Women face lifelong health challenges, often ignored by a healthcare system that offers quick fixes rather than real solutions. From painful periods to postpartum struggles, many feel dismissed and misunderstood. This blog highlights the need for healthcare to listen, validate, and truly support women’s unique health experiences.

Being an adult is hard enough. Being a female adult feels infinitely harder. Why? Because we are plagued* (ok plagued* is rather hyperbolic, but sometimes it feels that way) with a myriad of health issues from puberty to forever. And more often than not, we are dismissed, ignored, repeatedly told it is in our head, and finally thrown some sort of medication to shut us up.

In a world where women are vying for equal rights, for equality and for the right to be heard, why is healthcare is so incredibly behind?

When I turned 15 I was told to take the contraceptive pill. Why? Because my periods were incredibly painful, in fact they were debilitating. The first day of every period was met with tears and stomach clutching cramps that sent me straight to bed. Mum would often have to come to school or work to pick me up, wipe away the tears and help me to bed. Isn’t it crazy that the doctor never recommended I do further testing?

Fast forward 20 years later and I have nearly had the exact same experience, albeit with a different ‘health issue’. This time it was my mental health. I was six months postpartum and was in the deepest, darkest moment of my life. My head was barely above water. I had two children, 20 months apart, a husband who was constantly travelling for work, and I was living regionally with my family and friends at least an hour away. Writing this, it seems obvious, she needs someone to talk to. Maybe some blood tests to see whether she’s aborsbing nutrients. I would surely ask her how her diet is considering she is breastfeeding.  Alas, no, I was not asked any of these questions, I was not sent for any referrals. Instead, I was given a script for antidepressants.

My fear with all of this is that, in the year 2024, women are still being labelled as ‘hysterical’. Maybe not explicitly; I mean we’re not being burned at the stake because we listen to our intuition, so that’s a good thing right? But we are still made to feel hysterical. Our gut feeling is still questioned over and over, as both a woman and / or a mother. We have debilitating periods and most health professionals  don’t care to investigate. We are trying to conceive and we are told to take different medications without actually understanding what we are putting in our bodies. We are laughed at when we tell them “I just don’t feel like myself”. We lose our keys. We forget certain dates. We gain weight. Our complexion changes. I could go on and on listing symptoms. And you wouldn’t even know which part of womanhood I was referring to.

Maybe it’s the start of puberty.

Maybe it’s during pregnancy.

Maybe it’s postpartum.

Maybe it’s perimenopause.

Maybe it’s menopause.

Hell, maybe it’s just called being a woman.

We are expected to listen, to nod our head and say thank you when given a prescription. Even when it doesn’t feel right. And don’t even get me started on blood tests and telling us everything is ‘normal’ even when our body is screaming at us on the inside that things are, in fact, not normal.

But where do we turn? If the system continues to let us down like this, to disempower us, to paralyse us in the face of our own health needs, where do we turn?
We are begging for answers, for further investigation, for someone to just listen to us and validate us. When will someone hold space for us?

And the craziest thing of all? Sometimes just feeling held alleviates part of the symptoms.

Our anxiety reduces a fraction because we feel like someone actually believes in us.

Our gut stops screaming at us because finally we have been heard.

Our headaches ease ever so slightly because the burden is now being shared with another person.

We start to trust ourselves again. We return home.

Because we are the seers and knowers of our own body. We feel what is right and what is wrong. And who are you to tell us otherwise?