About Em, Garden of the Moon

About Em ~ Founder, Herbalist, CHHC

Got a period? Then my guess is you've probably got some stories to tell (heartbreaking, hilarious, and everything in between), as well as your own relationship to "that time of the month” don’t you?

My personal history with my period might not be very different from yours — where those few days every month used to be a downright miserable experience.

I'd received the same message from my doctors that countless others have - prescribing me to go on The Pill and "that'll fix things," but never being told how that little pill was flatlining all of my hormones.

There was never a conversation around why I was having such an awful experience in the first place. As I got more into understanding my own body and my health, I wanted to embrace a more natural approach to wellness. So after a decade-plus on hormonal contraceptives, I dropped the pills I got curious about what alternative options were out there to help me heal my underlying hormone imbalances.

Along the way I began exploring herbal remedies, learning how the plants have so much medicine to help harmonize all manner of imbalances.

On my quest for something to ease the pain I experienced during my period (and my desire to avoid OTC medications as much as possible), I cobbled together my very first basic herbal tea to sip during my bleed days and called it the “Dark Moon tea” in honor of the lunar phase that connects with our bleed time. I was so excited to find some relief through something that seemed so simple.

I continued to dig into the research and history around menstrual cycles, hormonal imbalances, as well as the different cultural messages that exist around periods.

I learned the practice of Cycle Tracking and began to learn more about my body and my inner seasons. Through this practice I was able to tune into the more subtle shifts I was experiencing each month, which played a huge role in healing a two-decade-plus battle with my body and disordered eating.

The more I researched and learned, the more I found myself in conversation with others about their periods and the lack of education we'd been given at an early age about the complete story of our cycles.

It became so obvious to me how disempowering this was, and I began to see a link between the disconnect from our cycles, the negative narratives we'd been taught about them, and the painful relationships so many have around how they feel about their bodies.

Sacred Cycles Journal chart pages

While completing my final project through an Herbal Apprenticeship in 2018, I took my own experiences, along with a growing understanding of period education, menstrual justice, and what it means to "live cyclically" - and thus the Cycle Support Kit tea sets were born!

My hope is to help encourage a gentle but profound way of tapping into your monthly cycle through both the physical and energetic experiences of your inner seasons, creating a radically more positive relationship to your body.

All of this is possible through learning to harness the strengths and magic of each inner season within your cycle.

Big Love,