My Secret About Tampons, Shocking Discoveries After a Decade on Hormonal Birth Control, and Healing Post-Pill
I’ve never worn a tampon.
You read that right. In my twenty eight years of life, I’ve yet to even try.
This secret was tricky at times to keep.
For instance, I recall being at summer camps with my girlfriends, as a teenager, where, everyone sitting on their wooden bunks, discussed which tampons were the most and least comfortable. I looked on awkwardly, as an outsider to their special period club, having nothing to contribute to the topic. But it was even worse when someone would run out of tampons, and ask me if I had any, and I couldn’t come to their rescue, like a “good” friend would do.
Okay, I know what you’re thinking, “Why?” Why on earth don’t I use tampons?
Previously, I’d have thought it was due to never having been shown how to use them. But now, I’m certain, that even if I had been given a proper “lesson,” I would’ve stayed clear of the device.
Wearing tampons is a “rite-of-passage” of sorts, in our culture. They’re widely accepted as appropriate “period care.” But something about them has always felt off to me.
It would be years down the road though, on my healing journey, before I came across the data that offered an explanation for the icky gut feeling, I’d had about them.
When I was working to resolve my PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome), prior to getting pregnant, and digging deeper into the research around period issues in general, I stumbled upon some concerning facts regarding the harmful chemicals used in the most widely accessible feminine hygiene products. Suddenly, I was thankful I’d avoided years of sticking these toxic laden invaders in my vagina.
It’s worth noting however, that, as awareness is growing in this area, many companies are striving to do better, and alternative “safer,” products are popping up on the market for menstruating women. Hooray.
But on a more “woo-woo” level, my body didn’t want to, and knew it didn’t need to, be “plugging” up my birth canal, once a month.
The idea of stopping the flow of something designed to be leaving my body, intuitively, didn’t sit well.
If this makes me a rebel, hippie, or just extremely “crunchy,” so be it.
And tampons were only the start of my questioning of the women’s healthcare “norms.”
I’m speaking of the many exams throughout a woman’s life cycle she dutifully attends, in the name of “preventive” care and “safety.”
A schedule of visits to the gynecologist’s office, that condition women to believe, just by nature of being female, they need to be “managed.” That being a woman comes with subjecting oneself to invasive and humiliating medical surveillance.
Sounds to me like the opposite of female empowerment, folks.
Which leads me to my next big secrets: I’ve said “no,” to all women's “wellness” visits, dodged a PAP smear prior to being sexually active, and didn’t permit anyone to check my cervix dilation while giving birth to my son. My intuition has been clear in all the above: these practices are unnecessary and invasive at best, and exploitative and harmful at worst.
Knowing the above about me, what follows might surprise you. But for the better part of a decade, I was daily ingesting a substance – hormonal birth control – that actively diminished my health, vitality, connection to my natural rhythms as a woman, and ability to feel pleasure.
“Kind of hypocritical,” you’re thinking? I get it.
However, that former version of myself, didn’t recognize the incongruence, because I was still living in the paradigm of “a-pill-for-an-ill.” Where symptoms are treated in isolation, from the whole body.
And so at the age of fourteen, with an, embarrassingly, persistent case of acne, and an irregular menstrual cycle (I believe was due largely in part to an eating disorder, but more on that later), I started hormonal contraceptives.
My prescribing physician didn’t read the information packet to me, or disclose the potential side-effects of the medication – significant mood disturbances, interruption of healthy sleep, or gastrointestinal issues to name a few that I experienced.
Nor did it occur to me to ask if this medication was “safe.” I assumed if it was being issued to so many women, it must be. Right? Wrong.
I took the pill on and off, for over a decade. Looking back, I regret not exploring this piece of my health puzzle sooner. As a newly launched adult paralyzed with high anxiety, insomnia, and battling chronic digestive upset there wasn’t a single Western medical or conventional mental health provider I sought out for “answers,” who asked me about the pill, or considered the possibility that it could be related, in any way, to my symptoms.
