Hot Flashes In Cool Places
Thoughts on feeling self-conscious in public. Plus (at the very end): A tiny guide to cool sports bras.
I’m hot. Not just because it’s summer. And not just because I’m officially menopausal. I’m hot because it’s summer AND because I’m menopausal AND because my natural state is to be on the very verge of anxiousness and sweating—all day, every day. As such, a few weeks ago I was asked to speak at an event that I was super excited about. It was lovely and smart and full of interesting people. And I’m sorry to say that what I was mostly preoccupied with was the fact that I would be doing all this speaking in front of so many smart/interesting people without any air-conditioning.
😵💫.
Photo by Jen Steele.
This will not be good, I thought—outside, under a tent where all that steamy summertime air can menacingly gather together under hot plastic. Preparing as I always do, I asked for two glasses of ice water (I settled for one). And fully accepted the fact that I would likely start to melt like a coiffed 21st-century glacier as soon as the person I was interviewing said something brilliant I might not have had an equally brilliant response to (at least not right away). But thankfully, even though it was hot and I did start to sweat, the lighting was mercifully of the moody evening variety, and I’m honestly not sure anyone noticed me discretely swiping my upper lip with my index finger, as if to smooth my phantom mustache.
(I’m sure in a few years I will have one of those, too).
Fanning with vintage sequins, cuz YES ✨✨.
So, I carried on joyfully. Because that’s what we do, especially if we are sweaters that absolutely have to live our lives. You know, perpetually hot people who are on occasion asked to show up in cool places, like a fashion party or on a stage talking in front of people—or at a networking dinner where everyone is most definitely more successful and less sweaty than me (or so I think:).
Precisely the times I wished I looked better in a tank-top.
Just a few months ago, I was invited by an investor to come to an intimate dinner bringing together a small group of fellow founders at a fancy NYC institution. On my way up in the elevator, I didn’t give it a second thought that the climate would be anything but 4-star frosty. I was psyched! And after huffing the four blocks from the 2 train, I was more than ready for some sub-Arctic temps to be blasted directly into my face…all night long ❄️.
But well, NYC summers have a tendency to be either magical or outright RUDE, as if to say, “How dare you…you silly, silly person,” when we leave home on a 95-degree day without a neck fan or even a bottle of water. Case in point: The A/C in this private fancy dining room was having its own mid-life crisis, and so as I sipped a glass of tepid white wine, talking to one of the guests about something gravely important like women’s healthcare, I felt the “switch” go off inside me.
As I felt my scalp get tingly, I promptly excused myself, escaping to a nearby bathroom where I could melt in peace and literally stick my face into a grimy polar air vent. I was fine…but these episodes having to manage circumstances or in some rare occasions, abort mission entirely, are deeply rattling. And while I’d like to think I’m getting better at navigating them—what I need in my handbag to cope (cooling face wipes + mints), what I say (if anything), escape routes, etc.—they can be rough for someone contending with life-long anxiety issues to begin with.
“What’s it like to have a hot flash?” my husband asked with curiosity a few weeks later when the same thing happened—warm restaurant, hot body.
I sighed. “Basically,” I said, “it’s like the scary basement furnace in Home Alone actually lives inside your solar plexus and then suddenly comes alive out of nowhere and sends a fireball up through your spine and neck and then your eyebrows actually feel like they are burning from the inside, which makes your whole face really red like you’re mortally embarrassed because you’re actually having a hot flash in public. And you are in some instances embarrassed,” I said.
All the while, dabbing my forehead with my cloth napkin and surreptitiously using any remaining sweat to slick my hair back into my bun. ✨✨
Me 🔥.
Even though I’ve been sweating my whole life like a pro, sweating in your 50s is a little different than sweating in your 20s or 30s or probably any other time of a woman’s/person’s life. I learned the hard way, long before perimenopause, what it’s like to melt down in front of other people. For about a decade I had a ravaging run with Graves disease, a somewhat hard-to-cure thyroid condition whose main symptom—other than hair-shedding, vision problems, and sudden weight-loss—is Olympics-level sweating. Mostly at night but totally happy to throw down at other times when you least expect it, like on a crowded subway or just having a chill cappuccino. OR, less favorably, before giving a career-defining presentation in front of your whole company, and just a few minutes after you begin speaking—in front of your whole company—your co-founder thinks it’s a good idea to interrupt you mid-sentence to “speak louder!”
Sweaty Betty. Photo by Raffi Baxter.
Which immediately threw me into a full-blown off-the-rails sweating attack, that I don’t even know how by the Grace of God I managed to pull back on track a few slides later. All I can tell you is that it was not easy. It reminded me, and still does, how hard it is to do terrifying things we are already profoundly freaked out about compounded by the fear of being judged in public. Or by our peers…or just by the people we want to love + admire us more than we think they do. To be self-conscious when we also have to do, as Glennon Doyle says, hard things—like tell a compelling story, or drive home a real mission, or just get an important task done. Those years battling Graves while also doing a lot of public speaking and a podcast made me abundantly aware of how human we are…or can be, especially when we have a lot to prove to some critical audiences, but mostly to ourselves.
