Session 1- Foundations & Hormonal Literacy

Week 1 of 12 · Naming What Is Happening

Welcome to Bloom. This first session is about laying the foundation — not just for the program, but for a different relationship with yourself. Before we do any skills work, any values work, any shame resilience work, we start here: with your body, and with the truth of what has been happening in it.

This session is designed to be a relief. Many women leave it saying it's the first time anything has made sense.

What We Cover This Week

- How estrogen and progesterone affect your mood, sleep, and reward system — and what happens when they decline
- Why alcohol feels temporarily relieving during perimenopause, and why it ultimately makes everything worse
- How sleep disruption drives cravings — and why this is biology, not weakness
- What recovery realistically looks like in a changing hormonal landscape
- The Bloom framework: Naming, Claiming, Becoming

This Week's Reflection Prompts

Take your time with these. Write in your Bloom workbook, or in a journal — whatever feels right.

1. When did your relationship with alcohol, food, or medication change? What was happening in your body at that time?

2. What in today's session landed for you — what felt like information you already knew in your body but didn't have words for?

3. What would it mean for you if your struggles were a neurobiological response to genuine deprivation — rather than a failure of willpower?

This Week's Materials

Download your Session 1 workbook pages below. Complete the Foundations section and the Intention Setting and Coping Agreement pages before next session.

"When a woman understands that her brain chemistry has genuinely shifted — that her anxiety and cravings are partly neurobiological responses to hormonal decline rather than failures of willpower — the shame begins to lift. Reducing shame is the first clinical task."

— Bloom Recovery Framework