203: Don’t Have “the Talk” with Your Girls – How Fertility Empowers Pre-Teens and Beyond with Grace Emily Stark and Jackie Aguilar of Natural Womanhood

Ladies, how many of your friends have some sort of issue that has to do with hormones (rhetorical question)? Thyroid, infertility, estrogen dominance, acne, mood swings, migraines, painful periods, rough peri or actual menopause, etc.

If our girls can understand the natural cycles of their bodies and the purpose of feminine hormones early on, they’ll be less likely to choose band-aid solutions and more likely to feel empowered by their own bodies instead of being confused.

The ladies from Natural Womanhood joined me today for my first 2-person interview for the show, and we dug into so much!

• What was missing from our own fertility education (spoiler: just about everything!) and why things can get better for our daughters
• The deficit in having “The Talk” and a better alternative
• The power in understanding our bodies (even being able to predict when a girl’s FIRST period might come! For real!!)
• Positive messages girls need to combat what the culture is saying
• How the contraceptive Pill originated and why it’s so often used off-label in the present
• How to explain the purpose of our cycles while building a healthy mom-daughter bond

And so much more! I loved the stories both women shared, and I know every mom listening will have one or more lightbulb moments.

Learn more about the Mothers of Pre-Teens educational program here.

Can’t see the video? Watch Teaching Teens About Fertility here on YouTube.

No time for the video? Here are the notes!

Teaching Teens About Fertility

• 1:03: Today I’m talking to Jackie Aguilar and Grace Stark about teaching our teenage girls about their bodies and fertility. 
• 2:57: Grace shares how she became interested in the topic of women’s fertility and came to work for Natural Womanhood. Here’s the NFP post I mentioned.
• 6:52: Jackie shares her background and how taking the pill when she was first married led her to search deeper into how fertility works.
• 9:27: Let’s dive in by talking about “the talk.” Teaching our kids about their bodies and fertility should not be a one-time event. Give younger children age-appropriate answers to their questions and never shame them for asking something about their bodies. 

Body literacy should be like learning about any other topic. It’s an ongoing conversation. -Jackie Aguilar

• 11:00: There’s a lot of pressure on parents when you view it as a one-time talk where you only have one chance to get it right. It’s less intimidating to view it as an ongoing conversation where you can clarify and correct as you go. Grace shares an example of how her daughter was introduced to periods around age 2 or 3. 

What Messages Are Our Daughters Receiving About Womanhood?

• 14:15: Our culture is sending negative messages to girls about their bodies and their cycles. Birth control ads tell them that periods are unnecessary nuisances that hold them back. Periods are portrayed as something to dread and be afraid of in movies and TV shows. Girls aren’t taught the context and reason behind periods.
• 16:58: Many of us moms don’t have very good body literacy to begin with and this makes it tricky to educate our daughters. Jackie explains some of the fluctuations of the fertility cycle. There are times of higher energy where you may feel more social, and times when you want to be alone or introspective. 
• 20:08: Jackie works with clients in their 20s-30s who have been fighting against the natural flow of their energy all their lives trying to be the same every day. It’s ok to feel the hormonal fluctuations and lean into productivity one day or cancel social plans and rest another day. Here is a post on Kitchen Stewardship about syncing your activities and diet to your cycle. Here’s the beginning of a series on PMS and balancing your hormones.
• 22:12: When girls don’t understand their cycles they get confused about how they feel throughout the month. It shouldn’t be normal for a girl to wonder if she has a yeast infection because she observes cervical mucus and doesn’t know what it is! We now have several generations of women who have been very out of touch with their bodies and how they work and that puts up barriers to embracing our womanhood and femininity. Girls may feel ashamed of their bodies and even dislike being a woman. 

Is the Pill Really Pro-Women?

• 24:43: The big lie of the Pill is that women need to strive to be like men to be worth anything. The pill doesn’t “regulate” your cycle, it takes it away so we don’t have those natural ebbs and flows throughout the month and we’re more “stable” like men.
• 25:22: There’s a lot of pressure on young female athletes to have the same levels of energy as the boys. Especially male coaches don’t understand how the girls’ cycles affect their athletic performance. 
• 26:10: Most medical research is done on men because they are the same every day and women fluctuate so much due to hormones. This means that most of the drugs that get removed from the market are removed due to adverse effects in women because they were never studied thoroughly on women. 
• 27:17: When moms don’t step in and be the voice of truth for their daughters, these lies of society shape their view of their bodies and femininity.

• 28:04: Grace shares the background of the development of the pill. When it was first being tested, women died and it was swept under the rug. Women dropped out due to side effects and for some reason, we’ve now just accepted those side effects as normal. Fatigue, loss of libido, brain fog, etc. 

