<script data-pm-proxy="intercept"></script><?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0" xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd" xmlns:googleplay="http://www.google.com/schemas/play-podcasts/1.0"><channel><title><![CDATA[Humanhood]]></title><description><![CDATA[Humanhood explores the deep intelligence of the body—through science, story, and soul. A space for embodiment, biology, and becoming—for those tired of fixing and ready to listen.]]></description><link>https://melaniemurphyrd.substack.com</link><image><url>https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!qURM!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff2ec4181-8c17-4c1e-b8b4-ae254b46a2a7_1280x1280.png</url><title>Humanhood</title><link>https://melaniemurphyrd.substack.com</link></image><generator>Substack</generator><lastBuildDate>Fri, 04 Sep 2026 15:20:04 GMT</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="/__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/feed" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><copyright><![CDATA[Melanie Murphy Richter, MS RDN]]></copyright><language><![CDATA[en]]></language><webMaster><![CDATA[melaniemurphyrd@substack.com]]></webMaster><itunes:owner><itunes:email><![CDATA[melaniemurphyrd@substack.com]]></itunes:email><itunes:name><![CDATA[Melanie Murphy Richter, MS RDN]]></itunes:name></itunes:owner><itunes:author><![CDATA[Melanie Murphy Richter, MS RDN]]></itunes:author><googleplay:owner><![CDATA[melaniemurphyrd@substack.com]]></googleplay:owner><googleplay:email><![CDATA[melaniemurphyrd@substack.com]]></googleplay:email><googleplay:author><![CDATA[Melanie Murphy Richter, MS RDN]]></googleplay:author><itunes:block><![CDATA[Yes]]></itunes:block><item><title><![CDATA[A Love Letter to the Collective Female Wound]]></title><description><![CDATA[A descent into motherhood, the currency of beauty, and the female wounds we were never meant to carry alone]]></description><link>https://melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/p/a-love-letter-to-the-collective-female</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/p/a-love-letter-to-the-collective-female</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Melanie Murphy Richter, MS RDN]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 14 Aug 2026 17:39:14 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!fu3t!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe042beca-1719-4fcd-93c6-f7fa06efceb6_1320x1737.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!fu3t!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe042beca-1719-4fcd-93c6-f7fa06efceb6_1320x1737.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!fu3t!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_424, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe042beca-1719-4fcd-93c6-f7fa06efceb6_1320x1737.jpeg 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!fu3t!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_848, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe042beca-1719-4fcd-93c6-f7fa06efceb6_1320x1737.jpeg 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!fu3t!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe042beca-1719-4fcd-93c6-f7fa06efceb6_1320x1737.jpeg 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!fu3t!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe042beca-1719-4fcd-93c6-f7fa06efceb6_1320x1737.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!fu3t!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe042beca-1719-4fcd-93c6-f7fa06efceb6_1320x1737.jpeg" width="1320" height="1737" 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/__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe042beca-1719-4fcd-93c6-f7fa06efceb6_1320x1737.jpeg 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!fu3t!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_848, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe042beca-1719-4fcd-93c6-f7fa06efceb6_1320x1737.jpeg 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!fu3t!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe042beca-1719-4fcd-93c6-f7fa06efceb6_1320x1737.jpeg 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!fu3t!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe042beca-1719-4fcd-93c6-f7fa06efceb6_1320x1737.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image"><svg aria-hidden="true" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p></p><p>The journey into motherhood is a journey to the underworld.</p><p>It is a descent in which you are asked to remove your current garb - the identity you have worn until this point - so that you arrive fully naked at the gates of motherhood. Stripped of what once made you feel certain, you are left open to the terrifying and beautiful work of becoming someone new. There, you are given new fabric with which to weave a life and an identity you have never inhabited before.</p><p>You cannot bring everything you once knew or relied upon with you. Not because those things were wrong or useless, but because motherhood requires a different kind of fabric. Something stretchier. Stronger. More forgiving. Something capable of holding a body, a life, and a love that are all expanding at once.</p><p>And while you are down there, undressing from old identities and grieving the death of former selves, you are also asked to look directly into the eyes of every part of you that remains unfinished. The hard, unhealed places. The pieces you tucked away, stepped around, or simply learned to live apart from.</p><p>If I have learned anything from this experience, it is that you cannot hide on this journey.</p><p>Everything - and I mean everything - will find its way back to you.</p><p>Old wounds return and ask to be seen through newer, wiser eyes. Beliefs you have carried for years suddenly feel heavier when you are also carrying a baby. The old adage that &#8220;the only way out is through&#8221; has never felt more relevant to me than it does now.</p><p>So, as you stitch together new clothes from steadier material, doing your best with hands that are still learning, you must also pass through several gates within yourself.</p><p>Because when a mother is born, everything is reborn.</p><p>The way you have understood your body. The way you have measured success. The way you have loved. The way you have allowed yourself to be loved. It all comes back under investigation.</p><blockquote><p><em>Do I still believe this?</em></p><p><em>Is this mine, or was it handed to me?</em></p><p><em>Am I willing to carry the weight of this belief alongside the weight of my baby and this new life?</em></p></blockquote><p>I naively believed that pregnancy and birth would be the rebirth. I understand now that they were merely the preparation. The initiation. The first brave knock on Hades&#8217; door, asking to be shown what I must see before I can be born again.