The Body Literacy
Collective
We’re a female-led, non-profit company supporting menstrual cycle attunement through community-driven tools & learning resources
Our journey started from doubting if there could be a reliable alternative to hormonal contraception…
… to discovering a trustworthy, science-based way of working with our bodies to avoid pregnancy.
From being left in the dark about the inner workings of our menstrual cycles…
… to experiencing the thrill and satisfaction of charting ovulation as a sign of vitality.
From feeling disconnected from our menstrual cycles and pushed to override our inner rhythms…
… to feeling deeply attuned with our bodies with a sense of awe, appreciation, balance and flow.
From being puzzled by our menstrual cycle symptoms and patterns…
… to being able to decipher what they’re saying about our lifestyle, wellbeing and health.
All of this thanks to the practices of fertility / ovulation charting and menstrual cycle awareness, which we now share with you through the Read Your Body platform!
Welcome
Whether you’re arriving here with family planning or wellbeing goals, health concerns or simple curiosity about your menstrual cycle patterns – you’re most welcome.
We’re a small team based mostly in the UK & Europe, connecting with our community worldwide since 2017.
Read more about our story below!
We offer menstrual cycle information and tools that are evidence-based, empathetic and genuinely supportive of self-understanding – designed to enable you to feel confident reading your body.
We love to nerd out on cervical fluid, temperature graphs and hormonal science. But we also believe that menstrual cycle charting is about more than just tracking data.
In our experience menstrual cycle tracking can become a meaningful practice of paying attention to ourselves that can bring us into more attuned ways of being in our bodies and the wider world.
Ethical technology
As a company that stands for body literacy while stewarding a menstrual cycle app for our community, we hold space for critical questions about the values underpinning technology in this space.
How can ‘femtech’ usefully accompany – rather than shortcut or replace – our relationship with our bodies?
What does ‘femtech’ look like when it’s built around values of dignity, privacy, self-understanding, embodied presence & attunement rather than extraction, optimisation, digital engagement & profit?
These are questions that guide our work every day.
We’re proud to be part of a worldwide grassroots ecosystem of educators, practitioners, advocates and communities sharing body literacy and fertility charting knowledge with integrity and care.
Alongside the Read Your Body app, we offer learning resources designed to support you to understand your menstrual cycles with science-backed confidence and nuanced embodied awareness so that you can integrate this practice into your everyday life.
Our work is rooted in a deep appreciation of the menstrual cycle as a source of wisdom, insight, vitality and balance.
Our work is guided by ongoing dialogue with the people who we serve. The qualities of listening and curiosity that we cultivate through our own menstrual cycle awareness practice shape how we show up for our community.
Our vision
Our vision
We envision a world where everybody is able to read their bodies with confidence, autonomy and ease.
A world where menstrual cycles are visible, understood, appreciated and honoured ~ rippling more balanced ways of being throughout our communities.
Our story
From a community-crowdfunded app to a worldwide platform for body literacy, delivered by our small but mighty and beautifully aligned team!
The Body Literacy Collective (the non-profit company behind the Read Your Body app and learning resources) was founded by Laura Forrest in 2017.
Laura came to this work with a background in reproductive health, non-profit management and community action. After stumbling across the practice of fertility charting through her own search for a way of avoiding pregnancy without hormonal contraception, and experiencing the thrill and satisfaction of charting ovulation, she was also deeply moved by the practice of menstrual cycle awareness as an invitation to embodied attunement.
Feeling compelled to address system-wide gaps in menstrual cycle education that had left her in the dark about these practices until well into her 20s, Laura established The Body Literacy Collective as a non-profit platform for this work. She certified as a fertility awareness educator in 2017-18, and started preparing the learning resources that would form the basis of Read Your Body’s educational offerings at scale. In 2019 she pivoted to focus on crowdfunding and managing the development of the Read Your Body app, born out of careful listening within online community groups of which she was a member, as the need for such a highly customisable and privacy-focused charting app became impossible to ignore.
Within less than 48 hours of the app’s crowdfunder going live, the target was reached! The fertility awareness community had successfully rallied together to create the charting app of our dreams. After an intensive period of beta testing and several community-driven rounds of improvement, the Read Your Body app launched to the public in 2020. A few months later thanks to the translation efforts of many dedicated members of our community, the app became available in 15 additional languages including Spanish, Portuguese and French.
The Read Your Body team grew with Macarena and Winnie joining to lead on app design and illustrations – Macarena coming to the company with a personal passion for menstrual cycle awareness, while Winnie was already an app user and certified fertility awareness educator in our community. Together they delivered a beautiful design upgrade to the app and our website! This was also the year when we launched the educators directory, connecting our community with hundreds of fertility awareness educators worldwide.
The team grew again with Meagan, one of the app’s original crowdfunder supporters and most diligent beta testers, joining to help with user care rooted in her own user experiences and connection with our community.
The team grew further with Kristie joining to lead on user care and educator engagement. Kristie was already an app user in our community, and came to us with a background as a nutritionist and certified menstrual cycle coach. Yet again, we were fortunate to be growing the team in a grassroots and deeply aligned way!
We reached an important milestone as a company, bringing app development in-house to enable faster delivery of critical improvements and new app features. Alice joined the team as an engineer with the ideal tech background and skills (both frontend and backend), and a personal interest in menstrual cycle tracking from a health perspective. A little while later Daren started working for us as a senior engineering contractor – bringing excellent technical insight and a sensitive male perspective, and now leading on the frontend build of the partner app which will welcome more men into our community.
In 2025 we celebrated five years of the app serving our community. And a few months later we launched the long-awaited settings template feature, making the app more streamlined for both period tracking and charting with various fertility awareness-based methods (FABMs).
Today we’re a small but mighty, highly dedicated, close-knit team working together to continue to deliver new Read Your Body app features and various learning resources for you. In the face of accelerating AI developments and corporate companies entering the ‘femtech’ space, we’re proud to be a values-driven team that’s human, approachable and authentically rooted in community with you for the long-term.
Every message that you send to us at [email protected] is picked up by Kristie / Laura, and helps to guide the ongoing development of our work. So please don’t hesitate to reach out if you’d ever like to connect with us!
Our work today also stands on the shoulders of many valued team members / contributors who have come before us: Johanna (illustrations & crowdfunder), Julie (social media), Heidi (technical advice), Andrea (app testing), Zoe (user research), Naya (educators directory), Sarah (product management), Natasha (app testing), Ali (website development).
Our team
Employees
Laura Forrest
Education & outreach
Kristie Becker
Product & community
manager
Alice Zolnieruk
App developer
Contractors
Daren Taylor
App development
Macarena Daher
App design
Winnie Trekker
Illustrations
Meagan Boehl
Various support
We’re forever grateful to our original crowdfunder supporters, alpha / beta testers, fertility awareness educators and translators for making the Read Your Body app what it is today! 💛
Some of our original crowdfunder supporters & app testers pictured here
Appreciation from
our community
Appreciation from
our community
Dreamy
Never a better app! The team are so responsive, this is truly a fertility awareness / natural family planning user’s DREAM!
Lauren
So impressed
I’m so impressed with all of the thought that has obviously gone into this app. Very customisable and user friendly. Highly recommend!!
Ashly
Exceptional
This is the best charting app I’ve ever used. I love how customisable it is. It really is like having my paper chart in my pocket. I also love the feeling that this is app belongs to us charters. There’s a great sense of community because the developers are actively seeking input from the users. It just keeps getting better and better.
Noami
Get to know your menstrual cycles with Read Your Body
Get to know your menstrual cycles with Read Your Body
