How Star Trek: Voyager Secretly Guided Me Through the Turmoil of Perimenopause and Rekindled My Love for Reading
Ever find yourself stumbling into a TV show at 2 a.m., bleary-eyed and searching for a lifeline, only to discover it becomes your unexpected anchor? That was me with Star Trek: Voyager—not a childhood favorite, but a nocturnal refuge during a tumultuous year when life flipped on me like a spaceship caught in a cosmic storm. Job loss, grappling with identity, and the amplified chaos of perimenopause had me questioning everything, yet there, amid Captain Janeway’s command and the Delta Quadrant’s vast unknown, I found a surprising order and comfort. What if the key to reconnecting with our voice isn’t some shiny productivity trick, but the simple act of revisiting forgotten stories and letting our thoughts roam freely? Here’s how writing about Voyager helped me navigate the messy, loud moments—and maybe why it just might help you too.
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I didn’t grow up with Voyager. I found it at 2 a.m., when I needed it most.
In 2023, I left the classroom for a promising career with an ed tech start up. A year in, the company shifted direction and just like that, I was out of a job for the first time in my life. The shock of unemployment shook something loose. I found myself grieving not just the role, but my sense of value. I didn’t know what I was good at anymore. I couldn’t sleep, and the exhaustion made everything harder. I felt like I was failing —at work, at home, as a mother, and as a partner.
Perimenopause only magnified the sense of failure. Everything was louder. Messier. I craved comfort. I needed order. Some kind of structure to hold onto. But I didn’t find it in a productivity hack. I found it in a line from Stephen King.
He wasn’t talking about grief or identity or reinvention. He was talking about story. About the act of writing as a way of discovering what comes next. “To know, I have to write,” he said.
And something in me jolted. Because I recognized it — as a writer. One who had gone quiet for years not because the words were gone, but because life got busy. I realized I wouldn’t feel fully connected to who I am until my thoughts hit the page.
So I started writing again. Not to be published. Not to be good. Just to see what was inside me if I finally gave my writing space. But I didn’t reach for a blank journal or a fresh novel idea. I turned to a decades-old sci-fi show.
I watched Star Trek: Voyager for the first time in 2024, in the sleepless haze of hormonal chaos. Night after night, I burned through the episodes —one, sometimes two at a time — because they were exactly what I needed. Comfort. Order. A woman in command.
I started writing episode recaps that were thoughts on life stitched together with sci-fi. At first, they were just for me. Notes scribbled in the dark. Reflections I wasn’t ready to say out loud. Now I share them in a project I call Delta Quadrant Diary.
Here’s What Writing About Voyager Taught Me:
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