Our next workshop is Saturday March 1st

a move towards empowerment
Though we often don't know it and haven't fully grasped it yet, we have so much power as women to take control of our own bodies, to truly know and care for ourselves.
So much has started to come out about natural cycle tracking, cycle "syncing", and cycle health in general. We now can know so much more about our cycles, our hormones, the natural balancing acts of our systems and bodies, and we can work with our bodies to create a beautiful balance within ourselves.
Have you been interested in learning more about your cycle? Or maybe about moving away from hormonal birth control? Moving toward the Fertility Awareness Method (or "natural" birth control)?
Or maybe you just want to understand and live more harmoniously with your body, not feel like it is such an unknown, or such a struggle all the time.
If you relate to any of this, then I want to invite you in to this, my first, cozy little series on cycle health. Read or listen below for more!
my story, and really, all of our stories...
In September of 2022, 28 months ago, I had my IUD removed after a lot of back and forth, careful thought, research, and preparation. I’d had the IUD for a little over 5 years - 5 years plagued with fatigue, bloating, cramping, anxiety. I’d been convinced to get it by a doctor who I am sure had the best intentions, but misadvised me. She heard my concerns about the painful periods of my teenage years, and had seen me struggle with the symptoms the last 2 years and 3 types of oral birth control had brought on, and so she recommended the IUD. I am a research person – I did my research on what was out there about IUDs, as well as the implant, and various other forms of hormonal birth control. And what my doctor had said about the hormonal birth control checked out with what the internet said too – it would help relieve all of those symptoms. But the research wasn't there yet, we didnt know enough. The IUD felt scary to commit to– what if I had all the same symptoms, but this time I couldn’t just stop or switch as easily? I went through with it, and as you will hear so many women say, it was a painful procedure. It is quick, but it is painful. I was in bed with a heating pad for 3 days after, unable to move. And after that subsided, I still found myself in bed with that heating pad on way too many occasions over the next 5 years. My period stopped after a few months, but the symptoms never subsided. I had cramps, nausea, fatigue, oh my gosh the fatigue, it is crazy to think back on. It wasn’t all bad, I wasn’t completely miserable for 5 years, but I was not me, not at all. A few years in, I hadn’t yet made the correlation that this little plastic thing nested inside of me could be causing all of these symptoms. I went to so many doctors with these symptoms, as I know so many other women have too, and was told it was psychosomatic. Tests are fine, you are technically fine. After ultrasounds confirmed all was technically fine inside as well, I started to settle on the idea that it was maybe this IUD, it was all I could think of. At that point though, I didn’t feel like I had any real options. Pull it out and go back on oral birth control, but would that fix much? Try the implant? Try nothing and hope for the best? One of my dearest friends had started her own process of getting off of HBC (hormonal birth control) and sent me the book that absolutely changed my life – “Taking Charge of Your Fertility” by Toni Weschler. I flew through this book the first time, overwhelmed and greatly upset by all that had been kept from us. I was actually outright angry (I still often am) by all of this knowledge, that was so easy to understand and learn, has been kept from us, not taught to us as girls, still isn’t taught to girls. And I grew angrier still knowing that our gynecologists sit here and write script after script for HBC that is actively hurting us when there is another way. It’s lazy, negligent for them to not know for themselves or educate women on their true options and the affects of hormonal birth control and not having a real hormonal cycle. It's even more awful that they sit and tell us our symptoms are psychosomatic, or pretend its just "normal". If this story is sounding too familiar, please know that you aren't crazy, and that while these symptoms might be common, they are not normal. The reality is that HBC provides synthetic progesterone (and sometimes synthetic estrogen) to the body, turning off your natural hormonal cycle and confusing the body into thinking it has already ovulated and is preparing for pregnancy. You no longer experience a real cycle, real periods, real progesterone, and your estrogen production reduces greatly. In essence, your body is tricked into thinking it is [about to be] pregnant, or is in the luteal phase of the hormone cycle. You enter into a nesting phase, your body swells to protect a baby that isn’t there, it craves food to provide for a baby that isn’t there, your energy levels drop to ensure you aren’t overdoing it, to protect a baby that isn’t there. This is the phase of PMS symptoms, so you may experience bloating, cramping, headaches, fatigue, but now ALL the time, not just the week before your period. To further make things worse, these synthetic hormones are in much lower dosages than our bodies naturally produce when not on HBC, leaving us deprived of essential hormones needed for overall health (and later, healthy menopause). There has been a lot of recent research on our bodies' need for periods and for moving through these hormonal cycles in general. They are finding that our natural cycles are vital to our overall and longterm health. We obviously know cycle health is vital to fertility, but even if you never plan to conceive, cycle and hormone health are so important for our bodies. The shedding of the uterine lining protects the uterus from hyperinflammation and oxidative stress within the cells. The natural estrogen and progesterone cycle help with healthy breast tissue development, healthy