A Lifetime of Becoming: Honouring the Immensity of Women’s Hormonal Transitions
As women, our life is naturally punctuated by significant hormonal transitions. From our first period, to the cyclical ebbing and flowing of hormones through our monthly cycles, from peri- and postnatal journeys if we have children, to peri- and post-menopause transitions.
Our bodies are innately cyclical, and yet, so much about these significant transitions is still underplayed, deeply misunderstood, and under-resourced.
Our culture continues to assume that a woman who has just given birth is essentially herself, just with a baby. Or that a woman moving through perimenopause will remain mostly as she was before, simply with more erratic hormones and mood swings.
But these transitions are not minor adjustments. They are not just biological events unfolding in the background alongside the rest of our lives.
They are whole-person reorganisations.
Of our body, our nervous system, our hormonal landscape, our sense of Self, and the relationship we have with our work, family, values, and future.
They are thresholds.
There is a before and an after, and those two places are often much further apart than the outside world realises.
The immensity of what they ask of us can be difficult to convey to someone who has not moved through them. We can describe the exhaustion, the extra sensitivity, the anxiety, the tenderness, the rage, the grief, the strange feeling of being both familiar and almost unknown to ourselves.
But some experiences have to be lived first-hand through the body to be fully understood.
This blog post felt important to write because I know, personally and through accompanying many women moving through these transitions, that being seen in the scale of what we are navigating helps to normalise our experience and can be, in itself, a form of deep validation and inner nourishment.
It helps interrupt the pervasive and corrosive thought that we should somehow be finding this easier, that we should glide through these moments effortlessly, and that we are failing if we’re not.
I strongly believe that we need to reconsider how women are supported through these key moments. Reframing the expectation that we will keep functioning just as we were before, and offering the deeper care that truly meets us as and where we are (rather than how we are supposed to be).
We Are Not Simply Who We Were
In reality, when a woman gives birth, she experiences many shifts that go far beyond the arrival of a new baby, which in itself is life-altering.
Her body has moved through one of the most physically demanding experiences a human being can have. Her hormones, her body and her nervous system shift considerably. Oestrogen and progesterone fall. Oxytocin and prolactin rise and fluctuate in relation to feeding, bonding, and recovery. Our emotional and neurological inner landscape is not the same as it was only a few days before.
Our nervous system also becomes exquisitely attuned to this new life we are caring for.
If motherhood has been part of your experience, you will have noticed that the smallest sounds, movements and changes in our baby often register through our body before our thinking mind has caught up. Our senses sharpen, our sleep becomes fragmented and the bond between us and this tiny human being can feel both incredibly beautiful, and also hugely overwhelming at times.
And alongside all of this, our identity also begins to reshape.
Within a day of my daughter being born, I found myself sitting by the river nearby in tears, hit by the grief of the life I was leaving behind … unclear about the life that would unfold forward.
And I hear so many similar stories.
We are not just ourselves with a baby.
The entirety of what we have known is shifting.
Yet so often, the world expects us to recover quickly, to bounce back, to function and embrace this entirely new way of living as if we had done it our entire life.
There can be so many layers of emotions at play: love and grief, gratitude and anxiety, joy and exhaustion,…
And there is a vital need to be supported as we slowly integrate these profound inner and outer changes, and recalibrate who we are becoming.
A Life of Thresholds: Perimenopause and Menopause
Later in life, when perimenopause begins, our inner terrain shifts again.
For many women, this can begin in their late thirties or early forties.
The gradual fluctuations and eventual decline of oestrogen and progesterone do not just affect our mood, our sleep or our temperature. It’s not just about hot flushes, sleepless nights and emotions that have been simmering for years beginning to surface.
These hormones impact how our nervous system regulates itself, how our emotions are processed, how we experience stress, relationshipos, boundaries, and our own sense of Self.
Once again, it can feel as though the ground beneath life as we’ve known it is turning into quicksand.
This isn’t only a hormonal transition, it’s another reshaping of our identity.
