July 1, 2026

Adaptation

I can still picture the sweater.

It was bright blue, and by the end of my speech there were dark sweat marks under both arms that stretched almost to my belly button.

I was fourteen years old and had decided to run for president of my class. I gave that speech everything I had. And then I lost.

Later, I cried into my teacher's beautiful silk blouse, leaving sweat, tears and probably a fair amount of snot in my wake.

Maybe that's why hot flashes make me a little nervous. Or maybe it's because my grandmother’s lasted nearly twenty years, and research suggests that many aspects of menopause, including the age it begins and some of the symptoms women experience, tend to run in families.

The funny thing is, I'd never really thought much about menopause. Even though this year is filled with 40th and 50th birthday parties. Even though many of my girlfriends are in perimenopause.

I've never been the person who is prepared for every possibility. I'm not the mom with Band-Aids, snacks and spare clothes tucked away in her handbag. To be honest, I don't usually even carry a handbag.

I tend to meet life as it comes. So rather than preparing years in advance, as a 36 year old, I simply hadn't thought about it yet.

When I contracted CMV during my third pregnancy, I did what I always seem to do when life surprises me. I disappeared down a research rabbit hole, reading every paper I could find. I emailed researchers, changed doctors, and put myself on a train to Paris the day before Europe shut down for COVID to participate in a clinical research protocol.

Over the years, I've learned to trust that I'll figure things out.

Not because I always have a plan. But because I'm endlessly curious once life gives me a reason to be.

Which is exactly what happened with menopause.

Not because I suddenly decided it was time to prepare for the next stage of my life.

But because, for the first time, menopause had become my work.

When Work Becomes Personal

Over the past month, I had the privilege of preparing a masterclass on the female brain. Menopause happened to be one chapter in that story. And I absolutely loved it.

For four weeks I disappeared into neuroscience. I read papers, reorganized notes, rewrote explanations, and slowly turned hundreds of pages of research into a 26-page script. (Yes, I really do write every single word before I give a talk. Yes, I did the same when I was fourteen and running for class president.)

About halfway through, I realized why I was enjoying it so much.

This is what I've spent my career doing.

Telling stories with science.

For more than a decade, I've translated medical research, biology, science experiments into something people can understand and use. I've written about cancer, rare metabolic diseases, diagnostics and clinical trials. The subject matter changed, but the mission stayed remarkably consistent: take something incredibly complex and make it understandable, accessible and actionable.

It was meaningful work. But it was rarely personal.

This time, though, the science wasn't happening to someone else.

Instead of writing about diseases I hoped none of us would ever experience, I found myself immersed in something that connects almost every woman I know.

Pregnancy. Motherhood. Aging. Menopause.

My brain. My mother's brain. My grandmother's brain. One day, my daughter’s brain.

Suddenly, the science wasn't happening to someone else. It was my own story.

I’ve Been Here Before

And then I realized I'd actually been here before. As I was preparing the talk, I kept thinking back to my first pregnancy.

I could tell you exactly how big my baby was every week; blueberry, peach, avocado.

I knew when fingerprints formed. When hearing developed. When tiny lungs prepared for that first breath.

Like so many expectant parents, I became fascinated by the little human growing inside me. But somewhere after giving birth, I realized something that completely changed the direction of my career.

I knew an incredible amount about the baby. I knew remarkably little about me.

I didn't understand what was happening inside my recovering body, why my brain suddenly worked differently, why my identity and priorities had shifted so profoundly.

There was a What to Expect When You're Expecting. And I was subscribed.

There wasn't really a What to Expect When You're Becoming You Again. So I decided to make one.

I wanted women to understand what was happening inside their own bodies and brains, not just inside their babies'.

Building those resources naturally led me to another question.

We had spent years helping women understand pregnancy, postpartum, breastfeeding, pumping, returning to work and the transition into motherhood.

What comes after that?

Menopause is simply the next biological chapter.

Why shouldn't we understand that chapter just as well?

The Story the Science Was Telling

As I was rehearsing my script, I found myself saying one word oh-so-often.

Ctrl+F. 24 times. Adaptation.

In a 26 page script on the female brain, adaptation appeared twenty-four times.

I didn’t plan that; I actually tried to remove it because it felt repetitive.

But that was the story the science was telling.

Adaptation.

Pregnancy is a story of adaptation.

Motherhood is a story of adaptation.

Menopause, despite how often it is framed as decline, is also a story of adaptation.

One finding kept appearing across paper after paper.

Women showed measurable changes in their brains during the menopausal transition.

Brain metabolism shifted. Gray matter volume decreased. Communication between networks changed. Activation patterns looked different. Yet many women continued performing just as well on cognitive tests.

The answer appears to be adaptation. Rather than shutting down, the brain recruits different regions and wires up new networks to accomplish the same tasks. It reorganizes. It compensates. It finds new pathways.

That doesn't mean symptoms aren't real. Sleep disruption, brain fog, difficulty concentrating and hot flashes are neurological in origin and they do profoundly affect quality of life.

But it does mean the story is richer than the one we often hear.

Different doesn't mean damaged. The female brain isn't fragile.

It's incredibly adaptive.

The Morale of the Story

And maybe that's the word we'd find most often if we searched the script of life.

Pregnancy asks us to adapt.

Parenthood asks us to adapt.

Careers ask us to adapt.

Loss asks us to adapt.

Aging asks us to adapt.

Menopause asks us to adapt.

Our brains have been doing this all along.

Maybe we can learn something from them.

I'm still decades away from knowing exactly what menopause will look like for me.

Maybe I'll inherit my grandmother's hot flashes.Maybe I won't.

I'll probably still avoid bright blue sweaters on potentially-sweaty days. (Picture proof: I wore white sleeveless to the masterclass)

And I'll almost certainly continue writing every word of every presentation.

But thanks to one month immersed in the science, I find myself looking toward that next chapter with a little more curiosity and a little less apprehension.

I started the month thinking I was preparing a masterclass.

I finished it convinced of something I'd never really put into words before.

Women deserve to understand every chapter of their own biology.

Not because understanding prevents change.

Pregnancy still changes us.

Motherhood still changes us.

Menopause will still change us.

But understanding those changes replaces fear with curiosity.

And curiosity has always been my favorite place to begin

Stay Curious,

Erica

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