You Are More Than Your Hormones!

Why It Matters

The piece matters because it reframes a popular health trend as a double-edged sword: greater hormonal awareness can improve care, workplace accommodations, and parenting, but overreliance risks commercial exploitation and limiting women’s autonomy and identities. Policymakers, employers, parents and clinicians should weigh both the benefits and potential harms of codifying cycle-based behavior.

Summary

In the video, Avital Tal acknowledges that hormones and menstrual cycles exert real, measurable effects across life stages—from periods and ovulation to pregnancy, postpartum and menopause—while endorsing biological literacy and empathy. She credits recent cycle-syncing trends for increasing awareness and support but warns that a cultural fixation has morphed into an industry and identity framework that can reduce women to their hormones. Tal critiques the “hormone worship” tendency in some cycle communities and urges a balanced view that recognizes physiology without letting it define personality or agency. She frames informed understanding as empowering but cautions against letting cycle narratives narrow self-conception or become prescriptive.

Original Description

What if one of the most “empowering” trends for women… is actually making us feel more powerless?

A recent conversation with one of my students completely stopped me in my tracks.

She said: “I feel like a walking bag of hormones.”

And it opened up a much bigger conversation about modern hormone culture, cycle syncing, female identity, emotional resilience, and what young women are being taught about themselves.

Now to be clear: Hormones are real. PMS is real. Postpartum is real. Perimenopause is real.

But somewhere along the way, many women started absorbing the message that we are entirely at the mercy of our biology.

In this video, I unpack:

- The rise of cycle syncing culture

- The good parts of hormonal awareness

- Where I think the conversation goes too far

- The mindset shift I desperately want young women to hear

- And why I believe women are far more powerful than this narrative suggests

This is nuanced. It’s compassionate. And it might challenge the way you think.

Watch until the end because the message I would give my own daughter is the most important part.

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