</p><p>Nearly two years into motherhood, the journey has been nothing like I imagined. It has been longer and less linear. Rougher in places. Filled with unexpected detours for questioning, grieving, and rediscovering.</p><p>And one thing has become clear: I am not walking a road paved by me alone.</p><p>It has been shaped by every mother who came before me. Every woman who has entered these depths and asked:</p><blockquote><p><em>Who am I now?</em></p><p><em>What matters to me?</em></p><p><em>How am I supposed to bend time enough to hold everything being asked of me?</em></p></blockquote><p>As we walk, we begin to understand that this process is not only required of us as individual women. It belongs to us collectively.</p><p>Motherhood is one passage into the underworld, but it is not the only one. Each time a woman is asked to surrender who she has been and step toward someone she has not yet met, she enters her own journey of becoming. And as she walks, she crosses the still-open wounds of what being female has looked like, sounded like, and felt like through the ages.</p><p>So much of it has been bitter and harsh. Wounding and cold. Isolating and fracturing.</p><p>My own initiation began during pregnancy.</p><p>As a dietitian who spends so much of her life talking about bodies, self-worth, and self-love, I did not expect to struggle so deeply with my growing body. After all, I was growing a human. The expansion was expected. It was miraculous.</p><p>Yes, and&#8230;</p><p>Dressing a new body was difficult. Finding ways to feel beautiful inside a body I did not recognize, and that often did not feel entirely my own, challenged me more than I wanted to admit.</p><p>I did not understand then that pregnancy was only the beginning of that wound revealing itself.</p><p>I am now three months shy of celebrating two years since I birthed my best friend into the world. The greatest creation of my life. And still, I find myself circling the pond of physical worthiness.</p><p>I peer into the reflection and see all the ways my body is no longer what it once was.</p><p>It is softer now. Rounder in the place where my baby once lived, as though my body is determined to remember forever that he was once physically part of me.</p><p>And there are questions I have been almost afraid to ask:</p><blockquote><p><em>Could I still be loved this way?</em></p><p><em>Could I still experience the thrills and advantages of sexiness, allure, and lust?</em></p></blockquote><p>I see those things differently now. I understand them as currencies women have been taught to use, exchanges through which we have learned to secure attention, access, protection, and power within a world largely constructed by men.</p><p>Three questions continue to move through me:</p><ol><li><p>Do I still need these currencies to succeed and thrive?</p></li><li><p>Can I untangle my body from my worth when both men and women continue to exchange in this currency, often without realizing it?</p></li><li><p>And can I learn, despite all this conditioning, to love my body again?</p></li></ol><h5><strong>Not despite its changes, but because of them?</strong></h5><p>My best friend recently asked me, as I talked to her for what felt like the four-hundredth time about my body, whether I could trace this belief back to my childhood or young adulthood.</p><p>Where had I learned that my face and body were among my greatest assets? Perhaps even my greatest weapons?</p><p>I sat with that question for a long time.</p><p>Of course, I can trace it back.</p><p>I remember the summer I &#8220;became pretty&#8221; between eighth and ninth grade. I went away for the summer and, without consciously deciding to, stopped eating. It was an emo, Avril Lavigne summer spent ice-skating in Sun Valley, Idaho, and mourning the loss of my elementary-school identity.</p><p>It was a small, unconscious eating disorder that lasted only a few months, but it changed the way the world saw me.</p><p>The baby-faced, rounded child who had left for the summer returned as what the world recognized as a slender, attractive young woman.</p><p>The disordered eating resolved quickly once I understood the proverbial and physical weight of what I was doing. But the body remained. The baby weight was gone, making room for a more mature, soon-to-be athletic build.</p><p>And people noticed.</p><p>Their noticing left a mark on me.</p><p>I understood, even then, that this new body was a favorable condition. That the world responded differently to me within it.</p><p>This experience, along with so many others, reinforced what appeared to be an obvious truth:</p><p>Being small and pretty will open doors.</p><p>But as I searched my own history for the source of my current ache, I realized the pain I was touching did not belong only to me.</p><p>I was standing upon the open wounds of women everywhere.</p><p>The collective female wound.</p><p>The centuries-old wound of women fighting for survival, sometimes even fighting one another, to secure the food, shelter, status, and protection that only men were allowed to control.</p><p>The wound left by a world that separated us from the sacredness of the feminine and then taught us to distrust the very qualities that made us powerful. Our softness. Our intuition. Our intentionality. Our capacity to nourish and receive. Our refusal to abandon the body in service of endless production.</p><p>This wound is bigger than me.</p><p>It is a deep chasm, widened each time another weight-loss diet or pill becomes a moral victory. Each time we celebrate a woman primarily for becoming smaller. Each time we congratulate her for burning the wick at both ends so she can keep pace with a model of success that was never designed to honor her body.</p><p>It widens each time we override our boundaries to please someone else.</p><p>Each time we feel ashamed because we cannot be everything to everyone, all at once.</p><p>Each time we call our exhaustion ambition.</p><p>I have been circling this part of the road for some time now.</p><p>I have been sitting beside it, feeling every tear, every heartbreak, and every love that went unacknowledged, trying to understand how we begin to heal something so old and so vast.</p><blockquote><p>How can I better support all the women around me?</p></blockquote><p>The young and impressionable, before this way of living is tattooed onto their souls.</p><p>Those of us who are bravely opening our eyes to the ways we have unconsciously participated in our own diminishment.</p><p>And the wise, sage women who have lived long enough to see the illusion clearly, yet are made to feel invisible by a world that prefers women young, beautiful, and easily consumed.</p><p>Of course, it is very on-brand for me, the body-literacy, body-comes-first practitioner, to have found my way to this part of the road through my body.</p><p>This fuller, wider, softer, more experienced body I inhabit now.</p><p>Perhaps I need the daily physical reminder when I look at myself.