“How are we supposed to learn to love the world if we don’t pick berries?” I saw a woman say this on TikTok. I was heartstruck. That woman was Robin Wall Kimmerer, the author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Wisdom of Plants.
The book has been on my nightstand for 2 years (which sometimes happens when you’re a mom!) But this was the nudge I needed. So for the rainy lunar eclipse day on Sunday, I laid in bed and read 100 pages. This is a book about our symbiotic relationship to Nature, a worldview in which we are perpetually nourished by Her, and about our responsibility to tend to Her in kind.
As I read, I felt my body and my heart soften, I felt hope, and I felt grief for what we modern humans have forgotten.
And I see how this so intimately connects to the state of women’s health.
How women feel disconnected from their bodies. How they feel disconnected from their instincts…
…what they want
…how to use the medicine of nature to heal themselves and their loved ones
…how to understand what their bodies communicate to them through symptoms
…how to trust and love their bodies
…and how to feel safe and satisfied enough to finally relax and enjoy life
Like so many women, my Achilles heel was perfectionism and pushing for success in whatever way I was defining it at the moment - work, parenting, relationships, my clothes, my house, my body, etc. As women, our social nervous systems are more attuned to the communal. Our relationships affect our sense of safety. What so many don’t realize is that our perfectionism - and that harsh inner critic telling us we’re not enough - is a way our system is trying to keep us safe. By “fitting in” to whatever our community deems as “success,” we feel like we’re more likely to be supported and connected.
🌸 Safety
🌸 Satisfaction
🌸 Support
🌸 Nourishment
🌸 Connection
This is what drives so many women without them realizing.
But the reality is these are actually physiological states - states that are much harder to cultivate when we’re chronically overriding our bodies' needs, living out of rhythm with nature’s cycles, or following lifestyle and health advice designed for the male body. This will just create more dysregulation, fueling uncomfortable emotions, symptoms and negative self-perception.
It’s a vicious cycle.
But it’s the norm, right? It’s what we know how to do, and what we’ve been promised will get us all the things.
And maybe for some they have. But from my experience (and the statistics on women’s health) they’ve also gotten us…
đź”» Fatigue and emotional exhaustion
đź”» Neglect of our deeper needs
đź”» Anxiety, fear, anger, rage and depression
🔻 Isolation and loneliness, or feeling like we’re imposters
đź”» Hormonal imbalances
đź”» Inflammation
đź”» Disconnection from our bodies, not trusting our body or our instincts
🔻 Difficulty listening to our body’s signals or understanding the language it speaks to us
🔻 A harsh inner critic and drive to be “perfect”
🔻 Feeling like we’re not living our purpose
These are uncomfortable triggers. The discomfort hits, we try to pacify by driving to “fix it,” scattering our energy out into the world, hoping something we do will finally make it all better. We burn out. Crash. Tear ourselves apart. Then recover enough to send ourselves back out to see if something will stick this next time around.
But this pattern skips the most direct path: living in rhythm with the cycles of nature and understanding how our bodies are a reflection of Her. I believe this is the most important medicine for the times - for helping us reclaim our connection to our bodies and to each other.
What makes us healthy and whole is actually quite simple.
Much love to you on this path. I’m glad you’re here with me.
Courtney
P.S. If you want to learn how to move beyond the vicious cycle and reclaim your connection to your body, you can access my new self-paced course, The Feminine Code: Hormones, The Nervous System and Your Female Body Rhythms.
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