MENOPAUSE MOMENT

On a recent Monday morning while at work, I ran into a colleague who runs our company’s facilities department. I had an idea I wanted to share with him about how we can get more people to volunteer to respond to an emergency or a fire should there ever be one. As I approached him excited to share my thoughts, I felt my brain go blank as if I accidentally pressed the delete button. What happened to the safety feature asking me if I was sure I wanted to delete? There was absolutely nothing there. I kept searching for a specific word I needed to communicate in order to get my conversations started but nothing appeared. Stress of wasting his time as I searched my mind for this common word flooded my body and I could feel the heat of embarrassment making its way to my face. The next best thing was to try to give him context but my mind failed at this as well. I was empty! I felt like I knew what I wanted to say but nothing was coming out of my mouth. It was a moment of frustrating disconnect between thought and speech.

So this is what forgetting words during menopause feels like, I thought. One of the articles I recently read on menopause and memory comes from Harvard Health and explains that “on average, women perform better than men on measures of verbal memory, beginning as early as post-puberty. However, women's advantage for verbal memory performance is reduced with menopause. Many women report increased forgetfulness and ‘brain fog’ during the menopausal transition.”

Here I was having a moment of brain fog while my colleague waited with patience and gazed upon me with kindness. I took a deep breath, exhaled, and accepted the moment for what it was. And then, I boldly declared, “I’m having a menopause moment”. Why say a brain fart or brain fog when I knew exactly what the culprit was? We don’t shame teenagers while they navigate their wild puberty ride. We hold their hand through the awkwardness and changes. So why not extend the same warm, understanding embrace to the women going through a different kind of roller coaster? As I accepted the present moment and a limitation I was experiencing, something clicked in my mind and the word flooded back. Fire warden! The word was fire warden!

Naming my menopause moments feels like a process of acceptance of my body’s journey. My body is doing its thing and the thing is to sometimes not remember words. And that in turn made me realize that this is what love looks like, accepting myself where I’m at. It’s yet another journey, another adventure, another chapter I’m living through but this time I’m better prepared to love myself through it all.

So dear friends and menopause sisters, how are you loving yourself through your journey?

Love,

Sylwia