</p><p>Perhaps I need to see that I am here, standing at this particular juncture of my underworld rebirth, so I can remember to tell you how collective this feeling is.</p><blockquote><h5>How very much it does not belong to you alone.</h5><h5>How very alone you are not.</h5></blockquote><p>Maybe healing begins each time one of us opens her mind to the possibility that she can be loved without first changing her physical appearance.</p><p>Maybe it begins when we stop treating skinniness, self-denial, and &#8220;muscling through&#8221; as proof of our goodness.</p><p>Maybe it happens with every &#8220;I love you because of your changes.&#8221;</p><p>With every long hug shared between sisters and friends.</p><p>With every open, vulnerable conversation questioning our constant search for something outside ourselves, or some improved version of ourselves, that might finally make us worthy of receiving the love we have deserved all along.</p><blockquote><p>Perhaps we heal the collective wound each time we choose not to pass it on.</p></blockquote><p>And as someone still learning to uncouple her worth from her appearance, still practicing this love rather than having perfected it, I offer you these words with all the conviction I am learning to offer myself:</p><blockquote><p>May you know how deeply loved you are simply because you exist.</p><p>May you learn to look bravely at the ways you have denied yourself that love in the pursuit of &#8220;improvement.&#8221;</p><p>May you remember that rest is not something you must earn. That nourishment is not a weakness. That your body is not a problem to solve before your real life can begin.</p></blockquote><p>This healing revolution requires you to be well-nourished and well-rested. It requires you to feel strong and mighty. It requires clothes that stretch and move with the force of your power.</p><h5>Come find me when you are ready to revolt.</h5><p></p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading Humanhood! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[What I Didn’t Expect in My First Year of Motherhood]]></title><description><![CDATA[What happens when everything you&#8217;ve taught about the body comes back to teach you.]]></description><link>https://melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/p/what-i-didnt-expect-in-my-first-year</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/p/what-i-didnt-expect-in-my-first-year</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Melanie Murphy Richter, MS RDN]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 12 Nov 2025 20:42:02 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!UkcT!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F587be5f4-2cd6-405a-ae75-5beb2be9f3d1_1536x2048.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I thought I understood what it meant to surrender.</p><p>I&#8217;d practiced it before - in healing my gut, in rebuilding my relationship with food, in learning to soften control. I&#8217;ve sat across from countless women and told them that healing requires patience, that our bodies are wiser than we think.</p><p>But nothing - no degree, no meditation, no years of body awareness - could have prepared me for the kind of surrender motherhood demands.</p><p>It isn&#8217;t necessarily graceful. It&#8217;s raw and unpredictable - a surrender that breaks you open at 3 a.m., half naked and exhausted. It&#8217;s the surrender that asks you to feed another life when your own body is hungry, to keep loving yourself even when you no longer recognize your reflection.</p><p>Some mornings, I feel like I&#8217;m meeting myself for the first time. Other mornings, I just feel like I&#8217;m struggling to remember who I am.<br>Both are true.</p><p>This year has been the most expansive and confronting of my life. I&#8217;ve never felt more myself, and yet more undone. And in that unraveling, I&#8217;ve met versions of me I didn&#8217;t know existed.</p><blockquote><p>I&#8217;ve come to see that motherhood is not one grand revelation but a thousand quiet awakenings - small reckonings that tug at your edges until you realize you&#8217;re no longer the same shape you were before.</p><p>These are the truths that changed me - the ones that softened my body, rewired my work, and deepened my understanding of what it means to belong to myself again.</p></blockquote><div><hr></div><h3><strong>The Body I&#8217;m Learning to Trust Again</strong></h3><p>I&#8217;ve spent the last 10 years of my adult life studying bodies - how they work, what they need, how to heal them. But living inside a postpartum body has forced me to learn a new kind of compassion.</p><p>I&#8217;m still struggling with it - still catching myself in the mirror and missing the version of me that once felt effortless. Some days I can meet my reflection with gratitude. Other days, I flinch. Both belong.</p><p>I&#8217;m learning to love myself <em>through</em> it, not <em>after</em> it.</p><p>There&#8217;s a breaking happening - of old paradigms, of the grand female wound that tells us our worth is measured by how quickly we can return to &#8220;before.&#8221; I see mothers around me who seem to have it all together, and the comparison creeps in. Then I look at him - his steady breath, the glow in his cheeks, his giggles and playfulness - and I remember: <em>this is what health looks like.</em></p><p>He is the evidence of my body&#8217;s wisdom.</p><p>Even when I don&#8217;t feel at home in it, I&#8217;m learning to trust the process - to believe that my body knows what it&#8217;s doing, even when my mind resists. Healing, strength, restoration&#8230; they all take the same ingredient: time.</p><div><hr></div><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!UkcT!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F587be5f4-2cd6-405a-ae75-5beb2be9f3d1_1536x2048.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!UkcT!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_424, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F587be5f4-2cd6-405a-ae75-5beb2be9f3d1_1536x2048.jpeg 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!UkcT!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_848, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F587be5f4-2cd6-405a-ae75-5beb2be9f3d1_1536x2048.jpeg 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!UkcT!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F587be5f4-2cd6-405a-ae75-5beb2be9f3d1_1536x2048.jpeg 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!UkcT!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F587be5f4-2cd6-405a-ae75-5beb2be9f3d1_1536x2048.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!UkcT!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F587be5f4-2cd6-405a-ae75-5beb2be9f3d1_1536x2048.jpeg" width="1456" height="1941" 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/__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F587be5f4-2cd6-405a-ae75-5beb2be9f3d1_1536x2048.jpeg 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!UkcT!