Self-care does not come easily to me.
And, after many conversations with women, I’ve realized that I’m not alone in my struggle to prioritize self-care in my daily life. There’s a reason that there are so many articles, podcasts, and Instagram posts revolving around the subject of self-care.
I know many women who’ve also admitted that taking care of themselves is not very high on the to-do list. As women, we are wonderful at taking care of others, acknowledging their stories and wounds, and investing in them and their healing. But our own spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical health often gets put on the back burner.
How can we grow in our understanding and practice of self care?
The self-care we really need goes so much deeper than a spa day or a piece of dark chocolate after a hard day. That isn’t to say that there’s something wrong with treating yourself to a relaxing weekend or a bottle of wine. And if you want to open the bag of dark chocolates, pass one my way. But the self-care that we’re worthy of as daughters of God goes so much deeper than treating yourself. Behind those (good!) desires to relax, there’s a deeper cry for understanding what self-care truly is and how it relates to our identities as God’s beloved.
My journey to embracing holistic, healthy and holy self care is ongoing. Seeing myself as worthy of care and time has been something I’ve been working to embrace for over five years. But along the way, I’ve found an unexpected answer to my desire to grow in self-care that’s way better than chocolate.
Chloe Langr
Charting my fertility is one of the best self-care practices that I’ve embraced in my own daily life. When I chart signs of my fertility and the day to day occurrences in my cycle as a woman, I’ve been able to see the impact that stress made on my body – and start making some practical changes in my lifestyle.
When I first started charting my fertility with the Creighton model more than four years ago, I noticed the impact of unhealthy habits I’d assumed weren’t affecting my health. I slowly realized that the different systems of my body don’t exist in vacuums. The way I eat, exercise, and rest all impact my reproductive system. Most obviously, the stress I put myself through because of over involvement was causing longer and delayed cycles.
Are you ready to discover what charting your fertility can reveal to you about how you can grow in healthy self-care practices? Here are three ways that charting your cycle can help you learn more about yourself as a woman.
01. Charting your fertility can give you key insights into just how stress affects your health.
The biggest lesson I’ve learned from chartiting my fertility over the past four years is that stress has a huge impact on my cycle and overall health.
“Stress has an enormous impact on ovulation and menstrual cycles,” Dr. Thomas Hilgers explains in the Creighton Model Fertility System handbook. “The stress may be physical or emotional, and it may be acute or chronic. A variety of different patterns can be observed in women who are under stress. First of all, one can have the delayed appearance of the mucus cycle and delay observation of the Peak Day when an acute stress occurs right around the time one would be ovulating. In effect, the ovulation is suppressed and delayed and thus the mucus cycle is delayed with it.”
But stress doesn’t just delay cycles. When I’m under stress, my fertility is actually impaired. When I don’t rest and listen to my body, I ovulate less than what is considered normal in women’s health.
In a study conducted by Shekufe Akhter and colleagues, results found that women who experience high levels of stress will ovulate 20% less than women whose stress levels are lower. That’s not the only research on how stress can mess with healthy fertility. A study led by Dr. Cynthia Bethea found that the changes that stress can bring to a woman’s fertility are so serious she called it “stress-induced reproductive dysfunction.” That’s serious.
Before I started charting, I was so accustomed to being stressed on a regular basis that I became unable to even notice how stressed out I was. But when I started tracking my cycles and noticing all of the irregularities, I slowly became aware of what I was putting my body through due to the stress I was under.
Sometimes even having a written record of your fertility can reveal small hints that something could be up. Is your writing sloppy, rushed and hard to read one day? That could be indicative of something deeper. Having a physical record makes it easy to go back and pinpoint a day that things started going downhill, which can help you get to the bottom of what is causing you stress.
02. Charting your fertility helps you know about your whole body and how to care for it.
When we tackle self-care, there are so many aspects of the journey to examine. My road to recovery from a period of awful self-care habits included setting alarms on my phone so I’d remember to take a break to eat. It also meant getting outside and enjoying the sunshine, and getting up from my desk more often to move around and stretch. When I was committed to caring for myself more, I also knew that my fertility was an important part of my health that I needed to learn more about.
As a woman, your fertility cycle is just as much an integral part of your system as other areas of physical health. I got outside to boost the levels of serotonin in my brain. I went to the gym to strengthen my muscles. I also started charting my cycle to become more aware of my fertility health.
You are a whole person – mind, soul, heart, and body. By tracking your fertility through a variety of methods, I was able to see how intertwined all of those systems are. Until I started keeping track of my fertility through charting, I didn’t understand the bigger picture of how my poor self-care habits were impacting every part of me – including my fertility.
03. Charting your fertility can alert you to deeper health problems than just irregular cycles or bad PMS symptoms.
Charting your cycle and having an instructor spot issues could lead to early and quick diagnosis of a variety of health issues, including: endometriosis, infertility, risks of miscarriage, low progesterone, hormonal dysfunctions, abnormal ovulation, infrequent ovulation, inflammation of the cervix, and cervix infections. Most of these issues can be discovered just by an instructor noticing you have irregular bleeding, heavy periods, long mucus cycles, long cycles, short cycles, or short post-peak phases.
If you’re using fertility awareness to plan a pregnancy, you can find out about and address these issues before they cause even larger problems.
But regardless of your relationship status (yes, you can chart even if you’re not preparing for marriage) charting can tip you off to deeper issues or explanations on issues like why you’re suffering from awful pre-menstrual cramps, have heavy periods, or are experiencing irregular cycles – all without having to take tests, but simply through charting your fertility.
Are you ready to take a deep dive into self-care?
Are you interested in learning how to chart your fertility? If the incredible amount of resources and types of fertility awareness seem overwhelming, a great place to start is Managing Your Fertility. It doesn’t matter if you’re a single lady (cue Beyonce), dating, engaged or married – each stage of life deserves a holistic approach to self-care and fertility health. You are always worthy of holy, holistic, and healthy self-care as a daughter of God.
