Ep. 192: Releasing rigidity & embracing curiosity for your cycles, fertility, and beautiful female body, with client, Kelley (Part 1)

Kelley, a Woven client and Mental Health Counselor, joined me today to talk about her journey working with Woven Natural Fertility Care to make sense of her cycles and the effects of PCOS, but the conversation took a truly meaningful turn as we talked about the significance of understanding our mental, physical, and spiritual creation and how that impacts how we understand our female design. It was so rich that we've broken the episode into two parts so you wouldn't miss out on it. We explore the role of faith, the impact of mental health, the daily effects of irregular cycles, and more in this episode. It's a must-listen!

NOTE: This episode is appropriate for all audiences.

HELPFUL RESOURCES:

Ep. 15: Dealing with fertility-focused anxiety, with Ashley Yeager, LCSW

Ep. 101: Medical trauma in fertility with Rebecca Henderson, LCSW

Fertility Trauma Resource from Woven 

Transcript

Caitlin Estes (00:24)
Welcome back to the Woven Well podcast. I hear this sentiment so often. I just want my cycles to look healthy, or I just want them to seem normal like everybody else's. You know, it's just so common to hear that. And when you start learning how to then formally track your cycle through a system like the Creighton model, you're suddenly able to observe a lot about your reproductive health, like information that was never before available to you is now like popping off the page in red, white, and green. So if it doesn't look like what you expected it to look like, it can sting. It can really even sometimes make you feel sad about what you thought it was going to be and that it's not that. I think that it can become a source of disappointment and maybe even like inner struggle, inner pain. And so was talking about this with a client and friend, Kelly, and we said,

this needs to be a podcast. Like this needs to be a podcast episode to talk about this. So Kelly was so sweet to come and join us today. She is a licensed clinical social worker who lives with her husband Jackson. And she is just passionate about the connection between faith and mental health and our bodies. And that work for her flows from her own faith in Christ, her ongoing healing journey.

mental health experiences, and then her specialties in supporting those who have experienced trauma, OCD, and anxiety. But she also is a client with us at Woven Natural Fertility Care, which is just such a joy to me. And so we began working together years ago when Kelly was interested in better understanding her own cycle in women's health. So I'm really excited for you to get to hear from her. So Kelly, welcome to the show.

Kelley (02:10)
Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here.

Caitlin Estes (02:13)
I am too. I just feel like this is a conversation that so many women are having internally, know, like mentally with themselves, but they don't even know that they should be inviting others into it. And so I just think it's gonna be really fruitful and helpful. For your own story, maybe we should start, you know, kind of take us back a little bit and share why you were first interested in working with Woven in the first place. Like why did you want to get to know more about your own cycles?

Kelley (02:40)
Yeah, absolutely. So unfortunately, like is true for many women who have PCOS. ⁓ I had symptoms of PCOS, especially missing cycles or missing periods for about 10 years before I got an official diagnosis. And so when I had that diagnosis, you know, I had found different things specifically around food and very, very rigid diets.

that would help regulate my cycles and kind of help me feel like I was a little bit more on top of symptoms. But I discovered Woven about a year after I officially did get diagnosed with PCOS. And so I remember actually seeing on Instagram an ad for a PCOS webinar that you were doing. so at the time, yeah, so at the time I was very much like,

Caitlin Estes (03:27)
⁓ great.

Kelley (03:31)
Well, I want to try to find other ways to manage this and deal with this that don't require such rigidity and really try to figure out just more resources and support. So I joined that webinar, which then led to me joining one of your intro sessions and kind of all evolved from there.

Caitlin Estes (03:50)
Yeah, so you were really interested in an approach that wasn't so rigid and all-encompassing, but was maybe a little bit more focused on supporting your body and helping your body. Does that sound right?

Kelley (04:06)
Yeah, definitely. Or really, think if I'm being honest at the time, probably even more so this, okay, how do I have, you know, quote unquote, regular cycles without, you know, having an extremely rigid diet and routine and, you know, thinking that maybe learning about charting could help me get there. And of course, you know, the journey has become much more rich.

than just that, but that was probably one of the original motivations too. So, yeah.

Caitlin Estes (04:34)
Yeah, absolutely. A lot of women when they find out they have PCOS, they're kind of given the option of birth control and that's it. You know, like, hey, you want to manage this, you go on birth control. Was that ever part of your story? Like, did your doctor tell you to go on birth control for PCOS?

