Emma Goff of The Cyclical Doula: What Every Woman Should Know About Her Cycle

This episode is one I wish every woman was taught years ago.

Today I’m sitting down with Emma Goff, founder of The Cyclical Doula. Emma is a certified fertility awareness educator and miscarriage & bereavement doula who helps women truly understand their bodies — from first periods through postpartum and even perimenopause.

Through education, charting, and honest conversations, she’s empowering women to build something most of us were never given: body literacy.

And we’re not just talking about tracking your period in an app.

We’re talking about understanding what your body is actually doing, how your hormones work, what your cycle is telling you about your health and fertility — and how to use that information in your everyday life, your business, and your motherhood.

As a mom of two, Emma brings both science and lived experience into this conversation — and we go deep into what it really looks like to navigate motherhood, business, loss, and identity while staying connected to your body.

If you’ve ever felt confused about your cycle, frustrated with conflicting information online, or just completely disconnected from your body — this episode is for you.

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This episode is sponsored by FM Bookkeeping 💛

FM Bookkeeping exists to empower business owners and give them peace of mind around their finances. We believe you deserve clarity, confidence, and support—without shame, judgment, or overwhelm.

Whether you’re behind, confused, or just tired of carrying the mental load of your numbers, FM Bookkeeping is here to help you feel grounded and in control again.

If you’re ready to stop stressing about your books and start feeling supported, visit:

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to Raising Hustle, the unfiltered podcast for the moms who are building empires with babies on their hips and grits in their hearts. I'm your host, Mariel Fry, bookkeeper by trade, hustler by nature, and mama by choice. Around here we're raising kids, raising hell, and raising the bar. If you're tired of choosing between nap time and next-level dreams, this is your space. Let's redefine what it means to have it all on our own damn terms. Hey hustlers and mamas, welcome back to Raising Hustle.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Today we're joined by Emma Goff, founder and creator of La Cyclical Doula. Emma is a certified fertility awareness educator and miscarriage and brave braverment doula, who helps women deeply understand their cycles from first periods through postpartum and pre-menopause. Through education, charting, and honest conversations, she empowers women to build body literacy and make informed, confident decisions about their health and fertility. As a mom of two, she blends science, intuition, and lived experience to create spaces where women feel supported, seen, and truly in tune with their bodies. Hey Emma, welcome to the podcast. Hello, thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm so excited to have you. So really just excited to dive in about you and the cyclical doula and all things for women because I think this is such a hot conversation for so many people. I know myself included, obviously, as I'm in recording, I am pregnant with my second. So really Congratulations. Thank you. So I'm really kind of excited to get into a lot of this. First things first, why get into this space? And we'll go into you being a mother and all of the things, but why get into going, talking about fertility and helping women through this? What did you study, background? I'd love to know all the things.

SPEAKER_02 1:54

Yeah. So I came from a place of like not knowing about my own cycle and being like, how do I even find this information? And seeking out from there. So I like went to college to uh be an educator and kind of transitioned. I have a bachelor's degree in religious studies, which I feel like was really eye-opening to me. But after college, I had this idea of just like, I want to learn about my body. I don't want to be on hormonal birth control to avoid pregnancy as of like personal preference and like what else is out there. And I had this understanding of like you can track your cycle to avoid pregnancy and also obviously to get pregnant. And then once I learned about like how to actually do this, it's become my passion and it's just grown and grown since then of being able to just identify what those biomarkers, what are signs of our body is already doing, and then using that information for health knowledge to see what our menstrual cycles are doing on a regular basis and to dive into that. So I have one official certification through an organization that teaches this, and I'm in the process, I'm almost done with my second certification. And so I it's just something that I've like come to love of being able to do that. And with that, now that I'm a parent, I'm also in that stage of like, okay, like I see the need of how we teach the next generation more about their bodies in a shame-free way, with and like most of the people that are in our generation don't really know how to do this. So that's kind of like where I'm going right now is like, how do we do this and teach our kids this well so that they're prepared as they grow up to know their bodies really well?

SPEAKER_01 3:49

It's so true. And I I'm really excited to dive into this because I'm sure you're around the same age as me. And growing up, it was this idea of like birth control and don't have sex, and you can get pregnant right away. And now I'm in this space where a lot of my friends are trying to get pregnant. And I recently had a conversation with someone about this where she's like, I'm trying to have sex to have a baby, and I'm trying to get pregnant, and it's so much harder than what people think. And so, which is so mind-boggling to me with just the way society has been. And I think to your point, we are transitioning into understanding our cycle, understanding how many days, you know, we can ovulate, which I'd love to know, talking about the cycle. And naturally, right, doctors and everybody claims it's a 28-day, 29-day cycle, maybe 26, 27 days. What is the optimal cycle? And walk us through what a cycle, quote unquote, should look like. Because for any woman who has issues with fertility, maybe their cycle is something that they should pay more attention to. And what is a quote unquote normal cycle and what does that look like?

