We're not the kind of people who suffer from anxiety. We're not the kind of people who forget things. We're not people who are vague. We're not the kind of people who don't cope or make a fuss.

We get on with it. We get our heads down and we do the stuff. We make incredible things happen, often with very few resources. And although we might have been known to complain about the pressure, we love our jobs and we love the people we are when we're doing them.

So when perimenopause starts to change the shape of our brains, we lose more than our memories and our calm, capable exteriors, we can lose our sense of who were are.

And we still don't want to make a fuss. So we keep on.

We keep on when our every day tasks set up a churning anxiety that we've never felt before. That's weirdly different from normal anxiety that at least has a cause.

We keep on when we forget what we're saying, usually while we're saying it. When we worked out a really good way to organise a lesson and then forget what it was. When we wake up in the middle of the night thinking of all the things we meant to do.

And we really don't want to be that person.

But perimenopause will come whether we like it or not. And it will show up how it will.

And we will probably need to change the way we do some things. And we probably will need to ask for help. Or explain why we don't 'seem ourselves'.

But we are still ourselves. And we do still make incredible things happen.