“I didn’t think the menstrual cycle had anything to do with me… yet it turned out to be the key to my healing.”

I was diagnosed with MRKH when I was 16. 

My Mum sobbed as the doctor shared the news, and I found myself comforting her while trying to understand what it actually meant for me.

I won’t deny there was an initial sense of relief.

I wouldn’t have the monthly “curse” my friends talked about.

I wouldn’t experience the pain some of them suffered.

I wouldn’t have to worry about getting pregnant, the fear of every teenage girl.

And I’d no longer have to endure the embarrassment of my mum stuffing tampons in my bag every time I was going anywhere. Phew!

But as the relief subsided, another reality slowly dawned…

I was different.

I wasn’t like the other girls.

And as the months and years passed, I began to feel that divide. Unsure where I fit into the traditional story of womanhood. Feeling like I didn’t belong.

Not wanting people to know my secret, I told only a few close friends. I avoided all period-related conversations, or if I couldn’t, I would pretend. Trying my best to fit in.

As my friends began to get married and have children, I found myself pulling further away, moving countries and gradually losing touch with many of them. Not because I was jealous or desperately wanted kids, but because they were moving through experiences I knew I never would. Looking back, I see that it was actually because I still felt like I didn’t belong.

In my 30’s, I lived a rhythm of “push, push, go, go”, striving beyond my limits and experiencing multiple burnouts as a result. When at 39, I found myself on the brink of yet another burnout, I knew something was deeply wrong, and I needed to find answers fast.

The answers came from a place I never expected: Menstrual Cycle Awareness.

While on an embodiment course in 2021, my teacher said:

“Women try to stay in a perpetual spring/ summer, which inevitably leads to burnout.”

My ears pricked up and I knew this was meant for me.

Three weeks later I started tracking my cycle.

My whole life I had thought because I didn’t have periods, I didn’t have a cycle. I had no idea those were two completely different things.

In fact, most women believe the menstrual cycle is their period when in fact it’s the ovaries that drive our cyclical rhythm; the period is just one part of a bigger event.

Learning to track my cycle without bleeding has become one of the most powerful things I’ve ever done. It taught me to listen to my body, recognise patterns in my energy, mood, emotions and needs. It taught me what I now call Body Literacy: learning the language of your own body.

Chinese medicine also gave me a new way of understanding myself. It teaches that even when a physical organ is absent, its energy remains. During this time, I began practising womb work and about 9 months into my journey, my womb purred under my hand like a cat one morning, and I couldn’t deny the energy that existed there.

As the years passed, I began to realise something powerful.

I WASN’T different.

I was just like the other women around me.

I didn’t have a physical womb or periods, but I had a monthly rhythm, symptoms and a similar experience. The difference was that, because I couldn’t rely on bleeding as a marker, I had to cultivate a deep sensitivity to my body. In doing so, I developed a connection to my cycle that many women never have the opportunity to build.

I was already seeing clients for Somatic Womb Work when people began encouraging me to teach what I had learned. In February 2025, I held my first workshop and I’ve been teaching ever since.

How crazy is it that a woman born without a physical womb, who has never had a period, now teaches women about their wombs and menstrual cycles, which many women still think is their period? I spent most of my life believing I was outside of this conversation, and now I find myself right at the heart of it. How wild is that! As a woman with MRKH, I was shocked to discover Menstrual Cycle Awareness was the key to my healing. Not only from burnout, but also, my sense of belonging.

Learning my monthly rhythm helped me move with my body instead of constantly pushing against it. But more importantly, it showed me that I’d never truly been outside womanhood. I’d been part of it all along.

Body Literacy and Menstrual Cycle Awareness are gifts I wish every woman with MRKH could learn. 

I want them to know they are not on the outside looking in. 

They are just like every other woman. 

Their body is still speaking. 

Their cycle is still there. 

And by learning its language, they too can cultivate a deeper relationship with their body, their cycle and themselves. And finally join the conversations they may have felt excluded from for far too long.

by Niamh Asple