For five years, Dr. Nicole asked her doctors to check her hormones and heard the same answer: they’re fine. She was exhausted, losing her words mid-sentence, and having anxiety attacks for the first time in her life. Then came the afternoon she collapsed on her couch with nothing left and no explanation. Her naturopathic physician, Dr. Nicole Arguinzoni-Gil (Dr. Nikki), explains what was really happening and the internal transitions every woman will face.

Then Dr. Nikki shares a story she has never told publicly: her own breast cancer, found with no lump, only an itch and a feeling she tried to talk herself out of. Together they talk about trusting what your body already knows before anyone confirms it, learning to ask for help, and owning who you are at this stage of life.

In this episode:

• The real difference between perimenopause, menopause and post-menopause, and why treating them the same can backfire
• What estradiol, progesterone and testosterone each do, and why low testosterone can take your drive with it
• Why so many women are dismissed when they report hormonal symptoms
• How Dr. Nikki’s instinct, with no lump, led her to the ultrasound that found her cancer
• Self-advocacy, second opinions, and trusting yourself when something feels wrong
• Letting go, surrendering, and learning to receive

Disclosure: Dr. Nikki is Dr. Nicole’s own physician. Neither receives any compensation or affiliate benefit for this conversation.

Medical disclaimer: This episode is for education and conversation, not medical advice. Hormone therapy is not right for everyone. Talk with your own licensed clinician about any symptoms, testing or treatment, and see a doctor promptly about any change in your breasts, including changes without a lump.

• (00:00:00) - Introduction: Navigating Life's Transitions
• (00:01:53) - Dr. Nicole's Burnout Story
• (00:03:59) - Defining Perimenopause vs Menopause
• (00:08:04) - When Doctors Dismiss Your Symptoms
• (00:09:22) - Society, Aging, and Owning Who You Are
• (00:12:02) - Reclaiming Life After Hormone Support
• (00:12:48) - Estrogen, Progesterone, and Testosterone Explained
• (00:15:51) - Before and After: Patient Transformations
• (00:18:59) - Why Perimenopause and Menopause Need Different Treatment
• (00:21:36) - Adrenal Health and Listening to Your Body
• (00:23:19) - Dr. Nikki's Caregiving Years and Mother's Passing
• (00:24:52) - Discovering the Breast Lump
• (00:29:27) - Second Opinion Changes Everything
• (00:30:56) - Facing Cancer with Faith and Courage
• (00:34:54) - Crying on the Radiation Table
• (00:36:11) - Lessons in Self-Love and Living Your Truth
• (00:38:29) - Overlap Between Cancer Journey and Patient Work
• (00:41:00) - Learning to Ask for Help
• (00:43:46) - Let Go, Surrender, and Receive
• (00:46:53) - How to Find Dr. Nikki and Closing Thoughts

When life changes, whether it’s a new career, a loss, a new chapter, or a season of becoming, we tend to treat transition as something we figure out in our heads. But you don’t go through transition in your mind alone. Your body moves through it with you. It carries the stress, the uncertainty, and every past overwhelm it never had the chance to release. So the tools and resources you bring into your transition need to support your body, not just your mind.

In this episode of The Room: Navigating Life’s Transitions, Dr. Nicole Yeldell Butts welcomes somatic experiencing practitioner and trauma healer Ife Mora to explore what happens in our bodies during life’s chrysalis seasons. Ife shares that while we tell ourselves stories and perform “I’m fine,” our nervous systems are often bracing, numbing, and stuck in survival mode.

Together they talk about how the body holds what we’ve been through, why women of color in particular often live in constant survival physiology, and how that shows up as tight shoulders, a locked jaw, restless sleep, gut issues, and chronic pain. They unpack weathering, the Superwoman schema, the difference between being regulated and being numb, and why real resilience isn’t about taking it all. It’s about your body’s ability to return to baseline.

Most importantly, you’ll leave with practical tools and resources for your transition that you can use right away. Ife guides three live practices: a body scan to drop your mind into your body, a vagus nerve toning exercise, and a healthy pride exercise to help you move from shrinking to unapologetic thriving. Dr. Nicole also shares the everyday practices that support her own nervous system: grounding barefoot in the grass and a morning ritual of orienting to safety before her day begins. Because you can’t thrive in survival mode, but you can find your glimmers.