It took nearly a decade to get my Graves into remission. After which I savored seven heavenly sweat-free months. Until I began injecting myself with hormones to prime my body for IVF and carrying my daughter, at which point, the sweating commenced yet again. But spending a few decades navigating sudden sweat attacks taught me just as much about my own anxiety as a lifetime of therapy has. Eventually, I asked my doctor if I could try a beta blocker or Xanax to manage my performance anxiety, because I was more exhausted by the day’s of mounting fear leading up to the event I was speaking at than the actual event itself. I heard Annie Lamott say once (on Elise Loehnen’s treasure of a podcast) how hard it is to be an introvert living an extrovert’s life. I felt that so hard. But along with that beta blocker or a half-Xanax an hour before the event…some quiet breathing in a bathroom stall, or simply just reminding myself that nothing whatever was about to happen wouldn’t kill me. That even if I bombed…maybe it wasn’t THAT bad?
I don’t do as much public speaking these days as I used to, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think about it…or if I’ve somehow grown out of that phase or particular style of spiral. I think that’s why most of my events-related things are planned around demure black blouses or prints that won’t give away my truth—that I’m nervous. And sweaty. And probably not as cool as someone may think I am.
The truth is, no matter what we do for a living or how we spend our days or where our minds go when we dream about creating something in the future, we all find ourselves in mysterious, uncharted waters and unnerving situations. But living our lives with challenges we can overcome along with the privilege of getting older gives us many gifts—one in particular is perspective…and compassion. I wish I knew how to be truly empathetic to anyone who might have been going through something like my recent sweating attacks during my earlier career. Not that anyone would ever want me to notice or acknowledge them having a hot flash or a sudden bout of nerves. But I’d like to think I would have been loving and kind, even though I couldn’t have known what that might have been like. Or how embarrassing it could feel.
And that even if someone thinks I look weird or feels sorry for me or gets embarrassed by association when it happens to me…it honestly doesn’t matter. None of it matters. The only thing that matters is that we push through and do the thing we need or want so badly to do and DO IT and to love ourselves radically, no matter the outcome.
Last year, I remember I was doing an interview with a company I was absolutely dying to do a project with. I was meeting with one of the directors of their HR team and while she was speaking (on Zoom) her glasses suddenly fogged up. For a minute or two, we just went on talking. But finally, she took off her glasses and wiped them with a cloth, “I’m so sorry,” she said looking down. “I’m having a hot flash.”
I just smiled into the screen and said, “Honestly, I cannot believe I’m not having one right now, too.”
We both had a giggle, she put her glasses back on, and we continued our meeting. And it was just so special to me. Not because I landed the project (I didn’t:), but because I was given an invitation to connect with someone over something I’ve been traumatized by for most of my life—sweating, being visibly anxious, and feeling judged by it.
I am not the first person to write about having a hot flash, and I will not be the last. But at this stage of my life, I know a thing or two about what it feels like to lose your shit in public. To flub the pitch. To miss the cue or the handoff. To show your human-ness/sweatiness in public. And to remember that some people will be cool and warm and really wonderful about it. And some people will be dicks.
Focus on the cool people. Not the dicks.
And just remember—even if having a hot flash at a cool party isn’t on your agenda for for at least a few years or a few decades—consider this a reminder: When we have something special or scary or just really important to do, despite obstacles and fear and anxiety and naysayers and even a few world-class assholes—we are all just out here doing our best.
And thanks to good air-conditioning and ice water, we really can do just about anything…xxCb❤️
🪩 The latest thing I’ve been needing + hunting for: A cool and comfy sports bra. One you can wear to your dance class or instead of a real bra as an everyday underpinning beneath a button-down or blazer. Check out A Tiny Shop, freshly updated with lots of fun/practical options—because I’ve discovered they really are essential to a hard-working wardrobe and I needed a few myself. (Remember, if you love something, we may earn a tiny commission). And, btw: If there’s ANYTHING you’d like me to hunt down and add, please drop a comment, I’d love to help 🦄.
Once again,you share yourself generously and with grace, Christene, and with an honesty that makes me feel a little more brave, because you show how it’s done! xx
2 things from a 74 year old STILL having hot flashes - the extraordinary perscription hormone replacement Duavee - even after having breast cancer my surgeon at MSK agreed the studies were wrong and it was fine to take .
The perscription drug Veozah was just released . It contains no hormones .
Relizen an herbal remedy has helped me a lot . And Revaree for vaginal dryness .
text if you ever want to talk xo Brooke Garber Neidich