The impact of menopause on self-employed and freelance workers (long-read)
The first time I realised something wasn’t right was when I started forgetting things. Everyone who knows me will tell you I’m a stickler for organisation, lists, planning. On the ball. I used to hold a lot of information in my head – but suddenly started to find that I couldn’t remember basic things, like what I’d spoken to a client about an hour before. Or what I’d agreed to do for a piece of work. Juggling five or six client projects at once was never an issue, but it was clearly becoming one. Next came the brain fog. I found myself losing my train of thought part-way through running a focus group, doing a presentation, or delivering a training session. Not ideal. Gradually, I started wondering whether I was starting with early onset dementia. Something I say with knowledge, rather than flippantly: we lost my stepdad to mixed dementia in 2021.