists for Canadian women.
That is what I do for a living. And it is exactly what this site is built on.
I entered perimenopause hell without the information I needed, fought to get the care I deserved, and came out the other side with a very clear sense of what was missing. A site like this. Written by someone who has lived it and knows how to research and share important topics.
I am not a physician and nothing here should be taken as medical advice. But I am someone who takes this seriously, does the work, and writes for women the way I wish someone had written for me.
A note about Canada
Perimenopause content online is dominated by American voices, American healthcare context, and American statistics. Canadian women deserve Canadian content. Research that reflects our healthcare system, our referral processes, and our specific challenges getting care. That’s what this site is here to provide.