01. The healing powers of PMS.
How I cultivated inner peace during the most hormonal time of the cycle.
“Cookie?” my friend soothingly offers from the other side of the bathroom door. I’m expected at Thanksgiving dinner in less than two hours.
“Fucking hormones,” I furiously whisper through tears.
I lean into the toothpaste-stained mirror and stare into my crying eyes. I’d only been in my hometown for 24 hours, and yet I could feel myself slowly slipping into despair.
“Now I remember why I left this damn town,” I remark between cries, as I simultaneously complain of feeling hopelessly premenstrual.
Even men know exactly what this scene looks like: tissues askew, a long list of female grievances with chocolate ice cream waiting expectedly in the freezer.
“Let go,” a small and unsuspecting voice murmurs in my head.
I ignore this angelic-like nudge and continue on with my hormonally induced sob-sesh. I had driven 300 miles to my hometown with one purpose only: to surprise my family for the holidays. I desperately wanted to see the look of shock and awe on my father’s face.
There wasn’t a fat chance I was showing up to dinner with tear-stained cheeks.
I eventually hugged my friend in gratitude, grabbed my suitcase & trudged toward my silver hatchback waiting on the front curb. My heart felt equally relieved and ominous, coexisting like a cat & dog, as I drove off towards New Jersey.
Suddenly, George Strait sang “baby fall into my kiss…” into the car speakers. It was my husband, Brendan, finally returning my call. Sitting home with two napping girls in Massachusetts, it was our first Thanksgiving apart since Strait had serenaded us on our wedding day.
Brendan kept me company on my drive, until I abruptly pulled off the side of the road. I sat there just minutes away from my uncle’s house, while tears slowly began to spill over.
With my period expected any hour now, I was deeply entrenched in the ways my declining hormones always trigger me: by revealing every. single. gosh-darn-insecurity.
“How am I going to show up to Thanksgiving dinner looking like this?” I agonized, repeatedly. I deeply resented having PMS during my 48-hour visit home. I cursed my fate at being born a woman.
“Surrender,” the voice whispered, a little louder now. And this time, I knew exactly what it had been urging me to do all along.
I begrudgingly leaned into the holy-shit-I’m-so-hormonal tears and gave it permission to turn the faucets on full blast.
My husband needn’t say anything as I felt my whole body shudder with sobs of deep sadness. I’d become all too familiar with this healing process since hitting rock bottom in 2020.
In the midst of my “woe-is-me” cries, I discreetly noticed a peculiar sensation shift within my body. As if I’d been wrapped in a weighted blanket, its confines slowly peeled away.
The faucet eventually turned off and I sat there in my car, feeling light as a feather.
My premenstrual thoughts & emotions no longer held me captive.
On the contrary, my hormones had shown me the power I’d held all along. The power to cultivate inner peace.
“Hey there stranger,” I cooly approached my father as he walked unassumingly into my uncle’s house.
All the emotionality of the day melted away as I savored his look of surprise. I stood there feeling strong & so gosh-darn-proud to be a woman. My tear-stained cheeks had finally dried.
Mary Nordahl has mentored dozens of women from all over the world in developing a loving relationship with their menstrual cycle hormones.
Mary utilizes a clinical psychology degree alongside a certification in fertility awareness to coach cyclical beings in cultivating inner peace.