As I’m writing this, I do recall, a few years back, while beginning to work with my Naturopathic Doctor, him mentioning that hormonal birth control could possibly be playing a role in the gut dysfunction I was experiencing at that time. But then, with zero education around non-hormonal pregnancy prevention options, I was hesitant to come off the pill. He mentioned using an IUD (copper).
So, I made an appointment with my (female) allopathic physician to have an IUD placed into my cervix. The pill I had been taking had also been causing me to bleed EVERY DAY of the month. Not cool.
Something needed to change, I thought.
But on the day of my appointment, as I pulled into the parking lot, I remember frantically texting my sister-in-law.
“I don’t want to do this.”
I was terrified and bailed on the appointment. After dialing the front office, safely from my car to cancel the procedure, I drove away.
Deep down, I just knew there had to be another way for navigating fertility and my sexual health. A way that didn’t feel scary, shameful, and unnatural.
Being fertile isn’t a pathology. Whether or not I have children, having an unhindered, and healthy menstrual cycle, is my right as a woman.
It’s a critical indicator of health. Sadly, though, after the IUD incident, I still wasn’t ready to conceive, and lacked the knowledge of the Fertility Awareness Method, so I went back on the pill, for a few more years!
It wasn’t until the summer of 2020, after returning from a trip to Idaho, to see my family, that I finally came off it once and for all.
The night I got home, the topic of having an “ours baby” (my husband has a child from a previous marriage) surfaced. I’d wanted a baby for a while, but we weren’t in agreement on it, up until this conversation. And so, cold turkey, I stopped taking hormonal contraceptives. And what followed, shocked me.
At first, after discontinuing the pill, I felt crippling fatigue, grogginess, and exhaustion. But then stepping outside, I was greeted with penetrating glory from the sun, shining more intensely than I had seen in a long time. The trees and grass also looked brighter. Even the volume of the birds’ songs seemed louder.
Like waking from an eerie black and white dream, I realized the renewed feeling of aliveness was what I was meant to be experiencing every day.
The ability to viscerally take in the sounds, sights, and sensations around me, is a fundamental part of the human experience. A gift. One that, while on hormonal contraceptives, I was hindered from enjoying.
Fascinated by this new post-pill version of myself, I began to consume any information I could around whether or not others had gone through something similar.
In my research, I found Lisa-Hendrickson-Jack’s book, the Fifth Vital Sign, as well as Dr. Joelen Brighten’s book Beyond the Pill, and Dr. Sarah Hill’s book, This Is Your Brain on Birth Control, all of which not only validated my experience, but also helped me to make sense of this phenomenon happening in my body without hormonal contraceptives present.
Among the most startling things I discovered were…
1. The pill can cause you to experience life as if someone has pressed the “emotional mute button.”
I was a happy free-spirited child, until adolescence. As the story goes for many, coming into womanhood, for me, was bumpy. With a changing body, the new turbulent emotions that accompany those physical changes, family life stressors, and (the most critical missing component) the absence of a village of older wise women to help guide me through this passage, it was a perfect recipe for mental health challenges.
I first turned to food restriction and exercise addiction, searching for something solid to grasp when everything else – body, emotions, family – felt wobbly. Sadly, neither provided the relief and answers I sought.
In medical offices, behavioral therapy, and nutritional counseling, while I wasted away, there was no education on how my body was changing, from a hormonal perspective, nor was there any conversation about how to support my natural cyclical rhythm, with diet and lifestyle modifications.
My hormones were crying out for help. The pushing of my body, physically, beyond what’s healthy, coupled with the lack of nutritional sustenance due to a disordered relationship with food, and the stress in my home environment all contributed to the ceasing of my monthly bleeding.
The loss of my period caught the attention of the allopathic physicians. But more concerning to me, as a self-conscious teen, was the aforementioned case of acne.
Enter their solution: oral contraceptives.
They promised that the pill would “normalize” my cycle (however, I now know, there is no such thing) and bring relief to the pimply problem. But this was merely a bandage approach. A cover up of deeper hormonal imbalances. And not a benign one, at that.
