Your Body Is Always Speaking to You. Are You Listening?

My mum used to get these horrific migraines—the kind that meant locking herself in a dark bedroom for days, unable to move, just waiting for them to pass.

She tried everything to work out her triggers. She cut things out, one by one, trying to gain some kind of control. No coffee. No chocolate. No tomatoes. But nothing changed.

Until she went through menopause… and the migraines disappeared.

I asked her recently if she’d ever considered that they might’ve been linked to her cycle. Her response made me a little sad.

She said, “I didn’t know very much about it. You know so much more about how your body works than I did… and I didn’t even really want to know anymore.”

That moment really stayed with me.

Because here I am now, at 45, absolutely in perimenopause and also reacquainting myself with my cycle after six years of not bleeding at all.

After my breakdown, when my depression was at rock bottom, my psychiatrist suggested I skip my period. The emotional crash I’d experience during my cycle made things even worse, and he said, “You don’t have to go through that.”

So I didn’t.

I stayed on the pill, skipping my bleed for years. Then they changed the pill on me—three times. The last one was just… gone. I went to fill a script and they told me, “That one’s been discontinued since June.” No one told me.

I was due to see my doctor in a few weeks, and I thought, You know what? Let’s just stop and see what happens.

What happened was nothing. For four months. One bleed, and then silence. And now? I’m cycling again. Slowly, irregularly, but she’s moving.

And this time, I’m paying attention.

I’m tracking. Not in a hyper-controlling way, but in a curious way. I’m noticing. I'm listening. I’m more aware of my energy, my emotions, how I respond to things. I'm using what I learn from my body to plan my work, my rest, my social life.

It’s a complete shift from how I used to live.

Back then, I lived entirely in my head. In my masculine, logical, lawyer brain. Everything was schedules and strategy and pushing through. I didn’t want to hear what my body was trying to say.

Now I live in a completely different space. I’m in my feminine. In my body. In the rhythm and mess and beauty of what it means to be cyclical. I don’t see her shifts as problems anymore. I see them as signals.

I trust her.

And this is the work I support women in every day. Rebuilding that relationship with their bodies. Tuning back in. Reclaiming that deep knowing that so many of us were never taught.

Because your body is always speaking to you. The question is: are you listening?

If this resonates and you're ready to explore what it might be like to come back into connection with your body, I offer 1:1 coaching, Qoya free-dance classes and monthly women’s circles. You don’t have to do this alone.