If Knowledge is Power, then Self Knowledge is Empowering.

“Why did no one tell me this happens?” It’s a question that circles the minds of so many women, across so many of their life stages.  When our periods start, when our periods get painful, when we are trying to conceive,  when we struggle to find the right hormonal contraception, when we are pregnant, during labour, in the months after birth, during motherhood and when we feel like we are losing our minds only to find out it’s peri menopause – women go through most life phases asking ‘why didn’t anyone tell me?’  ‘How could I not know about this?’  It leaves some feeling angry, frustrated, anxious or it fuels a sense of failure, of not being ‘normal’.  And for the most part, no one did tell us. Girls and women in the UK are woefully under-educated on important factors that will influence their health and wellbeing across their life.  A recent report called ‘Better for Women’ by the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecologists starts with a fantastic quote from it’s president, Professor Regan:

“a woman’s health and wellbeing are largely determined by her ability to access information and make decisions about her own health. And when she is empowered to make her own choices she becomes a willing partner in achieving better outcomes for herself and her family.”

Education is empowering for girls and women, and we must make credible and trustworthy information better available, in schools, in university, in work, in sports clubs, in health centres and in all the places that women are!  But here’s the catch!  What about when someone does tell us, does try and teach us? Would we listen? Can we really conceptualise what reality, far from our own, others are talking about until we start to go through it ourselves?  I cringe when I think of how I sat in the local library for our ante natal class one November evening, and another Dad, who already had older children, blurted out ‘it’s bloody hard you know, you have to realise how hard it will be’.  We all smiled smugly back, with a ‘I think we’ve got this covered’ sort of smile. We asked him no further questions. We’d done the classes, we’d read the books, we bought all the gear. We had no idea, that we had no idea.  We didn’t listen to the ante-natal dad. We thought he’d had a bad day at the office and laughed it off on the drive back home.  Eight years later of course, I know ante natal dad was right. 

So how do we make women (like me) really listen? How do we connect them to what is to come, even though it doesn’t resemble what is happening now?  Because across the whole life course of a woman there are (often predictable) opportunities to improve physical and mental health and wellbeing.  Not only does knowledge and body literacy at each stage, make understanding the next stage easier, but it guarantees to reduce anguish and anxiety because there is a power in understanding the now and in knowing what is coming.   Anticipation is key to resilience. There is also clear evidence of a strong inter-generational transmission of both good and bad health behaviours, such that women with an understanding of what is happening and why across their life, can better educate and empower the generations that come behind them. 

I think a great starting point is tuning women into common threads that run through these important life phases.  For starters, an understanding of the hormones which are significant in puberty, menstrual health, fertility, pregnancy, post-natally and through menopause.  There are some key players, hormone wise, that crop up time and time again, and understanding what they are for and how they make you feel is an amazing start to understanding your lived experience of your health during these phases. Another thread is pelvic health – maintaining good pelvic health is a life’s work, and there are life-stage-specific challenges which women are often unequipped to overcome without the right knowledge and support. Another thread is breast health - from coming to terms with developing breasts, to the right breast support at the right time, breast pain and changing breast size and soreness across the menstrual cycle and during pregnancy and breast screening in later life. 

Knowing about what’s happening in your body, and how that is changing, as a woman, during different times of your life, is really empowering.  It’s not just a lesson in anatomy and biology, but a lesson in how that biology connects to your own experience, how it influences your capability to fulfil all your hopes and dreams throughout your life.  I believe that knowing is a great start. Knowledge is power, and self knowledge is empowering. Most of all it allows women to be architects of their own health and wellbeing – able to make informed decisions about what is best for them in the context of their own body and their own life. 

Join me and Baz Moffat for The Cycle Dialogues - pay what you can webinars on June 10th, 11th and 12th where we will be discussing the menstrual cycle across the lifespan – from puberty, through our reproductive years, and exploring our changing cycle across these life phases.