Suppression is not healing

The pill. For many, a given. For me, a years-long experiment to silence a body that simply wanted to be heard.
In this post, I’m sharing openly and unfiltered why I quit the pill five years ago and why I’ll never go back, even though my symptoms have gotten worse. Not because it’s easy. But because I want to live in truth, not suppression.

I used to take the pill for years. Not to avoid pregnancy (that was never the issue) but because, by the time I was fifteen, I was bent over from pain. For days. Sometimes weeks. It got so bad my mother wanted to call the doctor multiple times.

When I finally started using the pill, it felt like relief. Years of control followed: less blood, less pain. But it was an illusion. What really happened was that my natural cycle was shut down. My body was silenced. And I thought that was normal, because doctors said it was. Because everyone does it. Because it’s what supposedly helps.

Over time, I tried different pills for 16 years. And I can say now: I don’t even know who I was during that time. My body was speaking, but I couldn’t hear it, because it was numbed. I only knew myself under the influence of synthetic hormones.

When I stopped five years ago, my natural cycle came back. And with that cycle came symptoms. Not the same as before; the old physical pain is mostly gone now. Miraculously, my periods are shorter, lighter, and manageable. As if my body has grown up and learned how to take care of itself.

But in its place came something else. Migraine attacks.  Mood crashes I now recognize as PMDD, sensory overload, extreme sensitivity to noise, smells, lights, people. Sometimes I feel like my nervous system is on fire.

Yes, it’s intense. And yes, people don’t understand. They say: “Why don’t you just go back on the pill?” But that’s exactly the point. I don’t want to go back to suppression. I don’t want a pill that shuts my body up. I want to know what’s really going on. I want to feel what’s true. I want to take my body seriously, even when it’s messy.

My symptoms didn’t start because I quit. They became visible because I stopped silencing them and there’s power in that.
Because now, finally, I can learn what my body is trying to say, instead of drugging it into submission month after month.

And by the way, this isn’t just personal. Since 2005, the combination birth control pill has officially been classified by the World Health Organization as a Group 1 carcinogen, which means: proven to cause cancer in humans. The same group as asbestos. Cigarettes. Plutonium.

Why are we still handing this out like candy? Why is it still the first line of defense? Why are women still expected to swallow it and shut up, even when their bodies are screaming? I’m done with that.
As a woman. As a human.

I’m not choosing convenience. I’m choosing an honest life. Not symptom management.


Maybe you or your daughter, your friend, your partner have also been on the pill for years, never really questioning what it does.
Maybe you feel, like me, that you’re too sensitive for this world, too intense for the norm.
What I’ve come to believe is this: suppression is not healing. Listening is. And honest living doesn’t begin when you go numb again: it begins when you finally take your body seriously.

If this story resonates, feel free to share, comment, or reach out.

You’re not alone.