SPEAKER_02 4:56

Yeah. So I think the first thing that's really helpful to remember as we're talking about this is that everybody's cycle is going to be different. And so there's this mindset of based on previous conversations of like our cycle being that like 28 days, and we ovulate on cycle day 14. That's not the case for most people. And so I think that's extremely helpful as we're thinking about what's happening with our bodies. So when we start a new cycle, we have this increase in estrogen after menstruation takes place for most people. And it usually happens right away, but the there's this increase in estrogen, which builds up to ovulation. When ovulation takes place, there's this increase, this like surge of what's called LH or luteinizing hormone. And then after ovulation, estrogen and luteinizing hormone are kind of gone, and progesterone becomes the dominant hormone. And so it's at that time that we're we have this then cycle. And our lutical phase, progesterone being high after ovulation is usually about two weeks. The time before ovulation can fluctuate drastically, depending upon stress levels, like what is best for our cycle, where we are in our reproductive health life, like first adolescence versus perimenopause versus like prime fertility years. And so the range of a normal like cycle length, we usually say is like healthy, is like 25 to I think it's 36 days long, is all in the range of normal. If you're experiencing cycles that are continuously shorter than that or continuously longer than that, there could be some things at play. If you have one random cycle that's shorter or longer, that's not something to be concerned about. Um ideally, yeah. Oh yeah, but ideally, we're seeing like three to five days of cervical mucus, maybe a little bit more present in the middle of our cycle with that high estrogen. And then we around five days of bleeding is typically normal, but anywhere between two and seven, it's in the range of healthy. But if you're having pain or like heavy periods, that's abnormal. Um, it's typical, but abnormal. And so that's kind of some of those like stats to help with that.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

That's really great to know because I think a lot of times naturally we're told like a 28, 29-day cycle, but it's interesting you're saying 36 days and even the length of bleeding that's normal, not normal. And it's just crazy how much for women they have to think about this. And I want to go into ovulation for a second before we go into many other topics here. But with ovulation, I remember when I was getting pregnant with my first, I remember I thought it would just happen right away. And I think a lot of women have this. I thought maybe I had the misconception. My parents got pregnant quick with all of my siblings, same with my husband. So we thought, okay, we're not gonna have issues. And it took a couple months for us to get pregnant. And one of the things I did was did like these ovulation strips to see the happy face to know that, okay, I'm ovulating. How accurate are these ovulation tests? Do you have any companies you recommend? Do you think people should do this if they are trying to get pregnant? Like, I want to understand a little bit more of this because I think the ovulation, some people say they ovulate day 14 or some people say day 17, kind of like you mentioned with the cycle. I'm curious what recommendations or how to help somebody with a benchmark of ovulation and what they should be doing to track or I guess quote unquote figure it out.

SPEAKER_02 8:42

Yeah. So I think those ovulation test strips are highly marketed. Like they're telling you like this is the way that you're gonna find out when you're ovulating and when you can get pregnant. And to some degree, they they do that well if you are timing them correctly. So ovulation test strips are usually most of the time, they're only measuring lutinizing hormone or LH, and that has a like 24 to 36 hour surge of this high lutinizing hormone around the time of ovulation, which sends the signal to the brain to release the egg. So if you're tracking that daily, you can have this knowledge base, like you said, when there's like the smiley face or whatever on it, that that's the day, that's the time frame the ovulation is taking place. Though that can be helpful. And some people really like that data. And so I don't want to discredit that, but it's it's a cost, like that's an investment. You're making a cost investment into that. And it's it can be a stressful for a lot of people to try to like time that to remember to do that. Um, and so I always recommend if you're just starting out and you're like just want to get like best timing, and this is this is for people who are just starting out, not people who like have been trying for an extended period of time and need some extra support. But I would recommend getting to know your body and looking at cervical fluid. And so our bodies naturally produce more cervical fluid that's less acidic. It has a lower pH or a higher pH balance, I think. And it has contents in it that's nourishing to sperm and it creates these channels that allow sperm to move easily upward in our body, which is just like fascinating that this estrogenic type music mucus can do this. And so I recommend just trying to like become aware of that and having this understanding of like, okay, like, is my body producing this? What does that look like? And noticing the sensations, noticing visual observations. So noticing like what you're feeling and visual observations, if it looks kind of like egg whites, like that's usually the most quality, high quality fertile mucus that you can have. Um, and those are gonna be the best days to try to get pregnant. The really cool thing about female bodies is that that mucus can prolong the lifespan of sperm to up to like five days. So you can, instead of just waiting for that like 24-hour window where you have that positive LH test, you could use days of fertile mucus, multiple days up until ovulation, um, and have this knowledge base that, like, okay, like our bodies might be able to do this naturally by having all of this time. And so it kind of for many couples, it kind of relieves that stress a little bit of like not having one day specifically that they're trying to achieve a pregnancy, but kind of having this like week of time frame of being able to use days.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

