On the weight of being a woman

Somewhere in the world, a little girl is folding scraps of old cloth because she doesn’t have a sanitary pad. Somewhere else, another stays home from school because someone convinced her that bleeding makes her dirty. And somewhere in between those two realities is me, sitting in my OBGYN’s waiting room, staring at a noticeboard covered in pink paper and frilly ribbons reminding women to book their smear tests, get the HPV vaccine, and look after themselves. Every time I walk into that building, my shoulders tense before I even realise it.

Because somewhere along the way, being a woman started to feel less like living in a body and more like managing one. There is always something to monitor. Your period. Your fertility. Your cervical cells. Your iron. Your hormones. Your mood. Your weight. Your skin. Your hair.

Now even your workouts come with instructions. Don’t lift heavy during your luteal phase. Eat more protein before ovulation. Run today. Rest tomorrow. Work for your hormones.

We’re finally beginning to acknowledge that women’s bodies aren’t simply smaller versions of men’s. That our biology isn’t constant across the month. That estrogen and progesterone influence everything from muscle recovery to cognition. Which makes the next part feel strangely contradictory. Because when many of us walk into a doctor’s office with painful periods, acne, irregular cycles, or PCOS, we’re often handed the same little packet.

Birth control.

The frustrating part isn’t that birth control exists. It’s that too often it becomes the end of the conversation instead of the beginning.

If you’re anxious, are you anxious because life is hard right now? Or because your hormones are changing? If you’re crying over something small, are you overwhelmed, or is your birth control making you more emotional? If you wake up one morning feeling heavy for weeks, is it depression? Stress? PMS? PCOD? The pill? Or is this simply who you are today?

There’s something quietly unsettling about questioning every emotion before you’re allowed to feel it. You become your own investigator. You replay conversations trying to find a reason for why you’re upset. You check your period tracker before checking in with yourself. You wonder whether you should call your therapist, your gynaecologist, or just wait another week to see if everything changes when your cycle does.

Eventually, every feeling comes with an asterisk. Maybe this is me. Maybe it isn’t.

We’re encouraged to know our cycles so intimately, yet so many women only begin learning about them after something has already gone wrong.

Maybe that’s what feels so difficult about being a woman. Your body is always speaking. Everyone tells you to “listen to it.” But what does that actually mean when your body seems to have a different opinion every week? When your hormones, your cycle, your medication, your PCOD, your stress, your sleep and your actual life are all talking at once? How do you separate your intuition from your biology? How do you know which feelings belong to you and which ones are passing through because your hormones decided today was the day?

Being a woman has always meant navigating contradictions. Some girls grow up fighting for the right to go to school while on their period. Others grow up with every medical resource imaginable, yet still leave appointments feeling like strangers in their own bodies.

We’ve come so far in understanding women’s health. And yet I can’t help but feel like so many of us are still trying to learn a language we were never taught.