You were handed a pamphlet in fifth grade and sent on your way. Since then you've had cramps that cleared your calendar, a cycle that shows up on day 22 or day 51, and a week every month where you don't recognize yourself.
When you asked about it, you got birth control, or you got told this is just how some women are.
Nobody asked what you were eating. Nobody asked how you were sleeping, or what you were carrying, or what you were around all day. So you've been left to piece it together from articles and podcasts, trying things in whatever order you found them.
It's the trip you won't book because you can't predict what your body will do. The dinner you cancel on day 25. The morning you apologize to your kids for the night before. The quiet worry that this is simply how it's going to be, and that it might get worse from here.
Most of all, it's the part nobody sees: you've stopped trusting your own read on your body. When the people who are supposed to know keep telling you nothing is wrong, you start to wonder whether you're the problem.
You're not. You're missing an explanation nobody gave you.
I know, because nobody ever explained it to me either.
I had painful, heavy periods from high school on. One day I took too much Midol trying to get through the school day and got sent home. The acne and the heavy bleeding followed me into my twenties.
When I brought it to doctors, I was laughed at. I was told there was no such thing as a hormone imbalance and handed birth control.
Here's the part I'd want you to know: I believed them. I had no idea there was anything to be done about hormones through food or daily life. I assumed this was my lot, and that the only choice was medication or putting up with it.
Then I went to Bastyr to study nutrition, mostly because I wanted to be healthier. I wasn't trying to fix my periods. But as I changed how I ate and how I lived, my cycles got easier and more predictable on their own. Nobody had ever told me that was possible.
I kept going, because I wanted to understand why. A bachelor's and then a master's in nutrition. Culinary training, so I'd know how food actually works in a real kitchen. Herbal science. Ayurvedic medicine, which had been studying cycles and seasons for thousands of years before anyone called it wellness.
Years later, after kids, when my body shifted again into perimenopause, I learned something else. Your energy, appetite, and capacity aren't meant to be identical all month, and when you eat, move, and rest in step with where you actually are in your cycle instead of pushing straight through, a lot of the nagging symptoms settle down. That changed things for me again.
I couldn't stop thinking about how long I went without knowing any of it. Nobody is teaching this. So that's what I do now, fifteen years into practice as a Certified Nutritionist and Holistic Women's Health Coach: help you understand what your body is actually doing, using nutrition, DNA testing, and traditional plant and Ayurvedic medicine..
Your history, your cycle, your symptoms, your labs, and your DNA results, in one picture with an explanation attached. Your supplements get chosen from that, not from a general list.
Food and blood sugar first, then sleep, light, and stress, then your cycle. One at a time, so each change gets a fair test and fits the life you already have.
By the end you know what your signs mean and what to do when a month goes sideways.
A period that stops taking days from you. Energy that holds up all four weeks instead of three. A cycle predictable enough to say yes to the trip before you check your app.
And the thing underneath all of it: knowing what your body is doing and why. Not managing a mystery for the next ten years, but understanding the one you live in.
I'd be honored to help you get there.
I'll email you how the Cycle Foundations Method works and what's included. If it sounds like a fit, we'll set up a time to talk.