Pathway · Work · Disclosure scripts
Telling work, in actual words.
You don't owe your manager, your HR business partner, or the colleague at the next desk one syllable about what's going on in your body. But if you decide to say something, and most women, at some point, decide to say something, here are the words to use, and the words to keep in your back pocket for the day you need to leave a meeting in twenty seconds.
First, the part nobody says out loud.
You have a right to medical privacy at work. In every jurisdiction this site reaches, the decision to disclose a health condition to your employer is yours, not theirs. Canada's Department of National Defence puts it most plainly in their internal menopause guide: "the decision to share information about your experience with colleagues or chain of command is up to you." If a military health document can say that, your office can manage it too.
Disclosure has trade-offs. Sometimes it unlocks real accommodations and a manager who actually adjusts. Sometimes it changes how you're seen, in ways that are hard to undo. The scripts below are for both: the version where you tell someone, and the version where you firmly don't.
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One last thing.
Treat the symptoms before you decide what to disclose. Most of the things that feel like work problems, the brain fog, the 3 p.m. cliff, the rage in the stand-up, get quieter once sleep is back and the loudest symptom is being treated. The conversation you'd have with your manager from a treated baseline is a different conversation. Start there if you possibly can.