Part I: Repair ~ Bona Dea Journal Series

Repair is the recollection of the forgotten, the frayed, the unspoken, and the shifted, towards a returning and a becoming. It recognises rupture as a necessary restructure, creating space for renewal. It holds respect for continuity and brings meaning to mending. Culturally, repair resists disposability.

It opposes the perpetual need to replace, with speed and convenience, which bypasses the effort needed for lessons gained in discomfort. Instead, repair requires a kind of honest lingering, to gain an understanding that only presents itself with time and context. It asks for a willingness to be shaped by the process of ritualised consistency, paving the way for the returning of parts.

Repair is deeply personal. It lives in the body’s negotiations, in scar tissue, in sensitivity, in the places that ask for closer listening. It asks us to soften our urgency and to move at the pace of trust rather than outcome. Through this, repair becomes an act of self-relationship, where care is practiced through patience, attention, and remembering to move towards a sense of wholeness that comes from integration.

In naturopathy, repair nods to the restoration of the relationship between things. Between bodily systems like our digestive system and our nervous system; our bodies and our environment, habits and history; and the internal language we use with our body. It’s the intention to understand and rediscover the ever-changing dynamics, knowing they never exactly repeat but are refined into new expressions of themselves. Some forms of repair are made tangible through what we choose to return to, simple formulations, intentional processes, and ingredients that are allowed to remain whole. In this way, repair becomes a practice held in the rituals we repeat.

On a practical level, repair begins by turning our attention inwards and engaging in the
conversation our symptoms are offering. In my clinical practice, I see this most clearly in the restoration of female hormone health. As women, it’s easy to feel as though our hormones are speaking a language we were never taught to understand, unpredictable, confusing, and difficult to trust. This makes sense. We were raised in a culture that values linearity, convenience, and constant output, while our bodies move in rhythms, cycles, and subtleties.

When you’re asked to perform consistently in a system that doesn’t honour your biology, it’s easy to feel out of sync with yourself, or to believe your body is failing you. Repair, in this context, is about learning your patterns and gently rebuilding a relationship where the body becomes a place of trust and collaboration, rather than conflict.

My three starting points for restoring this relationship are nervous system support, warmth as medicine, and mindful absorption. Support your nervous system. Regular meals with protein, fat and carbs provide the nutrients and the consistency that supports stable, regular hormonal communication. Skipping meals signals scarcity and triggers fluctuations in stress hormones. Anchor into the practices that begin your day, a balanced breakfast, sunlight, breathing and mindful quiet before checking your
phone helps stabilise your stress hormones for the day. Warm your womb. This is my favourite underrated support especially in the lead up to your bleed. Cold, restriction, and pushing yourself unnecessarily override hormonal intelligence. Eating warm foods, drinks, baths, and keeping your lower abdomen cozy supports blood flow
and signals safety to reproductive hormones.

Mind what you absorb. Hormones respond not only to food, but to what we put on and around our bodies, skincare, cleaning products, plastics, and even constant digital stimulation all contribute to endocrine stress. Choosing clean, thoughtfully formulated products reduces the chemical load on your endocrine system, supporting hormonal balance. For example, swapping artificially fragranced cleaning products for natural alternatives like Koala Eco with gentle, plant-based ingredients can lower the impact these harsh chemicals have on your sex hormones. Similarly, choosing Seed & Sprout Co. glass containers over plastic, reduces exposure to xenoestrogens that cause havoc on our oestrogen signalling. Selecting skincare free from parabens, phalates, and strong synthetic fragrances, and instead using plant-derived, nutrient-rich options like The INBLUEM Finger Lime Repair Serum, provides phytonutrients that nourish your skin without disrupting endocrine function.

Repair is an ongoing conversation with your body and your environment. It asks for patience, attentiveness, and the willingness to meet your rhythms on their own terms. In honoring this process, we cultivate trust, presence, and a deeper understanding of our own cycles as we participate in repair as an embodied act of self care. It is in these small, considered gestures that restoration takes root, and the body, mind, and spirit begin to remember how to move in harmony with one another.

By Ebany Holloway
Clinical Naturopath & Founder of Bona Dea