We are navigating a transition of significant complexity, which often happens while we continue to meet the demands of our careers, our families and perhaps tend to ageing parents who might be needing more care.
But it isn’t all doom and gloom - unlike what the media has us believe.
The perimenopause and menopause bring revelations, tease our inner fire, and offer a doorway into intentionally entering the next season of our life.
It’s a period of reclamation. We can see with such clarity where we’ve been living out of alignment with our own rhythms, capacity, our desires, dreams and the values that orient our life.
And we can choose to realign what feels off.
Meeting Ourselves And Our Body With Compassion
We all move through these seasons of change and transition in our own unique ways, because we all live in layers of context that are uniquely ours.
For some of us these transitions are more easeful, resourced, seamless. And for some of us they feel like navigating a rough sea on a raft that barely holds together.
In cultures where there is no wider understanding of the depth of these transitions, we are often left to make sense of them on our own - which can leave us feeling under-resourced and bring up a lot of self-judgment.
We assume we should be more resilient, more together, more in control, gracefully gliding through any rough patch.
But from a somatic perspective, these experiences make so much sense.
We know that our body is adapting, that our nervous system is recalibrating, that our hormonal landscape is changing and our identity is reorganising. Below the surface, different questions are bubbling up about what really matters to us going forward.
The old ways of coping may no longer work because they belonged to a version of us who lived in a different internal landscape.
More than ever, these times of transition are times where we need to be extra kind to ourselves, and where we need to learn to lean on resources and support that can help us feel nurtured in the deepest sense. Not just enough to keep us functioning and move through without collapsing. Enough to metabolise what is happening and to embrace the season of life we are transitioning into, from a place of inner stability and reciprocity.
We were never meant to carry everything alone.
So many of us are mothering without enough nurturing, leading without enough replenishment, and caring without receiving enough care ourselves. Moving through enormous hormonal, emotional and identity transitions while still showing up as though nothing fundamental was happening within us.
What we need in those times is to be met where we are, with compassion and patience. With the recognition that what we are moving through deserves genuine care and support.
Because while on the outside we might seem like we still have it all together, on the inside, everything often feels like it’s shifting or even crumbling.
What Becomes Possible When We Are Held
When we receive the holding, nurturing and care we deserve to navigate these transitions, they can integrate into greater resilience and sovereignty. Our emerging new identity is grounded in a more stable inner foundation.
Postpartum can initiate us into a love and fierceness we never knew was possible. It recalibrates what truly matters and reveals where we need more boundaries, more support, or perhaps a new direction.
In Chinese medicine, menopause is sometimes referred to as a Second Spring. It can bring us into an entirely new relationship with our power. We often become less willing to please and appease, our boundaries become firmer. Our power begins to root deeper within, and we are ready to reclaim a life that feels more aligned and authentic.
When there is enough space, support and steadiness around us, these transitions can be empowering and incredibly clarifying.
And with the right support, they can guide us into a life that is less organised around self-abandonment and more rooted in truth.
Why Women-Centred Somatic Approaches Are Vital
This is why my work as a somatic practitioner, and the heart of The Wisdom Within™ Practitioner Training, centres women.
Because our experiences as women are uniquely shaped by our hormonal cycles, the thresholds we navigate throughout our life, our conditioning and the low-nurture society we live in.
As women, we deserve to be held in ways that honour the cyclical intelligence of our bodies.
If you are navigating a transition, or would like to support women through these thresholds in a way that truly centres women’s experiences, bodies and nervous systems, you are welcome to book a call with me here. Together, we will explore how this could support you personally, or your work as an existing or aspiring practitioner.
You might also be interested in:
Why Women Deserve Somatic Approaches That Honour Their Body, Cycles and Lived Experience
The Edge of Burnout: Listening to the Body Before It Shuts Down
Somatic Practices to Support You When You Feel Drained, Flat, or Numb
The Missing Piece For Women To Feel More Rested, Radiant, and to Embrace Their Fullest Potential
