I forgot my friend's birthday last month.

Not a distant acquaintance. A proper friend. Someone I have known for years. And I did not just forget on the day. I forgot entirely. No card, no message, no belated "oh god I am so sorry." It just did not exist in my brain until she mentioned it two weeks later and the floor opened up beneath me.

If you are neurodivergent and in perimenopause, you probably know this feeling. The brain fog swallows things whole. Birthdays, replies to messages, plans you made and genuinely meant to keep. Not because you don't care, but because your brain simply cannot hold everything it used to, and the things that slip through the cracks are often the ones that matter most.

The friendships that are surviving this season of my life? They are the ones where both sides extend grace. Where a forgotten birthday is not a betrayal. Where a message left on read for nine days is not a statement. Where the response to "I completely forgot, I am so sorry" is "honestly, same" rather than a cold silence.

And that shift, from friendships that require constant maintenance to friendships that can breathe, has been one of the most significant changes of my life in the last few years.

There is something that happens when you go through a big life transition, whether that is perimenopause, a neurodivergent diagnosis, becoming a parent, or all three at once. Your capacity shrinks. Not permanently, not dramatically, but the bandwidth you have for maintaining relationships gets quietly reassigned to just getting through the day.

For a lot of women, especially neurodivergent women, there has always been a role we played in our friendships. The organiser. The one who remembered birthdays, arranged the dinners, created the group chat, kept the social calendar ticking. We did it because we were good at it, or because nobody else would, or because our people-pleasing meant we could not bear to let a friendship go unattended.

And then perimenopause arrives, or a diagnosis lands, or life just gets heavier, and suddenly you cannot keep that role up anymore. Not because you do not want to. Because you do not have the energy. Your executive function is stretched to breaking point just managing work, kids, your health, and remembering to eat lunch. Organising a group dinner for eight people is no longer on the list.

And here is the thing that stings: when you stop being the organiser, you find out quite quickly who was only showing up because you made it easy for them. Not because they did not care. But because without someone driving the logistics, the friendship quietly stalls. Nobody picks up the baton. And the gap gets wider until one day you realise you have not spoken in six months and neither of you reached out.

That is not anybody's fault. It is just what happens when the person who held everything together runs out of capacity to hold it.

I used to think that a friendship ending was a failure. That if I could not maintain every relationship I had ever built, something was wrong with me. The guilt would sit heavy in my chest every time I thought about someone I had drifted from. I should message them. I should make more effort. I should be better at this.

But here is what I am slowly, imperfectly learning: not every friendship is meant to last forever. And that is not sad. It is just life.

Some friends are in your life because you worked together, or your kids were in the same year, or you took the same class, or you lived in the same place. And those friendships are real and valuable and meaningful for exactly the time they last. But when the job changes, or the kids move schools, or you stop going to that class, the thing you had in common shifts. And sometimes the friendship drifts with it.

That does not mean it was not important. It means it was a season. And the season changed.

Some friends are in your life because you are on similar paths. Going through the same things, navigating the same struggles, understanding each other's worlds. And when your paths diverge, when one of you has kids and the other does not, when one of you gets a diagnosis that reshapes everything, when your daily realities become so different that you struggle to relate to each other's lives, the friendship can feel like it is stretching thin. Not because anyone did anything wrong. Just because you are growing in different directions.

Letting go of a friendship does not have to be a dramatic ending. Most of the time it is just a quiet acceptance that this person was part of a chapter, and the chapter has turned. And holding onto guilt about that helps nobody.

Can we talk about the guilt? Because it is enormous.

The guilt of not replying to messages quickly enough. The guilt of cancelling plans because you are too drained to leave the house. The guilt of forgetting birthdays and anniversaries and milestones. The guilt of knowing you used to be better at this and wondering what happened to the person who could juggle fifteen friendships and never drop the ball.

If you are neurodivergent, the guilt is compounded by a lifetime of feeling like you are not doing relationships "right." Masking in social situations. Overthinking every interaction. Worrying that you said the wrong thing, or not enough, or too much. And perimenopause layers on the brain fog and the fatigue and the emotional volatility, so now you are not only dropping balls but you are crying about the fact that you dropped them.

Here is what helps me with the guilt: being honest about it. Saying to the friends who matter, "I am struggling with my capacity right now. It is not about you. I forget things. I go quiet. I cancel. And I need you to know that none of that means I do not care."

The friends who hear that and say "I know, me too" are your people.

The friends who hear that and take it personally, that is painful, but it is also information. And it does not make either of you the villain. It just means you need different things from a friendship right now.

The friendships that are thriving in this season of my life all have something in common. They are built on mutual grace.

These are the friends who do not keep score. Who do not hold a forgotten reply against you. Who understand that a three-week gap in messages is not a reflection of how much you care. Who extend the same patience to you that you extend to them, because they are probably going through something similar themselves.

A lot of these friendships have naturally gravitated towards people who share similar experiences. Other neurodivergent women. Other mums navigating perimenopause. Other women who understand what it is like to have a brain that loses things constantly and a body that will not cooperate. Not because I deliberately filtered my friendships, but because those are the people who get it without you having to explain it every time.

And some of the most meaningful connections I have right now are with women I have never met in person. Online communities, WhatsApp groups, spaces where the conversation picks up exactly where it left off whether that was yesterday or three months ago. For a neurodivergent brain, that kind of low-pressure, text-based, reply-when-you-can connection is not a lesser form of friendship. It is often the most sustainable one.

One of the things I am learning is that keeping the channels of communication open matters more than keeping up appearances. Telling your friends what you are going through. Being honest about the brain fog, the memory loss, the capacity issues. Not as an excuse, but as context.

Because when your friends understand why you have gone quiet, they are far less likely to take it personally. And when you understand what they are going through in their own lives, you are far less likely to feel guilty about not being able to show up the way you used to.

It takes vulnerability. It takes saying "I am finding this really hard" to someone and trusting them not to judge you for it. But the friendships that survive that honesty become something so much deeper than the ones that relied on you performing a version of yourself that no longer exists.

If friendships have changed for you recently, or if you are carrying guilt about the ones that have drifted, I want you to think about this for a moment:

You are not a bad friend. You are a person going through a massive life transition with a brain that is being rewired by hormones and neurodivergence simultaneously. Your capacity has changed. Your needs have changed. And it is okay for your friendships to change too.

The ones that are meant to stay will stay. They might look different. They might be quieter, less frequent, more text-based. But they will be real. And the ones that drift? They were not wasted. They were part of a season that mattered at the time.

Friends for a reason. Friends for a season. And a very precious few who are friends for life. All of them count. None of them are failures.

Go gently with yourself. And go gently with the friendships that are changing. There is no villain in this story. Just people growing in different directions. And that is allowed.