Aviva Romm MD is both a midwife and an Internal Medicine and Board Certified Family Physician with specialties in Integrative Gynecology, Obstetric and Pediatrics, with a focus on women’s hormonal health, childbearing, and reproductive justice. If that wasn't impressive enough, she's also a world renown herbalist, and author of the textbook, Botanical Medicines for Women’s Health, as well as 7 other books, including The Adrenal Thyroid Revolution.
A practitioner, teacher, activist and advocate of both environmental health and women’s reproductive rights and health, she has been bridging the best of traditional medicine, total health ecology, and good science for over three decades. She practices medicine in both NY and MA, and lives in the Berkshires of Western MA.
When we sat down with Aviva to ask her what her go-to, tried and true word of universal advice for women is, she didn't stutter for a second.
Romm says, "If it's not a hell yes (in my inner knowing), it’s a no." Here's why, in her own words.
"As women, we’re asked to do a lot of emotional labor, take things on when we’re already too busy, or we feel pressured to accept offers, salaries, etc. based on scarcity, and not trusting ourselves. This comes to relationships, too. I believe as women - when someone asks us to do something, when someone offers us an opportunity, or even when it comes to social relationships - we know in our core, inner knowing - our guts, our intuition- whether it’s right for us. Whether it’s in alignment with who we are, what we have time for, what we feel and believe. What we want. Too often we say yes when we want to say no because we don’t trust ourselves or believe in our path and future better opportunities that are more in alignment. We end up taking on too much or the wrong things. It's only later that we think - ah - I should have trusted my intuition.
So for me, I listen to my body, to my inner knowing.
If it’s a hell yes, I say yes. But if it’s a no, I don’t look back!"
Follow Aviva Romm on Instagram here.
