Let's not talk about the menopause

(Wtf?)

Last week, a vulnerability that had been gestating over several months came to a head and I impulsively posted about it on my personal social media. For context, I’m deep into perimenopause, on the earlier and trickier side of the spectrum.

I tick a lot of the physical boxes. Hot flashes, tick. Insomnia, tick. Weight gain, tick. Incontinence, tick, ugh (cue me skulking home from a run wearing a hoodie like an apron because my bladder is an ARSE).

Less obviously, this life stage has taken a great big hulk out of the ‘me’ as I knew it. It’s not all bad, in fact it’s forced me to slow down, listen better and cultivate patience (when I’m not moody/weepy/so, so angry). But aspects of my confidence have been hit with a wrecking ball. In the workplace, it’s like in the space of a year I’ve gone from someone with purpose and prospects to someone who is clinging onto a moving train with mittens – some days I feel not much more than baseline useless.

Confidence is a funny thing. It’s not a constant but when you have it everything is lighter, clearer. It’s been a hard-earned asset for me, and I hadn’t realised how much I was taking it for granted until one day it just wasn’t there anymore. For a few months now, I’m often deer-in-the-headlights where before I was decisive and assured.

Then last week I stumbled upon a cartoon illustration of the menopause brain fog, went ‘Aha!’ and shared it with friends and family with this blurb:

‘I used to be all over the detail at work, way past my pay grade. I was the detail person. Now I’m the Olivia Colman character in Green Wing who comes to work without pants. The strategic, bigger picture though? Also, no. Aargh.’

Not sure what I wanted to get out of sharing that. It was a self-deprecating rant, my favourite way to deal with difficult feelings. My teen would maybe say I was being a ‘pick me’ and guess I was hoping for a bit of validation. Maybe I thought someone might have a lightbulb moment, like me. Mostly I was expecting uncomfortable radio silence. And I was spot on, with all those things.

What came from the left field, though, was a woman friend shitting on my vulnerability with a passive-aggressive concern over how these kinds of posts risk collectively devaluing older women in the workplace. Not everyone gets brain fog, she said, and made a point about how much better she is at a bunch of things now despite the menopause, and she wouldn’t go back.

Good for you. I also don’t want to go back to my younger self. Gripes. But I do want my fogless brain back. Maybe my confidence would return then, too.

But more than anything I balked at her – possibly unintended or poorly thought through – suggestion that talking about brain fog is a tar brush, damaging all menopausal women in the workplace, especially in the eyes of the men and the younger women. It hit my anxiety bullseye about being useless. Maybe I should have stayed quiet. I felt a little shamed. And then I got cross.

Here’s the thing. Menopause is a transitional phase. It passes. I won’t always feel like a liability, nor act like one. But if I don’t say it, if I don’t see it, I can’t begin to understand it. I recently talked about this with a colleague whose undiagnosed brain fog got so bad she took a demotion and is ending her working life in a job she’s bored with and overqualified to do. She told me to pace myself and not quietly quit – to find a way, not least because of my financial reality and my retirement age looming somewhere around 2050. There’s a lot of professional growth and enjoyment to be had yet.

So that’s what I’m focussing on now. There’s getting the hormonal balance right (still work in progress), there’s being honest with both male and female colleagues about what’s going on, there’s asking for help and support, there’s delegating and developing talent, there’s re-evaluating my current strengths and weaknesses. There’s also allowing myself to care a little less about my job, which may be kind of crucial – as much as that irked me when my husband suggested it.

Talking openly about the full impact of menopause at work doesn’t collectively devalue older women. In another 30 years my daughter’s generation will hopefully laugh at the very notion.

Photo by Emily Morter on Unsplash