How Fertility Awareness Deepened My Appreciation and Love for My Body
Do you ever look back after doing something really hard and think, “wow…i did that.”? It’s like you made yourself the most proud by just getting through it, but then when you look at the progress that was made along with it, you can’t help but be impressed with yourself. Sometimes there’s a moment you can identify as the moment things were about to go down, but sometimes you can’t, but you know you’ll never forget when you come out on the other side. Right?
I couldn’t really tell you where things started to spiral, but spiral they did. I wish I could pin point the moment because maybe then I would’ve saved myself from an entire cascade of side effects induced by PTSD and stress. Although now that we are starting to make headway towards what feels like the other side *knock on wood*, I feel ashamed sometimes when I look at myself in hindsight. Like I should’ve handled a moment better sometimes or said something different or maybe calling myself dramatic, but those things are very kind, so instead, I relish looking back at the messy just a point of reference and comparison.
I don’t think I’ve ever been so disconnected and shut down from my body in the most apathetic way than I was last year. I watched from what felt like an aerial view from outside my body, as my mental health declined in a way I honestly never thought it could and it took my physical body along with it. I was losing my hair in gobs so much so I would feel stomach pain and cry as I washed my hair. My skin was wrecked and dull with bumps all over the back of my arms. I was gaining weight by the week literally doing different. Foods that I felt fine eating just a couple years prior no longer were serving my body and it felt like rocks sat there for days after eating them. Clothes I brought with me from CA no longer fit. I had almost reached my immediate postpartum weight, 2 years after giving birth. (I will make no apologies for wanting to be at a healthy weight for my body.) We can’t forget about the joint pain. My knees ached to the point getting off the floor was painful…standing from the couch even.
My moods weren’t any better. I was snappy. Rigid. Angry. Temperamental. Sad. Anxious booooy was I anxious (still am at times). Depressed. Resentful. It felt like God stopped listening to me so I stopped talking to Him. It was dark. I would go through these cycles of having bad days, but pushing through anyway, only to lay down at night feeling like a failure to my children with the promise to do better tomorrow, sometimes I did. Sometimes I didn’t.
It was until I saw my son struggling also that I realized I needed to get my whole life together because it’s not just about me. Healing is ALWAYS palpable to those around you, I hope you never forget that. Healing also always starts somewhere no matter how small. I tried God again. I prayed but this time, I listened for answers. Everything that kept presenting was calling my attention and my curiosity and that evening, I listened to my Bible meditations and the narrator was on the theme of, “seek and you shall find”. So seek I did. I searched for reasons to feel grateful. It always hovered around my home, my boys, and my husband.
I started w/ getting curious again and taking accountability. No one was going to make this better besides acknowledging that I needed help so I opened the Bible and the verse that showed up, not even kidding, was Psalm 139:14, “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” I claimed this statement as my own mantra.
I remembered how wonderfully made my body was to function as a woman and a whole mother, became invested in healing from the inside out, slowed down to become self aware, charted my cycles, food journaling, habit stacking, and it snowballed.
Through my charts I was able to find estrogen dominance, the way certain foods effected my cycle and digestion, and how stress impacted all of those response signals. I learned that my issues mentally and physically weren’t just signs of stress and discomfort, my body was crying out for help w/ healing. I had ignored my body signals so long I became apathetic.
I really didn’t think charting my cycle could help me deepen an appreciation for my body, and I certainly didn’t think it’d be the domino effect that started my journey. However, I was humbled by the simplicity of it all, simply slowing down, tuning in, curiosity, and a hunger for knowledge would put me on path of healing.
While this wasn’t my initial intention behind this approach, it ended up being the doorway into an improved version of the way I view my body and facilitate it’s natural processes. If you’re someone embarking on this journey, please don’t hesitate to open new doors of opportunity. The BOM Girls Workshop is one of the tools I use to inform you about the intricacies of your body as a woman, the ways your body speaks to you, the story it tells, and how you can be the only expert in this language. Click here and join us in the workshop and be part of a community of women that will change the conversation around reproductive knowledge, body literacy, for future generations of women. See below for details and don’t forget to stay curious always.
