Kristyn Hodgdon
Everything you’re feeling, but didn’t know how to say.
What Christina Applegate's Book Made Me Google
As someone with an autoimmune condition (hi, Hashimoto's, the gift that keeps on giving), I'm obsessed with the research connecting what happens to us emotionally — especially early in life — to what eventually shows up in our bodies.
I came across this Norwegian study while listening to Christina Applegate's new memoir, You with the Sad Eyes. She trauma dumps — freely and without apology — and somewhere in the middle of it, I couldn't stop thinking: what if these things aren't separate stories?
Turns out, researchers are asking the same question.
The study followed nearly 78,000 women and found that childhood sexual or emotional abuse was associated with a significantly increased risk of developing multiple sclerosis. Women who experienced sexual abuse had a 65% higher risk. Those exposed to all three types of abuse (sexual, emotional, and physical) had a 93% higher risk.
The theory is that childhood trauma triggers a chronic stress response that the body never fully shuts off. A proinflammatory state that persists for decades. Stored, not resolved... and then dismissed.
Women are already underdiagnosed and underbelieved in medicine. Add a trauma history, and suddenly symptoms become anxiety, stress, and "have you tried therapy?" The idea that the stress response to trauma could be a biological MS risk factor doesn't just tell us something about the disease; it tells us something about why women's pain gets dismissed for so long.
Most of us have spent years wondering what our bodies were trying to tell us. Some of us are still finding out.
Ask Clara:
"When does MS typically show up in women?"
Endometriosis: Four to Eleven Years of Being Told "It's Fine"
Every day, without fail, a version of the same search lands in Rescripted's data: why are my period cramps so bad, is this amount of pain normal, can't get out of bed during period. Millions of women, typing the same quiet desperation into a search bar (at what I can only assume is 2 a.m.), hoping someone on the other side finally has an answer.
Here's the thing: for a lot of them, it's not just bad cramps. It's endometriosis, a chronic condition where tissue similar to the uterine lining grows outside the uterus, causing pain that can be genuinely debilitating. And according to new clinical guidance just released by ACOG, people are waiting between four and eleven years on average from the onset of symptoms to an actual diagnosis. Four to eleven years of heating pads, Advil, and being told, in one way or another, that this is just how periods are.
It's not.
What makes this guidance feel significant — and it is significant, because this is new guidance that, for the first time, focuses specifically on diagnosis — is that it gives clinicians permission to stop waiting for surgery to confirm what a patient's symptoms are already saying. A clinical diagnosis, based on history and physical exam, is now explicitly supported. Which means treatment can start faster. Which means women don't have to keep suffering through month after month while the system gets around to believing them.
March is Endometriosis Awareness Month, which is usually when the infographics appear and then disappear. But I keep thinking about all the women in our community who are still in the middle of that wait — still wondering if they're being dramatic, still being dismissed.
You're not. The system just took eleven years to say so.
My Whole Personality Is a Pisces (Except When It Isn't)
Every year around my birthday, I do this thing where I take stock — not in a vision-board way, more like a slightly uncomfortable audit of the gap between who I think I am and who I actually seem to be.
I've always identified hard with my sign. Pisces: creative, intuitive, charismatic, sees the best in everyone to an occasionally inconvenient fault, toxically positive (if we're being honest about it). Co-Star, for their part, suggests my best career options include "amateur poet," "sad clown," and "orb of light," which honestly tracks more than I'd like to admit. All of it has felt true for so long that I stopped questioning whether it still fit, which is probably its own kind of Pisces behavior.
Here's the thing about Pisces, though: it's two fish swimming in opposite directions, the whole symbol built around contradiction. And lately, looking at the people closest to me — my husband, most of my good friends, basically an unintentional Pisces support group I never formally organized — it's obvious we share a sign and almost nothing else. He's internal where I'm external, Type A to my Type B, same birthday season, completely different operating systems. At some point astrology stops explaining it, and you just have to accept that people contain multitudes... even the ones with the same cosmic assignment.
What it's made me think about is labels more broadly: how we pick them up young, wear them long enough that they start to feel like fact, and then one birthday you look around and realize the label was never the whole picture. Just the part that was easiest to explain.
The older I get, the less I fit the story I've been telling about myself — and somehow, that feels like exactly the right direction.
I Scheduled All My Appointments (and Then Cancelled All My Appointments)
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This week I did something I'd been meaning to do for months: I sat down, opened my calendar, and scheduled everything — the annual GYN visit, thyroid bloodwork, the follow-up I'd been quietly avoiding. It felt genuinely good, like the responsible adult version of a gold star.
