Today I sat down with Brittany, a wise and vibrant shop staff member here at the Light Cellar, to learn about her practice, offerings and upcoming classes.
Brittany is incredibly passionate and lit up about women and mother centered-care, and hearing her speak on these topics is fascinating!
Her offerings are truly a labour of love, that deeply resonate with this modern time, where we are seeing the effects of what Brittany calls intergenerational depletion.
I invite you to explore her two classes coming up - so you can hear her poignantly share the earth-based wisdom coming through her:
- Aligning with Cyclical Wisdom and Your Menstrual Cycle - online only - April 10th
- Essentials of Nourishing & Supporting Mothers - online and in person - on April 14th
Can you share a bit about your background and how your offerings through Blissful Womb Care came to be?
I spent 16 years on birth control.
During this time I had no connection with my cycle or my body. It felt like this nuisance, a big pain and something that was going to basically ruin my life for a few days out of every month.
I did everything that I could to try to control and repress it.
I also lived with chronic pain for seven and a half years as well, so not only was I on birth control, I was on pharmaceuticals that were trying to manage chronic pain.
I just developed more and more symptoms and kept getting sicker. Nothing was working.
So it was in 2020 that I decided to come off of the pill, and all other pharmaceuticals.
That was the gateway for me into everything that I have learned and created today.
What shifted for you after coming off of birth control?
When I came off of birth control, all of a sudden I could hear my body. I could start to see how my body was beginning to repair.
How all of those symptoms and side effects that I was experiencing were really just messengers from my body.
One of the main reasons why I spent so long on birth control was because I didn't know that there was another way to avoid pregnancy.
I decided to start to look into understanding my cycle from this place - not only of reclaiming my body, my connection to my womb, my soul, my higher self and what I came here to do; but also, how can I listen and track the symptoms of my body for when I'm fertile and when I'm not, so I don't have to rely on birth control or other contraceptive methods.
What did you learn after deciding to track your cycle?
You don't ovulate on the same day every cycle.
The only way to confirm ovulation is by tracking the basal body temperature and cervical fluid.
I go into details about this in my Aligning with Cyclical Wisdom online class.
We are taught in health class that the menstrual cycle is 28 days and you ovulate on day 14 - but that's only true for 12% of women. We're also taught that you can get pregnant at any point in your cycle
That's all I ever knew about my body, until I started to dive into all of this.
The day you ovulate is actually likely to change from cycle to cycle as well.
Some cycles I'll ovulate on day 13, some cycles I won't - it will be later on day 17 or 18, and it has been even up to date 21 before.
What can impact ovulation time?
Your body is going through different shifts, and it takes different amounts of times for it to produce and mature an egg.
There's kind of this race within your body to produce an egg.
But stressors in the first half of your cycle can delay ovulation.
Why is it valuable to learn to track your cycle naturally versus relying on apps?
Lots of people are tracking their cycles using apps.
They'll be like "yeah, my app says that I ovulated on day 14, and my expected date of my period is day 28", but again - that's only true for 12% of women.
The apps use predictive technology - it's prediction based on past data that you have entered and what other women have entered to predict your date of ovulation.
It might give you what your fertile window is, but you might not actually ovulate during that time if you're not inputting in your basal body temperature and tracking your cervical fluid.
How does Cycle Awareness connect with both fertility and postpartum care?
It's hard for me to differentiate between cycle awareness, pregnancy support and postpartum care because it's all intertwined.
I follow the practice of cycle awareness, which is what the class on April 10th is all about.
It's an introduction into fertility awareness, which includes the four phases of the menstrual cycle, and how these align with the four seasons and four phases of the moon.
We have this internal cyclical map that we can follow that reflects what the external cyclical maps are.
Cycle awareness is the gateway into postpartum care, including pregnancy and birth care.
Energetically the menstrual cycle and postpartum time correlate.
Can you touch a bit on how the seasonal energies correlate with our cycles?
Inner spring
The first part of your cycle has to do with an emerging energy that correlates with spring. Think ebbs and flows of energy, new growth and playfulness.
Inner spring is a really great time to experiment, plan and map out what it is that you're going to be doing throughout the rest of your cycle.
Inner summer
Ovulation correlates with the abundance of summer. In this phase it's a really yang, external, expressive energy.
This is a really great time to do speaking engagements, to do promotions, to be gathering with friends and families, socializing.
Inner Fall
Then when you think about the first fall day that comes and how big of a shift that is for your body and for your system.
As soon as you ovulate you go through a hormonal shift and your immune system drops during your luteal phase.
Again we can look to Mother Nature and it's the time to harvest.
Lots of women will still feel really creative during their inner fall, but also a lot more irritable and tired. It's a pull inwards.
Inner fall is a great time to meditate, do creative work, write. This is an inward time.
It’s a reflective energy, and it’s a time of preparation for the winter.
Inner Winter
Inner winter is a time of rest and planting seeds of intention of what you're calling in for the next cycle.
It's about knowing how can you support yourself in your luteal phase, in your inner fall, to prepare and tend to yourself for when inner winter arrives, your menstrual cycle.
Your inner winter is going to go much better if you've prepared for it.
If you understand how your energetics are going to shift, then you can also plan and support yourself, because who you are when you're ovulating is not who you are on day 27 of your cycle.
What are some tips for supporting inner winter?
For inner winter - warmth and rest.
We live in this world that doesn't honour and support rest, and we are expected to just maintain the same level of productivity wherever we're at in a cycle.
What has shifted for you when you align and flow with the energy of your cycle?