That's great advice. And I think for anybody looking to save money, right? I think a lot of this fertility stuff can get very overwhelming, very confusing, and very expensive. I think it's a great way to just naturally look at your body and look at your underwear almost and say, okay, this is what's happening today. And it's just a good benchmark for anybody going through this. And I want to go into a little bit of postpartum. And postpartum is such a conversation. I think a lot of times we talk about fertility and trying to get pregnant. And then it's like, okay, we get pregnant and we go through so many hormones. But what I really want to focus on is postpartum. I don't think it's, yes, it's talked about, but I don't think it's talked about enough. It's something I did as much research as I could, considering this isn't my realm. But when it comes to postpartum, right, after you have the baby, what does postpartum mean to you? And how do you help women navigate through such muddy waters, trenches of postpartum and just kind of helping women find I don't want to say find themselves, but I guess find themselves again through postpartum and your definition around that.

SPEAKER_02 12:46

Yeah, I mean, I do want to like make a mention that although like my focus with postpartum is usually all specifically cycles, but then also with that, just like also knowing that like because I might be one of the only other people that they're talking to that I like because I've gone through my own horrible postpartum experiences myself, like how d directions to send people to of other supports too. So with that, like I I think it's helpful. There's so many things that happen postpartum. Our hormones drastically change after birth. That progesterone just like tanks, and we see that in so many different signs with our bodies taking place. I think we don't talk about like night sweats postpartum happening as much as we should. Like those like first days where you're soaking and you're like, what's happening? But I do think like having that that space, but a lot of a lot of the postpartum women that I'm working with are in this time frame of like, okay, like I don't want to get pregnant right again right now. Like I want to have some time to to be with this baby, space it, maybe for an extended period of time or just a short period of time, depending on their preferences. But how to how to do that without using other forms of birth control and being able to focus on that? And the hard part of that is that there's there's two parts of that. There's not really any specific research that we have yet about why somebody's cycle returns earlier than other people's. If someone's breastfeeding, like kind of like exclusively, that usually increases the time frame before that return to fertility, but it really depends upon the specific woman. It's not, it's not cut and dry, unfortunately. But there's some research behind like sometimes like the first eight weeks or the first six months, depending upon if you hit like qualifications for that, that you might not be, that you might be infertile postpartum. Um, but I think a huge portion of my my understanding of working with women through postpartum is that postpartum is not just like the first month or two. Like it really for many women, it's like two years long, a year and a half, two years until they're really feeling like they're back to themselves. And just holding space for that. Cause I think that's something that like we can just build up a village of women are surrounding each other and supporting each other through that postpartum time. Cause it's really, it's it's a time that we need more support. And I think we don't always realize that we need support when we're in the trenches of it. And and being on the outside, my youngest is almost five. I am like, okay, like I can see how like we need all the support in it that we can possibly give during that time frame.

SPEAKER_01 15:55

I agree. And thank you for shedding that light. And I think it's so interesting postpartum, even for myself. Like I got my period back, I think three months later, and I tried pumping and it just didn't work, which is fine. And I'm definitely happier for that. But I meet uh so many women who breastfeed and pump and get their period sooner or gets delayed later. And so it's just interesting how the body works. But I want to segue into your business. Did you start this business before kids, after kids? And depending on the transition, what was it like starting this kind of business? Because I think, you know, look, I'm a bookkeeper, right? A lot of things are what I do are very analytical. It's very cut and dry, black and white. You see the numbers and that's it. But for someone like you doing what you do, it's a very vulnerable space, not saying mine isn't, but it's very personal, it's very emotional. There's a lot of heightened awareness around like their fertility or anything going on or something wrong. So I'd love to hear a little bit about your business in terms of when you started it, how your business has evolved, and you know, what support you're giving when it comes to some of your services.