And then my kid got the stomach bug.
Which triggered the kind of scheduling jenga that only working moms truly understand: the one where pulling out a single block brings the whole week down with it. The GYN had to go because someone had to stay home with a sick seven-year-old, and that someone was me. The bloodwork required fasting, which required planning, which required a version of my week that simply did not exist. And somewhere in the chaos, my pharmacy filled a prescription I actually needed with the wrong dosage, which — truly, a nice touch.
This is the administrative tax nobody mentions when they say "prioritize your health," as if the hardest part is deciding to do it. A 2024 Deloitte survey found that half of women skip or delay medical care in a given year, and are 35% more likely to do so than men... which tracks. We're not skipping it because we don't care; we're skipping it because we're the ones holding the bowl.
I did make it to therapy, though, and given the week I just described, that felt like exactly the right appointment to keep.
Trimester Zero: Knowledge Is Power, Until It Isn't
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Someone asked me recently what I thought about the "trimester zero" trend: the growing movement of women spending months, sometimes years, optimizing their bodies before they even try to conceive. Swapping out nonstick pans, replacing workout clothes, unplugging the Wi-Fi at night, taking beef organ capsules. All of it in pursuit of the perfect fertility foundation.
They asked: what's your hot take?
I said: do you want my answer as a founder, or as a person?
As a founder in the women's health space, I wholeheartedly believe knowledge is power — Rescripted is quite literally built on that premise, the idea that women deserve access to real, evidence-based information about their bodies, and that being informed leads to better outcomes. I stand by that completely.
But as a type-B human with ADHD who has lived through infertility, two high-risk pregnancies, and a miscarriage, I also know that more information is not always more peace. And peace, it turns out, matters more than most wellness influencers will ever admit.
The thing that worries me about trimester zero isn't the prenatal vitamins or the earlier bedtimes. It's the subtext. The quiet implication that if you just prepare enough, optimize enough, eliminate enough toxins, you'll be rewarded with an easy road to pregnancy. And when it doesn't work out that way, as it doesn't for one in six people globally, the information that was supposed to empower you can start to feel like a (very long) checklist of things you did wrong.
Fertility issues are not your fault, regardless of what you did or didn't do to prepare, and no amount of optimization changes that. My "hot take"? Know what helps you, ignore what doesn't, and whatever helps you sleep at night — that's the right answer.
The Thing That Wasn't on My Registry (But Maybe Should Have Been)
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When I was pregnant with my twins, I was not what you'd call a planner. I had the basics covered and a general sense of optimism, which — if you've ever carried two babies at once — you know is both completely understandable and slightly delusional. Cord blood banking wasn't even on my radar, and honestly, I wish someone had brought it up.
You've got enough to think about when prepping for baby: diapers, wipes, a bassinet that fits in your room. Cord blood banking didn't make my list the first time around, and I get why it doesn't make most people's. But the stem cells in your baby's cord blood are packed with powerful cells that could treat over 70 conditions, including leukemia and immune disorders. They're a perfect match for your baby and possibly siblings, too. The collection itself is quick, safe, and painless: it happens right after birth, so it's not adding anything to your plate in the moment. And ongoing medical research could unlock even more uses in the future.
The honest caveat: private banking isn't cheap. But some parents are now adding it to their baby registry... because it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bank something priceless. And unlike the fourth muslin blanket on your list, this one actually has a shot at mattering in ways you can't fully anticipate yet.
Use promo code SCRP at cordblood.com for 50% off CBR's annual bundle, including processing, shipping, and the first year of storage. And if you want to find out more about cord blood banking, we've got you.
The registry list is long. This one's worth adding.
Say Yes to the Plans
I saw a video recently that said something like: if you want a social life, you have to actually say yes when people invite you places.
Which sounds obvious. And yet.
As a mom of three, the default answer to almost any plan that requires leaving my house after 7 p.m. could easily be no. Not a mean no, not an unwilling no, just a tired one. The couch is right there, the kids still need to be bathed, and there's a show I've been meaning to watch for six months. The reasons stack up fast, and they're all perfectly reasonable. They're just not the whole story.
I say yes anyway. And that small decision has made more of a difference than I expected.
My esthetician — who is Irish and therefore says things with a matter-of-factness I find deeply refreshing — told me recently, "If it wasn't for our girlfriends, we'd all lose our marbs."
She's not wrong.
There's something that happens when you're around other women that doesn't quite happen anywhere else: the kind of conversation that goes from genuinely funny to unexpectedly honest in about four minutes. The feeling of being known, not as someone's mom or someone's employee or someone's whatever, but just as yourself, with a drink in your hand and nowhere else you need to be.
