Motherhood, Women’s Health, and Raising a Healthier Generation

I go through phases in my career where I feel hopeful about the direction women’s health is moving in, and then there are days where I feel we are still very much practicing symptom-based care. Women’s health is incredibly complex, and no two women need exactly the same thing. One woman may need support with stress management, another may need help rebuilding her gut microbiome, while someone else may need more movement, counselling, better sleep, or support through hormonal transitions. Health is rarely one-dimensional, yet so much of modern care still tries to fit women into standardized boxes.

Over the years, I have openly spoken about the need for more integrated approaches to healthcare. I truly believe we need clinics and practitioners that work together rather than separately. There have been periods in my own life where exercise became the most important piece of my health. Other times, I needed to focus more deeply on stress management, gut health, emotional resilience, or slowing down. The body is constantly adapting through different seasons of life, and women especially move through enormous physiological transitions that require different levels of support at different times.

What continues to concern me is that many women still do not receive comprehensive care early enough. We are often waiting until symptoms become loud before anyone starts asking deeper questions. At the same time, we are still living in a healthcare system heavily driven by insurance-based medicine, where people expect insurance to cover every aspect of care. Unfortunately, many of the tools that can provide deeper insight into health  i.e. stool testing, comprehensive hormone analysis, detailed nutrient testing, microbiome assessments, and preventative care  are often not covered at all. This creates a difficult situation where individuals are forced to choose between investing in their health now or waiting until disease progresses further.

One of the biggest gaps I see today is adolescent health. Teenagers are not always open about what they are experiencing physically. Conversations around mental health have become far more normalized, which is incredibly important, but discussions around menstrual health, headaches, migraines, digestion, fatigue, painful periods, and changing eating habits are still often brushed aside or normalized. “She’s just hormonal.” “She’s in bed with another headache.” “It’s just stress.” These are phrases we hear all the time, yet many of these symptoms are signals that the body may need more support.

Puberty is one of the most metabolically demanding transitions in life. The microbiome changes significantly during these years, eating habits become more established, and hormonal shifts increase nutritional demands dramatically. By the time many young adults are 18 or 19, their relationship with food, stress, sleep, and movement has already become deeply ingrained. This is why I believe we need to start looking at children and adolescents in a much more individualized way. We need to ask deeper questions. What is their diet actually providing? Are they eating enough protein? Are they getting enough minerals? What does their gut health look like? How is stress affecting them? What are their eating patterns teaching their metabolism and microbiome long term?

As a mom of two young boys, I am constantly thinking about how to stay one step ahead in understanding their health and development. This Mother’s Day, I found myself reflecting on just how much my children still need me and how much more I want to teach them before they eventually leave home for college. The older they get, the more I realize that motherhood is not simply about raising children. It is about preparing human beings to understand their bodies, trust themselves, and take ownership of their health long before they enter adulthood.

I honestly believe motherhood, in all of its juggling, has become one of the greatest challenges of our generation. Women today are balancing careers, households, emotional labor, parenting, and their own health, often while trying to navigate systems that still do not fully support preventative care or education around wellness. Things are changing, but not fast enough. We still have not fully empowered the next generation to feel truly in control of their health.

Social media continues to dominate many of the decisions our children make around food, skincare, body image, and lifestyle habits. Kids are deeply influenced by what their peers are wearing, eating, drinking, and putting on their skin. Much of their understanding of health is shaped through trends rather than education. Often, it is only when something more serious develops such as acne, fatigue, gut issues, anxiety, hormonal problems, or weight struggles  that families begin making meaningful changes to diet and lifestyle. By then, many unhealthy habits have already become deeply ingrained.

This pattern has been happening for decades, and I think we need to start changing the conversation much earlier. We need to teach our children that health is not something that suddenly matters when symptoms appear. Health is built daily through food choices, sleep, movement, stress management, relationships, cooking, and understanding the signals the body is constantly giving us. We need to normalize conversations around menstrual health, digestion, energy, mood, concentration, and nutrition in the same way we normalize conversations about school and achievement.

I also think one of the greatest opportunities we have as parents is teaching our children how to cook. Cooking is not just a household task; it is a lifelong health skill. Somewhere along the way, we placed enormous emphasis on academic performance while underestimating the importance of learning how to nourish ourselves. Knowing how to prepare food, build balanced meals, and understand ingredients creates a completely different relationship with health later in life. It builds confidence, independence, and awareness around nutrition in a way that no textbook can fully teach.

More than anything, I believe it is time to empower both girls and boys to understand that their health is in their hands. Not through fear, restriction, or perfection, but through education and awareness. The earlier we teach children how to nourish themselves, understand their bodies, and build resilience, the greater chance we have of creating a generation that feels healthier, stronger, and far more connected to themselves than many of us were taught to be.