Among the most significant side-effects I experienced being the evaporation of my zest for life, joy, and adventurous spirit. It wasn’t until I discontinued use of oral contraceptives, that the sense of “blah-ness,” emotionally, that I had felt for the past decade, lifted. And my passion for, and sense of purpose in, life returned.
2. Hormonal contraceptives alter who you’re romantically attracted to
Say what? Yep. You read that right. The data shows that if you’re taking hormonal contraceptives, your ability to select a genetically suitable partner could be affected. In one study, women who were on oral contraceptives, at the initial stages of forming a romantic relationship, chose partners with significantly less masculine facial structures.
A disturbing and disorienting side-effect, especially if you were coming off the pill, for the purpose of making a baby with your mate.
With this in mind, it could be a wise idea to book yourself a relationship coach, simultaneously, to the cessation of hormonal contraceptives.
Personally, breaking up with the pill felt like I had been tossed out to sea, emotionally, for a while. It was a dark night of the soul, quarter-life-crisis, and great awakening all rolled together. I had to dig deep, and face a lot of undealt with relationship baggage, as well as childhood wounding. Ultimately, my partner and I stayed together, but the months that followed, after stopping the pill, were times of intense challenge, from a relationship perspective.
3. It’s entirely possible to know when your body is fertile (and when it’s not) WITHOUT exogenous hormones.
You don’t have to take a pill that’s health-damaging, in my bold opinion, in order to take charge of your fertility (avoid pregnancy or have babies). Natural family planning methods, such as the Fertility Awareness Method, can prevent pregnancy with as much accuracy as a pill, without the side effects. Yes please.
What more, oftentimes, the messaging around the pill is that it doesn’t hurt your ability to be fertile later on in life.
“Simply discontinue use when you’re ready to conceive, and you’ll get pregnant,” is the widely believed idea.
However, it doesn’t work that way for many women, myself included.
It took sixteen months, after coming off the pill, before I conceived my first baby. This condition is known as post-pill amenorrhea, and can be quite disheartening for women who were anticipating a quick road to conception, upon stopping hormonal contraceptives.
And for those who started on the pill at a young age, due to unpleasant hormonal symptoms, likely they weren’t educated on all their options. Such as using lifestyle modifications – nutrition, exercise, and stress reduction techniques — to achieve desired cycle health outcomes.
There is a world of information now available that highlights how one's food intake (quality), regularly engaging in de-stressing practices such as breathwork or EFT (tapping), and daily movement can significantly improve one’s overall hormonal balance, minus any of the negative side effects associated with the pill.
But without complete disclosure, how can young women make the best choice possible for themselves and their future family, should they choose to have children down the line?
I understand that this topic is highly personal, and, wildly, controversial. I’m simply sharing that coming off the pill, for me, was a complete mental and physical health game changer, and ignited my quest to uncover what other lies I was believing about the female body, that are perpetuated by our culture.
My goal with this article isn’t to demonize the pill. But I believe that young women should be given full consent when it comes to their reproductive health. Which means, all the possible methods for resolving (rather than masking symptoms) hormonal disturbances, and all of the potential side effects (short term and long term) involved with their options, are given up front.
Having access to all your options, as it pertains to menstrual health, is vital.
As women, what we put in our bodies, how we orient around our blood, sleep, exercise, and rest impacts our fertility. And our fertility is a marker of health, even if you choose to never have children.
While you might still opt for hormonal birth control, my hope is that this has opened your eyes to other options, should you desire to go a different route down the line.
You don’t have to choose between reproductive sovereignty and mental, physical, and relational health. You can have both.
And if you’re like me, and have experienced trouble getting pregnant post-pill, and/or are suffering from lingering side-effects, I get it. I’ve been there, and I’d be happy to chat with you about ways to help make the process more gentle.
Book me for a 1x1 Body-Partnership Session, as space where together we’ll design a roadmap back to vibrant health, that custom fits you, and your goals.
The body you live in is amazing, and is eager to work in harmony with you to come back into hormonal balance.
XOXO
Erika
