Hey gang--I'm Bridget and I am really passionate about helping women to understand their own hormones, bodies, and sharing information so we can all feel confident and strong. In an effort to make this passion a reality, I became certified as a Functional Hormone Specialist (FHS) by the International Association for Functional Hormone Health. My training taught me everything that I need to know about hormones, how they work, how we can impact them, and how to interpret hormone labs. By training to become a Menstrual Cycle Coach, I understand how to work with you in a way that supports your nervous system, your power, and which supports the emotional healing that oftentimes accompanies the journey to meeting our hormone, fertility, or contraception goals.
This is the story of how I got to this point and my own experience with learning to navigate my hormones...
Just before my 25th birthday, I laid in bed scrolling on Facebook and I came across a video where this gal talked about all of the different versions of herself that she met depending on what type of hormonal birth control. At one point in the video, the narrator said someone asked her, "well, how do you really know yourself if you've always been on hormonal contraceptives?" And I was like -- oh shit, wow, how do I know who I really am?! From then on, I was over hormonal birth control and ready to start living life hormone-free.
This was the start of my journey to get to know my cycle, track my symptoms, and also the next step in this chapter of my life where I was trying to understand the root cause of some persistent vaginal and vulvar irritation. I know it sounds luxurious, doesn't it, but nah it was super lame. I had a labiaplasty surgery recommended and completed in order to see if that would fix the problem, but no such luck. I've been on a 7+ year quest to figure this out and to be honest, I'm closer to figuring it out, but I'm still not quite there. We're all trying to figure something out.
In 2020, as I was looking for information and clues about what was happening to me, I was reading a book about periods that mentioned period poverty. Period poverty is a lack of period products, hygiene facilities, waste management, and education that impacts a bonkers number of gals both around the world but also in our own backyards. I don't know about you, but I feel like that's bonkers that access to menstrual products can be so prohibitive and I wanted to help provide products to women and girls around my community in San Diego county. This prompted me to begin volunteering with the non-profit PERIOD.
Ultimately this helped me to realize that what I feel more passionate about than anything is helping other menstruators to understand their body and be able to influence their health outcomes. Don't get me wrong, my day job is great, but providing education and really connecting other women is what fills my cup up. What fills your cup?
Between 2022 and 2023, I completed a Menstrual Cycle Coach certification through Lisa de Jong's professional program as well as a Functional Hormone Specialist certification through the International Association for Functional Hormone Health (IAFHH). Between the two of these programs, my deep understanding of the ins and outs of hormone health is now matched with the my ability to provide an environment for your growth, power, and agency over your body and health.
There are so many menstruators out there who are looking and asking for help with their cycles, fertility, or other hormone imbalances and too many of them are being met with inadequate or unhelpful responses. I feel strongly about helping people to identify the cause of their hormonal imbalances and correcting it because it's not the case that we should accept these unpredictable cycle, period pains, and stress over fertility as a normal part of our lives.
I view my work with you as a partnered effort, where we go on this journey together to make tweaks and changes to your lifestyle, diet, exercise, and other areas of life in order to reach closer to optimal hormone health. Depending on your symptoms, interests, and budget, we will decide together if testing options are a good fit for you; hormone panels, thyroid panels, DUTCH tests, and more can all be extremely helpful tools that will clue us in on what's the root cause of your issue.
On some non-ovary-related notes, I'm a Michigan-born gal who has lived all over the map before landing near San Diego in 2018. I went to the University of South Carolina and then transitioned into a career as an Officer in the Marine Corps; since then I have been developing a career in sales and starting a business. I'm a cat mom, a morning person, and I love to spend sunsets on the beach here with my friends and boyfriend. I like to host friends at my house and entertain, practice new languages, and just try to appreciate the simple things in life.