About Me

The year was 2014.

Disney’s Frozen had just taken over the world and refused to let it go (did you see what I did there?), I was 26 years old and oversharing my mood and musical preferences on social media as one does, and beginning to think about the future I wanted—which included children.

At sixteen I’d began taking hormonal birth control for the painful cyclical migraines I was getting, told that it would help. And it did. But fast forward ten years into the future, Googling when to stop taking the pill before trying to get pregnant, I discovered something I’d never been told:

It could take up to one to two years after coming off the pill to get pregnant.

What?!

I was floored! And furious. That information had never been shared with me by a doctor, nor even spoken about by anyone else I knew taking the pill. It felt like a confusing punch to the gut—and what I wanted more than anything was to understand why it could take so long. Waiting that long wasn’t my plan!

And thus began my FAM journey.

I spent days deep-diving scientific journals and articles on exactly how and why various types of hormonal birth control work, and the lasting impacts they can have even once they’ve stopped being taken and thought to myself, “there has to be an alternative.”

That’s when I found Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler. I absolutely devoured it in a matter of days and committed myself right then and there to never taking hormonal birth control again, and to healing my cycles.

It wasn’t an easy path.

I had post-pill amenorrhea (no ovulation, therefore no periods) for months on end following my last pill. My hair thinned severely. I felt anxious and depressed. But with time and supporting my body through nutrition, rest, herbs, and time… my cycles returned. And so did my wellness! But even better than before.

I was alive and empowered as I hadn’t been in a decade. I learned that cervical fluid is not only perfectly normal, but a wonderful sign of fertility—and that it did not in fact have anything to do with having a “dirty vagina” and was not a sign of a yeast infection.

Say it with me: discharge is normal! (Itching and burning accompanied by a certain kind of discharge, however, is a different matter.)

What brought everything together for me, all of this… learning, and unlearning, was charting my cycles with TCOYF.

But as I ventured into relying on the method for birth control, I found myself (understandably) nervous. Was I… doing it right? My charts didn’t look exactly like the examples in the book. Had I gotten the rules straight? Was I going to put myself in a situation where I got pregnant before I was ready? Because I didn’t want that.

Again, I turned to the internet. There were plenty of FAM message boards with people exchanging ideas and advice, but what I wanted was a professional. Someone who knew the method inside and out, knew how to chart, knew the rules, and could tell me “yes, you’re doing it right” or “no, you’re going to have a whoopsie if you do it this way”—but I couldn’t find anyone!

And so, dear friend, many years later… I became that person.

And here I am! Your friendly neighborhood Fertility Awareness Educator, ready, eager, and absolutely excited to look over your charts for you. :)