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_848, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F587be5f4-2cd6-405a-ae75-5beb2be9f3d1_1536x2048.jpeg 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!UkcT!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F587be5f4-2cd6-405a-ae75-5beb2be9f3d1_1536x2048.jpeg 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!UkcT!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F587be5f4-2cd6-405a-ae75-5beb2be9f3d1_1536x2048.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image"><svg aria-hidden="true" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p></p><h3><strong>The Beautiful Tension of Motherhood</strong></h3><p>Motherhood lives at the poles of the human experience.</p><p>It&#8217;s wanting space and never wanting to be apart.<br>It&#8217;s craving freedom and aching for closeness.<br>It&#8217;s the push and pull of exhaustion and euphoria - sometimes in the same breath.</p><p>I used to think balance was the goal. Now I see it&#8217;s not rhythm we&#8217;re meant to find, but the ability to <em>live at both ends of the spectrum with flow.</em></p><p>We can be whole and stretched thin. Grateful and grieving. Overflowing and empty.<br>The miracle is not choosing one - it&#8217;s allowing both simultaneously.</p><div><hr></div><h3><strong>The Miracle of Nourishment</strong></h3><p>I always knew breastfeeding would be meaningful, but I didn&#8217;t realize how much reverence it would create - not just for my child, but for my body itself.</p><p>The most astonishing part is that I never had to tell my body what to do. It just&#8230; knew.<br>Without instruction, it produced exactly what he needed, when he needed it.<br>That quiet intelligence humbled me. It reminded me how often we second-guess our bodies - its hunger, its instincts, its timing - when in truth, it truly already knows.</p><p>During lactation, every metabolic pathway re-routes itself toward life. Science calls it <em>homeorhetic adaptation</em> - I just call it grace.</p><p>It&#8217;s a reminder that the body&#8217;s wisdom is ancient - that nourishment is not something we force but something we allow.</p><p>I&#8217;m learning to apply that same trust to the rest of my life: eat when I&#8217;m hungry, rest when I&#8217;m tired, speak when it matters, soften when it doesn&#8217;t.</p><div><hr></div><h3><strong>How My Digestion Changed (and What It Taught Me)</strong></h3><p>For most of my adult life, dairy has been an enemy. The tiniest amount would trigger inflammation, discomfort, all the things I teach people to listen for.</p><p>But after giving birth, something shifted. Slowly, gently, I began to tolerate small amounts again - what I call microdosing.</p><p>At first I thought it was coincidence. But research shows that during lactation, metabolism and digestion adapt - a phenomenon known as <em>enteroplasticity</em>. The gut becomes more flexible, more forgiving, more attuned to the body&#8217;s new demands.</p><p>I felt that in real time. My body, adapting to a new era.</p><p>I took it as an invitation to slow down. To go gently with food and with myself. Healing isn&#8217;t a straight line - it&#8217;s a conversation that changes every day. It&#8217;s another version of myself that I&#8217;m slowly letting go of. </p><div><hr></div><h3><strong>Work, Boundaries, and the Re-Definition of Productivity</strong></h3><p>Motherhood didn&#8217;t just change my body - it changed how I work.</p><p>I used to equate productivity with presence. If I wasn&#8217;t constantly creating, I wasn&#8217;t contributing.<br>Now, I understand that presence comes from focus - from showing up intentionally, not endlessly.</p><p>I&#8217;ve learned to be direct, to communicate clearly, to protect my time like it&#8217;s sacred (because it is).<br>I no longer apologize for needing boundaries; I build from them.</p><p>I have an entirely new respect for parents - for the invisible calculus of what it takes to show up in both spaces, home and work, heart and ambition. I truly feel like an octopus with 8 legs, one outstretched in every direction I&#8217;m needed. </p><p>For so long, I tried to &#8220;return&#8221; to how I was before. But you don&#8217;t return - you evolve.<br>You bring with you more dimension, more empathy, more depth, more power.</p><p>This new version of me isn&#8217;t less capable. She&#8217;s just more <em>human.</em></p><div><hr></div><h3><strong>The Shifting Shape of Relationships</strong></h3><p>Motherhood changed the geometry of my relationships - the angles, the distances, the ways they fit together.</p><p>I want to honor the people who have stayed steady in this season, even when I can&#8217;t meet them where I used to. My friends without kids still anchor me to other parts of myself - the woman who loves long dinners, deep talks, and spontaneous nights out. I&#8217;m grateful for that reminder of my wholeness.</p><p>And still&#8230; it&#8217;s different now.</p><p>My energy is divided in a way it&#8217;s never been before. Conversations happen in fragments, texts go unanswered. Some friendships have deepened with new tenderness; others have drifted quietly toward memory.</p><p>I&#8217;ve stopped taking that as loss. It&#8217;s simply evolution.</p><p>I no longer measure closeness by how often we talk, but by how <em>understood</em> I feel when we finally do. The friendships that endure this season are the ones that breathe - that make room for the pauses, the silences, the smallness of my availability without questioning the depth of my care.</p><p>Because I still care. Deeply. Differently.</p><div><hr></div><h3><strong>What I&#8217;m Taking With Me</strong></h3><p>This year stripped me down and built me back up.</p><p>I&#8217;ve learned that self-love isn&#8217;t found in returning to who you were - it&#8217;s found in honoring who you&#8217;re becoming.<br>That nourishment is as much about grace as it is about greens.<br>That it&#8217;s possible to be endlessly giving and fiercely self-protective at the same time.</p><p>My body still feels unfamiliar some days. My patience still runs thin. My boundaries wobble. But beneath all that, I feel anchored in a deeper truth - that this body, this life, this messy love - is exactly where I&#8217;m meant to be.</p><p>This year wasn&#8217;t about getting back to myself.<br>It was about meeting the woman who came after.</p><div><hr></div><div class="pullquote"><p><em>If you&#8217;re in this season too - holding both the beauty and the exhaustion, the strength and the softness - I see you. We&#8217;re rewriting the story of womanhood together, one gentle surrender at a time.</em></p></div><p><em>If this resonated with you, you can subscribe to <strong>Humanhood</strong> - a space for poetry, science, and the slow remembering of who we are becoming.