SPEAKER_02 17:02

Yeah. So I started my business when my first my second child was like in like very, she was probably like six months old when I like really started doing this. And so I I had been like training while I was pregnant with her in early postpartum. And so just like personal experience with our bit with my business is that we moved from Vermont to Charleston, South Carolina, in when my daughter was like a year old. And we have been transitioning around that time. So I started my business and then moved while we had little kids, while we moved, while we transitioned to up, my husband transitioned to a new job as well. And so I was really doing this business like in the evening hours when everybody went to bed, my kids go to bed early and like wake up early, which worked out well because I think like most women and couples that I were working with, like after work in the evening, was working well for them. Um, and I've really I early on, I was really just working one-on-one with a lot of people kind of slowly. And now that I've had more time to give to my business, being able to be in other circles of birth workers and other people who are just supporting women and seeing where their needs are, I've been able to expand and be able to meet people where they're at. And right now I'm working on this program that's allowing moms to like teach to the next generation. And then also later on this year, I'm hoping to have some workshops and things in person for like teenagers and and young middle schoolers to come to learn about their cycles so that they have this information early on. But I think for me, a bit just a huge part of this business is like, like you said, like it is like working with a very vulnerable like time frame and something that sometimes people aren't really willing to share about right off the bat. And so I'm conscious of that. And sometimes maybe to my own detriment. I like I'm willing to work with people if they want to learn, regardless of whatever financial commitment they can make. And so, because I feel like it's more important to teach them this than make money off of it all of the time. Obviously, making money is important to sustain our family, but that's part of that is is there in my heart too. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 19:32

And I think what you're doing again, there was so much push, probably us growing up, I know myself in this and anyone listening, of like birth control and and don't have sex and all of these things. And so, what I'm curious on your opinion and kind of perspective and doing this work for quite some time, what are doctors and OBs and all these other people really getting wrong and like misconceptions and just things that you're just like, I can't agree with this. Like, why are you saying this? This doesn't make sense. Because I feel like a lot of people naturally want to listen to a doctor or they want to listen to an OB and they take that advice and run with it. But I think for someone like you, you're probably like, absolutely not. This is crazy. And so I'm curious on some thoughts that doctors and OBs have said that you just don't agree with, you don't align with, and you just think it's a wild thought that they have or a wild, um, maybe you just think it's a wild thing.

SPEAKER_02 20:27

Yeah, I think the biggest thing for me is it it grinds my gears when any health professional suggests hormonal birth control to regulate cycles. Because the way that all hormonal birth control works, as far as my knowledge, like I don't think there's one that's not this way when it's hormone related, is that its main mode of action is to shut down ovulation from taking place to begin with. Um, and then usually they have other modes of action to have higher effectiveness for avoiding pregnancy. But with that, when it really frustrates me, especially with adolescents, when they're coming in and they're saying, like my period's irregular or it's painful, or even as we get older and we're experiencing some symptoms, and the first response is to offer hormonal birth control. Um, that's like that's by far my biggest pet peeve. I wish we had more resources of looking at the possibility of all of the things that could be taking place or asking the right questions to know what else is going on or other things that could be influencing it. I think there's so many young women who like, especially like college age women who are athletic, who are playing a lot of sports, who are not having cycles, and asking questions about that to make sure that they know like, are you eating? Are you sleeping? Are you over-exercising? Because all of those things are going to influence how our cycles play out. And so that's, I think that's my big thing. I think there's a huge portion of our gynecological care that just puts a band-aid over symptoms that women experience without asking the right questions. And I think that's why things like endometriosis take upwards of 10 years for most people to get diagnosed with and why a lot of times why many women are on hormonal birth control from the time that they're teenagers through when they decide to have a family. And then they're left with going towards artificial options for like IVF as their next step because they don't realize that, like after being on birth control for so long, especially starting in adolescence, that they their body like needs to figure out how to cycle again. And obviously, like there's a time and a place for all these reproductive technologies. I don't want to discredit that, but there's kind of this huge swing of like going from one to the other. And it just makes me sad that we don't have that a lot of women don't have this understanding of how their body works naturally.

SPEAKER_01 23:19

I agree. And I think it is really unfortunate. I never liked birth control. I tried to do like a non-hormonal one. I think it was called Paragard. And I remember my period's horrible, and for years it was a nightmare. And I remember it was around the time we were I wanted my cycle regular and I just couldn't deal with it. And I, long story short, had to get it removed. And it was a very scary thing. And luckily they were able to remove it and not have any problems. But I do think there's a lot of noise around birth control. I think there is a lot of misinformation. And one of the things that when I think about misinformation is social media. I think a lot of times we go to Instagram and TikTok and all these different platforms to research and try to maybe have our own ideologies and thought processes. And I know there's so much out there now with like, don't have plastic or don't have aluminum foil or eat out of glass and have whole foods. And again, it is sleep and all of these things. How should a person sift through this noise? And I love to hear some of your thoughts around it because I think so many people just have so many opinions and they want to share so many things. And it can feel really daunting and truly overwhelming on social. And so I'd love to hear how you help people sift through some of this because a lot of this information just feels like a lot.

