49: The Menopause Paradox: Why Your Brain Fog Might Be Your Leadership Edge

Why Your Brain Fog Might Be Your Leadership Edge. You’ve been losing your train of thought in important meetings way too often these days. Laughing it off but silently cringing and wishing it would just stop happening so your colleagues won’t judge you. 

Perimenopause can get the best of us. Especially when it’s brain fog, memory loss, or distracting hot flashes at work, making you feel less productive than ever before. 

This is the paradox of menopause for women leaders. All the hard-won experience and maturity over several decades should set you up to be a great leader at the top of your game. And perimenopause makes it feel like the rug is being pulled from under you - undermining it all.

And what if the exact thing making you feel like you’re falling apart at work is actually the thing that makes you the best leader in the room? Today we’re playing with the idea that menopause might not be the end of your career peak; it might be the start of it.

You’ll hear:

• How this paradox plays out for so many women
• What is making it worse
• 3 ways you are uniquely set up to lead powerfully and intuitively as a menopausal woman (that are not your experience and capabilities)
• What to do to not only sustain your leadership edge, but step into an even higher version of yourself in this chapter of your life

Walk away feeling seen, with a new perspective on your career, and a path toward finding your most aligned and meaningful next chapter.

Join us in Costa Rica, October 2026 for our Retreat: Soul-Aligned - Design Your Extraordinary Next Chapter! Click here for details.

Find us on instagram:

 @midlifewomenrising

@jenreimercoaching

Transcript

Jen: Welcome. This is the Midlife Rising podcast. This episode is for the woman who has sat through an important meeting and suddenly you start to feel the heat rising up in your body, hoping the hot flash isn't going to be a bad one. And then in a moment you're sitting there sweating and hoping nobody notices — and hoping, even worse, that nobody comments on it and that it just goes away. Or you're mid-sentence in one of these meetings and completely lose your train of thought.

This is for the woman who is at the peak of her career, or should be at the peak of her career, and yet is starting to feel not like the leader she's meant to be at this stage of life, but less efficient. Things are taking longer to do. You're having to read paragraphs three times before they sink in, or you're distracted by all the symptoms happening in your body.

In this episode, we are shedding light on the paradox that women leaders are facing today. They have decades of experience and maturity, they're ready to step up and lead at the top of their companies, and they're finding themselves working harder than ever just to keep the pace of where they used to be effortlessly. And the irony is that the version of her that should be leading is the same version that feels like her body is under siege by this thing she has to go through.

We talk about what is making this dilemma worse — the patriarchal conditioning, and some of the mistakes that might be making it even harder to get through. And then we show you how women are uniquely set up to lead at this stage of life. We are not meant to be inefficient, declining, aging women at this stage. We're meant to lead. And there are physiological reasons for that.

You'll walk away with ideas about how to show up at work differently so you feel better, and feel like the leader you're meant to be in this phase of life. You might even get a little fired up, as we are, about this conditioning that keeps us feeling stuck. And you'll feel ready to step into the powerful leader you are, instead of being hijacked by a body that's keeping you less efficient and less capable than you used to be.

So if you want to understand all of this, find a little passion, and step into this kind of effortless leadership, then stay tuned. We've got lots to share today.

[SHOW INTRO]

Jen & Sheri: You're a woman over 40 who spent your life being the one who holds it all together. But now your body's changing, and your soul is done pretending everything is fine. Welcome to Midlife Rising. We're your hosts, Sheri and Jen, twin sisters and modern medicine women, here to help you rewire your stress response, balance your hormones, and reclaim your feminine power. Every episode is a rebellion against the rules you never agreed to, and a return to yourself. Join us — where midlife isn't a crisis, it's a catalyst.

[MAIN EPISODE]

Sheri: Welcome back to the Midlife Rising Podcast. I'm so glad that you're here. If you're a new listener, welcome. If you're a returning listener, so glad to have you back. So, Jen, you have been doing a lot of research on menopause in the workplace, and I'm finding this really fascinating, some of the stuff you're coming up with. One of the things that really stood out to me — that we talked about earlier this week — is the idea that in our 40s and 50s, even our 60s, we are actually primed for our most effective, powerful leadership yet. And I'm guessing not a lot of women in their 50s are feeling that way. So I'm excited to hear what you've found and what we're going to talk about today. Where should we start, Jen?

Jen: I want to just outline the paradox that's going on here. When women in their 40s and maybe 50s are hitting perimenopause, they're feeling — I forget the exact stat — but a huge number of women feel menopause symptoms today.

