Hi, I’m Brett!

It all started with my first period…

Or somewhere around there.

Depression. Anxiety. Obsessions. Phobias. Intrusive thoughts. Crying nonstop.

I was 11. I thought I was broken, and I honestly had no idea why.

I’d spend the next ten years in weekly therapy, get on hormonal birth control at 14 for “my moods,” and begin trialing antidepressant and anti-anxiety meds in college. But in between Psychology of Women lectures and Philosophy of Feminism discussions, I hit rock bottom.

I took a semester at home because I couldn’t cope. And that fall, with my mom’s fierce advocacy and support, I received a diagnosis of Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder. It felt like I finally had the right answer, and I assumed I’d find the right treatments shortly...

Upon graduation, I created the Me v PMDD Symptom Tracker app with my mom to help other women connect the dots between their mental health symptoms and menstrual cycles.

But as I started to connect with the PMDD community, I never felt more hopeless. It seemed the only treatment that women said actually ‘worked’ was total hysterectomy. And when you’re 21 and dream of having a family, that’s devastating.

On a quest to make meaning out of my suffering, I started volunteering with the International Association for Premenstrual Disorders as a peer supporter. Over the next few years, I’d support hundreds of women suffering from PMDD. I’d try to inspire hope in others, as I fought my own hopelessness. But over time I started to see the many common threads between our stories — invalidation, misunderstanding, self-doubt, self-hatred, shame, but also immense creativity and compassion for others. I wondered where it all stemmed from…

Then I stumbled upon menstrual cycle awareness.

For a girl so deeply sensitive to her menstrual cycle, I’d never known there was so much more to it than periods and PMDD. I dove headfirst into this new concept and found that my cycle also brought beautiful sparks in creativity, sexuality, expression, confidence, and intuition. Why had no one ever told me this?

Like seeing my world with new eyes, I started to fall in love with my cycle. I also began to notice the many subtle sensations in my body that preceded full blown symptoms. And through this embodied cyclical awareness I unlocked a flow of intuitive creative expression I hadn’t experienced since before my first bleed.

Despite the love and reverence I now had for most of my cycle, I still struggled greatly in my luteal phase, quietly hating my PMDD self. I thought that PMDD was just my cross to bear for the rest of my cycling days. Until in a vision, it hit me — my hatred stood in the way of my healing. My self-rejection blocked my full integration. And I saw that this hatred and rejection was not actually mine. It was the product of a society that deemed women less than because of their womanhood and a culture that had erased the power of the feminine from collective memory. I could release it and rewrite my story.

Over the next few years, I worked to integrate my PMDD self into who I was as a whole, embracing the shadowy parts of myself and reframing my symptoms during PMDD as messages about my values, desires, and needs. I also rewound to the start of my PMDD at puberty and saw how my mental health issues had not arisen out of the blue as I’d always thought, but following a series of big changes and small traumas in my life related to sexuality, my spiritual and religious beliefs, and bodily autonomy. It made sense!

I healed.

Today I am medication-free and living with more freedom, confidence, and joy than I’d ever thought possible. I was and still am sensitive to my cycle. I change from day to day. Some days are more challenging with emotions and intensity, and others are boons of creativity, deeply spiritual and intuitive. I am convinced now that there was never something fundamentally broken in me, simply wounded and in need of healing.