The Education You Should Have Had

Here is something I want you to sit with for a moment.

Your menstrual cycle is not a reproductive inconvenience. It is not a monthly interruption. It is not something to manage, suppress, or push through.

It is a vital sign.

In the same way that your heart rate, your blood pressure, and your temperature tell a practitioner something meaningful about the state of your health — your cycle is broadcasting information about your hormonal picture every single month. Consistently. Reliably. In a language that is entirely readable, once you know how to read it.

The problem is that almost no woman was ever taught to read it.

I have been working in women's health for a long time. I attended over 300 births as a midwife. I have sat with women across every season of their hormonal lives — from the first bewildering cycle at twelve to the last one at fifty-two, and everything in between. And the thing that strikes me, still, is how universal the gap is. How many intelligent, capable, deeply self-aware women have arrived in my practice having never been given the most basic map of their own biology.

Not because they didn't ask. Because the map was never offered.

So today, I want to offer it.

Your cycle has four phases. Not two — not just "period" and "not period" — four distinct hormonal environments, each with its own character, its own strengths, its own particular demands and gifts.

Understanding them doesn't require a biology degree. It requires someone to actually explain them, which is what I'm going to do right now.

The menstrual phase is the one everyone knows — the bleed itself. Estrogen and progesterone are at their lowest. The uterine lining releases. For many women this is the phase they most want to escape, and I understand why — it has been framed, for most of our lives, as the inconvenient price of womanhood. But here is what nobody told you: this is also a phase of profound clarity. The hormonal noise quiets. Introspection comes naturally. The women I work with who learn to honour this phase — to rest when they can, to turn inward rather than push outward — often describe it as the most honest time of their month. Their body is doing significant work. It deserves to be met with something other than a painkiller and an apology.

The follicular phase begins as bleeding ends and estrogen starts to rise. This is the body preparing to ovulate — building the follicle that will release an egg, thickening the uterine lining, and in the process, generating a quiet but unmistakable lift in energy, mood, and cognitive sharpness. New ideas feel possible. Social engagement feels easier. This is the phase where many women feel most like themselves — and now you know why. Estrogen, among its many roles, is directly neuroactive — it supports serotonin, verbal fluency, and memory, which is why so many women feel most like themselves in this phase.

Ovulation is the event at the centre of the cycle — the release of the egg — and it is so much more than a fertility moment. Ovulation is your body's monthly proof of hormonal health. When it happens well, you can feel it: a peak in energy and confidence, a warmth, a sociability that is distinctly different from the follicular phase's quieter aliveness. This is the body at its hormonal high point, generating a surge of luteinizing hormone and, crucially, triggering the production of progesterone — the hormone that will govern everything that comes next. When ovulation doesn't happen, or happens poorly, the entire second half of the cycle is affected. This is why I call ovulation the most important event in your hormonal month — and why its absence is never something to gloss over.

The luteal phase is the second half of the cycle — the progesterone-dominant phase that follows ovulation and lasts until bleeding begins again. This is where most women's relationship with their cycle gets complicated. Progesterone is a quieting hormone. It draws the body inward. Energy naturally consolidates. The social ease of the ovulatory phase gives way to something more introverted, more detail-oriented, more attuned to what isn't working. When progesterone is sufficient and well-supported, this phase feels like a productive, focused deepening. When it isn't — when progesterone is low relative to estrogen, when the adrenals are depleted, when the body is running on empty — the luteal phase becomes the site of everything we have been taught to call PMS. The irritability. The tearfulness. The anxiety. The feeling that the world is too much. These are not character flaws or hormonal chaos. They are a depleted progesterone system asking, loudly, for support.

Here is what strikes me most about these four phases, and why I think understanding them matters beyond just managing symptoms.

Most women in the modern world have been living as though their bodies should function the same way every day. Think of it like a phone that's expected to perform at 100% whether it's fully charged or at 20%. We don't question why the phone slows down when the battery is low — we understand that output depends on resources available. And yet we have collectively decided that women should deliver the same energy, the same emotional availability, the same cognitive sharpness on day 26 of their cycle as on day 10 — and that anything less is a personal failing rather than a simple matter of where the body is in its monthly rhythm.

And when the body doesn't comply — when the luteal phase brings tears, when the menstrual phase brings a need for rest, when the follicular phase brings an energy that wants to run rather than sit in meetings — she has been taught to manage it. To push through. To apologize for the fluctuation.

What if the fluctuation is the point?

What if your cycle isn't interrupting your life, but offering you a map of it — a monthly rhythm that, when understood and worked with rather than overridden, actually makes you more effective, more grounded, and more yourself?

This is what body fluency looks like in practice. Not a perfect cycle. Not the elimination of all symptoms. A relationship with your own rhythms that is informed enough to be useful, and compassionate enough to be sustainable.

You were designed to move in waves, not a straight line. Nobody taught you that. But it's not too late to learn it.

FROM THE DISPENSARY - RASPBERRY LEAF (Rubus idaeus)

If you have ever walked past a raspberry cane in early summer and brushed your fingers along the underside of a leaf, you already know something about this plant. It is soft where you expect it to be rough. Quietly generous. Unassuming in a way that belies how much it actually does.

Raspberry leaf is often the first herb I recommend to women who are new to plant medicine — not because it is simple, but because it is approachable. It asks very little of you. A handful of dried leaves steeped in hot water for ten minutes. A cup, maybe two, most days. That's the whole protocol.

And yet what it offers is quietly remarkable.

The leaves of Rubus idaeus are deeply nourishing to the uterine muscle — toning in the truest sense of that word, not tightening or stimulating, but bringing the tissue into a kind of organized readiness. Herbalists have worked with raspberry leaf across the full arc of women's reproductive lives for centuries: for teenagers with cramping, irregular cycles, and the general chaos of a body finding its rhythm; for women in their childbearing years supporting cycle regularity and uterine health; for pregnant women in the third trimester preparing for labour; for perimenopausal women navigating the unpredictable; for anyone whose pelvic bowl feels like it could use a little tending.

It is also, simply, nourishing. Raspberry leaf is rich in magnesium, calcium, iron, and vitamins C and E — nutrients that the female body draws on heavily across every hormonal season, and that most of us are quietly short of. Drinking it regularly is less like taking a supplement and more like eating well. It replenishes something.

I grow raspberry canes in my garden, and right now the leaves are at their best — young, vibrant, full of everything the plant has been building toward since spring. If you have access to a raspberry plant, you can harvest the leaves yourself: pick them before the fruit sets, spread them to dry in a single layer somewhere with good airflow, and store them in a jar once fully dry (out of direct sunlight). If you'd rather source them, look for organic dried raspberry leaf from a reputable supplier — the quality varies more than you'd think.

To make the tea: one to two teaspoons of dried leaf per cup, steeped covered for ten minutes. The covering matters — it keeps the volatile constituents in the cup rather than escaping with the steam.

The flavour is mild, slightly astringent, and pleasant on its own. You can sweeten it with honey if you prefer something a little softer.

One note: if you are in early pregnancy, check with your midwife or care provider before using raspberry leaf regularly. Traditionally it has been reserved for the third trimester, and while the evidence on timing is nuanced, it's worth the conversation.

Otherwise — this is a plant you can simply begin. Make a cup tonight. Make another tomorrow. Give it a few weeks and notice what shifts.

That is how most good things in herbal medicine work. Quietly, consistently, over time.