Sheri: It's the majority. It's more than 50%.

Jen: So the paradox is: women are actually not feeling great in their 40s and 50s because of the memory loss, the brain fog, the hot flashes — all the symptoms. They're not feeling their best. And at the same time, this is the point where they're most primed to be the best, most powerful leaders of their lives. We're going to talk about later how they're uniquely placed to be great leaders at this point. But what's happening is this conflict — they want to lead, and workplaces feel like so much pressure. They're working harder than ever to compensate for the brain fog, the memory loss, the embarrassing moments. And that sets them up to be worse leaders than they're meant to be. It's a constant conflict, and it's hurting not just women who want to be leaders or should be leaders — it's hurting companies, and it's hurting our world, because at this point in their lives, women are also most primed to change the world.

Sheri: Yes.

Jen: It's the time when they're most revved up by social injustices. Sometimes that comes out as rage, but it's also a time when women do big things.

Sheri: Yeah.

Jen: So it's hurting our planet that women are silently suffering — even if they'd only call it "suffering a little bit" at this phase of life.

Sheri: Yeah, I want to go back to that for a second. Women have so much potential to do — and are doing — great work in the world at this phase of life. That rage you mentioned — that emotion comes up when we see a social injustice, any kind of injustice that causes anger. In perimenopause and menopause, that can show up as rage because of the hormone swings. And yet it's there to tell us something. We see it as something to get rid of — people don't like that rage, and it can be uncomfortable if you're on the wrong end of it. But rage and anger are fire energy. It's getting revved up.

Jen: Yeah, so it's also passion. There's a fine line.

Sheri: Yes, exactly.

Jen: The other thing I wanted to point out — beyond the anger and passion — is that we also have more financial means at this stage to do more work, or to volunteer, that sort of opportunity.

Sheri: Time to volunteer, too, because the kids tend to be — maybe not for everybody — but tend to be out of the house by now.

Jen: Yep.

Sheri: Or at least can take care of themselves — driving, got their licenses, that sort of thing. And the other thing that comes up for women at this stage of life is: what does my next chapter look like? I want it to feel meaningful, purpose-driven. So they're already asking — what's my purpose, what's next, what's going to feel fulfilling in this next chapter of my life?

Jen: That is so true. We hear that all the time.

Sheri: Yeah, yeah.

Jen: So we have all of these things combining to prime women for this next chapter — priming them to do wonderful things in the world. Life-changing things, planet-changing things.

Sheri: Yeah. And it's such an irony — this version of her, this wise woman who should be leading, is the version that's struggling under siege by this thing, this perimenopause, that feels like it's happening to her. And also, Jen, I want to point out — this is kind of the first generation, maybe not the very first, but when our moms and their friends were going through perimenopause, a lot of them weren't really in the workplace. They were stay-at-home moms, or doing part-time work. The real influx of women into the workplace happened from the 70s and 80s onward. So this is kind of a new phenomenon.

Jen: Yeah.

Sheri: We've really had this shift to dual-income households — even in small towns like the one I live in, where there's probably a higher proportion of stay-at-home moms, there's still been a huge influx of women into the workplace. And now they're at this stage of life — their 50s, their 40s even.

Jen: So there are some things making this dilemma even worse — that frustrate me, let's say.

Sheri: Yeah, let's talk about those.

Jen: So one is conditioning — the societal conditioning we've been talking about the last three episodes (this is the third episode) — that tells us age is a decline. You're "over the hill." All the jokes are ingrained in our psyche: once you hit your 40s and 50s, once you hit menopause, that's it, it's all downhill from here.

Sheri: Yeah. You and I have a friend — I won't say her name, I haven't talked to her about this directly — she's about ten years younger than me, in her early 40s. She was telling me she was at the doctor's for something, and out of her mouth came, "Well, you know, I'm starting to get older." And the nurse said, "You're 43." We were laughing about it afterward — it's just a flippant remark we make all the time. "Well, I guess I'm just getting older," or "this is what happens when you get older." We make these lighthearted comments, but they're there because they're so deeply ingrained.

Jen: Yeah. And when we make a joke or a flippant remark about it, it's covering up the shame we feel about getting older. I remember friends of mine freaking out at their 30th birthdays because they were turning 30.

Sheri: Yeah, it's gone a little crazy.

Jen: So that's the first thing — this is making the paradox worse because it makes us feel judged, makes us judge ourselves. And then the symptoms can be visible, sometimes.

