Brain fog in the meeting: the recovery lines, and why it happens to sharp women at 50
You have used the term "amortization" countless times, so reaching for it should be effortless. Here in Salt Lake City, you are 51, serving as chief financial officer, and four slides into the quarterly review when the board chair poses a question that begins with that very word. The word is not there. Where it used to sit, there is a blank. The pause has run two seconds, then three, and you can feel the committee watching you dig through a drawer you cannot find.
Where the stakes really lie
Three seconds passes in a blink. Hesitating for three seconds before a board is a reputation risk, and you recognize that, which is why the fourth second is what truly harms you: once you begin observing yourself from the outside, the hunt for the word is replaced by anxiety about the hunt. The chair is patient. The newest director is not. You have spent nine years building the assumption that you are the sharpest person in the room, and that assumption is now hanging on one noun.
The turn
The word finally comes. It always does. You manage to say "the amortization schedule," respond to the question, and the discussion carries on. Nobody mentions it. Across the next three days, you keep turning that moment over in your mind.
Stumbling for that word did not signal a downturn in your abilities. It was a sign of something else, and signs like this have explanations. Poor sleep from night sweats, shifting hormones and a mind running on four hours of rest can cause anyone, at any level of seniority, to lose a noun every so often. What makes it seem like a decline is that no one warned you it could happen, so the only label available to you was "losing it." You are not losing it. You are 51, and your body is renegotiating its chemistry while you run a company's finances, whether that company is a Murray manufacturer, a Sandy healthcare group or a downtown firm near the Wasatch Front's business corridor.
Why this happens to plenty of people in Utah, from the Wasatch Front to Millcreek
WebMD Health Services reports that 45% of women managers and executives in Salt Lake City and along the Wasatch Front hide their menopause symptoms at work, while 34% have weighed quitting over them. A 2025 Deloitte survey of 7,500 women, including many across the Wasatch Front, showed that 36% of those experiencing menopause symptoms push through severe pain while working. Read those together and you get boardrooms full of women dropping the occasional word, each one quietly concluding she is the only one, and some of them leaving rather than saying so. The sharp women at 50 are not dulling. What has changed is that they are sleeping less and have less information to draw on.
Three takeaways from the research
Hold a backup sentence at hand. A hesitation turns into a genuine difficulty only once panic moves in to occupy it. Instead, fill it with a deliberate phrase such as "Let me start with the number." Or try: "I'll share the figure first and then name the term." Either approach gives you five seconds and comes across as thoughtful, which is exactly what you are being.
Begin by treating it as a sleep matter, since that is usually the root. Book a visit with a clinician in Sandy, South Jordan or anywhere nearby who specializes in menopause, and mention "word-finding" and "sleep" directly. Addressing one of these often resolves the other. Time constraints and embarrassment are the two biggest reasons women put off that appointment, and neither one is a valid medical consideration. If you need a starting point, the University of Utah health system and Intermountain Health both have women's health clinicians who see patients across the Salt Lake Valley.
Quit the self-scrutiny. One noun slipping away in a meeting where you handled eleven questions well reveals nothing real about your ability. Count the eleven.
The word in question was "amortization." The next time it slips away, you will already have a phrase ready to bridge the gap while it returns. The board will see a CFO carefully selecting her language, which is precisely the skill they are paying her to demonstrate.