Kelley (04:51)
Yeah, I mean, I feel like as much as I've, you know, gotten into different, you know, PCOS communities and heard different things, I kind of in my head call it the classic. For me, it was first this way and I've heard so many others say this to you, like the classic, well, you know, go on birth control and come back when you want to have a baby deal. And so, yeah, that was that was told to me many times, even before I was officially diagnosed. That was often often a part of it.

And yeah, for me that just wasn't what really felt right. I kind of wanted to see if there were other things going on in the background or like root causes as well. So, but yes, I've heard that many times ⁓ for sure. So.

Caitlin Estes (05:33)
I feel like you are by nature kind of an interested and curious person. Like why this or why that? Like we usually talk about that in our conversations, you know, like wanting to always know a little bit more. And I kind of see that going back to this perspective, even that you mentioned earlier about.

Kelley (05:39)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Caitlin Estes (05:54)
you know, wanting to know how can I nurture my body? How can I help this not be so rigid, not be so crazy intense? And that whole perspective shift from, I'm just going to make my body do what my mind wants it to do, you know, that kind of like manipulating it or forcing it or, or almost like getting it to submit.

You like, I don't know, the whole, like put it on birth control until you want it to have a baby kind of has that rigidity to it that you're kind of describing, even though you were talking about diets and your desire to do something that was more holistic, supportive, something that made sense to you that you could understand. I just feel like that perspective shift.

Kelley (06:23)
Mmhmm. Yeah.

Caitlin Estes (06:40)
is huge and it's hard for a lot of ladies to get there like they don't even know that there are options for that so they feel really kind of paralyzed in that but that

Kelley (06:50)
Mm-hmm.

Caitlin Estes (06:52)
has ended up coming up for us so many times in one form or another over the years as we've been working together, like wanting to love and nurture this body that God's given us instead of control it, you know, like do you see that dichotomy? Like do you feel like it's like that's a good way to describe it or does it feel different for you?

Kelley (07:06)
Yeah.

Yeah, no, I think that's a really great way to describe it. even I think something that really stands out to me is, even though was like several years ago, I think about our first, or actually it wasn't even our first session. was a part of an info session with a few people on a call. I remember you saying something that, and you might remember how you word it more than me, but I remember you saying,

something about like if you have longer cycles and then kind of normalizing having longer cycles or the way that you phrased it was just in such a way that to me highlighted that our bodies and our cycles are good even if they're not this perfect like you know 28 to 30 day thing and

That, I think, was a really good foundation to then also being able to frame it through more of lens of curiosity than, like, it has to look this way.

Caitlin Estes (08:15)
Yes, I love that you felt that way in response to whatever it was that I said in that moment, you know, because

Your body is good. And that's true for anybody listening. Like it doesn't matter what is unique or different about you in particular. Your body is good and it's deserving of respect and care and nurture. Like it is made in the image of God, you know, it is a good thing. And having that grace for ourselves is so tough. Like

Kelley (08:25)
Mm-hmm.

Caitlin Estes (08:51)
we start looking at a chart and it doesn't look like what we thought it was going to. And I think a lot of times it stirs up what you were just describing of, I wanted it to be a 28 day cycle, but it's not, it's something wrong. Is this bad? Am I flawed in some way? You know? Yeah. It just stirs it up. I think for a lot of us in the beginning, and it's a journey to get to that point where we feel like,

Kelley (09:07)
Right, yeah, definitely.

Caitlin Estes (09:18)
my body is not going to look like an example on a page, but that doesn't make it any less good, any less valuable, especially with someone with PCOS. It's such a diverse diagnosis. You know, there are no two women out there who experienced it exactly the same way. Like in your journey in particular, you've had some wins. You've had some setbacks over the years. You know, maybe talk us through some of those that have stood out to you.

Kelley (09:33)
Right.

Yeah, definitely. Well, I think that, you know, I before I really started working with woven, I had found different things that helped me get regular cycles. And really, that was discovered from in college, I went on a Daniel fast ⁓ for 40 days, which is basically, you know, being like a gluten free, sugar free vegan, essentially is how I would describe it. And so I was eating a lot of like vegetables, like rich whole foods, which is great. But I noticed that when I did that, I noticed a really clear change with my cycles and that I had to, you know, in a very, like a much shorter amount of time. And it was cool to notice that my eating had a direct impact on my cycle health, but that ended up causing problems because I kind of ended up developing this mindset that, you know, unless I treat my body and my diet and my routines extremely rigidly and follow these rules, I won't have a regular or normal or okay enough cycle. And so it was kind of this interesting, you know, I had learned different things that I could do with my diet and lifestyle that would be helpful, but were never things that I wanted to sustain. And so I kind of had to take a step back from that.

