How I Improved My Period–A Love Story
Did you know periods aren’t supposed to be painful? And did you know that they also aren’t shameful or dirty?
Before I embarked on an epic quest to fix my periods, I was under the impression that my period was something to be ignored, hated, trudged through and not talked about.
My entire adult life I’ve suffered from debilitating periods: cramps that take me out for 1-3 days every month, 7 days of heavy, clotted bleeding, fibroids, ovarian cysts with an occasional rupture resulting in unfathomable internal pain I imagine akin to birthing pains or having your appendix burst. The kind of pain that makes you sick and feels like you might need to be rushed to the ER. Through the years of trying to figure this out, every gynecologist told me there was nothing I could do about any of this except go on the pill. And every other kind of healer asked me if I had been sexually abused, to which I could thankfully answer no. I tried to go on the pill a couple times and it messed with my liver to the point where I would have egregious hangovers, it also numbed physical sensation in my female bits. I was single and in my 20s so clearly that was not going to work. I took herbs, and the only one that cut down some of the excessive bleeding was Shepard’s Purse. Nothing helped with the pain. Everything I tried were just little bandaids on a much larger problem: I was trying to silence, ignore and push away a part of me that is central to who I am as a woman. My womb, the creative force of my being, a part of the body that changes every month in preparation to do the most miraculous thing: create new life, and birth a new soul into the world.
Your body is listening. And when it hears you reiterating things that all of society since the beginning of time have hammered into your psyche, saying that your period will hurt, your period (and thus your womanhood) is to be ignored and hidden, your period is like an illness, don’t be so emotional etc, your body takes note and follows suit! I happen to be an extremely sensitive to my surroundings individual, so I guess my body took the memo and ran with it.
The first clue of what would turn out to be the answer to my problem happened last September. I was having the onset of cramps on the first day of my period, which coincided with a big dye workshop I was putting on. People traveling from all over the city and country to come and learn from me. I had to be on point. I was panicked that I would not be functional for this event. The pain was so bad I crumpled into a ball on the floor and started crying (I wish I was exaggerating but if you’ve been in any sort of chronic pain you understand the defeat of what it feels like for your body to betray you over and over again). I don’t remember what happened between me being in the fetal position on the floor, and my boyfriend, who is in no way trained for it, giving me reiki, but somehow this took place. He laid his hands on my abdomen for about 15 minutes and I could feel the pain subside almost instantly. After that “session” the pain went away completely and I was able to have a full day teaching my workshop completely pain free! It felt like a miracle. This was the first time I was functional on the first day of my period. Emory was completely wiped out for the rest of the day. Since he was basically giving me his life force without proper precautions taught in systems like reiki, he went to play football that day and said he could barely function. I had three pain free periods after that, and then things started getting dicey again when I had a cyst rupture over Christmas. But knowing that my issues could be made much better with the help of loving energy sent to that part of my body was a breakthrough.
So the healing energy was once piece of the puzzle. But after having a cyst rupture and some pain come back, this wasn’t the whole picture. At the beginning of 2020 I decided to dive in headfirst the only way an Enneagram type 5 knows how: Investigate. I needed to read 4 books on the subject and have armchair medical knowledge to be able to connect with this part of myself. Until recent years, I did not read anything empowering about the ability to heal my periods. Like dental health, it seemed disconnected from the rest of the body, mysterious and just something to be dealt with. Not intricately connected to all parts of my physiological, psychological and spiritual system. Now all of a sudden there are myriad books on the subject and they’re all REALLY good! What a time to be alive. I feel like I’m doing this for myself and for my mother, and her mother, and all the mothers before them who were left in the dark with their pain and shame.
It was not until reading these four books that I put together that my period woes could be connected to all of my other health issues. I realized that all of my health issues that I’ve been dealing with are connected: the nausea, the abdominal pain, my occasional adrenal fatigue, the list goes on. Now I had an understanding of what was happening at each point in my cycle. I needed to eat differently, exercise differently, and plan my schedule differently depending on my cycle. This is revolutionary and each of the below books go into glorious detail about this. These will become your bibles and your life will be forever changed:
My main takeaways from reading these books are:
We live in a world created by men. This is not a political statement, but fact. Our cycles, sensibilities, physical needs and way of being are all round pegs trying to fit into the square hole of society, down to the very physical design of our world, the schedule of office jobs, lack of maternity leave, medical testing which is all done on men, to name a few.
