I was in the middle of a budget meeting when it happened. One second I was fine, the next my face was on fire and I could feel sweat starting at my hairline. Nobody else in that room felt a thing. I sat there smiling and nodding while internally panicking about whether my face had actually turned red or if it just felt that way. It took me embarrassingly long to connect the dots.
Nobody warns you about this part
I’d heard about hot flashes the way you hear about most things related to aging women’s bodies: vaguely, and usually as a joke. What I didn’t know was how sudden they’d be, or how much they’d throw me off in the middle of ordinary moments. A phone call. A grocery line. A meeting I couldn’t just walk out of.
What actually helped
The second thing was almost embarrassingly simple: I bought a tiny desk fan, the kind marketed for gaming setups, and just left it running. Aimed directly at my face. All day. Somewhere around week two I stopped caring how that looked to anyone walking past my desk.
The third thing is the part no wellness article ever mentions: I now keep a hoodie draped over the back of my chair, because about ten minutes after the fan saves my life, I’m suddenly freezing and reaching for it like it’s an emergency. It’s not really a system. It’s more like a weather pattern I’ve learned to dress for.
What it actually felt like for me
Here’s the part I still find hard to talk about: the physical symptom wasn’t the worst bit. It was the fear that someone would notice and ask if I was okay, and then I’d have to explain something I hadn’t even fully explained to myself yet.
So for a while I just didn’t say anything. I’d fan myself with a folder and blame the office AC, which fooled exactly no one.
At some point I got tired of managing everyone else’s reaction more than my own. Now when my face goes red mid-sentence, I just keep talking, and someone will glance over and say, “oh, she’s here again.” Not me. Her. The hot flash itself has become its own character in the room, a guest nobody invited but everyone’s learned to recognize on sight.
There’s a phrase for this in Korean: 그분이 오셨네, “she has arrived.” Not the flash. Not the symptom. She. As if menopause doesn’t just happen to you, it shows up as a very particular, very formidable woman who lets herself in without knocking. My mom used to say it like that, half-joking, half-bowing to the inevitable. I didn’t expect to end up saying it about myself in an office, but here we are.
A quick note: I’m not a doctor, and nothing here replaces a conversation with one. This is just what one perimenopausal woman figured out through trial and error.
So, when was your first one? Mine happened in a meeting. Where were you when yours hit?
