Start with the best

Most loved posts of 2025 on Brighter Days, Darker Nights

Happy New (calendar) Year!

I’m so excited for the upcoming year, for many reasons.

I notice that there’s also always so much more to be grateful for and optimistic about as long as I am looking for them.

Today, rather than start something new, however, I thought it would be fun to share the most loved Brighter Days, Darker Nights posts of 2025.

Let me know in the comments which was your favorite!

This is also to welcome all new readers—I know there are many of you here who are new here this month based on the recommendation of Sarah Kleiner, Dr. Martin Moore-Ede, Dr Sara Pugh, Peta Kelly, or many of the other wonderful Substack authors in our community (thank you all), so I wanted to send a special hello and welcome to all new readers here at the New Year. Thank you for coming to check out the community and resources I curate!

Now, for the top ten posts I shared last year:

#10

This Substack Live interview was so insightful about how memory and patterns are stored in our body, and how reflexes can just “fade into the night” when they are no longer needed! Amanda Conta Steencken is a wealth of knowledge and such a generous teacher. I’m very grateful to call her a friend and colleague. Highly recommend our interview, and for you to also check out her Substack and consider a paid subscription so you can join us in her monthly masterclasses.

#9

This post was for those of you—I know you are out there, and I used to be one of you—who sleep the recommended amount but still feel crummy when you wake up.

#8

I was absolutely amazed when I learned what percentage of our daily iron needs are supposed to come from recycling of old red blood cells (it’s by far the majority of iron reused each day). This process of iron recycling requires… darkness! Which is something most of us are deficient in until we learn about circadian rhythms and controlling our nighttime light environment. This post was very mission-driven for me because the narrative that everyone is iron deficient (or that iron deficiency isn’t really a thing at all, at the other extreme) both irk me for not addressing this major circadian key to iron metabolism. The anemia series as a whole was inspired by several consultations I did with people who could not tolerate oral supplementation (they’d either just throw it up, or it would make them feel awful). I wanted to offer supportive measures that could help them improve their energy and the health of their blood.

#7

This one was another Substack Live I did, and it was delightful. We had a few chime in live during the chat, which was great to get their questions in real-time, and then in the replay and comments we got quite a few conversations going. It’s a great place to jump in if you are living in an extreme polar climate, because Musings of a WiseWoman lives and does birth work way up North in Canada and has amazing insight into how to make it work with the swing of the Winter season. She also has an excellent Substack I recommend subscribing to.

#6

This post was inspired by a composite of a bunch of fertility consultations I have done over the years. I list out the cluster of symptoms I have seen among women who have baby fever and want to conceive again, but who can’t because their period still hasn’t returned even after more than 2 years since giving birth. When I dug in, I learned that the vast majority of prolactin (even in a breastfeeding woman), is actually part of her circadian metabolic axis—thus, the elevated prolactin status preventing her cycle return is actually a signal from her circadian metabolic state, not the fact she is still breastfeeding. And so I shared what could help bring that baseline prolactin down naturally. Next year, I’m going to write a complementary post for the women frustrated at their cycles coming back immediately postpartum.

#5

I started the Folate series in 2022, and add to it every so often. This was this year’s addition. You might want to start the whole series here for context. I began it, similarly to the anemia series, based on the questions I was getting about Folate and Folic Acid. It never sat right with me that it was considered nutritionally impossible to get the necessary folate for pregnancy through diet alone, thus necessitating universal supplementation. I set out to get to the bottom of this, and again, found the circadian rhythm hidden at the center of the folate cycles.

#4

On January 8th, I’ll finally be teaching the sleep classes I teased in this post. Read the post, then register to attend here if you think this type of sleep awareness and practice could benefit you. Circadian polyphasic sleep has been one of my biggest personal transformations in terms of feeling good in motherhood. The mindset shift is huge, but then the way it plays out physiologically just gets better over time as you break free of the mentality that as a mother you never can sleep 8 hours solid and so you just have to feel tired all the time.

#3

I thought listicles were over, but it turns out, even in 2025 everyone still loves a good listicle—especially if it is about babies and sunshine. This one is full of studies and should feel validating to what you probably already know: if sunlight feels good to you, it’s probably good for you and your baby, too. I think part of the way the “sunlight is bad and dangerous” idea has traction is we’ve been conditioned to think that is something feels/tastes really good, it must be bad for you. But when it comes to full-spectrum light, the evidence shows that moms are naturally wise about solar exposure for their babies and that babies seem adapted to be able to get the sunlight they need without adverse effects.

#2

This post started out as a Substack Note, which for those of you who are in email but don’t use the app, is like a social media network with medium-form content. This post was expanding my thinking based on this insight I had that the purpose of the clock is really to communicate with other humans, so we can show up at the same place at the same time and cool things like that. Of course, clock things are really things babies don’t yet do. So I dove in a bit about my philosophy of solar time over clock time and what that means in the ethereal postpartum time.

And the most well-loved post of 2025 on Brighter Days, Darker Nights was…

#1

This one suprised me, in a good way. The research cited was from an Architectural publication about designing indoor spaces for stronger circadian entrainment. It’s where I learned the term “daylighting”, which I love, and also just a bunch of nifty guidelines for ways you can make an indoor space friendlier for circadian rhythms. In this era, that’s actually pure gold! Thus, I’m very glad for this post to land at #1 for 2025 because it’s so practical for the way we live.

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I hope you enjoy some of these posts! And I look forward to sharing much more with you in the coming year.

Thank you again for being part of the community, and Happy New Year!!!!!!