By: Ivanna Salehudin
For most of my life, I believed discipline meant pushing through everything.
If I felt tired, I told myself to work harder.
If I felt emotional, I told myself to be stronger.
If I felt unmotivated, I assumed I simply lacked discipline.
Like many women, I believed the goal was to perform at the same level every single day.
Wake up. Work hard. Stay consistent. Push through.
It took me decades to realise something simple that no one had ever explained to me.
Nothing was wrong with me.
I was simply experiencing the natural rhythms of being a woman.
Women don’t operate on a constant daily cycle of energy. Our hormones rise and fall across a monthly rhythm that affects how we think, feel, and function.
“Women are not designed to operate at the same level every day.”
Some days we feel energised, confident and creative. Ideas flow easily and we feel ready to take on the world.
Other days feel slower. Our energy dips. We feel more reflective, sometimes more emotional, and occasionally just plain tired.
For many women, those quieter phases are where the guilt begins.
Because when you grow up without understanding your body, you start interpreting its signals as personal shortcomings.
You think you are inconsistent.
You think you are undisciplined.
You think you simply need to try harder.
And sometimes the world reinforces that belief.
I remember moments when expressing a strong opinion or emotion would be met with a dismissive remark:
“What’s wrong? Are you on your period?”
It is often said as a joke. But behind the joke sits a message.
That a woman’s emotions are irrational.
That her body makes her unreliable.
That her voice can be dismissed.
When girls grow up without understanding their bodies, comments like these quietly shape how they see themselves. Many of us learn to shrink. To question our feelings. To apologise for taking up space.
But what if girls grew up understanding their bodies from the very beginning?
What if they knew that energy, mood and focus naturally shift throughout the month and that some phases are ideal for creativity and connection, while others are better suited for reflection and rest?
Instead of seeing those shifts as weaknesses, they might recognise them as signals.
Signals that their bodies are simply moving through a natural rhythm.
This realisation came to me much later in life than I wish it had. Like many women, I spent years pushing against my own biology, believing discipline alone was the answer to everything.
Only recently did I begin to understand that listening to my body was not a failure of discipline. It was a form of wisdom.
As a mother raising daughters (and a teenage niece now entering womanhood) I think often about the knowledge we pass from one generation to the next.
My mother did the best she could with what she knew. But like many women of her generation, she was never taught to understand her own body either.
So how could she teach me?
Today, I believe this is a conversation mothers should feel empowered to have with their daughters.
Not as a medical lecture, but as a simple understanding of how the female body works.
Because when girls understand their bodies, they stop seeing their emotions and energy shifts as flaws.
They see them for what they really are: information.
They learn that being tired does not mean they are weak.
Feeling emotional does not mean they are irrational.
And moving through different rhythms of energy does not make them less capable.
In fact, understanding these rhythms can become a strength.
When you understand your body, something else happens too.
You stop shrinking when someone dismisses your emotions.
You stop apologising for feeling tired.
You stop believing that your biology makes you unreliable.
Because knowledge does something powerful.
It removes the power of shame.
“Understanding your body removes the power of shame.”
Author Bio:
Ivanna Salehudin is the founder of Nova Satra Bionatural and a mother of two daughters.