SPEAKER_02 24:36

Yeah, it is a lot. And I think especially as mothers, like we we're inundated with all of these things, with all aspects of our lives. And like we're we're asked to do all of these different things. And it's hard to, especially with all of the AI technology out there, like it's really hard to know like what is true and what how do we know if this is actually going to support our body? So I think my biggest advice is to find the the people in your circles that you trust that have the knowledge and the focus on the specific thing that you need. So like if you want information about your cycle, like I'm your person. But if you want information about how your nutrition works, I'm not. Like I don't have that degree. I can give you some research that I've read or books that I've read and told you to go there. But there's also like some people who have spent their whole life studying this other thing. And so like they're gonna be the expert in that field. And I think it's it's hard to sift through that and it's hard to spend all the time to like find the people who who you're gonna trust with that information. But I think if we as individuals can do that well and then block out all the other noise, we're gonna be better for it mentally. And when we know better, we do better. Like when we hear something that's that contradicts what we previously thought and we feel comfortable with that next step, then like change your opinion or find the other resource or do the other thing. But it's hard. I was talking to my mom a couple months ago about the fact, especially around gynecological care, that the the standard used to be to just go to your gynecologist and they would tell you, and that was what you like what you did, because that's what was being told. That's who you trusted, you trusted your doctor. And now that we live in a world that you can get information so quickly from so many different places, you have we have so much more resources to be able to connect with other people and all over the world and all of this other information and connect with other people who have gone through similar things, which is a great thing for community and a great thing for knowledge. But like you said, it can kind of just like be overwhelming and inundated. So I think my biggest advice is to find the people that you trust in the circles that you need. And if you don't, like ask other people about those situations because there's there's amazing resources out there and being able to trust those certain people can be really helpful.

SPEAKER_01 27:19

I love that. And thank you for sharing that. And I think we do almost need to go back to roots of this and going to people that we like, know, and trust and not just always trusting everything we see online. Like we don't trust everything we see online anyway, from regardless of any industry or what anybody talks about. It's just doing extra research. So thank you for sharing that. When it comes to your business and working with your clients, what has surprised you? What challenges have you come up with, both from like a vulnerable side with clients, but also a business side as a business owner? Would love to hear some of these thoughts because I think, like I said, the work you do is so vulnerable, it's so emotional. And you're handling like clients' emotions, and then you're obviously a mom handling those emotions at home. And so, how do you kind of manage like the emotions of the business and being a mom and surprises in your business, working with clients? Like, I'd love to hear a little bit of all of these thoughts.

SPEAKER_02 28:19

Yeah, I mean, the thing, the first thing that comes to mind is I'm a huge proponent of mental health and therapy. So, like, totally transparent. Like, I go to therapy because I think that's an important thing and would recommend everybody else do the same. But in regards to like kind of juggling all of the business owner, mom holding emotions for everybody, I think I'm not perfect at it, like full disclosure and balancing it all, like it's all messy. But a huge part of it is I before, like right before I became a parent, I wound up doing a lot of emotional intelligence work and really like focusing on that. And I I know that I'm a better human for that, like to go through all of that to look at how to just hold space for emotions, how to regulate my own emotions while somebody else is having a big emotion, and being able to just like sit in this space and also know that like I don't need to fix everything, and being able to just let people feel what they need to feel is is extremely important. And and sometimes asking guiding questions within my work to kind of help people go through the process a little bit more is part of what I do, but a huge part of it is just holding space. And I think I worked with a couple last year who had been trying to get pregnant for over like three years, and there was nothing like wrong with what was there was they had done all of the testing. They were using correct days, nothing else was like obviously wrong. And it got to a point that there was one call that they were on the call and they just them as a couple were like, we don't like we just don't think we can keep going. Like it's just devastating every single cycle. And so we just sat there for like 30 minutes with them, like just explaining how they were feeling. And at the end of the call, like we didn't, there wasn't any conclusion. I didn't have any other specific advice that we hadn't talked about the last four times that we had met. But just being able to sit there and sit in that emotion with them, and then being able to sit in the joy when they did get pregnant a couple of months later, a couple of cycles later, like that also was amazing. And being able to hold space for both of those things is just so beautiful. Yeah, it's just it's just a cool part of the job. And I think a huge so you mentioned in the beginning that I have a certification as a miscarriage dual, and I don't currently use that in the typical sense, like a lot of people would assume that I'm helping people specifically walking through miscarriages, which I might do at some point, but I'm really using it specifically in the work around my cycle. So yes, I'm helping people through loss, but specifically around their cycles. And I think like that as I was working, I was like, okay, like this is becoming a need. I need more resources to be able to support women through this time in their life because I'm often the first person other than their partner to know when they are pregnant and therefore also one of the first people to know that they have a loss. And that like that was important to me to be able to support them through that.