</em></p><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe now&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="/__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/subscribe"><span>Subscribe now</span></a></p><p></p><div><hr></div>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Healing the Gut Makes People-Pleasing (almost) Impossible]]></title><description><![CDATA[Health, honesty, and a little "fuck it" energy.]]></description><link>https://melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/p/healing-the-gut-makes-people-pleasing</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/p/healing-the-gut-makes-people-pleasing</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Melanie Murphy Richter, MS RDN]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 24 Oct 2025 21:48:57 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!6RN_!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8abf584e-7bdc-4b2f-bf18-38f93882fc7c_3452x3855.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I had a conversation recently where I felt&#8230; different.<br>Bolder. Clearer. Unapologetic.</p><p>I wasn&#8217;t softening my words, or cushioning my truth to make it more digestible.<br>I was cutting right to it - naming what wasn&#8217;t working, what had been agreed to, and what I needed.</p><p>And I could feel my inner people-pleaser watching me, slightly alarmed.</p><blockquote><h5><em>Are you okay? Are we okay?</em></h5></blockquote><p>Of course I am.<br>I&#8217;ve spent over a decade healing my gut, and this is one of the outcomes.</p><div><hr></div><p>For most of my life, I thought confidence came from mindset work - affirmations, therapy, posture, preparation.<br>But true confidence, I&#8217;ve learned, is <em>physiological </em>first<em>.</em></p><p>When your gut is balanced, your whole body feels safe.<br>When your body feels safe, you can tolerate honesty.<br>And when you can tolerate honesty, your voice changes.</p><p>You stop swallowing your truth.<br>You stop saying yes when you mean no.<br>You stop pretending you&#8217;re fine when your body is clearly telling you otherwise.</p><p>Healing the gut often makes people-pleasing impossible.<br>You realize that feeling well means speaking up, even if it makes you the &#8220;difficult&#8221; one at the table.</p><div><hr></div><h3>The gut is often our first boundary.</h3><p><br>It&#8217;s where we feel our discomfort, our stress, our intuition.<br>It&#8217;s also where we absorb - food, yes, but also energy, emotion, and expectation.</p><p>So when the gut begins to heal, it forces a <strong>reckoning.</strong><br>You start making different choices.<br>You begin saying <em>no</em> to what you once tolerated.<br>You start noticing how much energy it takes to keep everyone else comfortable while abandoning yourself.</p><p>And sometimes, you say it out <em>loud</em>. (GOOD! Louder!)</p><div><hr></div><p>Let&#8217;s be honest, though - that part can be uncomfortable.<br>Because even as you begin to feel more like yourself, not everyone around you is ready for this version of you - the one who doesn&#8217;t automatically say yes, who asks for specifics, who requests what her body actually needs.</p><blockquote><p>You might feel &#8220;needy.&#8221;<br>You might feel &#8220;extra.&#8221;<br>You might feel &#8220;too much.&#8221;</p></blockquote><p>But believe me when I say: you&#8217;re not.<br>You&#8217;re just no longer willing to live in a body that feels out of alignment.</p><p>And this process takes practice. </p><div><hr></div><p>The work now - for me, and maybe for you - is to stay okay with how other people feel about your new voice.<br>To let them adjust, while you stay regulated.<br>To keep choosing what your body needs, even if it&#8217;s inconvenient.</p><p>Because healing isn&#8217;t just about soothing symptoms, it&#8217;s about returning to self-trust.<br>And that kind of trust changes everything: your digestion, your energy, your boundaries, your voice.</p><div><hr></div><h4><strong>A gentle reminder before the holidays:</strong></h4><p><br>This is the season when people-pleasing runs high.<br>The endless gatherings, expectations, social meals, and silent stressors can easily pull you away from yourself.</p><p>But it doesn&#8217;t have to.<br>If your body&#8217;s been asking for deeper alignment, start now.<br>Not in January. Not after the burnout. Now.</p><p>Rest when you need rest. Eat what truly nourishes you. Ask the &#8220;annoying&#8221; questions when eating out. And say &#8220;f-it&#8221; to anyone giving you a hard time for taking what you need. </p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!6RN_!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8abf584e-7bdc-4b2f-bf18-38f93882fc7c_3452x3855.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!6RN_!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_424, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8abf584e-7bdc-4b2f-bf18-38f93882fc7c_3452x3855.jpeg 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!6RN_!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_848, 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/__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8abf584e-7bdc-4b2f-bf18-38f93882fc7c_3452x3855.jpeg 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!6RN_!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8abf584e-7bdc-4b2f-bf18-38f93882fc7c_3452x3855.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image"><svg aria-hidden="true" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" 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y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p></p><p></p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading Humanhood! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[What I Wish I Had Ten Years Ago for My Gut Health]]></title><description><![CDATA[Why my own gut healing struggles led me to build the very tool I needed most.]]></description><link>https://melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/p/what-i-wish-i-had-ten-years-ago-for</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/p/what-i-wish-i-had-ten-years-ago-for</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Melanie Murphy Richter, MS RDN]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 03 Oct 2025 04:30:32 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dUzN!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fde9a10dc-49e8-4038-9061-a71092cda4d1_1284x2778.png" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>There&#8217;s a quiet kind of exhaustion that comes with food restrictions.</p><p>It&#8217;s not just about what you <em>can&#8217;t</em> eat. It&#8217;s the endless cycle of trial and error: eliminating, reauditioning, reading every label, second-guessing every symptom. This is the acute phase of gut healing: the stage where you must quell the inflammation and finally give your gut a moment of respite.</p><p>It&#8217;s necessary. It&#8217;s powerful. But it&#8217;s also one of the hardest phases of healing.