What messages are in your menstrual cycles?  

Today, let's connect with our wombs and practice listening, observing, and learning from our bodies. There is so much information stored in our blood, breast, bones, and breath. It takes patience, curiosity, and compassion to be a good listener.

Often we feel vulnerable, and our periods are private personal experiences. I think we feel that way because our blood comes from deep inside us. It comes from the most amazingly creative and productive space in our bodies: that space that no one can feel but us. I mean, so many things come from there. From mucus to blood, clots, amniotic fluid, and babies to art, businesses, healing practices, to everything in between.  

The intricacies of the human body are almost magical, with no one system or function working entirely on its own. Within a mother’s body, the processes that lead to menstruation, pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding are all interconnected. Just a handful of hormones can dictate each of these functions, with different organs and actions responding in their own way. A fascinating and, sometimes, bewildering example of this is the relationship between menstruation and breastfeeding.

During your pregnancy, you enjoyed Lady in Waiting tea to nourish your body and prepare your uterus. Afterward, you soothed your body and hormones with Nourished Mother and gave your body what it needed to make milk with Let There Be Milk and Nursing Nectar. You might have even used Fertile Ground to help encourage fertility to become pregnant in the first place! Your baby was wrapped in herbal goodness from his first Postpartum Herb Bath to the Cord Care Powder and Diaper Salve that helped protect and heal his body as it adjusted to the new world. But now he’s getting bigger, his cord long gone, your uterus is back to normal and your milk supply has regulated...and you’ve got a stash of products just sitting around. Now what?