It doesn't have to be elaborate — drinks, a walk, someone's kitchen table. It just has to happen.
So if you've been feeling a little untethered lately (a little like you're losing your marbs), before you Google your symptoms or adjust your supplements, just ask yourself: when was the last time you said yes to plans?
Ask Clara:
"Is laughter really the best medicine?"
Meghan Trainor’s Surrogacy Decision (and Why People Have Opinions)
When Meghan Trainor shared that she used a surrogate for her third baby after two C-sections and complicated pregnancies, my first reaction wasn’t shock. It was recognition.
Not because I have strong opinions about how celebrities grow their families, but because I understand the calculus that starts happening after your body has been through it — surgery, risk conversations, recovery that’s longer and heavier than the announcement. After you’ve already done the brave thing twice, after infertility and operating rooms and signing forms you barely remember reading, gratitude and fear can start living in the same body.
She said her doctors advised her against carrying again. She talked about safety, about wanting to be present for the kids she already has. It felt measured and practical. Almost immediately, though, the online commentary filled in the rest: privilege, outsourcing, what “real” motherhood requires.
It’s interesting how quickly women’s reproductive decisions become public debate, especially when they step even slightly outside the expected script. We celebrate endurance (fertility treatments, high-risk pregnancies, repeat surgeries), and then get uneasy when someone chooses not to endure one more round.
Surrogacy is layered: money, access, ethics, none of it simple. But so is pregnancy. Repeat C-sections carry increased risks, maternal health in this country is complicated at best, and choosing not to do it again isn’t a scandal; it’s a decision.
Eventually, the question shifts from proving you can to deciding you don’t have to.
When Your Postpartum Period Has a Personality
After two pregnancies and three babies, I thought I knew my body pretty well. We've been through infertility, loss, two vaginal births, and a C-section — I felt like we had a rhythm. And then my period came back postpartum and introduced itself like someone I’d met once in college and barely recognized now.
Not necessarily more painful. Just… different. Heavier. More dramatic. The kind of cycle that makes you check the calendar twice and wonder if your uterus has been quietly rebranding. I remember thinking, is this just what happens now? Because no one really mentions this part. You get the discharge instructions, the mesh underwear, the six-week clearance. You do not get a heads up that months later your period might return with a slightly louder personality.
There are reasons for it. After pregnancy, your uterus has stretched and shifted and done the absolute most. When your cycle returns, prostaglandins (the compounds that trigger uterine contractions) can fluctuate, and the uterine lining can be thicker at first, which can mean a heavier period. Breastfeeding adds a whole other layer, and when hormones finally recalibrate, things can feel unpredictable before they feel steady.
For a lot of women, the first three to six cycles are the messiest... heavier, irregular, just off. I wrote a full breakdown of what’s happening physiologically, what actually helps, and when it’s worth checking in about conditions like endometriosis or adenomyosis (which pregnancy can temporarily mask), here.
Just because your body did something extraordinary doesn’t mean it snaps back into familiarity overnight. It’s allowed to need real support afterward.
Ask Clara:
"Can you get pregnant while breastfeeding?"
"Half His Age" and the Relationships We’re Still Untangling
I finished Half His Age in two nights — the kind where you look up, it’s past midnight, and you’re already tired for tomorrow. If you read I’m Glad My Mom Died and immediately decided Jeannette McCurdy could write anything and you’d follow... same.
I loved it. Then I read the reviews and had that familiar reaction when something hits a little too close to home and the internet starts picking it apart.
The premise is uncomfortable by design: a high school teacher, a student, an affair. People are calling it gratuitous, irresponsible, unnecessary. And I understand the instinct to recoil. We want stories like this to tell us exactly how to feel.
But that’s not what she’s doing.
McCurdy has spoken openly about being in a relationship with an older man when she was 18 — someone with power over her, someone who should have known better. Half His Age is her processing that experience through fiction, which is what writers do with the things that are too sharp to hold any other way. The discomfort isn’t incidental; it’s the whole point.
What she captures — the way a young woman can mistake control for love, intensity for intimacy, attention from the wrong person for proof of her own worth — isn’t gross. It’s familiar. It happens constantly, quietly, to girls who grow up to be women still untangling it decades later. (I don’t know many of us who don’t have some version of that story.)
Brilliant coming-of-age stories are rarely comfortable. The ones that stay with you usually aren’t. And maybe the urge to look away says more about us than it does about the book.