Breaking the Cycle: How Emotional Stress Impacts Women’s Hormones

In my last blog, I wrote about eclipse season and how cosmic energy can stir up shadows, asking us to release what no longer serves us. When I first started that piece, I didn’t realize how much that would actually show up in my life. These past few weeks, I’ve been sitting in survival — watching parts of my life unravel, noticing what feels lost, and slowly learning what it means to trust in God.

It’s a strange thing, how the body holds onto these experiences. Bessel van der Kolk’s word’s in The Body Keeps the Score have been echoing for me: our bodies don’t just remember stress, they store it. I can feel that truth every day right now. My nervous system doesn’t know the difference between running from a lion and navigating the end of a marriage, the sting of being dismissed, or the shame of chasing affection that isn’t returned. My body only registers: unsafe. And so it keeps me on high alert, even when I just want peace.

This is survival mode. Hyper-vigilant, restless, waiting for the other shoe to drop. And even as I practice self-awareness — even as I remind myself I am safe — my body keeps the score.

Here’s what I’ve noticed: when stress lingers, cortisol rises. When cortisol rises, glucose follows, keeping my body in a constant state of “readiness.” My cravings change. I hold onto tension. I feel “wound tight.” It’s hard to sleep. I feel restless. It’s not just emotional — it’s deeply physiological.

For women, this stress response ripples everywhere. Elevated cortisol suppresses progesterone, making cycles irregular. It slows digestion. It dulls the thyroid. It even makes weight harder to regulate. Our bodies will always choose survival over balance — and that means when cortisol is in control, everything else pays the price. Stress literally makes us fat!

And here’s where it hit me like a lightning bolt this week: I’m processing all of this in my Prickly phase. That short window after ovulation when estrogen dips, leaving us more sensitive, less resilient, and often a little raw. Of course everything feels heightened. Of course my nervous system feels stretched thin. This is the beauty of cycle literacy — it doesn’t make the hard things easier, but it helps me understand why I’m experiencing them the way I am. It gives me compassion for myself. The silver lining? I’ve learned NOT to have emotionally charged conversations in my prickly phase. They often snowball out of control. Now that I am painfully aware of this, I will be very intentional about checking cycle days 😉

As I’ve navigated my healing, I discovered rituals. I’ve created a few to remind my nervous system that I am safe, and to help my body shift back into the parasympathetic state where healing happens:

🌅 Morning: I begin with stillness — prayer, breathwork, and journaling. Since my kids were little, this has always been “Jesus time.” I set the tone for my day by putting words to what I’m feeling and anchoring myself in truth. Sometimes, when the weather is nice, I’ll sit outside and let the sun warm my skin while I sit still & breathe, telling my body: “You are safe. You are here. You are held.” This is also the time I hold space and send love and protection to people I hold dear. There’s a prayer board above my vanity with thoughts and wishes for people God has laid on my path and in my heart.

☀️ Midday: I step away from my to-do list to move and to get a little grounded. This might look like walking, dancing, swinging, or running! Rhythm is medicine for me — it regulates my heartbeat and gives my body a pattern it can trust. Sometimes I’ll add a frequency track in my earbuds, letting vibration guide me back into calm, or I’ll jam out to some of my favorite tunes and dance it out. But I always break my day up now with this practice.

🌙 Evening: I wind down intentionally. A nourishing meal to steady blood sugar, hot tea, and gratitude before bed. I love to count my blessings. Years ago, I had a friend tell me she prayed I would find tiny blessings. That has stayed with me for nearly a decade. It’s my way of telling my nervous system, “the day is done, you can rest now.”

But I won’t sugarcoat it: sometimes the hardest part isn’t doing the rituals, it’s sitting still with what I’m feeling. Doing nothing but being with the ache, the loneliness, or the grief can feel unbearable. My instinct is to distract, fix, reach for validation and clarity, or worse — numb it all away. But healing asks something different. It asks me to stay present. To witness my emotions without running from them. To trust that feeling them won’t break me, but free me.

And that’s the paradox: calming the nervous system isn’t about forcing peace, it’s about creating space for what’s inside to move through. Every time I sit with the discomfort instead of fleeing it, I remind my body that it doesn’t have to stay in survival mode forever. Every time I choose to sit, I’m rewiring my brain to trust that emotions won’t kill me.

And now here I am, noticing how this all comes to fruition at the Equinox — the sacred pause when light and dark find equal measure. It feels like the perfect reflection of my own journey: survival and healing, shadow and light, grief and hope. The Equinox is nature’s reminder that balance is not only possible, it’s inevitable in the rhythm of life. Just as the sun and night trade places in harmony, my body is learning to balance cortisol with calm, sympathetic drive with parasympathetic repair, survival with safety.

Just like the cosmic perspective I shared last time, I hold onto this truth: imbalance isn’t permanent. Eclipses remind us that shadows always give way to light, and the Equinox reminds us that balance always returns. My body tells the same story — stress is not the end, it’s an invitation to reset.

I share this because I know so many women are living with stress their bodies are silently keeping score of. We think it’s just “being tired” or “not having willpower,” but really it’s physiology. It’s cortisol. It’s survival mode. And the good news is — there are ways back to balance.

That’s exactly why I do the work I do. I teach women how to pair science with soul — how to read their bodies’ signals, support their nervous systems, and create rhythms that make healing sustainable. Because when you shift from survival to safety, everything changes: your hormones, your energy, your mood, your cycle, your ability to show up in the life you’re creating.

✨ This Equinox feels like an invitation for all of us: to pause, to reset, and to find balance again. If you’re ready to bring your body back into balance and learn how to work with your hormones instead of against them, I’d love to walk with you.