Why is it always so hard to let go?

The habits I clung to cost me my health – until I learned to release them.

Obsessive cleaning, drinking on my feelings, overspending, not eating all day and then having a family size bar of chocolate. These are to name a few of the habits that gave me a shortcut to comfort but in the long term cost me my hormonal wellbeing as well as nervous system. I lived like that for years. And sometimes I can find myself still picking up the occasional bad habit mainly the obsessive cleaning & maxing out my credit card, almost like a keepsake for that 20 something me that is no longer. 

However I also notice it in my relationships. I tend to return to people who have hurt me. I still want to seek safety through connection even if the connection is fraught and frayed. Unfortunately these said people usually do exactly what they did before, and I find that there is no space for a conversation about my feelings or how something they did or said made me feel. So it goes underground. It settles like a heavy dust on my bones. In my hips, my pelvis, my womb. It live in my tight chest and shallow breath. 

How does this relate to my hormonal health? Or my nervous system? I believe that we store things in our body. Things that we haven’t been able to say, ways we have abandoned ourselves, and bad habits we have used to alleviate that knowledge that we haven’t been able to be really honest with the friends, families, partners…the ones we really care about. Because any comfort is better than none, right? 

In my own journey of PCOS, of substance abuse and of trauma, it has been a meandering and winding road. Sometimes I have not seen the light for the trees and got lost in the forest. I left my job and I started a business in generational trauma healing, and abandoned it. I sat in dark rooms, in long baths. I said mean things to myself yet I did my daily affirmations. I packed up everything and moved abroad. I gave up on myself. I gave in. I tried again. I threw in the towel again. I thought fuck this and picked up a drink again. I worked with nutritionists, with coaches, signed up to nervous system courses. All of this was part of my healing, my deepening in awareness of why I suffer in certain ways, and why I find it so hard to fully relinquish those bad habits. 

I share this because as a Woman’s Cycle Somatic Coach, I believe it’s important to understand that this work is not about perfection. It is not about hitting a certain weight, or having our eating habits locked down, or tracking our macros. All of these things can be a great byproduct of working with our nervous system and restoring our hormonal balance, but at the heart of it is creating a coherence within yourself. A coherence that lets your body know that it’s safe, safe to ovulate, safe to menstruate, safe to express how it feels throughout every part of the cycle. This starts with nervous system work, and learning about our hormonal health. It’s also about recognising that we aren’t before and after projects, that humans are much more nuanced, complicated and more wildly beautiful than any linear timeline could really depict. 

So how can you start to come home to yourself? How can you start to work with your hormones rather than against them? 

This is why I created ‘The Embodiment Cycle Pack’ – a guide to empowering your cycle through somatic practice. 

It’s packed with tips to guide you through each cycle and to understand the different seasons of your menstrual cycle. Our body is wildly intelligent, something we are taught to forget as women. 

To us, as always

Chantelle