</p><p>During my own journey, what made it especially difficult wasn&#8217;t just the physical symptoms - it was the logistics. What to cook, how to shop, how to find variety and joy in food again without risking another setback. Most days, compliance wasn&#8217;t about discipline - it was about decision fatigue.</p><p>As a dietitian, I&#8217;ve watched my patients experience the exact same thing. They are motivated. They want to heal. But the sheer burden of managing food restrictions often holds them back.</p><p>That&#8217;s why, over three years ago, I teamed up with Bernard, the CEO of Tera, to build what I wish I had back then.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dUzN!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fde9a10dc-49e8-4038-9061-a71092cda4d1_1284x2778.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dUzN!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_424, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fde9a10dc-49e8-4038-9061-a71092cda4d1_1284x2778.png 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dUzN!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_848, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fde9a10dc-49e8-4038-9061-a71092cda4d1_1284x2778.png 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dUzN!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fde9a10dc-49e8-4038-9061-a71092cda4d1_1284x2778.png 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dUzN!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fde9a10dc-49e8-4038-9061-a71092cda4d1_1284x2778.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dUzN!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fde9a10dc-49e8-4038-9061-a71092cda4d1_1284x2778.png" width="1284" height="2778" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/de9a10dc-49e8-4038-9061-a71092cda4d1_1284x2778.png&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:2778,&quot;width&quot;:1284,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:1427039,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/png&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:&quot;https://melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/i/175165401?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fde9a10dc-49e8-4038-9061-a71092cda4d1_1284x2778.png&quot;,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dUzN!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_424, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fde9a10dc-49e8-4038-9061-a71092cda4d1_1284x2778.png 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dUzN!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_848, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fde9a10dc-49e8-4038-9061-a71092cda4d1_1284x2778.png 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dUzN!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fde9a10dc-49e8-4038-9061-a71092cda4d1_1284x2778.png 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!dUzN!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fde9a10dc-49e8-4038-9061-a71092cda4d1_1284x2778.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image"><svg aria-hidden="true" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p></p><h3><strong>Why I Helped Build Tera</strong></h3><p><a href="https://app.hellotera.com/fkiG/6afnf44v">Tera is an AI-powered nutritionist</a>, meal planner, and grocery shopper built to support many different health journeys: gut health, metabolic health, hormone balance, energy, immunity, healthy aging, and more.</p><p>But for me, the vision has always been personal. I think back to the acute phase of gut healing - when eliminations and reauditions consumed every thought and every meal - and that&#8217;s what drives me.</p><p>We designed Tera, in part, to take the complexity out of those moments. To translate your health profile - conditions, intolerances, goals, preferences - into personalized recipes, meal plans, and Instacart-ready grocery lists. To give people the scaffolding that makes success not only possible, but sustainable.</p><p>Food as medicine only works if it&#8217;s food you actually want to eat. That&#8217;s the standard we built into Tera.</p><h3><strong>And this week, we&#8217;ve launched!</strong></h3><p>After three years of building, testing, and refining, we&#8217;re officially launching Tera.</p><p>It feels surreal to say that. Bernard, the incredible Tera team, and I began working on this long before an actual app existed, driven by the simple question: </p><blockquote><p><em>What if food as medicine could feel easy?</em></p></blockquote><p>Tera supports 60+ conditions, 50+ health goals, and 32 specialty different diets. It maps your biology to over 1,100 foods and their bioactives, delivering recipes and meal plans that actually fit your life.</p><p>While my personal &#8220;why&#8221; will always be gut health, I&#8217;m proud that Tera is designed for so much more. It&#8217;s for anyone who wants to align their food with their biology in a smarter, more joyful way.</p><h3><strong>A Note to My Gut Health Community</strong></h3><p>To my gut health community: I know how demanding this journey can be. The early stages can feel like more sacrifice than nourishment, more questions than answers.</p><p>But it doesn&#8217;t have to stay that way. With the right tools, healing can feel lighter, more sustainable, and even joyful. That&#8217;s what we built Tera to be - to make sure you don&#8217;t just know what you <em>can&#8217;t</em> eat, but that you have delicious, nourishing options for what you <em>can</em>. To bring more variety, more ease, and more joy into your healing journey.</p><blockquote><p>Your gut deserves rest. Your body deserves nourishment. And your healing deserves to feel a little lighter.</p></blockquote><p>Whether you&#8217;re a patient or a fellow Dietitian, I&#8217;m proud to share this with you. You can download Tera today in the App Store - or reach out to me directly, and I&#8217;ll happily walk you through how it works.</p><p>Download Tera today and try it for yourself. I&#8217;d love to hear how you like it&#8594; <a href="https://app.hellotera.com/fkiG/6afnf44v">https://app.hellotera.com/fkiG/6afnf44v</a></p><p></p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading Humanhood! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[Gut as Oracle]]></title><description><![CDATA[A story of healing my gut, realigning my life, and reclaiming trust in my body.]]></description><link>https://melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/p/gut-as-oracle</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/p/gut-as-oracle</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Melanie Murphy Richter, MS RDN]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 08 Aug 2025 20:21:24 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!D9NB!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffbd73ad0-2914-4382-9e79-c7c0565cfffb_3000x2000.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I thought I was doing all the right things.