Why You Need to Know How Hormones Shape Your Body, Emotions and Relationships

The Body as a Living Landscape

I’ve been sitting with this topic for a long time.

Because as mothers, our bodies are not static. They are seasons in motion. And yet, most of the somatic world still speaks as if there’s one kind of body.

But a woman’s body moves to a different rhythm. Her hormones shift with the cycles of adolescence, fertility, pregnancy, breastfeeding, and menopause. These hormonal tides shape not only our physical bodies but our emotional lives and the ways we relate to others.

As mothers, this matters deeply because when we understand how our hormones influence our somatic experience, we begin to make sense of the shifts that can feel confusing or even isolating and why we sometimes lose ourselves in caring for others, why we feel more reactive after weaning, why menopause can feel like a breaking apart and a coming home all at once.

The Relational Body of Adolescence

In adolescence, estrogen surges through the body, awakening sensitivity, sensuality and awareness. This hormone influences brain areas tied to empathy, mood and social attunement (ScienceDirect, 2024).

This is when many of us first learn to read the world through relationship. We sense when someone is upset, we feel when we’ve said the wrong thing, we care deeply about being liked or accepted. It’s easy to internalise that our safety lives in others’ approval.

From a somatic lens, this sensitivity is the body’s way of learning connection. Yet if we grow up in environments where that attunement is not met or reciprocated, the same sensitivity can harden into people-pleasing which is a pattern of reading everyone else’s needs before our own.

For many mothers, that pattern reawakens during pregnancy and early motherhood, when hormones once again tune the nervous system to others.

Pregnancy and Breastfeeding: The Body in Deep Relationship

Pregnancy is a time when our bodies and nervous systems are completely reorganised to support connection. Estrogen and progesterone rise to extraordinary levels, influencing mood, thought, digestion, and the tissues that hold us upright and open.

The brain itself changes structure, enhancing empathy and caregiving networks (ScienceDirect, 2024). During breastfeeding, oxytocin and prolactin deepen this bonding as they quiet the stress response, open the heart, and soften the body (Hormone University).

These hormones weave us into the most primal relationship where our body becomes a bridge between our baby’s nervous system and our own.

And then, when breastfeeding ends estrogen and oxytocin drop, and many mothers experience what can feel like a kind of grief. Mood changes, energy drops, and a quiet emptiness can move through the body (Metro Counseling & Wellness).

Knowing this helps us meet ourselves with compassion rather than confusion.

Menopause and the Turning Inward

Menopause is not the end of womanhood, it is another transformation of it.

As estrogen declines, the nervous system reorganises once again. What once drew us outward, the hormonal pull to nurture, to smooth, to keep the peace begins to fade.

Many women find they no longer have the same tolerance for pleasing others or carrying invisible emotional labour. Relationships may shift, boundaries strengthen, voices grow louder. The outward flow of energy turns inward.

Biologically, estrogen affects the brain’s social-emotional circuits, so its decline naturally changes how we orient toward others (MDPI, 2025). But emotionally, this can feel like loss before it becomes liberation.

he body begins to prioritise truth over harmony, authenticity over approval. It can be disorienting, but it is profoundly freeing.

Why Mothers Need to Know This

When we understand how hormones shape our inner landscape, we stop labelling ourselves as “too emotional,” “too reactive,” or “not coping.”

We begin to see that our sensitivity, our fluctuations, our changing relational needs are physiological truths to honour.

Somatic practice that includes women’s bodies can become a space to notice these shifts with tenderness. It becomes a way to re-learn that your nervous system is actually deeply wise.

When you know this, you can meet each season of your body with more gentleness. You can feel less alone when the waves of motherhood, weaning, or menopause move through you. And perhaps, you can begin to feel the quiet power that comes from inhabiting your own hormonal truth - your body as it really is, alive, changing, and utterly human.