My Story and Why This Work Matters to Me
I spent years doing everything “right”.
Building a career, collecting qualifications, going to therapy and doing all the extras of the self-development. I worked hard and at the time, I seemed very capable being the version of myself I thought I needed to be.
But behind the scenes, my body was waving every red flag it could.
There were hospital appointments, symptoms I couldn’t make sense of, chronic pain, burnout, nervous system dysregulation, and a growing sense that something was not right. I was eventually diagnosed with Stage 4 Infiltrative Endometriosis, but not before years of things escalating in ways that were scary, confusing and hard to explain. At one point I was admitted to hospital and put on cancer pathways. It turned out I had both sepsis, and Endometriosis, followed by post-sepsis syndrome.
That was the turning point.
Everything didn’t change overnight, because sometimes we have to learn things the hard way. I tried to prioritise my recovery and health, but I didn’t have all the tools. This was in the middle of a very full, very busy life, with increasing demands that I put on myself. Like - holding down a full-time job, climbing a career ladder, doing a Master’s degree, and trying to build a life that looked successful on paper.
My body was making it increasingly clear that the way I was living was not sustainable and what changed was my understanding.
For a long time, I thought I was completely at fault and this was just life – a hamster wheel of feeling exhausted. I thought I needed to try harder, be more disciplined and more resilient. I leant into learning more, fixing more and optimising as much as I could.
Eventually I had to face something much simpler, yet somehow harder: my body was not the problem.
I wasn’t ill because I wasn’t doing enough. If anything, I was doing too much. I was living completely out of rhythm with myself, in a world that rewards disconnection and calls it discipline.
That realisation had me completely change course.
Doing it differently – this time
I began learning my body in a different way. I started paying attention to my cycle, to stress, to rest, to energy, to nervous system patterns, to the stories symptoms were telling me, and to what changed when I stopped forcing myself to live as though I was the same person every day.
I also made a very deliberate choice to heal holistically. I have never had surgery or hormone treatment for my Endometriosis which was and is a personal decision, not a moral one. Different people need different things. But for me, it meant learning to support my body in a way that was broader, slower and more relational. It meant understanding health as something connected: body, mind, nervous system, environment, pace of life, safety, support, rhythm.
That is a huge part of why I do this work now.
Because menstrual health is still treated as niche, overly personal, or something we should just quietly manage around the edges of “real life”… but it’s central to it.
The menstrual cycle, and natural cycles of hormones and our systems affects how people feel in their bodies, how they show up at work, how they experience relationships, how safe they feel, how much pain they are in, how clearly they can think, and how they make sense of themselves.
And I truly believe that a lot of struggle because many of us are still trying to function inside systems that do not equip us to understand or support our bodies properly.
I don’t believe that wellbeing is all about individual choices, because nothing happens in vacuum. If you look at your own life, family, friends and people at work – you can see the impact of the issue.
Do you know anybody who is not burned out? Tired? Stressed? Anxious?
People’s wellbeing is increasingly fragile and under pressure – so the work is personal, but it is also political, practical and necessary.
There is hope, and we rise together
We have reached a moment where more people are talking about menstrual health properly, and solid research is emerging. Organisations and governments are realising that this is not a niche issue but an essential part of wellbeing, inclusion and sustainable participation.
For me, I don’t think the mechanism is about pushing harder. It’s about increasing awareness and education, softening where we can and building safe spaces that facilitate real conversations and change.
There is still a long way to go, but there are more openings now for different ways of seeing health, and for more holistic, body-aware and equitable approaches to support.
That matters. Because the current way is not working.
We have an opportunity as individuals to increase our body literacy, map what’s going on and make changes in line with our natural rhythms – not the ones imposed on us.
We also have an opportunity now, collectively, to do this differently. Across health, wellbeing, community and culture, more people are questioning systems that ask us to disconnect from ourselves in order to cope.
History shows us that people evolve, and so do the ways we live. We can build ways of living, working and caring that support the body rather than work against it.
In many ways, we already are and I’m proud to be a part of that work.
Explore my work:
hello@flowwithpaige.com
