What My Fibroids Taught Me About the Female Body | Hormones, Cycles & Body Literacy

How a difficult doctor’s visit led me to discover hormones, fertility awareness, and cycle wisdom.

I had fibroids. I still had a child's wish. And I walked into his office carrying both of those things carefully, the way you carry something fragile. Before he had examined me, before he had run a single test, he looked at me and told me I probably had no eggs left. When he asked what I did for work, and I said "yoga teacher," I felt the temperature in the room change. The dismissal was instant. Wordless, but unmistakable.

When he finally examined me, there was a brief “oh,” almost surprised, as he confirmed I still had eggs. An operation date was scheduled. A waiver was placed in front of me acknowledging that he might cut through my womb in the process.

Before he finished the appointment, he handed me a prescription. A contraceptive pill to take in preparation for the operation, scheduled for a month later. I told him directly. I get depressed from hormonal contraception. I clearly disclosed the side effects I would experience, as I had only understood this myself at the age of 24, after I had stopped taking the pill, and the emotional rollercoastering I had been living with suddenly lifted. Nobody had ever told me the two were connected. For some women, the impact is profound, and it deserves to be taken seriously.

He didn’t take it seriously. He handed me a prescription for what he called a lighter pill. Something more gentle, he said. I could manage that, surely.

So I took the prescription to the pharmacist.

And that was the moment everything shifted.

The pharmacist confirmed what I had already suspected. This was not a lighter pill. He had told me what I needed to hear so I would stop asking questions.

I stood at that pharmacy counter and felt something click into place. This was not a doctor who was simply rushed or dismissive. This was a doctor who had looked me in the eye and misled me.

I went home. I called my gynecologist. I canceled the operation.

And then I started reading.

What followed those next days was me, furiously and hungrily, going online and ordering every book I could find on the natural healing of fibroids, on hormones, on the female body. And that is where everything changed.

There was no dramatic revelation. It was quieter than that. A slow, steady realization that arrived page by page. I had spent forty-something years in this body, and I was only now meeting it properly. That feeling of wonder mixed with a kind of tender disbelief never quite left me.

Fertility awareness. The profound, intricate changes the body moves through during a fertile peak. The intelligence encoded in a cycle that I had spent decades either ignoring, overriding, or being mildly annoyed by.

Why had none of this been in school? Why had no doctor ever sat down and explained it? How had I, a yoga teacher who had spent years studying the body, arrived in my forties not knowing this?

The answer, I slowly understood, wasn't personal. It was systemic.

We live in a world built around a linear model of energy. Show up the same every day, perform consistently, push through. That model was never designed around a female body.

A female body is cyclical. It moves through distinct phases, each with its own hormonal landscape, its own strengths, and its own need for rest, expression, or stillness.

That is not a flaw. That is biology.

But we were never taught to see it that way. Instead, most of us absorbed a very specific idea of what strength looks like. Steady. Constant. Uninterrupted. A model built around a body that does not bleed, does not shift, and does not need to slow down once a month. We were handed that template and told to fit ourselves inside it.

And so we ran. Many of us are still running.

The fibroids, the PCOS, the burnout, the PMS that steals a week from your life every month. These are not random malfunctions. They are often the body’s way of making the point that the mind has been trained to ignore. The body speaks before we are ready to listen. And it will keep speaking, louder and louder, until we do.

When I finally started listening, I found my way back to myself. That journey did not happen overnight. It unfolded slowly, through books, through practice, through learning to trust what my body was telling me. And when I later met my husband, and we began trying for a child together, that inward work deepened into something I had not expected. Feminine-aligned practices, a relationship with my cycle that felt less like management and more like a conversation. Slowing down became my path, not from giving up on ambition, but from discovering a quieter, enduring power that had always been there.

If you are reading this and something in you recognizes what I am describing, the exhaustion, the feeling of being at war with your own body, the sense that something is off but no one seems to take it seriously, I want you to know something.

You are not alone.

And you are allowed to ask more questions.

You are allowed to leave an appointment that made you feel small.

You are allowed to go home, open a book, search for another opinion,

and take your time. Your body is not a problem for a specialist to solve without your full participation. You are the expert on your own experience, and no degree changes that.

The information exists. The knowledge is out there, waiting, in books, in practitioners who will actually listen, in communities of women who have walked this path before you.

You get to know your own body. Fully, deeply, on your own terms.

That is not a radical idea. It should never have been kept from us in the first place.

A note: This essay is a personal account, not medical advice. It is not written to discourage you from seeking medical care, working with doctors, or following treatment that is right for you. Good medicine and body literacy are not opposites; they work best together. What I am inviting you toward is curiosity: about your hormones, your cycle, and the remarkable intelligence of your own body. The more you know, the better equipped you are to ask the right questions, advocate for yourself, and make informed decisions alongside the practitioners you trust.