SPEAKER_01 31:42

That's beautiful and super vulnerable. So thank you for sharing that. And it leads me to this next question of obviously, this couple, it took them three years, and then they started working with you and a few months later got pregnant. Who is your ideal client in this? Is it someone like six months in? Is it someone two years in, or is it someone who's just naturally concerned before they're even trying? Like, who is an ideal client for you, listen like as they're listening to this, that you would love to work with, you'd love to help, and you'd love to support?

SPEAKER_02 32:13

Yeah, so I love this question because most people think that my answer is the person who's like trying to get pregnant, but which I love to, I don't like I love to work with people who are trying to get pregnant, but I my ideal client is somebody who's doesn't want to use hormonal birth control for a variety of reasons, but just wants to avoid pregnancy for as long as they need. Like that's that's where I find a lot of joy. That's where I like that's my personal experience and where I just feel like getting to know your body and understanding your body and feeling confident in that and allowing intimacy to be really strong because of that is is one of my favorite things too.

SPEAKER_01 32:56

I love that. And I think that this needs to be a conversation in general. I think I've tracked my cycle with like different cycle apps over the years, and I just am so curious about the data and I love to know and I like to see the pattern. So I think what you're doing, going so deep into it, is awesome. I do want to ask you this because you've segue into another question for me, because you obviously love to help women with their cycles. And I think a lot of times, correct me if I'm wrong, which I definitely could be. I know when I was getting my cycle being pregnant, I don't have a cycle, which is kind of nice. But when I typically have a cycle, I know when I'm gonna get my period. I'm very emotional, and I kind of know my weeks when I'm ovulating and and my emotions change with this, right? And so thinking about you and your business and your cycle and maybe helping other people through this, do you believe there's a correlation with your emotions and your cycle and how you should do business in life? And one of the things I've read, and again, you can correct me if I'm wrong on this, but naturally men go through the same 24 hours of a hormone cycle, right? Like sun up, sun down. Yeah. But for women, we obviously have this cycle of like 28 days, quote unquote, based on our periods. Do you believe in that when it comes to like optimizing business and emotions and all of that related to your cycle? Because I think it's such a conversation. And I'm curious to hear your kind of expert thoughts around this.

SPEAKER_02 34:24

Yeah. So I think there's a a couple of things to point out. Absolutely, our emotions change when our hormones are fluctuating. So, like for sure, absolutely, definitely. When we're in that stage when estrogen is high around ovulation, like we're gonna naturally just be more creative, more flirty, more outgoing, even in our own bubble, like even in just our own circle. And then in that time, right before our next period, like we're gonna be more inward, we're gonna be more nesting. Progesterone's gonna be high. So, like, that's the part of the hormone that's high during pregnancy. So you're gonna feel more of that like inward, nesting, like focus time. And then obviously, like when our body's bleeding, like your body's gonna need more rest. So all of those things are true. And if it's if it's debilitating out of any of those realms, that's something that's outside of the norm and like should be addressed. So that's a caveat. But I think if people have the ability to live their life cyclically, that they're able to schedule presentations when they're ovulating and like schedule more like inner work during that gluteal phase before their next period, and like take a break when they're bleeding and all those things. Absolutely do it. If you have the ability to do that, do that. But I feel like for most people, that's not possible. The way that our society works, the way that we have to keep parenting even through everything. And so I would recommend to just notice those things and give yourself grace when you need the grace. So, like maybe cancel that third appointment that you had scheduled when you were supposed to like go to the dentist and the doctor and the and do all your kids' activities in one day when it's in your luteal phase. Maybe like push it a week or two if you can. But also know that like you just acknowledging it and being aware and the people that are in your circles, maybe just talking about it more allows for us to have the appropriate emotional support that we need during those times. And yeah, maybe when you're ovulating, schedule a date with your partner because it will be more fun and you'll be more outgoing and all of those things. But I think that's there's a little bit of like romanticizing the fact that people can do this easily and being able to just realize that for most people that's not the reality of being able to completely change their schedule. And although I wish we could, we could do that.

