Mission

STORY

Hello, I'm Clea, an AFAP-certified London-based fertility awareness and sexual health educator, and the founder of Clear Cycles.

I've been tracking my cycles and avoiding pregnancy naturally using fertility awareness practices for the last 10 years.

I went on the hormonal contraceptive briefly during university, and honestly, I had no noticeable side effects. But one day, my friend told me that she had recently learnt in a pharmacology lecture that the contraceptive pill had as strong of an effect on a woman's mental health than anti-depressants. From that point forward, I really began to question why I was taking this very strong pill daily, to block my intermittent fertility. Suddenly, none of it felt right to me. I came off the pill, and never looked back.

Years later, after some trial and error using apps like Natural Cycles and my own naive intuition (thinking I could just guess when I was fertile), I decided to learn the rules of a sympto-thermal fertility awareness method, from a wonderful teacher, Isobel Ripley. And, my life was changed. I knew from that point forward that I wanted to teach cycle and body literacy to as many people as possible, and show them how to bring this life-changing practice into their lives.

I trained for two years to become an AFAP-certified Fertility Awareness and Sexual Health Educator at the Well School of Body Literacy, led by Midwife and FAE Sarah Bly. You can read more about the standards and practices of the Association of Fertility Awareness Practitioners (AFAP) here.

During my training, I realised that the "secondary" benefits of tracking fertility biomarkers in many ways outweigh its "primary" purpose: natural contraception and conception.

Your basal body temperature and cervical fluid changes are essentially hormone markers; they don't just tell you when you are fertile and whether you are ovulating cycle to cycle.

They tell you how in balance your hormones are.

They are a mirror into your reproductive and endocrine health.

They tell you exactly where you are in your cycle; this is so helpful if your cycles aren't regular or typical.

And, of course, observing your fertility day-to-day can be a beautiful, grounding practice, connecting you in a very unique way with your body.

Your biomarkers can only really be studied for these numerous cycle insights if you are experiencing natural cycles, and are not on hormonal birth control or using the IUD. But, you can learn these tools for future use, even if you're on birth control.

Why should this all be gate kept for those wanting to learn all the rules to avoid pregnancy naturally, or to support conception?

Through Clear Cycles, I hope to teach as many women and female-bodied humans with cycles as possible how to track and interpret their hormone and fertility biomarkers: no matter their reproductive goals and choices.