Episode 133: First Period Prep with Christina Valenzuela
What You’ll Learn
Welcome back to the Deliberate Day podcast...the podcast for moms of many!
If your entry into 'Womanhood' was a bit less than stellar...
If you're staring down the barrel of a pre-teen starting her transformation...
Then what our guest is sharing today is exactly what you need in your life!
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Pearl & Thistle & Christina Valenzuela (00:00)
Today, we have the pleasure of chatting with Christina Valenzuela…a wife, mom of four, and the owner and creative director of Pearl & Thistle.
She offers a unique blend of theology and science to bring better body literacy to Catholics. She's been a certified instructor in the Boston Cross Check™ method of Natural Family Planning since 2013 and her signature course, Cycle Prep, was a 2021 OSV Innovation Challenge finalist.
She holds an undergraduate degree in Philosophy and Theology from the University of Notre Dame as well as a Masters in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School. She is a life-professed member of the Lay Fraternities of St. Dominic and today she is here to teach all of us how to introduce our teens (and really, the entire family) to their cycles in a beautiful way…
Proximate Formation (03:00)
When is the right time to talk to your daughter about cycles? The proximate formation is what we do immediately before puberty, and it can begin as young as 9 years old. When she begins developing breast buds, that’s a sign that in 2-3 years she’ll get her first cycle.
Christina also suggests that moms be attentive about what’s happening in their daughter’s peer group. Part of the mission of Pearl & Thistle is to make sure that we’re understanding, welcoming, and shepherding the girls in the community into this transition…so, talking to our daughters before they experience puberty themselves can help them become compassionate and caring voices for the other girls in their classes.
Building a Culture of Care (5:16)
Many are familiar with the idea of packing a period kit…a small collection of supplies that can be easily brought to school or summer camp, and this is a great idea! In Cycle Prep, Christina takes it further and talks about building a Culture of Care. It’s important to take care of our bodies—yes—but girls can also be intentional about caring for their friends.
In our own homes, with our sons and husbands, we can build a culture of care by having intentional conversations. Dads need to be brought into the conversation so they know where the necessary supplies are, or if mom isn’t home, how to respond when a cycle does begin.
The Church, in Her great wisdom, talks about the family as the first school…this means that children are learning about all things in the context of family life (especially how we care for, and respond to, our bodies).
So, when we think about building a culture of care, it really is…how is our family set up to teach our kids in general that when our bodies need attention, we listen and we respond generously.
If you have a husband who’s stand-offish about sex, or reproduction, or the impending cycle in your daughter’s life, one good way is to invite them to preview the information (like Cycle Prep) together. Also, if your husband is on board first, it can make it a much more comfortable environment for sons to experience as well.
Tracking Your Cycle (16:59)
Introducing your daughter to the concept of tracking her cycle is a good idea, but whether she should track it is a personal decision. In the first few years of a cycle, tracking is difficult because it can vary greatly. This can be recorded in a planner with a symbol of her choosing, or in her Charting for Girls course, Christina introduces a basic paper wheel chart that works well.
If you’re looking for an app, the FEMM Health app is a good option (with the “tracking for health” portion turned on). Christina also likes (as a paid option) the Read Your Body app because you can turn on the mode that tracks only for health, and it’s completely customizable.
She asks parents to please stay away from any app that has predictive features, because this can cause unnecessary anxiety for girls in their first few years of having their cycles (these first cycles are not consistent). Also, stay away from apps that have a “chat” or “forum” feature (there are lots of reasons for this, the utmost being internet safety). Christina also tried Teena and wrote about it on her blog here.
Cycle Prep not Period Prep (23:09)
Charting your cycle is NOT just charting bleeds. This is particularly important for younger girls, whose cycles are still normalizing for the first few years. The reason Christina called her course Cycle Prep and NOT Period Prep is because she wants girls to understand what’s happening in the WHOLE cycle.