SPEAKER_01 37:23

I wish too. I think, yeah, I I know I've tried to listen to my cycle and I've done some human design work around my life and kind of the ideal week for myself. And I really feel very aligned with a lot of those things. And so I think when you are tracking your ovulation, you are tracking your cycle. And if you are able to quote unquote make a perfect life for yourself with your cycle based on your emotions and your ups and downs, I think we'd all be in a better place. I think it's unfortunate that in society we have to go by the patriarchy to a certain level and kind of perform the same every single day when it literally feels impossible to do that. And I'd love to know why. How do women get out of that kind of thought process of trying to catch up with the patriarchy in this sense? But they're also women dealing with cycles and hormones and so much in balance. Like, do you feel when somebody is really imbalanced, do you like to look at other things within like their cycle? I know you mentioned a lot of it's like sleep and maybe food, obviously, not you not being a nutritionist and understanding cycle. But I'd love to know what are some things that you help women fix in their cycle if you're able to do so? Like, do you have them track on an app for a certain amount of months? What's kind of your process when it comes to working with someone, trying to figure out their cycle and what that looks like if maybe they've never done it before? Cause I think that's really challenging for women who just don't even know where to begin.

SPEAKER_02 38:49

Yeah. So we start by just talking about how to physically track your cycle. So what to look out for. And then I recommend either using paper to track, or there's an app that I recommend called Read Your Body. And it's basically just a digitalized paper chart. So it's just like you can keep all the information on your phone. It's really secure, it's run by women, founded by women, all of those things. It's it's a great app for that, but it doesn't have any predictive qualities. So it's you're doing all the interpretation, and I'm I'm helping people understand how to do that well. And so most of the time, my ideal situation is that I work with somebody for at least three cycles that we're having conversations probably bi-weekly of what you're seeing, what what you're experiencing, and then how we're kind of able to interpret that. And for a lot of women who have these irregular cycles or hormone levels, we're able to see things pretty quickly in the signs that we track. So I teach a method that we're looking at cervical mucus, we're looking at basal body temperature, which is our resting temperature. So you take your temperature every morning when you wake up. And then sometimes we throw in urine hormone testing like LH. And so with that information, we're able to see is your body producing enough progesterone to have a long supportive luteal phase? And is your body producing estrogen? So you're seeing cervical mucus. What is your bleeds looking like? And how is that affecting your life? How long is your cycle? When in a cycle are you ovulating? All of those things. And we can use that data point, those data points to kind of have an understanding if if your cycle is like doing what it's supposed to, or if you're ovulating at all, because sometimes we have bleeds and we're not ovulating. And so those, yeah, that's crazy, by the way. It is, but when you think about the the way that our bodies work, if we have this prolonged estrogen stimulus that there's just estrogen for a really long period of time and there's not any surge in LH, our body never ovulates, then it's what happens is what call is just called breakthrough bleeding. So like sometimes the uterine lining just like collapses a little bit. We have some breakthrough bleeding, but ovulation never took place. And so we can see all of those things if you're tracking data well. And therefore, like that's that's super cool to be able to just like have that information and then have other resources. So if you're if there's anything that pops up with all of that, then having those resources to be able to help support that. And sometimes it's just as easy as making sure you're eating protein and sleeping well and reducing the stress that you can in your life or moving more or all of those things that like that can help in itself. But sometimes it looks like getting progesterone supplements, or a lot of times I've seen multiple people who, based on their data, like we can see that their thyroid might not be producing really well, and they're able to go get their blood work done and then get tests and support for their thyroid health. And so it's it's really a cool vital sign understanding your cycle well.

SPEAKER_01 42:16

So interesting. And one of the things I did, I was postpartum about a month after I had my my son, and I got blood work done through postpartum support group, or it was like a postpartum USA, and I tried to essentially like bring vitamins, minerals, nutrients back into my body. And doing it one month post postpartum, you're so depleted. And one of the things I learned after I had a lactation consultant is my thyroid levels were so low. It's why I could not produce any breast milk. And so it's interesting how much your thyroid is related to so many things to your cycle and pregnancy and postpartum and all of that. So it's it's very fascinating. I have two more questions to ask you. First things first is how do you have any boundaries, quote unquote, in place with your business? Because I can imagine so many people who work with you probably come to you at any crazy random time. I know for me, I sometimes reach out to people late at night, early in the morning. It's just when I have the thought or I'm thinking about it or whatever's going on in my day. But you're also a mom and you have kids and you have a partner and you have a house and you have so many things in your own life. So, how do you have boundaries? Like, what are you doing to protect your energy around this?

