BREAKING UP WITH BIRTH CONTROL
Part I: My story — ten years on hormonal birth control, and the road back to my own body.
HOW IT STARTED
I was fifteen years old when I went on the pill. My periods had started at ten, almost eleven, and while they were mostly manageable, I'd get intense cramps every now and then. A friend in high school mentioned the pill could help with that. My doctor put me on the lowest dose possible. The first one made me so sick I couldn't keep it down. So we tried again: LoLoestrin Fe. That became my prescription, my normal, my body's new operating system - from 2013 all the way to 2024.
Eleven years.
I didn't know anything then about what synthetic hormones actually do to a body over time. I didn't know about nutrient depletion, or gut disruption, or what it means to chemically suppress an entire hormonal cycle. I was fifteen. I just knew my cramps had eased, and someone offered me relief.
WHAT I DIDN'T KNOW I DIDN'T KNOW
On LoLoestrin, I didn't bleed. Not a withdrawal bleed, not spotting, nothing. My doctor told me this was normal, so I believed her and I normalized it. What I didn't understand, what no one explained, was why it was happening.
The pill works by stopping ovulation. No ovulation, no cycle. No cycle, no bleed. I didn't know what ovulation was. I didn't know I was missing it. I didn't know there was a whole hormonal choreography happening inside a healthy menstruating body every single month - one that affects your mood, your metabolism, your skin, your gut, your nervous system, your sense of self - and that I had been opting out of it since I was fifteen years old.
I just thought: this is how my body works now. And for much of my coming of age, I genuinely didn't question it.
THE BEGINNING OF THE UNRAVELING
It wasn't a slow realization. It arrived more like a quiet certainty in my mid-twenties, as I was deepening my studies in herbalism and holistic nutrition and learning to listen differently, to land, to plants, to bodies. A thought surfaced that I couldn't un-think:
I am a 26-year-old woman who hasn't had a real period since she was fifteen. Is that actually okay?
That thought was my wake-up call.
Before I left for a hands-on herbalism apprenticeship in Costa Rica, I read Women, Let's Break Up With Birth Control! by Marina Schroeder. It was the first time I'd encountered an honest, accessible account of what hormonal contraceptives actually do, and what coming off them might look like. It wasn't overwhelming, it was illuminating. And it planted something in me that Costa Rica would bring to full bloom.
COSTA RICA AND THE WOMEN WHO CHANGED EVERYTHING
I landed in the jungle surrounded by a small group of women from all over the world. We made medicine together, we slept to the sounds of the jungle, we talked about cycles and plants and what it means to actually inhabit yourself.
That experience cracked something open in me. Being with women who were deeply embodied, deeply rooted in their cyclical wisdom, it amplified what I had already started to feel: my disconnection wasn't just emotional or spiritual… It was physiological. The pill had been quietly shaping my hormonal reality for over a decade, and I had never once been given the information to understand what that meant.
I came home, finished my last pack, and that was that.
I wish I had read Marina's book six months earlier. I wish I had spent that time supporting my body, building up my nutrient stores, tending to my gut, preparing my liver, before asking it to do what it was about to do. I didn't know to do that then. I'm telling you now so you might.
THE RECALIBRATION (THE PART NO ONE WARNS YOU ABOUT)
I want to be honest with you about what happened next, because I didn't see this part coming, and because I don't want you to face it alone if you're on this road too.
My first bleed came in June, about 40 days after I stopped the pill. The blood was a good color. The flow felt real. I cried.
And then 5 cycles in, my body started doing what bodies do when they've been held in suppression for a very long time: it recalibrated loudly.
The cystic acne came first. Deep, painful clusters along my forehead and chin that no topical product could touch… because they weren't a skin problem, they were a hormonal and gut problem wearing skin as a symptom.
Then the hair. Large clumps in the shower drain, on my pillow, in my hands. Thinning visibly. Falling in a way that scared me.
My gut was wrecked in ways I could literally see. My tongue told the story if you knew how to read it. Signs of dysbiosis. Signs of liver strain. A system that had been quietly overwhelmed for years.
I couldn't gain weight. I was eating, but my body wasn't absorbing. I was malnourished in the way that comes not from lack of food but from a system too dysregulated to actually use what you give it. Mineral imbalance. Gut disruption. The downstream effects of eleven years on synthetic hormones.
And underneath all of it, my mood. I cried every day. For no reason I could name, or for every reason, or for the strange grief of realizing what you didn't know was happening to you. I was a mess. I thought I might never feel okay again.
WHAT IT FEELS LIKE NOW
My cycle has settled into its own rhythm, consistently 27 to 29 days, with blood that tells me something, with phases I can feel and anticipate and support. I live seasonally now, inside every month. Winter, spring, summer, fall, and I move with them instead of against them.
But more than my cycle, I feel like I am actually here. In this body. In this life. Present in a way I didn't know I was missing, because you can't miss what you've never experienced. I feel grounded. I feel full. I feel like I am inhabiting myself rather than floating alongside myself.
I trust my body now - her cues, her signals, her way of communicating what she needs. I hear her. I respond. I have built what feels like a living, evolving wellness practice that belongs entirely to me - one that shifts with my cycle, with the season, with where I am. That is not a small thing. That is everything.
And it is exactly why I do this work.
This story is not just mine. I hear versions of it from women constantly - the feeling of disconnection, the symptoms that seem unrelated, the quiet sense that something is off even when the labs say you're fine. If any part of this resonates with you, I wrote it for you.
In Part II, we’ll go beneath the surface. What the pill is actually doing inside your body, how synthetic hormones work, what they suppress, and why the recalibration can feel so disorienting. The science, made accessible. Coming soon.
If you've been carrying the quiet feeling that there may be another way, I hope this story reminds you that your questions are worth following.
You don't need to rush. You don't need to have it all figured out. But you deserve to understand your body, to make informed decisions, and to be supported every step of the way.
Subscribe to La Rosa Journal for Part Two, or explore 1:1 coaching if you're seeking personalized guidance on your journey back to your body's natural rhythm.