Sheri: Yeah — makes us feel like now there's a visible sign that we're past our prime.

Jen: Yes, exactly. And then comes the shame spiral. There are so many women I talk to who don't want to admit they feel any shame about this — they'll say, "it's just a natural transition, we all go through it." But underneath it, the research also finds that half of women feel shame about it.

Sheri: I think that's because — and you might have thoughts on this, Jen — we're at the point in our consciousness where we can intellectualize it: "yes, this is just a natural transition, we shouldn't feel shame, we have no reason to." And yet, whenever there's secrecy about anything — if you're hiding your symptoms — there's a reason for that. Usually it has to do with shame.

Jen: Yeah, that's because you can't think your way out of a subconscious belief.

Sheri: Right. We can intellectualize it, say it out loud, reframe it all we want, and it doesn't actually work.

Jen: Yeah, it's a whole different thing to embody it. It's like "fake it till you make it" — you can fake it through your actions, but it's really hard to believe it. You know, 90% of CEOs feel imposter syndrome. That's a researched fact.

Sheri: Even the men?

Jen: Yeah — not just women, even men. Other things making this dilemma worse: the conditioning that women have to prove ourselves to be valuable, especially at work. I know workplaces have come a long way since women first entered them, and I acknowledge that. But workplaces were started by men, and even when we were teenagers first entering the workforce, there was still that residual feeling that women don't belong. So many women try to prove they belong at the leadership table — they prove their worth by doing. I have a friend — a director, probably higher now, in a financial company — who said it perfectly: "I'm still always the doer. I'm at the exact same level as my male colleagues, and I'm still doing my own reporting and analysis. They haven't written a financial analysis report in years. I can't stop, because I have to prove — through all this tangible stuff — that I can do it all, that I'm smart enough, good enough, efficient enough." And that doesn't switch off when we hit perimenopause. We're still trying to prove our worth. So when suddenly you're not as efficient, you're rereading paragraphs three times, or losing your train of thought mid-meeting — which can be embarrassing — you try even harder to prove your worth.

Sheri: As you were talking about proving — and especially in what is still essentially a man's world — I know some women would argue that, but even the nine-to-five structure, though it's changing slightly with flexible work options, is still constructed by men. And this underlying, inherited belief that women don't belong in the workplace — one of the things I felt, and maybe a sign for women reading this — I even felt it when I was in my prime within the corporate world. Good job, good money, working with executives, in front of them often. I had this feeling of being intimidated by male executives in particular. Whenever you're intimidated by someone, you're placing their value higher than your own — like you've built an internal totem pole of who's on top. And I sat below these male executives. I remember even as a little girl being intimidated by adult men — I was shy, didn't say what I really thought, didn't feel like I could stand up for myself in front of them. At work, I felt confident I knew what I was doing, I was good at my job — and yet I still felt intimidated in a room full of men, even just one or two at the executive level.

Jen: And you didn't feel the same with women?

Sheri: No — sometimes there are certain women whose confidence intimidates me, not as much anymore since I've worked on my sense of self-worth. But in my late 30s and early 40s, I still felt that in the workplace — definitely not as much in front of women, though.

Jen: You're definitely not alone in that. I was in a meeting with all men, all director-level, with a young colleague — she'd just graduated, in her 20s. We walked out and she said, "Jen, how do you do that?" I said, "What?" She said, "In a room full of all those men, and you were arguing with them." I remember laughing, because I'd felt that at her age — it was the best compliment in the world. I thought, oh, I've finally gotten over that.

Jen: Oh, you know what else I wanted to say — going back to when you said the nine-to-five is constructed by men. Some listeners might not know what we mean by that. The men's business philosophy of showing up ready to go every single day, five days a week, is very different from how women in our ancestry used to show up. We rested during our period. We showed up differently at different times of the month, but there were times built in for rest. Our 24-hour workplaces don't reflect that cyclical nature of the female body, or of feminine energy generally — feminine energy waxes and wanes, just like the moon. We can't be "on," creative, and problem-solving at all times. There are times to do, times to rest and imagine, times to initiate. We work on a cyclical level. That's what we mean when we say the business world was made by men and still reflects that. That's just one way — there are many others.

Sheri: That's good clarification. Yeah.