bone density, heart and artery health, nervous system health, brain health, mental health and clarity, the list goes on. Our bodies are perfectly made machines, evolved to self-regulate, self-heal, to balance. When we halt a major balancing cycle of our body, there are major consequences. I spent a few months preparing myself and my body for the switch. To go from 7 years of false progesterone and very little natural hormone production into the unknown shouldn’t be taken lightly. I know so many women who have a terrible time coming off of the pill or off an IUD, and even quickly jump back on HBC to counteract it, and its no wonder as the body goes into a kind of shock, not knowing how to produce the hormones it now needs. I was terrified to get the IUD out, I went in expecting the type of pain I’d experienced at its insertion. But it was a breeze. I know that isn’t common for everyone, but for me it was so painless. It was like my body was confirming how right this decision was. I went into the next month tracking a newly returned cycle, watching my body work its way toward an ovulation, and then finally, for the first time in 5 years, a period. I was honestly overjoyed. Gone were the days when a period was an annoyance, a thing to be dreaded. What a marvelous, spectacular thing our bodies move through. There has been slightly more conversation around the fertility awareness method (FAM) and cycle health lately, yet I still meet and talk to women all the time who have no idea of their birth control options, or of the phases of their cycle. And it isn’t their fault, we were not taught this, and we still aren’t talking about this enough. We’ve got to start talking about it. For the sake of our own bodies, our own balance, our own health, our own empowerment. For the sake of our future girls making their way through this world. Id spent the months of prep to help my body find its rhythm again, and a rhythm that would hopefully be pain, and symptom free. We are taught as girls, as women, to accept pain, bloating, nausea, headaches, clotting. This is common, but this is NOT normal. It is not something we should accept as normal either. I came into those first cycles with no pain. I was astonished, as someone who’d had severe nausea and cramps with every period in my teenage years, I had assumed I’d have to deal with some symptoms at least. And I will say, over these 28 cycles I’ve so far had, some have not been perfect and pain free. But I usually know exactly why and when that will be the case. I’ve learned to listen to and live with my body. I’ve learned to feel how it is truly feeling, I've learned to notice the correlations between my choices and how I feel 2 weeks later, I can know what to expect and I can flow with the rhythms my body is asking to move with. We have so much power as women to take control of our own bodies and to truly know and care for our bodies. I want to scream that from the rooftops, offer this up with open hands to every woman I meet. I do find myself moving to this topic so often these days with women, because it is so important that we all know what is going on in our bodies. We have every right to know all there is to know about our bodies. And we need to all know that we have the power to make choices that are good for us and our bodies. You have the power to make choices that are good for you and your body. We don’t have to be dependent on a pill or a piece of plastic that will harm us, keep us small, and keep us sick. We can nurture ourselves, our bodies, and live as harmoniously and as naturally as we were meant to. What could possibly be more empowering than knowing and living in alignment with the natural cycles of our bodies?
a (re)introduction to your cycle
We will walk through the 4 phases of the cycle, get into how our hormones work and act, and learn how to track and understand our cycles. (This is the talk we all should have been given as girls)
birth control, fertility, and whole body health
We will get into how hormonal birth control works and how it affects the body, talk about fertility and whole body health, and why "fertility" is important even if you never want to conceive. We'll get into the fertility awareness method and myth bust the "rhythm method".
nurturing and healing our bodies
We will talk about how to support our bodies during each phase of the cycle - from the food we eat, the way we move our bodies, what we can work on, and more. We will also cover how to support our bodies as we come off of hormonal birth control, and how to support your body if you choose to stay on it.
moving forward for ourselves
We will discuss how we can move toward living in synchronicity with our cycles, how we can empower ourselves by listening to our bodies and making the most of each phase of our cycle. This will also be a big day for questions/discussion.

what we will cover:
the details:
Our 2 Hour Workshop will run
Saturday March 1st from 4-6pm MT
The workshop will be recorded, so if you cannot attend live, you will receive the recording after.
For quick time difference calculations, these will be held:
3pm - 7pm Pacific
4pm-6pm Mountain
5pm-7pm Central
6pm-8pm Eastern
Participants will have the option of keeping cameras and microphones off during the entirety of the workshop. There will be time during the workshop for questions and discussion, which can be spoken or put in through the chat.
If you are unable to attend the workshop, you will still receive the recording via email, as well as all emailed materials.
pricing:
Sliding Scale: $20 - $40
This workshop is on a sliding scale so that it is hopefully more accessible for everyone. There are 3 tiers on the booking page, for $20-40. The $45 tier is a bit of a "pay it forward" tier to help subsidize this series and future cycle syncing workshops for those who deserve access to this information but can't always afford it.
*please reach out if you’re interested but still feeling financial strain at these tiers.
Ready to learn more , find balance and take control of your own healing?