It’s Time To Be Empowered By Your Body Changing

It’s a bloody nuisance.

That’s what many of young girls are taught about their menstrual cycle.

It’s your problem to fix…

…is the other takeaway with just how little talk there is (in general) about the biology and reality of the changing female body.

If you are female, it isn’t a matter of IF but WHEN you will experience body changes.

Yet, you are neither empowered nor encouraged to understand the way your bodies work and will likely change which makes navigating menstruation, pregnancy, peri and post menopause challenging.

You’re taught to keep menstruation woes private, suck it up and keep on going. 

Yet women worldwide suffer in silence either dealing with irregular menstruation changes that are linked to serious health issues like pcos (as many as 5 million in the US) and endometriosis (~190 million women worldwide) OR are the woes of peri and post menopause (~1.3 million per year in the US alone).

Add to this the unrealistic beauty standards and the pressures of diet culture to control your bodies [from changing] and you have a banger of a cocktail for women waging war on their bodies for doing what bodies do.

…change from season to season and from one phase of life to another.

Yes, life must go on while you’re menstruating, while you’re pregnant/postpartum, while you’re in peri and post menopause.

But how much more gentle and kind would young girls - who become adult women - be to their own bodies if they were both given the knowledge and tools to navigate their periods and changing bodies, but shown more affirming and empowering ways to care for and support their bodies throughout?

How much more forgiving and patient would postpartum women be to their bodies and themselves if they stopped being pressured to ‘get their body back’ after the miraculous yet traumatic, body and life changing experience that is child birth?

How much more grace and kindness would peri and post menopausal women show themselves if they were readily given support to sustain a vibrant, active and fulfilling life rather than be simply told to suck it up cause its just life?

And how much better off would women in general be if we started celebrating all the ways our bodies can show up for us regardless of what they look like and how they perform?

I’d wager that it would be so much more.

The reality is bodies are meant to change, they come in different shapes and sizes, aren't all meant to work the same (even if we do the same things), and will do what biology intends for them to do whether you agree with it or not.

And with that there is both good news and bad news.

The bad news is that you’re probably going to have to (learn to) be more accepting and understanding of your changing body. Waiting until your body changes before you love and accept it is a fool’s game you’re not likely to win at.

The good news is, things are shifting and not only are there more open discussions about female physiology taking place, there are also significantly more support avenues available for you to nourish and advocate for your body throughout whatever the changes might be. i.e. work smarter rather than punish-your-body harder.

Stay keen my friends.