And then when we started working together and really learning more about Creighton, it was interesting because it actually helped me slow down. And instead of just, okay, here are all the things that I have to do to get to have more regular or consistent periods. What's the bigger picture? Like there's so much more going on in our cycles and bodies than just, you know, starting a new period in a certain amount of days. And so I feel like

in a strange way, taking that step back and learning more about what underlying root causes could be that are impacting it, that maybe those diets spoke to that I would go on. But to really learn that in a deeper way has been a win in and of itself. But getting to have more care because of looking at what is my body trying to do?

Caitlin Estes (11:49)
Mm.

Kelley (11:56)
And even though it might not be what I want it to be doing, I can tell that it is still good. And I can come back to that reality that God made our bodies with beauty and intention. And that is always true, no matter what's happening with our cycles. It has been so helpful and actually has allowed me to get more answers like discovering that I have insulin resistance and different things like that that have come from more of a lens of curiosity than rigidity, if that makes sense. Yeah.

Caitlin Estes (12:29)
Yes, it's like, if we have that lens where we can see our body, our mind, our spirit, our whole selves through the lens of that goodness, God's goodness that that he gives to us as a gift, then it really does change how we see it. You know, it gives it a different coloring. It gives it a different clarity. And we do. We're amazed by what's going on. You know, it gives us, I think,

Caitlin Estes (12:57)
the ability to delight a little bit more in our bodies. So you've been talking about PCOS and one of the things I'll see fairly commonly is the attempt to ovulate, but it may not be successful, but then there could be another attempt a few weeks later. And it's like, the body is amazing. The reproductive system is amazing. It is working hard to successfully ovulate. Like that is so cool. Whereas in a lot of other places, it's just, you're not ovulating. And then it's like this defeating label on you. And I just, I don't think that's helpful. I think we should look at it the other way because it's also so much more freeing, but also so much more, I think, theologically sound to come at it from that perspective. Like God has made us good and yes, we live in a fallen broken world. And so our bodies are going to be broken as well, but it doesn't mean

Kelley (13:44)
Hmm.

Caitlin Estes (13:55)
that they aren't also good. So holding those two things together is just, it can be really powerful, I think.

Kelley (13:58)
Yes.

Yeah, and I think that is truly like such a sweet way that God has used you and woven in my life, Caitlin, truly. Like, as you were saying all of that, I was thinking back on so many meetings that we've had where I'll send you my chart and just go into it being like, I don't know what is wrong with my body. You know, I have all these white stickers and you know, what does this mean? And your response or when you're walking me through it has been framed through such a positive lens of, wow, the body's amazing. Look at what it's trying to do. Or one of my favorite sayings that I hold onto that you've said is, your body knows what to do. And it's really cool to get to see it that way and through that lens. And it's always something that I can come back to, even if I'm not in a place of perfectly seeing the results or being on the other side of this that I want to be on.

Caitlin Estes (15:01)
Right. And you bringing that curiosity to that perspective, like I may be the first person to give that perspective to you, but then you are responding by having the curiosity, right? So you can look at a chart that doesn't look like what you expected it to or what you want it to or be diagnosed with something or you know be surprised by something and instead of going well I know it's good but it's still you know instead it's like hmm . . . I wonder why that's happening, know, which is something you've said to me before, you know, changing that perspective a little bit from, this is bad, or this is not a good thing, or this is wrong, changing that to, hmm, I wonder why it's doing that because knowing that our body knows what to do, there could be a reason and it opens it up a little bit more, I think.

Kelley (15:52)
Yeah

Caitlin (15:54)
Hey listeners, Kelly and I had such a great conversation that we did something that we rarely do, which is go long. I was trying to edit it down and I just couldn't. There's just too much good, rich conversation happening here and I don't want you to miss out on it. So I want to keep my commitment to you in having short episodes that are 20 minutes or less because hey, real life, sometimes we cannot listen to an hour long episode.

So we're gonna give the first half this week and then next week we'll hear the second half of Kelly's story and our conversation around all things that come up, mental health, spiritual health with cycle charting and fertility and women's health in general. It is just such a fun, good conversation and I hope that you benefit from it as well, just as much as I did. So we would love for you to leave a podcast review if you wouldn't mind. It's so helpful to get the episodes like this out into the ears of other ladies who are looking for helpful information.

As always, thanks for listening as we continue to explore together what it means to be woven well.