Our Mission
To reclaim the power behind each hormonal passage.
The Asherah Institute empowers women, and all those born with female anatomy who may not identify as women, to understand, discuss, and honor their mental health during specific hormonal transition points — puberty & adolescence, PMDD & the menstrual cycle, perinatal (pregnancy through postpartum), perimenopause (the menopause transition), and post-menopause.
We create a safe space to —
Learn more about your brain and hormones during specific times of hormonal transition.
Receive tools to normalize and empower dialogue — internally with yourself and externally with peers.
Share personal stories, as desired, without shame and with support.
Identify and release harmful stigmas; in their place, imprint knowledge, power, and strength.
Begin to heal individually and collectively from trauma and wounds related to these transitions.
From isolation & silence to community & collective strength.
We seek to transform isolation into community, shame and stigma into empowerment, and individual silence into collective strength.
Through this community-powered work, we hope to reclaim the narrative around women's hormonal transitions into one of strength, power, and grace — and to offer ourselves and each other the care, support, validation, and healing that we may have otherwise lacked.
Why this work, now
The medical establishment has historically failed women during hormonal transitions.
Before 1993, women were rarely included in clinical trials, often due to purported hormone complexity. Medical education taught men's biology as the "default," and women's as atypical and "special interest." Even after policy shifts, women remain substantially underrepresented in clinical trials and women's health research funding remains disproportionately small.
Pervasive societal stigmas have compounded the results of these medical disparities. Women's hormonal journeys are often mislabeled as "dramatic," "hysterical," "irrational," and "crazy." Women often face medical gaslighting relating to their hormonal symptoms. Many have internalized — even perpetuated — the gaslighting and stigmas. All carry related trauma and wounding.
Women are physiologically, metabolically, and cellularly different from men. Those differences are not too complex, not a special interest, and not an add-on. We deserve medical research and care that respects and uplifts us as unique beings.
The Asherah Institute sees a valuable opportunity to use women's individual and collective power at the grassroots level to profoundly expedite efforts to achieve our own healing and to catalyze health equity. Underlying the Asherah Institute's mission is the fundamental truth that women embody unparalleled power and capacity to uplift themselves and those around them. Research from postpartum support groups demonstrates that women generate incredible strength and healing from each other's support. Through Asherah Circles, we hope to immediately shift how we show up for ourselves and each other. Bigger picture, we hope to contribute to rewriting the narrative surrounding women's hormonal transitions and to create a groundswell to further spotlight and catalyze adequate medical research and care.