In her program, she teaches how to tell the story of a menstrual cycle through the idea of a kingdom, with the four hormone helpers. The follicle stimulating hormone, which is like the messenger. A luteinizing hormone, which is like the herald (makes a big important announcement). Estrogen is like the royal steward, and progesterone is like the queen hormone.
At the beginning of our cycle, there’s a menstrual bleed when all the hormones are low. Then, FSH goes to the ovary and says, “Hey eggs! Wake up! You need to get ready, because one of you is going to be selected to be a special guest in the kingdom this month.”
So, the egg wakes up, matures in the follicle, and meanwhile estrogen—we enter the follicular phase—because now the egg is in its follicle. Estrogen goes back to the uterus and begins making preparations for the egg to come visit. It builds up a rich uterine lining—which is a network of blood vessels, proteins, and other wonderful things.
Then…when estrogen is ready, FSH and LH go back to the ovary to the egg and say, “Ok egg, you need to go! It’s time to go!” The follicle will open up and the egg is released at the event known as ovulation…and the egg starts traveling towards the uterus. The follicle where the egg was getting ready now becomes the corpus luteum and it signals the production of progesterone, our queen hormone. She now goes to the uterus and works together with estrogen to make this luxurious guest room just in case the guest arrives.
If the guest doesn’t arrive—most eggs dissolve within 12-24 hours—then progesterone says, “We’ll clean up and start this process all over and we’ll try again,” which is when we have the period bleed.
Basically the whole cycle is the process of maturing, releasing, and preparing for the potential for a fertilized egg…a new human life to take up residence in the uterus.
When we look at these four phases, the menstrual, the follicular, ovulatory, luteal…we actually see how girl’s and women’s bodies are designed to optimally function through these different fluctuations of hormones, and when we understand that—when we understand the importance of the whole cycle and what it does in our bodies—then we can have a much better appreciation for that period bleed when it comes. This also gives us a better context for understanding what’s going on and why we’re seeing changes.
Christina’s course, Cycle Prep is laid out to be very common sense and easy to understand. Brittany learned more about her cycle from taking Cycle Prep with her oldest daughter than she ever knew about her cycle before.
Too Late? (27:45)
For the moms with daughters who’ve already started…is it too late? The good news is…it’s never too late! Christina has had moms tell her their 17 year olds took it with a younger sibling and learned a TON!
If your daughter is really beyond Cycle Prep, there are plenty of other things out there. For late teens, late high school, or early college aged girls, there’s a book called The Happy Girl’s Guide to Being Whole that introduces girls in a more mature way to the menstrual cycle. It speaks very positively about the different energy patterns and how our cycle influences our body. It is produced with the imprint of the Guiding Star Project, it is very cautionary about supressing our natural cycles. Christina also recommends Guiding Star, Natural Womanhood, and she has a charting book for young adult women that is explicitly Catholic called Cycle Charting for Single Women.
Many of Christina’s younger programming doesn’t include too much theology. But, in the young adult age range, she does have a book with deep prompts and discussion questions that would be great conversation starters for mothers and older daughters (who can read it together!)
Preparing & Affirming (32:30)
There is research that’s almost 40 years old that proves that when young girls are adequately prepared and affirmed in the transitions that happen through puberty, this can drastically reduce their anxiety and GREATLY improve their experience of their first period! It’s important to keep in mind though, that although this approach can decrease anxiety, but it doesn’t eliminate it. So, our daughters are going to feel how they’re going to feel.
With preparation and affirmation, some girls WILL feel proud and accomplished, but some just won’t…and that’s ok! So it’s our job to give our daughters space to handle these feelings in their own way.
All that being said, we CAN give our girls the vocabulary and the concepts to logically come back from the initial response and say…
This is healthy.
This is normal.
I will get through this.
It’s a temporary transition.
And if your daughter’s excited, take her out to celebrate, and if not…that’s ok too!
Some particular affirmations that are woven into the concepts Christina teaches in Cycle Prep are…
My body does important hidden work.
My body is good.
My body is smart.
My body knows what’s healthy for me.