</p><p>Green smoothies. Yoga. Organic groceries. Smooth skin from expensive serums. A schedule that looked disciplined on paper.<br>And still, every morning, my gut ached like it was carrying a truth I didn&#8217;t want to hear. At the time, I didn&#8217;t realize it was my oracle.</p><p>Doctors called it IBS. They said it with the finality of a period at the end of a sentence. <em>&#8220;Fairly common. Nothing much to be done.&#8221;</em><br>As if that was an acceptable ending to my story.</p><p>What they didn&#8217;t see:<br>Days of diarrhea followed by days of constipation.<br>Twenty-five pounds of inflammatory weight I couldn&#8217;t shake.<br>Mood swings that took me down like riptides.<br>Irregular periods. Skin that mirrored the inflammation I felt inside. The creeping sense that my body was becoming foreign territory.</p><p>The worst part: anxiety every time I&#8217;d socialize with food for fear of not knowing how my body would respond. It lived rent-free in my mind, taking up space I needed for living.</p><p>And underneath it all, my life looked good on the outside; but inside, I knew it wasn&#8217;t mine. I was climbing a career ladder I didn&#8217;t believe in, pouring energy into work that drained me. I was in the middle of a relationship transition, trying to hold together a version of myself that no longer fit. My gut wasn&#8217;t just digesting food - it was digesting the weight of a life out of alignment.</p><p>What the doctor&#8217;s didn&#8217;t didn&#8217;t ask:<br><em>What my childhood diet looked like.</em><br><em>How my moods shifted with my digestion.</em><br><em>What I had been carrying - not just in my gut, but in my life.</em></p><p>The turning point came in a small clinic, sitting across from a Naturopathic Doctor who didn&#8217;t just look at my chart - she looked at the patterns. And she didn&#8217;t write me off. </p><p>She asked about my symptoms, yes, but also about my history. My stress. My sleep. My longing. She ordered specialty labs that revealed intolerances and imbalances no one had bothered to check.<br>We started with an elimination diet, targeted supplements, and gut-healing foods. But something else began to shift that had nothing to do with the protocol.</p><p>For the first time in years, I felt <em>heard.</em> </p><p>And in that safety, my body softened enough to respond. As my digestion steadied, other parts of my life began to shift into place, too. I found the courage to leave a career that no longer felt like mine. I began redefining relationships, letting go where I needed to, drawing closer where it felt true. Healing my gut became inseparable from realigning my life.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!D9NB!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffbd73ad0-2914-4382-9e79-c7c0565cfffb_3000x2000.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!D9NB!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_424, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffbd73ad0-2914-4382-9e79-c7c0565cfffb_3000x2000.jpeg 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!D9NB!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_848, 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/__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffbd73ad0-2914-4382-9e79-c7c0565cfffb_3000x2000.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!D9NB!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffbd73ad0-2914-4382-9e79-c7c0565cfffb_3000x2000.jpeg" width="1456" height="971" 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/__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffbd73ad0-2914-4382-9e79-c7c0565cfffb_3000x2000.jpeg 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!D9NB!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffbd73ad0-2914-4382-9e79-c7c0565cfffb_3000x2000.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image"><svg aria-hidden="true" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div><p>Slowly (but steadily), my digestion normalized. My moods evened out. My cycle regulated. The inflammation that had been clinging to me melted away like ice cream in the desert sun. And beneath the physical healing was a deeper realization:</p><p>My gut wasn&#8217;t the problem.<br>It was my most honest teacher.</p><p>We like to think symptoms are annoyances to suppress. Inconveniences that keep us from living &#8220;normally.&#8221; But symptoms are language. They are the body&#8217;s way of telling the truth before we&#8217;re ready to say it out loud.</p><p>Science calls it the gut-brain axis:<br><em>How your microbiome shifts with your emotions.<br>How inflammation influences mood and memory.<br>How the enteric nervous system - the &#8220;second brain&#8221; in your gut - processes information long before your conscious mind catches up.</em></p><p><strong>I call it the oracle.</strong></p><p><br>The part of you that knows when something is out of rhythm, before you have the words for it. It&#8217;s not just digesting my meals - it&#8217;s digesting my life. It tells me when something is nourishing me, and when it isn&#8217;t. It speaks about alignment, safety, and the truth of how I&#8217;m living.</p><p>If you take nothing else from my story, let it be this:</p><blockquote><p>Your gut is not your enemy.<br>Your symptoms are not your fault.<br>Your body is not broken.</p></blockquote><p>When I meet someone in this place - this moment where the body&#8217;s signals can&#8217;t be ignored - I quietly congratulate them. Because while it&#8217;s common to reach this level of discomfort, it&#8217;s far less common to respond. To listen. To act.</p><p>If you&#8217;re here, you&#8217;re already standing at the threshold of something truer. Your gut is guiding you, even now.</p><p>It is speaking.<br>It has always been speaking.<br>And the more you listen, the more you&#8217;ll remember that it&#8217;s been on your side all along.</p><p></p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading Humanhood! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item><item><title><![CDATA[What Is Humanhood?]]></title><description><![CDATA[A love letter to the space between biology and soul]]></description><link>https://melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/p/what-is-humanhood</link><guid isPermaLink="false">https://melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/p/what-is-humanhood</guid><dc:creator><![CDATA[Melanie Murphy Richter, MS RDN]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 30 Jul 2025 16:58:21 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!nSJQ!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F989ea17c-29c0-4e6b-b0ff-f6dd1d68fad4_2049x1536.jpeg" length="0" type="image/jpeg"/><content:encoded><![CDATA[<h1><strong>We were never meant to feel this disconnected.</strong></h1><p>From our bodies.<br>From each other.<br>From the rhythm of the earth and the wisdom of our cells.