Dear fellow neurodivergent woman,
You're halfway through a sentence you've said a thousand times. Then the word is gone.
Not on the tip of your tongue. Gone. So you say "the thing" and point at the kettle.
Or you're in a meeting, you know exactly what you think, and the sentence just won't build itself.
You've probably googled it. You've probably seen the word dementia in the results and closed the tab very fast.
It isn't that. It's something much more ordinary, and much easier to work with.
The words aren't lost. They're too expensive right now.
Your brain is about two percent of your body weight and it burns roughly a fifth of your energy. Speaking is one of the most expensive things it does.
Think about what happens in a single sentence. You pick the word. You build the grammar. You check the other person's face. You adjust your tone. You decide whether what you're about to say will land badly. If you're neurodivergent, you're probably doing most of that on purpose, because it doesn't come for free.
When the budget is healthy, you never notice. When it's short, your brain rations. It keeps the lights on for the things that keep you alive and it switches off the extras.
Words are an extra. They're the first thing to go.
What it looked like for me
I go to a writers' group every fortnight. We sit outside a vegetarian café on a quiet road. One day there were more people than usual, so there was more talk, and I rode home on my Honda in the midday heat feeling happy.
Then I lay down in a dark room and my brain felt like concrete. I couldn't speak. I wasn't upset. I'd had a lovely morning and I was paying the bill.
I have a rest after lunch every day. I call it Medicinal Cellular Repair, partly as a joke, partly not. That day the rest wasn't optional.
Just last week I was on the phone to my daughter, trying to remember the name of someone we both know very well. I couldn't find it. I had to go round the houses: you know, who owns that shop, who has a daughter your age...
I wrote about this crash in Why You Crash After a Good Day. Losing your words is the same crash, seen from the inside of your own mouth.
Why perimenopause turns it up
Estrogen helps your brain use fuel. It also supports the areas that handle verbal memory. As it starts to swing in your forties, the budget shrinks and gets less predictable from one week to the next.
Studies following women through the transition find that verbal memory dips in perimenopause and is usually back to normal afterwards. That's useful to know. It means this isn't the start of something. It's a stretch of road. I wrote about the estrogen side in Plummeting Estrogen, Starving Mitochondria.
Now add what neurodivergent women already carry. The masking. The filtering. The tab that's always open in the back of your head.
That's the same budget with a bigger bill.
The cell part nobody mentions
Inside every cell are mitochondria, the tiny engines that make your energy. They also act as sensors. Dr Robert Naviaux's work shows that when they detect a threat, they turn down energy production and go on guard. He calls it the Cell Danger Response.
The threat doesn't have to be a bear. Illness counts. Long stress counts. So does a hormonal shake-up, or years of holding yourself together in rooms that were too loud.
And your mitochondria don't sort load into good and bad. A joyful morning with ten people is still load.
So when your words go, your cells may simply be spending less on anything that isn't essential. Speech is the first item cut.
The pattern to look for
You probably already have one. You just haven't been allowed to see it, because you were busy being embarrassed.
The words tend to go after a day full of people. After a bad night. After a sugary breakfast and nothing else. In the week before a period, if you still have one. On the days you've been holding in something you didn't say.
They tend to come back after food, quiet and a lie-down. That's the clue. Memory that's damaged doesn't come back after a sandwich and an hour in the dark.
What I'd try first
For a week, jot down three things on your phone each time you lose a word badly: what you'd eaten, how many people you'd spoken to, and how you slept. Nothing clever. Just look for the pattern.
Then make talking cheaper. Eat before you go somewhere you'll need to speak. Send a message instead of ringing. Say "give me a minute" out loud and let the silence happen. Nobody dies of a pause.
And plan your recovery like it's part of the event. The writers' group is on the calendar and so is the dark room afterwards.
If you find the words go most days, and nothing seems to change it, that's worth taking to someone who can look at your blood sugar and your hormones properly.
You're not losing your mind. You're running a clever, expensive brain on a smaller budget than it was built for.
I hope you have a gentle week,
Love Hannah xoxo
