How I Transformed My Painful Periods Using Ancient Womb Wisdom and Herbs
“It felt like fishhooks inside me, pulling on my uterus.”
I used to curl into myself, clutching my belly like it held secrets I wasn’t meant to know. The pain came in waves-sharp, dragging, relentless, and each month, I braced for battle. Heating pads, ibuprofen, canceled plans. I’d lie in bed wondering if this was just what it meant to be a woman. To suffer. To grit my teeth and push through. Sometimes I’d lay on the floor, face pressed into the carpet, trying not to scream. The pain wasn’t just physical-it was a kind of loneliness I didn’t have words for. No one told me this wasn’t normal. No one looked me in the eye and said, You don’t have to live like this.
But I did.
I got good at pretending. Smiling through meetings. Pushing through the pain. Numbing out. I lived outside my body because being inside it felt unbearable.
And underneath it all, I hated my period. I hated this part of me that felt broken. I hated that I didn’t know how to fix it.
There were times I felt like my womb was punishing me…for what, I wasn’t sure.
For not listening? For abandoning her?
But something in me, maybe the tiniest flicker, still believed healing was possible and this isn’t how it’s meant to be.
I just didn’t know where to begin.
I didn’t know then that my womb was crying out for care, for attention, for remembrance.
It was a midsummer night. The kind where the air feels thick with memory. My baby was finally asleep, my husband breathing softly beside me. And there I was-wide awake, aching.
Not just physically, though my body still carried the rawness of birth, even 18 months later. It was something deeper. An ache in my spirit. A feeling like I had crossed a threshold but didn’t know how to find myself on the other side.
I remembered something I’d learned years ago in college—barely more than a whisper tucked into an end-of-semester project on Filipino traditional herbalism. Suob, a postpartum ritual using steam and herbs. At the time, it intrigued me. Now, it felt like a thread I needed to follow. A breadcrumb my ancestors left for me.
I reached for my phone, hungry for more—but what I found stopped me in my tracks.
Page after page of warnings:
“Dangerous.”
“Don’t do it.”
“You’ll burn yourself.”
“Not safe for modern use.”
And yet… something in me pushed back.
How could this be dangerous when my ancestors practiced it with such care?
How could this be harmful when it was once sacred?
I wasn’t looking for a trend. I wasn’t looking to be saved.
I was longing for a way to return to myself.
To ease the pain. To mark the threshold, I was walking through.
To feel held.
So, I gathered what I had: some herbs, a pot, a quiet moment, and I listened.
Not to the noise online, but to the wisdom in my bones.
And that’s where my healing truly began.
At first, I approached it like everything else…maybe this will fix me? I was still holding my womb like a problem to solve, not a part of me to come home to.
But something happened during that first steam. Something I didn’t expect.
I slowed down. I sat still. I breathed.
And for the first time in what felt like forever, I wasn’t fighting my body. I was listening to her.
There were tears I didn’t even know I was holding. A grief that rose up from deep inside. I cried for all the times I had ignored her. Silenced her. Hated her.
But in that steam, surrounded by the scent of herbs and the warmth of the water, I felt held.
It was like my womb exhaled, and so did I.
This was more than easing my cramps. It was about reclaiming a relationship I didn’t know I’d lost. The emotional shift wasn’t exactly instant, but it was instantly sacred. I went from resentment to reverence. From shame to softness. From disconnection to devotion.
And that’s when I knew: my womb wasn’t broken.
She was waiting for me to come back.
Now, years later, I still steam, not because I’m in pain, but because it’s how I listen. It’s how I honor the cyclical wisdom that lives in my body. My womb is no longer a battleground, an enemy-she’s an altar.
And that shift changed everything.
It’s why I do the work I do now. Because I know there are so many women still lying on the bathroom floor, wondering if this is just how it has to be. I’m here to tell you—it doesn’t.
There’s another way.
If you’re ready to begin, I created a free guide just for you:
The Natural Period Pain Relief eBook: a gentle, holistic starting point filled with the exact steps that helped me shift out of suffering and into sovereignty.
You don’t have to do it alone.