</p><p>For too long, we've been taught that the body is a machine to be hacked, a project to perfect, or a problem to solve. We've been told that healing happens only in sterile rooms, on rigid timelines, with someone else holding the answers.</p><p>But biology tells a different story.</p><p>Science shows us that our bodies are not broken&#8212;they are brilliant. Every day, your cells regenerate. Your microbiome shifts with your emotions. Your hormones whisper the state of your environment. Your nervous system responds to your relationships, your traumas, your joy.</p><blockquote><p>What if every symptom is a message?<br>What if every ache is a calling back home?</p></blockquote><h2><em><strong>Humanhood is the space where I begin again.</strong></em></h2><p>Where biology is honored.<br>Where language meets the body.<br>Where truth lives not in perfection&#8212;but in process, presence, and becoming.</p><p>This space was born from my own healing journey&#8212;years of navigating gut dysfunction, hormonal chaos, medical gaslighting, and the slow, aching work of remembering that my body was never the enemy.</p><p>It was born from grief.<br>From transformation.<br>And now, in my new era of motherhood.</p><p>From the quiet initiations that cracked me open.</p><p>And it was born from this knowing I now live in my bones:</p><p><em>That we are not fragments. We are whole.</em><br><em>That who we were, who we are, and who we&#8217;re becoming&#8212;are not separate selves, but one continuous unfolding.</em></p><p>The body&#8217;s biology remembers far more than we consciously do. Our cells carry echoes of the past&#8212;of what we&#8217;ve eaten, what we&#8217;ve feared, what we&#8217;ve loved. Our gut is a second brain. Our heart has its own rhythm of intelligence. The more we learn about the body, the more it confirms what the soul has always known:</p><p>We are not linear.<br>We are living systems, in motion.<br>We are becoming&#8212;again and again.</p><p>It&#8217;s not childhood. It&#8217;s not adulthood.<br>It&#8217;s not postpartum or perimenopause or reinvention.</p><h3>It&#8217;s <strong>Humanhood.</strong></h3><p>The full arc of being.<br>The full rhythm of becoming.</p><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" target="_blank" href="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!nSJQ!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F989ea17c-29c0-4e6b-b0ff-f6dd1d68fad4_2049x1536.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="/__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!nSJQ!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_424, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F989ea17c-29c0-4e6b-b0ff-f6dd1d68fad4_2049x1536.jpeg 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!nSJQ!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_848, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F989ea17c-29c0-4e6b-b0ff-f6dd1d68fad4_2049x1536.jpeg 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!nSJQ!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_webp, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F989ea17c-29c0-4e6b-b0ff-f6dd1d68fad4_2049x1536.jpeg 1272w, 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/__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F989ea17c-29c0-4e6b-b0ff-f6dd1d68fad4_2049x1536.jpeg 424w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!nSJQ!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_848, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F989ea17c-29c0-4e6b-b0ff-f6dd1d68fad4_2049x1536.jpeg 848w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!nSJQ!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_1272, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F989ea17c-29c0-4e6b-b0ff-f6dd1d68fad4_2049x1536.jpeg 1272w, /__u/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!nSJQ!, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/w_1456, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/c_limit, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/f_auto, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/q_auto:good, /__u/melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F989ea17c-29c0-4e6b-b0ff-f6dd1d68fad4_2049x1536.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" loading="lazy"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><div class="pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-8 pc-reset"><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container restack-image"><svg aria-hidden="true" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 20 20" fill="none" stroke-width="1.5" stroke="var(--color-fg-primary)" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g><path d="M2.53001 7.81595C3.49179 4.73911 6.43281 2.5 9.91173 2.5C13.1684 2.5 15.9537 4.46214 17.0852 7.23684L17.6179 8.67647M17.6179 8.67647L18.5002 4.26471M17.6179 8.67647L13.6473 6.91176M17.4995 12.1841C16.5378 15.2609 13.5967 17.5 10.1178 17.5C6.86118 17.5 4.07589 15.5379 2.94432 12.7632L2.41165 11.3235M2.41165 11.3235L1.5293 15.7353M2.41165 11.3235L6.38224 13.0882"></path></g></svg></button><button tabindex="0" type="button" class="pencraft pc-reset pencraft icon-container view-image"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 lucide-maximize-2"><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></button></div></div></div></a></figure></div><h1><strong>Here, I&#8217;ll share:</strong></h1><ul><li><p>Personal essays on the mess and medicine of embodiment</p></li><li><p>Reflections on gut health, hormones, and circadian living</p></li><li><p>Science interpreted through a soulful, story-forward lens</p></li><li><p>Field notes from motherhood, spiritual awakening, and somatic literacy</p></li><li><p>Audio drops as I develop my forthcoming <em>Humanhood</em> podcast</p></li><li><p>Glimpses into my book-in-progress, <em>My Soul Contract</em></p></li></ul><p>This is not a place for easy fixes or flat-line answers.<br>It&#8217;s a place for nuance, tenderness, and truth.</p><p>If you&#8217;ve ever felt like you had to choose between being spiritual <em>or</em> scientific, intuitive <em>or</em> informed, strong <em>or</em> soft&#8212;this space is for you.</p><p>If you are tired of feeling like your symptoms are your fault, like your body is unpredictable, or like you&#8217;re somehow behind in your healing&#8212;this space is for you.</p><p>If you crave a gentler, deeper, more honest relationship with your body&#8212;this space is for you.</p><blockquote><p>You are not broken.<br>You are brilliant.<br>You are becoming.<br>And you&#8217;re not alone.</p></blockquote><p>Welcome to <em>Humanhood</em>.<br>I&#8217;m so glad you&#8217;re here.</p><p>In health &#8217;n Mellness,<br><strong>Melanie</strong></p><div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://melaniemurphyrd.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble"><p class="cta-caption">Thanks for reading Humanhood! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</p></div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><p></p>]]></content:encoded></item></channel></rss>