We see the fallout of a lack of education in our culture when it comes to what it means to be a woman. -Grace Stark

• 30:47: Every new formulation of the pill functions the same way. They shut down your cycle primarily by preventing ovulation. Otherwise, it thickens cervical mucus and thin the endometrial lining to prevent implantation if ovulation does occur. There are different versions of the pill, but they’re all still synthetic estrogen and/or progesterone that do not function in the body the same way our natural hormones do. Here’s an interview I did with Dr. Aumatma Shah where we talk more about the Pill and its negative health effects.

Negative Effects of Shutting Off Our Cycles

• 32:16: What about young teens who aren’t even sexually active, but they’re being prescribed birth control for health issues? It’s become an easy bandaid for acne, painful cycles, irregular cycles, etc. In the end, this has set women’s health back. It takes about a decade to get diagnosed with things like endometriosis and PCOS because doctors are so quick to prescribe birth control without looking into root causes. 
• 34:36: A female’s monthly surge of estrogen fortifies her bones, stimulates her brain, produces more collagen, and many other benefits. Shutting that down with the Pill excludes all those benefits. This is especially a problem when prescribed in the teen years which is a critical period of development. Here’s the series Grace mentioned: Reasons Women Need Periods

• 36:40: If you are having heavy or painful periods that’s a clue that you need to get help and seek the root cause of the issue. Your body is trying to tell you something, don’t slap on a bandaid and ignore it. 

Your cycle is part of your mental and physical development and if you’re shutting it down with the Pill, there are things that are not happening in your body that should be. -Grace Stark

Teaching Girls About Their Fertility

• 38:17: When is the right time to start teaching girls about fertility? Even if your daughter isn’t beginning puberty by age 8, it’s likely that some of her peers are. You want to be the one to share true information with her before she makes assumptions or begins to adopt some of the confusion and lies we’ve mentioned so far. Teach her that her body is good and periods are healthy and why they’re necessary. 

• 39:57: When girls develop eating disorders a common time of onset is when they begin developing curves and their hips widen at the beginning of puberty. If they don’t understand what is happening to them, they may take control by developing an eating disorder which harms their health and becomes something they need to heal from later. 
• 41:22: Natural Womanhood has a course called Mothers of (Pre) Teens to help moms teach their daughters. Jackie shares what the course includes and what it covers. 

• 45:50: Grace shares some feedback they’ve received from moms and daughters who have taken their course. One of her favorite things to hear is how the mom’s mindset has shifted over her own body and how she views her womanhood by learning and talking alongside her daughter. 

We need to be the change we want our daughters to see. -Grace Stark

• 47:33: Jackie shares how her 12-year-old daughter used her knowledge of her body to predict when her very first period would start. How many of us had no idea when that would happen and had fear leading up to it or terror because we didn’t know what was happening when it did start? 
• 50:53: Let’s end with a practical step you can implement now. Jackie recommends working on really listening to your kids to build a relationship where they want to talk to you about these topics. Grace says that when your kids come to you with questions, don’t react out of fear, and make sure you answer their questions openly and honestly. They need to know that you’re the one they can come to with difficult questions. 

Resources We Mention for Learning About Fertility

• Here’s the NFP overview post I mentioned
• Here is a post on Kitchen Stewardship about syncing your activities and diet to your cycle.
• Here’s the beginning of a series on PMS and balancing your hormones
• Here’s an interview I did with Dr. Aumatma Shah where we talk more about the Pill and its negative health effects
• Reasons Women Need Periods
• Find Natural Womanhood online here
• Mothers of (Pre)Teens online course from Natural Womanhood
• Follow Natural Womanhood on social media: Facebook, Instagram
• If you’re looking to learn more about cycle syncing check out this free resource

Grace Emily Stark, M.A., is the Editor of Natural Womanhood. Grace holds an M.A. in Bioethics & Health Policy from Loyola University Chicago and a B.S. in Healthcare Management & Policy from Georgetown University. She is a recent alumna of the Paul Ramsey Institute Fellowship at the Center for Bioethics and Culture, and in 2019, she was awarded a Robert Novak Alumni Fund Journalism Fellowship. Grace and her husband are a certified Teaching Couple for the Couple to Couple League, teaching the Sympto-Thermal Method.

Jackie Aguilar is the Director of Education for Natural Womanhood. Jackie is a trained FertilityCare Practitioner instructing women and couples in the Creighton model, and a certified Sympto-thermal method instructor with the Couple to Couple League. Jackie also holds a degree in Marketing from Texas A&M University. As a former Zumba instructor, she enjoys salsa dancing with her husband, with whom she has 5 children.