Jen: So that's what's making this dilemma worse, and these things compound each other. We have to prove more, so we hide more, which makes the proving worse, and we end up in this cycle. I was describing it to a friend recently — how women in their 40s and 50s are showing up to work. They're feeling symptoms like no generation before them. They get to work with brain fog, can't focus, can't think straight. It takes longer to read and reread emails or reports. Hot flashes, incredibly distracting. Or any of 80 other symptoms — hip pain, heavy periods — all making her less efficient and less productive than she used to be. One friend told me she started feeling anxiety before a presentation — "I've never felt anxious for a presentation" — because of the fluctuating hormones. All of this makes her start to doubt herself. And instead of sharing it and getting support, she hides it — doesn't want people to know, even her female colleagues who are probably going through the same thing.

Sheri: Yeah, and you found some research on that, didn't you, Jen?

Jen: There are a number of studies interviewing women at this age across different kinds of workplaces — not just business, one study interviewed nurses. They're all feeling the same thing: less productive, whether that's real or not, sometimes the difference is minute.

Sheri: Yeah.

Jen: But they don't feel at the top of their game, and they hide it because they don't want it to affect people's judgment of them — afraid of being judged not just for being in menopause, which still carries stigma, but for their performance. In your 40s, you still feel like you've got a couple more promotions ahead of you.

Sheri: Sure.

Jen: And you don't want to be passed over in favor of a male colleague because people think you're less worthy of it, or declining.

Jen: And they're suffering in silence. And what makes it even worse is they work harder and longer — checking emails at night before bed to get ahead so they can get more done the next day.

Sheri: Yeah, and you and I both know what that does to your body — it raises your cortisol.

Jen: And when cortisol is up, you don't sleep as well. It's a vicious cycle — you don't sleep, the brain fog gets worse, the memory loss gets worse. I sometimes call it the "perimenopause overdrive cycle," because that's when burnout happens.

Sheri: And then women leave the workplace.

Jen: Yep — one in ten women that age just leave. They're done with the pressure, or they take the package they're offered.

Sheri: Yeah, and they don't go back.

Sheri: Well, there are so many things coming to mind right now. The first is that ageism is real. Having spent the majority of my career in human resources, I've watched men — especially now, when you can go on Facebook and figure out someone's age by when and where they went to high school, or just from their birthdate — check candidates' ages before hiring, because they want people who are young and sharp.

Jen: Young, quote unquote. Fifty doesn't mean "sharp" for a woman.

Sheri: For men, it's the top of their game. For women, it's "getting foggy," not sharp. And we've suffered this kind of judgment throughout our careers, because people also check women's ages so they don't hire someone of childbearing age who might go on maternity leave — especially with maternity leave being a year, or eighteen months, in Canada.

Sheri: These days, if you want to take eighteen months, you can.

Jen: Yeah, and companies don't want that. That may have changed since I was in corporate, I'm not up on it. But anyway, that's what's happening — and when I described this scenario to a friend, she just said, "Oh my god, Jen, you just described my life."

Jen: And I can quote all the stats — anywhere from 50% who feel the symptoms, to about 67% who feel they're being judged for declining performance.

Sheri: And that brings up something else I've been thinking about, that you and I talked about earlier — we also judge. We've been conditioned by media and society — there are memes and Instagram reels about the Golden Girls, women in their 50s. When you go back to those episodes, they don't look the way I look, they don't say things I'd say — they seem older than I feel. Until recently, that's how women in their 50s were presented. Advertisements of women in their 50s — gray hair, a belly, wearing polyester like our grandmothers did. Not high-powered businesswomen.

Jen: No — not presented as fashionable, sharp, or beautiful. Or — I take that back. Not presented as our ideal, the societal version of beautiful.

Sheri: Yes.

Sheri: The youthful look of beautiful.

Jen: No — I actually think the Golden Girls are all beautiful. All that to say —

And part of you might just be telling yourself that.

Sheri: Perhaps. Perhaps I'm just saying that because I'm supposed to. I have to admit, there's a part of me that still doesn't want to go gray — I'm fighting aging along with the rest of us. At the same time I'm trying to change the system that tells us youthful is the only beautiful, and yet deep down, part of me still believes it.

Jen: Yes — and I want to dye my hair and do all the things.

Sheri: Yeah, I haven't dyed my hair since my wedding, fifteen years ago — I don't have a lot of gray, so I don't feel like I need to. We got lucky.

Sheri: And even that — the fact that we say we "got lucky" for not going gray yet — it's so convoluted, and so deeply ingrained, that even when you're aware of it, it's hard to get out of it.

Jen: Anyway, we digress again.

Sheri: I know.

