The H-Word…Hormones

What We Talked About When We Talked About Hormones…

For our latest Wildflowers gathering, we brought Rebecca Eldridge to Kasa Café to talk about hormones. It turned out to be one of the most honest rooms we've hosted and not because Rebecca gave us a lecture, but because she gave us permission.

The evening, in brief

Rebecca is a menstrual health coach, women's health advocate, and the founder of The Happy Hormones Club. She came to us with her four pillars of hormonal wellbeing: nutrition, movement, mindset, and environment. What she actually gave us was something harder to name. A framework, yes. But also a reckoning.

She spoke openly about her own journey with PMDD and PCOS. About the boot camp she paid £14 to miss, month after month, because she couldn't drag herself out of bed in the week before her period. About the inner critic that turned up like clockwork. About the years she spent blaming herself for what her body was trying to tell her.

A lot of us had been there.

What we talked about

Our conversation kept circling back to three big questions.

Are we under-fuelling ourselves on purpose? Most of us wouldn't say we were. And yet Rebecca named something that landed hard. The black coffee before the half marathon. The salad at midday. The skipped breakfast because "I'm not hungry in the mornings." We've all done versions of it. The diet culture we were raised on didn't go away when we stopped dieting. It just got quieter. It taught us that being comfortable with hunger was a kind of strength. Rebecca called it what it is. Chronic under-fuelling. And the cost of it shows up in our mood, our energy, our cycles, and our capacity to cope with everything else.

Whose voice is in your head? This is where the conversation got really interesting. Rebecca talked about the inner critic that gets louder in the luteal phase. The one that tells you you're a failure for missing a class, a bad friend for cancelling dinner, a worse version of yourself for reasons you can't quite name. She was clear. That voice isn't truth. It's a symptom. And you can do something about it, but not when it's already shouting. You have to build the muscle in the weeks you feel good. Catch the cruel thought. Offer a kinder one. Fake it if you have to. So that when the critic turns up with a megaphone, you've got something to say back.

Which brought us to the question under all of the others.

Are we living in our bodies, or running from them? Rebecca talked about how many women are living in a near-constant state of fight-or-flight without realising it. Rushing. Bracing. Never quite landing. And how if we stay in that state long enough, we tip over into something that looks like rest but isn't. It's shutdown. Emotional disconnection. The thing we call "fine" when someone asks how we are. She offered a simple practice. Four seconds in through the nose. Seven-second hold. Eight seconds out through pursed lips. Do it daily. Tone the nervous system like a muscle, so that when stress arrives, you've got somewhere to put it.

Why it matters for Wildflowers

We built this collective because we believe in the power of honest conversation. The kind that doesn't wrap things up neatly. The kind that leaves you thinking on the way home.

Wednesday night did exactly that.

Want to go deeper with Rebecca?

Rebecca offers 1:1 coaching, group programmes, and a library of free resources on cycle education and hormonal health. If last night struck a chord, or if you're just curious about what working with your cycle could look like, her work is a brilliant place to start.

Find her at thehappyhormonesclub.com and on Instagram at @hellohappyhormonesclub.

Thank you to Rebecca, and to every woman who showed up and told the truth.

The next one is coming. Watch this space.

Lx