How you are able to tend to yourself and support yourself when you're bleeding is going to dictate how your energy is going to flow throughout the rest of your cycle.
We live in this world that doesn't honour and support rest. We are expected to just maintain the same level of productivity wherever we're at in a cycle.
I’m feeling really vibrant and excited right now, because for the first time in months I actually took intentional rest on the first day of my bleed nine days ago.
I noticed a massive difference in how I feel today versus how I felt at this point in my cycle last month because I didn't take that time.
Why did you create the Nourishing Mothers class?
The Essentials of Nourishing Mother's class is a class not just for mothers - it’s a class for everyone.
We all come from a mother, we all know mothers, we have sisters who are mothers, we have friends who are mothers - our mothers never received postpartum care.
And again these essentials can support you through your menstrual cycle, they can support you through any sort of healing that you are going through in your life as well.
For community around mothers!
This is a class for mothers so that we can center mothers, but I really want to see people who aren't mothers here as well.
Partners or anyone who is supporting mothers - this is a really great class for you!
Regardless of however many years postpartum you are, it's supportive for the menstrual phase of your cycle and it's just the foundations of healing.
I healed 7.5 years of chronic pain through integrating all of this into my life and I'm not postpartum.
It's all interconnected - I'm very passionate and excited about it!!
Your approach in working with women and mothers is so unique, can you expand on this?
This is a woman-centered approach that fosters mother-centered care in general.
I educate and help women integrate the five essentials of postpartum care: rest, warmth, body care, nourishment and community support.
These are really just the essentials for healing and thriving in general.
And when we can integrate these, especially during the bleeding time of the menstrual phase, it's a way to honor and prepare for postpartum.
How did your work with supporting women emerge?
I had been a full-time yoga teacher - prenatal yoga was one of my specialties, so I already had a connection to pregnancy and birth through that.
Then my sister got pregnant. I wanted to be able to support her, so that led me to do birth trainings, and I was going to be a full spectrum Doula.
Supporting fertility, pregnancy and postpartum - was what my training promised.
What happened with my sister was that we did all of the planning and preparation for a physiological birth - and no planning and preparation in the event that she would need a cesarean, which is what ended up happening.
You recognized that there was a needs-gap in terms of providing women with adeqaute post-partum care, regardless of how they birthed.
One in three or more women now are giving birth via cesarean and this isn't to knock cesareans in any way shape or form, however there are no teachings or awareness intending to support someone post-cesarean.
I learned nothing in my postpartum doula training on how to support someone after a cesarean.
They talked about how to support someone in the event of a birth cesarean, but not how to support someone recovering from a cesarean.
It's a major abdominal surgery.
Why is it that after someone has a knee surgery, a shoulder replacement, an organ removed, any sort of major surgery or injury there is this understanding that you need rest - you need physio.
Sending a mother home with major abdominal surgery, a brand new baby and say figure it out on your own was really a crisis point for me.
What inspired you to really focus on nourishing mothers?
We spend all of this time and energy rallying around and ooing and awwing over babies, these vulnerable little humans that are coming in.
But the mother has just gone through a massive rite of passage and transformation.
Lack of Support
There is that saying - it takes a village to raise a child - well it also takes a village to Mother the mother as well.
From the time that she conceived her body has not been her own. We spend all of this time supporting women through pregnancy and preparing for birth, but the second the baby is born - where is the community?
Where is all the support? Where is all the resourcing? Mothers are just expected to do it on their own.
Intergenerational Depletion of Mothers
I see so clearly now one of the biggest distortions and reasons for an increase in postpartum depression, anxiety, autoimmune disorders and conditions like ADHD, that all of these chronic diseases that are piling up now are as a result of intergenerational depletion of mothers.
Mothers not being honored and supported during their very tender postpartum time.
Educating Community
This conversation really is about educating community on very simple and tangible ways that we can support mothers in our community.
We're talking in the context of the early time because that's the most tender time, however, support is available at any point, wherever you're at in a postpartum journey.
I am so intrigued by the Closing of the Bones Ceremony you offer through your practice - can you share more on this?
Most people will know of Closing of the Bones as a Mexican postpartum care tradition.
The teachings that come from my teacher's lineage is through her mother-in-law, who's an indigenous Mexican woman.
In Mexico they'll do the Closing of the Bones - but not necessarily in a ceremonial way.
Physical and energetic closing
The Closing of the Bones practice is a way to physically and energetically close the body back up after this massive expansion.
As you go through pregnancy, your body is expanding - it's changing, it's shifting your pelvis, it moves your organs - everything shifts.
Now when there's no baby in there - you're in this state of emptiness.
The pelvis will actually remain in an open birthing position for life if there is no body care done, or any sort of body work to help bring the body back into alignment, which is why so many women have pelvic problems. This is because we're not honoring or tending to that.
The Closing of the Bones physically and energetically closes the body back up.
It's also a way to honour and hold the mother - to honour her right of passage, of this journey that she has just gone through.
That who she once was is no longer - so that she can draw on the wisdom from her pregnancy, birth and postpartum time to support her in her mothering journey.
To recognize that she's not who she once was.
Thank you Brittany!
This conversation was so impactful.
Brittany's teachings and offerings are so theoretically intriguing, yet so practical, grounded and applicable to integrate into everyday life.
If you come into the shop and are looking to chat about support around cycle awareness, women's well-being and nourishing mother's in general - Brittany is your go-to woman!
Explore Brittany's offerings through her practice Blissful Womb Care here, and follow her on instagram here (where she frequently posts the most delicious and divine meals she is making for mama's and those in need of inner-winter support!)