Jen: So here's the thing for women in the workplace, and for companies — it doesn't matter what profession. I know a doctor in her 50s who just retired because she couldn't deal with the pressure anymore. Our world is losing the leaders we need most, and women are losing the careers they fought so hard for, right as they reach the top. We talk about the glass ceiling — yes, there's still one women have to prove themselves against — but there are also fewer women left to choose from at the top, because they're leaving, or they no longer want the position, no longer want the pressure. Ambition fades when you're this tired. And we know we need women leaders — companies are more profitable, more environmentally sustainable, and have lower turnover when women are at the top. Then we complain about not having enough gender diversity at the top, and no one connects it to this.

Sheri: It is. And there's so little research — you're doing all this digging and there's more coming out, but there's almost nothing. There are literally no studies on menopause and leadership at work.

Jen: There you go. A year ago there were basically none at all. That's starting to change — between 2023 and 2025 there's more research on menopause at work. I did a Google Scholar search the other day for "menopause plus leadership." One study came up with "leadership" in the title. One.

Sheri: And you're right — I want to make that point again. Women over 50 have about fifteen years left to work. Those are the years when men are becoming C-level, directors, VPs, board members — considered the prime of their careers. That's fifteen years of prime time for women to do their most important work, and these symptoms, plus how they've been treated at work and outside it, are causing them to step away.

Jen: So this is where I want to go next — why women are actually primed for leadership at this age, and not just because of experience.

Sheri: Yes, this is exactly where I wanted to go.

Jen: The first, obvious reason goes back to the grandmother hypothesis — women are full of professional maturity, experience, and knowledge by this point. So that's the 3D-world case. But what I find more fascinating is that we're physiologically primed for leadership.

Sheri: I find this fascinating too.

Jen: These aren't our ideas — they come from Christiane Northrup, an MD with years of menopause research. What we know scientifically is that FSH and LH — the hormones your brain releases to trigger ovulation — stay high for the rest of your life after menopause, because your brain is still trying to make you ovulate, even though there are no eggs left.

Sheri: Right.

Jen: Those hormones are also high at ovulation — the time we have the most creative ideas, feel most on fire, most sparked. FSH stands for follicle-stimulating hormone, LH for luteinizing hormone. So if those are elevated for the rest of our lives, imagine that spark — a kind of perpetual ovulation.

Sheri: Yeah — the spark, the creative ideas, the possibilities.

Jen: And — this is a little controversial — Northrup says this is also what connects us to our inner wisdom, our intuition. She calls it "the thinning of the veil." Because of these physiological and hormonal changes, the veil between us and our higher self is thinner, so we're more easily able to access our intuition and inner wisdom at this point in life, which makes us better leaders.

Sheri: Exactly. There's a belief to bust here, too — the male-constructed workplace we talked about earlier values logic, analysis, pros and cons. I was constantly building PowerPoint presentations with advantages and disadvantages to help leaders make decisions. There was nothing about intuition in there.

Jen: No.

Sheri: Although, from talking to a lot of men, I know they use their gut for decisions all the time too.

Jen: They do, of course. They might just call it their gut.

Sheri: But we're taught to shove down our intuition in favor of logic, analysis, and tangibles.

Jen: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Sure.

Jen: And there's one more researcher — Louann Brizendine. Her theory, which isn't new, comes from a book she wrote — women are also primed for leadership at this age because the estrogen-to-testosterone ratio is lower than it was during our fertile years.

Sheri: Right.

Jen: Testosterone becomes relatively higher than estrogen, which wasn't the case before. Testosterone makes us more assertive. Lower estrogen reduces — doesn't eliminate, but reduces — the people-pleasing, nurturing, relational wiring in our brains. So we're not as worried about what other people think, which helps leadership, because to some extent you have to not care what others think. That helps us become the assertive leaders the business world expects.

Sheri: Be more assertive, don't care what other people think, be less nurturing — it strikes me there's a whole bunch of factors working against this, blocking it. When we should be moving into our prime with all this energy FSH and LH are providing — and the fact that we're no longer producing eggs, which takes a ton of energy and calories — we're not using it for that anymore.

Jen: Right.

Sheri: Yeah, but —

Jen: We have that energy now. So that's the fourth reason — we have the energy to lead because we're not spending it on reproduction.

Sheri: Except we don't get to use it, because of all these other factors — ageism, societal norms about women at this age, the drive to keep being productive even as our bodies change. All of that adds more symptoms, more fatigue, more low energy — the opposite of what we should be feeling.

