Birthing Resistance

As an American, Hollywood helped raise me. I grew up on stories that promised good would always prevail, that even when the odds were impossible, there would always be a small band of rebels in the shadows, plotting. The Jedis. The Fellowship. The Order of the Phoenix. The Mockingjays. Ordinary people who chose courage over comfort, truth over safety. Every one of those stories taught us that the army of good is usually small, often underestimated, but always unwavering.

And yet, here we are. In this moment of history, it feels as though many have forgotten that good doesn’t win by destiny. It wins because people rise up and choose it again and again.

In my small corner of the resistance, I am choosing unity. I am choosing to connect women across borders, to center mothers, to protect the body. Because the body is where all revolutions begin.

The Escalation We’re Witnessing

From where I sit, things in the United States have escalated terribly fast. It feels like a tactic, overwhelm the public with a hundred executive orders, and watch as confusion becomes compliance. When there’s too much chaos, it is normal at some point for us to go numb. How can we possibly keep up when this level of confusion is the goal.

I want to lean toward unity, not division. Find the center. Yet unity doesn’t mean silence in the face of inhumanity. When ICE footage emerges showing the brutal treatment of immigrants and US Citizens (eyes on Chicago and Portland); when South Carolina advances H.3537, the 'Prenatal Equal Protection Act', which would define 'person' from fertilization and apply the state's homicide laws to abortion, meaning pregnant people could face the same punishments as if it were a homicide, including the death penalty; when the President declares that democratic cities will be used as training grounds, it is not the time to stay quiet. The line between democracy and authoritarianism is thinning fast.

There is a part of me that wants to run, to buy land, go off-grid, grow food, and stay safe. But that’s not an option for most of us. It’s not an option for me. And even if it were, hiding won’t save us. What might save us is remembering what we can control: our bodies, our knowledge, our ability to care for each other.

Body Sovereignty as Revolution

This is not a battle to be fought; it is a remembering. Sovereignty, autonomy, joy, and pleasure are poison to fascism. They are antidotes to control. For generations, we have been pulled away from our own knowing, taught to outsource our wisdom to doctors, corporations, governments, and algorithms.

If I were a permaculturist or a farmer, I would write about soil, how the health of the land determines the health of everything else. But I am a birthworker, and what I know is that the same truth lives within us. When we reconnect with our wombs, we reconnect with joy. When we honor our pleasure, we reclaim power. When we move, dance, bleed, and birth in awareness, we become ungovernable by fear. (This scares the patriarchy real bad).

We need to come back to the land of our bodies. To understand our rhythms, our cycles, our pleasure, our pain. Because autonomy begins with knowledge, and liberation begins with embodiment.

Know Your Cycle, Know Your Power

If there’s one thing I wish every woman on the planet knew, it’s how her menstrual cycle actually works. Most of us were never taught. I didn’t fully understand my body until I started my work as a doula, when a fertility awareness educator sat me down and explained it all.

Your cycle has four phases, and it’s exactly that, a cycle, a circle, a rhythm. Within that rhythm lies incredible power. Here is a brief overview...

1. The Bleed (Menstrual Phase)

This is the start of your cycle: the release. Your womb sheds the lining it built to welcome an egg. I like to think of it as your womb taking down the nursery it built for a fertilized egg that didn’t arrive. It’s the great letting go, a monthly cleansing that allows your body to begin again. During this time, you may feel drawn inward. Rest. Reflect. Listen. The body is speaking.

2. The Follicular Phase

A few days after bleeding, estrogen begins to rise. Your body prepares an egg to descend from the ovary, and your energy begins to rise too. During this time, your cervical fluid changes. THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO PAY ATTENTION TO.

It may look like Elmer’s glue or egg whites. That fluid is sperm food, it keeps sperm alive even before an egg drops. This is your fertile window, and if you pay attention, you can learn its language. You might feel more social, creative, and inspired. Your body is literally preparing to create. If you’re not trying to conceive, this is the time to abstain or use protection.

3. Ovulation

Ovulation lasts only 24–48 hours, but it is the peak of your cycle, the moment of potential conception. Your temperature rises slightly. Your cervical fluid becomes slick, stretchy, and clear. You might feel a literal glow, a sense of vitality. This is your most fertile window, when life and possibility are at their fullest. If you are trying to conceive, this is your moment.

4. The Luteal Phase

After ovulation, estrogen drops and progesterone rises. Your body thickens the uterine lining (decorates the nursery) in preparation for possible implantation. If no egg is fertilized, the lining will soon be released (taking down the decor). During this phase, your energy may dip, your emotions may feel tender, and this is often when PMS appears. Your body is signaling that it’s preparing to begin again. This is a time to turn inward, to slow down, to honor your body’s natural cycle of ebb and flow.

Learning to track this rhythm, through cervical fluid, basal body temperature, and self-awareness, gives you power. It helps you understand your fertility, your moods, your energy, your hunger, your needs. It helps you prevent pregnancy or achieve it, without pharmaceuticals or guesswork. It helps you become your own authority.

Our cycles also change with the world around us, with stress, with sleep, with travel, with love. This is why the path to sovereignty begins with observation. When you understand your body, you reconnect with it. You feed it differently. You treat it differently. You demand to be treated differently.

Connection as Antidote to Division

Once we connect to our bodies, we begin to connect to others. We remember we are rooted in something ancient, our own wisdom. That’s why body literacy is a threat to systems of control. Because sovereignty is contagious.

If I could ask anything of you, it would be this: get to know your body. Talk about it. Teach your daughters. Share it with your friends. Normalize it until it’s no longer radical. Because autonomy and body sovereignty are not just personal, they are political. They are how we rise.

For every protest, for every senseless death, for every law that tries to strip us of our power, there is another way to resist. By remembering. By connecting. By caring for life.

The resistance doesn’t need more teenage heroes. It needs women and mothers who remember. It needs people who refuse to look away. It needs birthworkers, midwives, and everyday human beings who understand that tending to life is the greatest act of defiance there is.

This is how we rise. Sending you my love, Charlotte Brielle