SPEAKER_02 43:30

Yeah. So I have a like designated business line, like phone number. And so clients can text me through there, but I turn it off at certain hours that it doesn't like it doesn't notify me on my end. And I everybody knows when I first start working with them that like I try to respond as quickly as possible, like within typical hours, but my like normal response time will be 24 hours. And if I ever go on vacation or whatever, I just let everybody know that I'll be, I hope I like try to let people know like a week beforehand and just be like, if you have questions, like let me know now and I'll I'll get back to you afterwards if need be. Um, and so that's been helpful. I think another big thing is like for me is just setting boundaries because I work all from my computer and my phone, is just setting physical boundaries on my phone. So I have an app that like just shuts down apps on my phone, which is helpful because then I just like it's it's a boundary, it's physically there. But I know that there's times where clients need more support. And so I I try to be there as as much as possible. But we also talk about the fact that I am not their gatekeeper for especially when somebody's trying to avoid pregnancy or or trying to conceive about intimacy. So, like if they're asking a question to say, like, hey, like, can we be intimate tonight and like not get pregnant? That's not like I don't respond like a yes or no with that. I explain how for them to interpret their cycle because that's a boundary that I hold that, like, I'm not their their gatekeeper. I'm just here to help them interpret their cycle. So that was something that was weird to learn early on, but has been a huge part of of how I do that. And and then also like I do run a business from my computer and my phone. And so, like, sometimes I'm answering messages while my kids are playing at the playground. And that's that's fine with me. And I try to have a balance with that as much as possible.

SPEAKER_01 45:39

I I do the same, to be honest with you. I mean, I don't have a separate business line, which maybe I should, but I definitely agree for being a mom myself and I'm on computer, Wi-Fi, phone, and it's it's definitely a challenging, I don't want to say juggling act, but it's definitely a juggling act. It's a balance, it's trying to navigate what this life looks like. So I commend you for it and putting these boundaries in place and also just giving the power back to your clients to have them interpret and have them make their own decisions, like you're educating them, but they also can't come to you 24-7 either because it's kind of crazy. So I can imagine that is very challenging. But my last question before we really wrap up is what does success look like to you? And I know you mentioned earlier it's not necessarily money, it's more helping clients, but I'd love for you to define that a little bit deeper in terms of what is success to you in business, in life, motherhood, like career, all the things.

SPEAKER_02 46:38

That's such a good question. And I think my definition of success has kind of changed over the years. And right now it's really just about empowering other women and empowering families and individuals. And I'm big on the like bring back the matriarchy right now. And so just like having that empowering time where we're able to just know ourselves and know our bodies really well is where the success is. I would love to not have a job in the sense of like everybody knew their cycles so well based on how like just our education system worked and how our medical system worked. Like that would be the ideal situation, is that that that would be the case, but that's gonna take some time. And so success is just being able to like turn off my business when I want to, and being able to be there to empower women all the other times. That's beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 47:38

And I think it is such a conversation, and I'm so glad we're having this conversation and recording this because it's just bringing awareness, right? I think I wish I deep down always wanted something like this, but it didn't, it didn't feel like it existed. I feel like my time looking up some of this stuff, it just wasn't as much of a thing. But I love that in today's world it's become more and more common, and more and more people are interested and they're intrigued and they're excited to really understand their cycle in a different way. Because Emma, I could probably talk to you forever. I think you're such a wealth of knowledge. And I've learned a lot, and I know my listeners will learn so much from so many things that you said, especially talking about fertility and your cycle and just feeling so lost around it and knowing that there's people out there like you that they can go to and kind of have a coach and support and help to understand their cycle, to whether you're trying to get pregnant or you're just trying to feel confident in your body, I think so many women, if not all women, could use a service like yours because yeah, the education isn't there, not yet. And I don't know if it will be so prevalent in our lifetime or our kids' lifetime or their kids' lifetime, but having people like you out there spread the word and bring education into this and more of an understanding of the individualized ways of understanding your body. Like I joke constantly from a bookkeeping side, like taxes are like a diet. I think there's a general rule of thumb, but there's always something very specific to each individual. And I very much feel the same with your world. There's always going to be a general rule of thumb, but until you get to the individual and you understand their body and their hormones and everything that's going on, you're really not gonna know. And so I again cannot thank you enough for coming on here and sharing your story, being so vulnerable, talking everything fertility, and just sharing your wealth of knowledge. I'd love for you to just shamelessly plug away where people can find you and look you up and ultimately work with you.

SPEAKER_02 49:39

Yeah, awesome. Well, thanks so much for having me. It's been such a great honor talking with you. Yes, people can find me. I have my own podcast, the Cyclical Dual Podcast. You can find it in all the platforms and my social media is all cyclical. You can find me. I'm mostly on Instagram, but I push it to everything else. And then my website is my like formal business name, which is MMA, so E-M A M M A.com. And you can find me there. So all my contact information is on my website, but feel free to like slide into DMs and have these conversations if you just want to have some information. And I do also offer like a free clarity call if you just want to talk about like if this is something that's interesting to you about trying to track your cycle and what that would look like, so we can have those conversations if it seems like the right fit for you.

SPEAKER_01 50:32

Wonderful. Thank you so much for coming on. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 50:36

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