Menstrual cycles are healthy for me.
Sometimes when Christina does parent presentations, she’ll give them a whole list of affirmations (to use with their daughters AND for themselves). Many times how we respond to the body changes in our kids is dictated by what we believe about our own selves, and being able to say those things to our own bodies can make a HUGE impact in our own experience of OUR cycles.
Rapid-Fire Questions (36:30)
Christina’s mom super-power is that she knows where everything is!
If she could go back to one stage of motherhood and tell herself one thing, she would go back to one very specific moment with her fourth baby. She literally cried over spilled milk. She had worked so hard to make 2 ozs of milk, and knocked it over while cleaning the pump. She wishes she could have given herself grace and said, “Christina, it’s ok…feeding your baby formula is ok.” Her husband was so wonderful in that moment and actually came in and said just that, but she couldn’t say it to herself in that moment. So, mommas, it’s ok.
Four things her friends and family would say she’s good at are piano, public speaking, knitting & crocheting, and taking big information and turning it into something that’s digest-able.
Something that makes Christina’s family special is that they love karaoke! They host parties, they have the entire setup, and whenever they’re in a rut, they pull out the karaoke books and have at it!
More About Christina Valenzuela (40:52)
Christina Valenzuela is the owner and creative director of Pearl & Thistle, LLC, where she offers a unique blend of theology and science to bring better body literacy to Catholics. She has been a certified instructor in the Boston Cross Check™ method of Natural Family Planning since 2013 and her signature course, Cycle Prep, was a 2021 OSV Innovation Challenge finalist. She holds an undergraduate degree in Philosophy and Theology from the University of Notre Dame as well as a Masters in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School. She is a life-professed member of the Lay Fraternities of St. Dominic and resides with her husband and four children outside of Boston. Her latest book, The Language of Your Body: Embracing God's Design for Your Cycles, is scheduled for release with OSV in 2024.
Cycle Prep: First Period Course for Girls is a self-paced video course you take online…it’s broken up into 8 small videos, it uses the kingdom analogy Christina shared earlier, and it dives into the culture of care component. Christina does offer live workshops, and she’s in the process of offering a facilitator training (this is her spring project).
The next course (that is new this year) is Perimenopause Prep: Navigating NFP with Shifting Fertility. This course if specifically for Catholic Couples who want to understand how our cycles might change, how the biomarkers might change, what are our options for shifting up our protocols based on our own particular goals during this time of transition. AND it has modules that are focused on couple communication…as things are changing with biology and hormones in the wife. How do we have constructive conversations together about navigating this transition as a couple, and where do we want to be when we come through on the other side of menopause. Because the perimenopause transition is a shared transition…her body will experience it, but the couple goes through it together.
Christina also has a book coming out Monday, April 8th with Our Sunday Visitor! It’s called The Language of Our Body: Embracing God’s Design for Your Cycle. She’s REALLY excited about this book because it’s taking her background in Theology of the Body and bringing it to the concept of body literacy and understanding our menstrual cycles as a unique way that women actually do image God. Men and women image God in different ways, and our cycles are one way we differently image God than men do. How can we take this knowledge of our cycles, how can it improve our sense of our identity as a daughter of God, our relationship with God, and our relationships with the other people in our lives. Finally, it also has some sections on how The Church can affirm and prepare women to understand this aspect of their unique design.
**Special note…In the podcast, we mention a code for our listeners…this actually turned into a link during production! So, click on any link in these notes and it will bring you to the right place!
If you'd like to learn more about Christina and Pearl & Thistle, you can head over to Pearl & Thistle's Shop to see everything she has to offer!
Thank you SO much for listening in on this conversation with the AMAZING Christina Valenzuela! If you enjoyed this, please share this episode with a friend!
And if you’d like more content like this, if you’d like to share content you’d like to see, or tell us what you think of the podcast, we’d LOVE to hear from you in the reviews!
And as always, sweet momma, never forget…
You are doing beautiful work!