In this episode:

• What somatic healing is, and where it came from
• How trauma and chronic stress show up as gut issues, chronic pain, poor sleep, and reactivity
• Why systemic oppression registers as a threat in the body, even when the mind says otherwise
• Regulated vs. numb: recognizing “faux resilience”
• The vagus nerve, glimmers, and the polyvagal ladder
• Co-regulation with our children, partners, and communities
• Healthy feminine rage, safe rest, and healthy pride

• (00:00:00) - Introduction and Welcome to the Room
• (00:01:05) - Body Scan Exercise with Ife
• (00:05:02) - Why Ife Joined: Somatic Work and Women in Transition
• (00:07:50) - Defining Somatic Healing and Its Origins
• (00:10:17) - Peter Levine, Trauma, and the Autonomic Nervous System
• (00:13:12) - Trauma, Identity, and Women of Color
• (00:19:59) - Survival Physiology vs. Embodied Presence
• (00:22:14) - Weathering, Health, and the Superwoman Schema
• (00:25:03) - The Vagus Nerve Explained
• (00:27:11) - Toning the Vagus Nerve: Vooing Exercise
• (00:36:56) - Personal Story: Dysregulation at 3am
• (00:40:23) - Resilience Redefined and Ancestral Patterns
• (00:41:49) - Ife's Own Trauma and Healing Journey
• (00:45:46) - Faux Resilience and the Window of Tolerance
• (00:51:15) - Building True Resilience and Agency
• (00:55:23) - Safety, Rest, and Healthy Rage
• (00:57:30) - Orienting to Safety and Gratitude Practice
• (01:01:15) - Healthy Pride Exercise
• (01:05:49) - Healing, Transmutation, and Closing Thoughts
• (01:08:01) - How to Find Ife and Episode Close

Monikka Stallworth didn't set out to make an exhibition. She set out to stop hiding.

In 2016, within moments of her mother's death, a sentence arrived that she couldn't shake: life is for living. It took years to understand what that sentence was asking of her, and years more before she could show anyone the photographs she'd taken of the woman she had spent decades keeping secret.

In this conversation, the artist behind Met Mo For This talks with Dr. Nicole about the long middle: the marriage she tried everything to save, a habit she hid from nearly everyone, the night she cut off more than a decade of locs while on the phone with her mother's best friend, and a poem that came to her at the least poetic moment imaginable. Along the way, she makes a case you don't often hear about transformation. Before anything can change, she argues, you need somewhere safe enough to let it, the way a caterpillar finds a protected place before it ever becomes a chrysalis.

This is an episode about the difference between fixing and feeling, what grief sets in motion without asking permission, and what it means to reclaim the parts of yourself you were taught to be ashamed of. Monikka also reads her poem "Feel" in full.

• (00:00:00) - Intro and Welcome to The Room
• (00:01:26) - Introducing Monika Stallworth and Her Exhibit
• (00:02:06) - Mother's Passing and the Message 'Life is for Living'
• (00:03:33) - Filing for Divorce and the Need for Safety
• (00:05:13) - Finding Safety Through Creativity and Butterflies
• (00:07:29) - The Poem That Came to Her
• (00:09:23) - Hiding Shame Around Smoking
• (00:10:31) - Safety as the Chrysalis Condition for Change
• (00:12:08) - What Happened Between 2016 and 2021
• (00:14:41) - Mother and Grandmother as Supplemental Love
• (00:17:25) - Therapy, Listening, and Feeling Her Feelings
• (00:19:51) - Submitting Desires and Learning Self-Compassion
• (00:21:12) - The 50th Birthday Portrait Session
• (00:23:13) - Being Honest About Smoking and Receiving Compassion
• (00:24:31) - Capturing the Transformation in Photographs
• (00:26:18) - Her Father's Quiet Compassion
• (00:27:59) - Cutting Off Her Dreadlocks After Loss
• (00:31:52) - Losing Weight and Confirmation at the Courthouse
• (00:33:14) - Identity, Marriage, and the Shame of Single Motherhood
• (00:39:07) - Reading the Poem 'Feel'
• (00:44:27) - Stillness, Marinating, and Understanding the Space Between
• (00:45:47) - Reclaiming Creativity and Giving Herself Permission
• (00:49:19) - The Value of the Chrysalis Process Itself
• (00:52:56) - What She Had to Release
• (00:54:23) - Still in Transition: Be Still and Know
• (00:58:51) - Compassion, Reclaiming Yourself, and Final Wisdom
• (01:02:43) - Where to Find Monika and Closing Thoughts