Jen: Yeah, so there's a whole bunch of stuff blocking our natural — we talked about this in the last two episodes — the grandmother hypothesis shows women are actually primed to lead. There's an evolutionary reason to begin leading differently at menopause. And yet that's not happening in today's modern world.

Sheri: Yeah.

Jen: So what I want to leave listeners with is this vision — women as powerful, energetic, passionate leaders in their 40s, 50s, 60s. That's possible.

Sheri: I don't even want to stop at 50s. Work as long as you want — I don't have this "65" number in my head.

Jen: Yeah, it's exciting to imagine more women in workplaces feeling energetic, passionate, primed to lead, powerful — not armored up, but truly, authentically powerful. We'd be changing —

Sheri: The world.

Jen: Yeah. And it's exciting to believe that's possible — that we can change the workplace, and that we can change how we feel in our bodies. You and I both know that — we've watched women in our programs change their bodies, get relief from their symptoms. We have a lot more power over this than we've been led to believe. And when we gather — as women, or with men, since this doesn't have to be female-led only — and focus on it, what becomes possible?

Sheri: And I know there are women out there thinking, "yeah, that's just a dream." I've been thinking about this a lot, starting conversations about it on LinkedIn. Here's my thought: companies are starting to offer menopause support — changing insurance to cover HRT, employee resource groups, flexible hours or accommodations. The HRT and insurance piece, I think a lot of women will take advantage of. But the visible supports — accommodations, menopause groups — women often avoid, because taking them makes you visible: "I'm in menopause, I'm in decline." If they fear that judgment, they won't join, won't take the support, because they just want to feel like their old selves again.

Jen: What I'd challenge anyone in the workplace to do is take the accommodation and be a leader about it — say, "I'm working from home this week because I'm having a really heavy period," and join the group. Let yourself be visible as being in menopause, because that's taking a stand — and setting an example for the women coming up behind you. That is leadership.

Sheri: That is absolutely the irony of it — women are set up to be better leaders, and we also need to step into it. This is one way to do it.

Sheri: And Jen, talk about that study you told me about earlier — about what happens when women actually admit they have symptoms.

Jen: Yes — this is the one leadership study I've found so far that touches on menopause. Researchers looked at women having a hot flash in a meeting. In general, women who have a hot flash and say or do nothing about it get judged lower on leadership qualities than a "normal" woman of that age. But when she disclosed it herself — something like, "Don't worry about me, just having a hot flash, give me a minute" — her leadership ratings went back up.

Sheri: That's so fascinating. It tells me the fear of judgment is largely false — we're not actually being judged, at least not for being menopausal, based on this one study.

Jen: And here's the kicker: they also compared what happens when someone else discloses it versus when she discloses it herself. When a colleague said, "Oh don't worry, she's just menopausal," her ratings went down. When she said it herself, her ratings went up.

Sheri: That's exactly in line with what Brené Brown talks about — vulnerability. Her research shows vulnerable leaders get rated higher. That's probably exactly what this study was measuring.

Jen: So I wanted to share that study, because if you're afraid to disclose that you're in menopause — that's your sign it's okay to. And Brené Brown's work is a second, maybe even bigger, reason to disclose: people will see you as a leader for being vulnerable.

Sheri: I think that's a good place to leave this conversation — with a bit of a plan. If you're feeling these symptoms, you're in menopause, and you're in a role where you can lead others through this — there's hope, we can change this. That could be a one-pager: scripts for what to say when you lose your train of thought, when you're having a hot flash mid-meeting, when you walk into a room and forget why — all the menopause moments.

Jen: I think that's a fantastic idea — we already have scripts for this, we've been coaching clients on it. How do you say it in a way that gives you authority, instead of it sounding like an embarrassing joke? Laughing it off helps you get through it in the moment, but it also signals "I'm a little embarrassed, so I'm joking about it." Instead — step into your authority, say it with conviction. There are lots of ways to do that. If you want those scripts, go to my Instagram — click the link in the show notes, Jen Reimer Coaching, and send me a DM.

Sheri: Go there right now — unless you're driving. Let us know if you want them and we'll put it together.

Sheri: Sounds good. Any last words, Jen, or is this a wrap?

Jen: I think this is a wrap.

Sheri: Okay — so if you found this valuable, even if you're not someone experiencing these symptoms at work yourself, if you know someone who is, forward it to them. Share it. Hit subscribe or follow, whatever platform you're on — we'd be so grateful. Come back for another episode. Thanks so much.