If you have painful periods, uncomfortable periods, hormone imbalances, they can all be healed.
Every single day your body is changing hormonally and that needs to be accounted for. We are taught that it is noble to ignore our body’s signals and grind every single day. This works for men’s physiology and depletes that of women. This does not make us weak or inferior, as these changes are what allow us to create the opportunity to nurture human life every month.
The way we can heal is through diet, exercise, decreasing stress, decreasing xenoestrogens like plastics and fragrance, and tapping into the cyclical power we hold, not denying it like it’s a curse.
All of the above are ways of caring, and loving, your feminine or menstruating body. This is the opposite of going on the pill, popping a midol, hating “that time of the month”, wishing you were born a man and still continuing to have pain until the day you die. It’s revolutionary. So, how did I personally “fix” my periods?
Over the past few years I’ve cut out caffeine. First coffee, then switched to cacao, then matcha (now just an occasional treat) and currently rooibos or some herbal tea. Which means I have prioritized sleep so I’m not in need of caffeine as a crutch. You can learn why caffeine is so detrimental in the books.
I’ve also worked hard to cut down on stress which creates hormone imbalances. Which of course, is extremely difficult when you live in NYC and run a business on your own, or really any scenario in the modern world. But I make sure to avoid it when I can. It’s a daily practice in balancing my never ending work, lack of work/home boundaries with basic things like taking time to do a morning gua sha facial, taking a bath at night, or setting alarms on my phone so I stop working at a certain time and get ready for bed.
After reading these books, I have kept an even closer watch on where I am in my cycle, and that dictates what I eat, and how I exercise. In the book In the FLO, Alisa Vitti really outlines how to sync your cycle and gives food recommendations for each phase of your cycle. In reading all these books, I’ve gained a new appreciation for all that my body does each month to prepare to create new life. Regardless of whether or not I choose to use this superpower (I do someday), it is a formidable process that needs to be taken into account in how we structure our lives.
I have a new understanding of the ways women underestimate themselves or push themselves in the wrong way because we are living in a world designed for men. I never really stopped and thought about how we are so vastly different from men, that we have all been taught to try and play a man’s game, all while ignoring our physiology and womanly power. This is not a man vs woman thing. I love men, have a great relationship with my father, many of my best friends are men, and as you’ve seen, a man was the catalyst for my healing. I’ve been pushing, grinding, and really depleting myself for years by living in a very masculine way. Instead, now I let things come to me, to receive, to wait, to rest during my period, to allow emotions to flow at different times of the month. To be the feminine witch that I was meant to be and to own that power, and then to tap into the masculine power of drive and force when it’s appropriate. We live in a linear society, and women are not linear. We are the ebbing and flowing yin to the structured and yielding yang.
And here is the biggest way that I have been able to diminish pain during my period: it’s so simple and has completely changed my relationship with myself. I send loving thoughts to my womb. Every time I get a cramp, instead of pushing it away, being mad at my body for misbehaving, and feeling the impending doom of cramps, I imaging giving it the care I would give a newborn baby. Shushing and cooing and I swear to goddess 99% of the time the pain subsides! This is profound. I am so thankful for my boyfriend who made me aware that this was a possibility, but we all have the power to do it for ourselves. Sometimes we need assistance to get us there. But if you are a person who menstruates, and you are reading this because you too suffer from some of the same things, try sending love and care to yourself next time you are in pain. The power of love is real.
Like all healing journeys, there is no clear cut beginning and end. I am a sensitive, ambitious individual living in a complex and demanding modern world so I do my best but do not always succeed in treating my body in the optimal ways. Some days I work 15 hours and barely stop to eat, and now I know that if I have too many of those my next period is likely to be worse than if I worked less hours, took more baths, did more yoga, ate all the right things on all the right days. Knowledge is power and I feel like I am now well equipped to make empowering choices. A few years ago my only options were pill or no pill. Now thanks to many women who have dedicated their lives to bringing this knowledge to light, I have a chart detailing what foods to eat and when, I have a fitness schedule, I have a scientific understanding of why stress creates more estrogen, and so many more tools that I can use to navigate life as a woman. And most of all, I have the newfound understanding that my body responds to love in miraculous ways. They say love is the most powerful force in the world, and I’m here to tell you that love is even more powerful than painkillers, synthetic hormones and even herbs. Love always wins.
