The blunder years
I needed to contact her. I clearly remembered her face, voice and professional affiliation, but could not — no matter what mnemonic trick I tried — recall her name. Plowing in frustration through my email address book, I finally found her way down in the R’s.
I used to have a memory like a steel trap. Co-workers came to me for instant recall of forgotten facts. Now it seems that trap has rusted shut. But I’m not alone. According to Dr. Jerilynn Prior, a Vancouver-based menopause expert and a University of British Columbia professor of endocrinology and metabolism, those memory hiccups that routinely stalk busy people in fast-paced work environments begin to happen far more often to women once they hit midlife.
Peachy timing, isn’t it? No sooner do we reach our professional peaks than our mental hard drives begin to unpredictably drop memory files into biochemical trash bins, forcing us to try and manage the glitches gracefully, while wondering what onlookers must be thinking.
Blame menopause – if you can remember to
Women’s busy lives may not have changed by this point — in addition to job stress, we still take on the lion’s share of domestic tasks — but we begin experiencing hormonal shifts during the decade or so of perimenopause preceding actual menopause.
Stress triggers production of too much of an adrenal hormone in the brain called cortisol, which can cause intermittent memory failures. And, Prior says, “estrogen levels average higher in perimenopause, and that increases or amplifies the cortisol response to stresses in women’s lives.”
Increasing memory lapses can spark a new stress, adds Prior: We begin wondering if we’re displaying signs of Alzheimer’s or some other early-onset form of senile dementia. We’re not, she says. It’s normal to forget where we put our sunglasses or what that person’s name is. Forgetting what sunglasses are used for, or who that person is, would indicate a more serious neurological problem.
“Memory glitches?” laughs 42-year-old Shannon Bowen-Smed, president and CEO of Calgary personnel firm Bowen Workforce Solutions. Her four-month-old baby, Kira, sister to seven-year-old Elacy, has thrown additional challenges into Bowen-Smed’s already crammed life. “I also have sleep deprivation,” she chuckles. “I have no memory!”
Strategies to keep things in mind
To keep track of details, Bowen-Smed sends herself emails and voicemails via her BlackBerry, and writes notes to herself, keeping pad and paper in her bathroom and bedroom, and by the telephone in her kitchen.
Meanwhile, 60-year-old Barbara Bowes, a human resources expert in Winnipeg, says her menopausal hormone storms are in the past, but she still relies on the tools she developed to cope with memory dropouts — because she still gets them. She writes everything down, depends on trusted colleagues to recall what she doesn’t, and delegates — something she notes successful businessmen have always done comfortably, whereas “women are used to doing everything ourselves, and if we try to delegate those details, we feel guilty,” she says.
She felt that guilt until she realized she was making too many errors. “Mistakes make you appear to be in a weaker position,” says Bowes. “You can’t ever put yourself in a position where you look weak. You always have to be on top of the game.”
That applies even more if your work environment happens to be toxic or highly competitive, or if you’re a senior executive whose memory-related errors occur often enough to affect employees’ morale and confidence in you, Bowes adds.
Fortunately for Calgary’s Bowen-Smed, she’s in a workplace where co-workers like and respect each other. “I think vulnerability is a lovely quality,” she says. “I’m reminding my colleagues that I’m human, like them,” she notes. “I do my very, very best — and my very best looks a little different now that I’m 42.” Like Bowes, Bowen-Smed delegates, dealing with critical matters herself and “passing on what I define as some of the supporting things that need to be completed.”
