The MoonPhase Approach

A Pattern-Based Approach to Women’s Mental Health, Women’s Whole Health Education & Life Transition

Michele Whitaker, MSN, APRN, PMHNP-BC, C-RYT

Certified Integrative Women’s Health Provider

Certified Women’s Mental Health Specialist

MoonPhase Founder & Clinical Lead

Michele Whitaker is a board-certified Psychiatric-Mental Health Nurse Practitioner (PMHNP), a Certified Women’s Mental Health Specialist and a Certified Integrative Women’s Health Provider. She also has advanced training in menopause-informed care. With more than 32 years of experience in psychiatric nursing and women’s mental health, she brings a deeply informed, whole-person perspective to reproductive transitions, midlife, and the many places where mental and physical health intersect.

She is the founder of MoonPhase Integrative Psychiatry & Wellness, a women’s mental health and wellness practice offering psychiatric care, menopause and whole-health education, professional education, and nonclinical rites-of-passage experiences.

Michele’s work centers on women’s mental health, with particular depth in reproductive transitions and midlife—times when mood, sleep, anxiety, cognition, desire, energy, identity, and physical wellbeing may shift together in ways that are difficult to separate or explain.

Her psychiatric work is menopause-informed and whole-person, drawing from conventional psychiatric care alongside integrative, nutritional, lifestyle, functional, and complementary considerations when clinically relevant. Evaluation and treatment may consider reproductive stage, medication response, sleep, metabolism, medical history, laboratory findings, nervous-system patterns, relationships, environment, and the circumstances in which change emerged.

MoonPhase grew from Michele’s recognition that women’s health and mental health deserve more than a symptom checklist—and that the rhythms of a woman’s life are part of the clinical and human story.

Women’s bodies and lives move through rhythms: hormonal and neurobiological, emotional and relational, cyclical and seasonal, developmental and deeply personal. These rhythms are not always linear or predictable, nor do they necessarily move according to an external timetable. Across each of the four MoonPhase pathways, there is space to notice what is changing, when it is changing, what may be shaping that movement, and what the woman herself is experiencing within it.

The work honors the science of transition—the changing relationships among hormones, brain, body, nervous system, health, and environment—while leaving room for what cannot be reduced to biology alone: identity, relationship, loss, desire, meaning, emergence, and becoming.

Michele believes women are best met where they are. Sometimes that means psychiatric evaluation and treatment. Sometimes it means education and mapping, a broader exploration of health and wellbeing, or simply having a meaningful transition witnessed and intentionally marked. The pathway may differ, but the underlying principle remains: begin with the woman, notice the pattern, and respect the pace and nature of change.

There is an element of accompaniment in this work. Not directing a woman across a threshold, but walking beside her as what is changing, ending, emerging, or asking to be understood becomes more visible.

Michele has advanced training in women’s mental health, reproductive transitions, menopause-informed care, sexual health, integrative psychiatry, nutritional psychiatry, and evidence-based menopause care for nurse practitioners. She is also a certified Hatha Yoga and Laughter Yoga teacher. These complementary disciplines inform a broader appreciation of embodiment, movement, connection, and wellbeing while remaining distinct from psychiatric evaluation and treatment.

At the center of Michele’s work is deep respect for the intelligence of women’s bodies, the complexity of lived experience, and the threshold nature of change. She approaches these transitions with curiosity, presence, and a sense of awe for the ways biology, rhythm, relationship, experience, and meaning can converge—and for what may become visible when they are allowed to remain connected.

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Why MoonPhase

MoonPhase reflects a cyclical view of Women’s Mental Health.

Midlife often changes thresholds-what your system can tolerate, recover from, and carry without cost. What has been muted, managed, or overridden for years can become harder to ignore.

Sleep, mood, anxiety, cognition, desire, stress physiology, and identity may all begin shifting at once. When these changes are treated separately, the pattern can be missed.

At MoonPhase, the work begins by bringing the pattern into view.

Hormones, sleep, metabolism, nervous system load, desire, and identity do not move in straight lines. They move in rhythms and waves-monthly, seasonally, and across life stages.

MoonPhase was created for women’s health care & education that can recognize those rhythms, interpret the signals, and support women with more clarity, precision, and coherence.

MoonPhase Wellness offers four distinct pathways, each with its own purpose, scope, and availability.

Across perimenopause, menopause, and post-menopause, the brain and body are renegotiating

What image, role, threshold, grief, desire, or awakening is asking to be understood?

Symbolic & Reflective Tools

Some women also benefit from reflective tools that help give language to the deeper identity, relational, and meaning-based shifts of midlife.

When clinically appropriate and personally meaningful, MoonPhase may incorporate journaling prompts, archetypal reflection, seasonal or lunar imagery, values clarification, and narrative exploration to support therapeutic insight and personal integration.

These tools are optional, reflective, and non-diagnostic. Their use depends on the pathway and purpose of the service and does not substitute for medical or psychiatric evaluation when clinical care is indicated.

Coming Into MoonPhase

Many women arrive at MoonPhase with language that is hard to organize at first. The concern may not be one single symptom, but a constellation of changes in mood, sleep, anxiety, attention, desire, energy, stress tolerance, and self-recognition.

What Women Often Say

“I don’t feel like myself.”
“My capacity has changed.”
“What used to work doesn’t work anymore.”
“I want care that takes this seriously, without reducing it.”

Midlife may be less a collapse than a recalibration of what can no longer continue as before.

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What This Practice is Built For

MoonPhase is built for women who sense that something is shifting and want a place to understand the pattern—whether they are seeking psychiatric care, menopause-focused education, broader whole-health education, or intentional support through a meaningful life transition.

Sexual Health Is Part Of The Larger Pattern

Changes in desire, arousal, orgasm, pain, comfort, and sexual wellbeing may reflect the intersections among mood, medication, hormones, relationships, identity, physical health, and life transition.

Inclusive Care and Identity-Affirming Support

MoonPhase is centered on women’s mental health with particular attention to reproductive and midlife transitions, and welcomes women across identities, backgrounds, neurotypes, relationships, and sexual experiences. MoonPhase is grounded in inclusive, sex-positive, and identity-affirming care. LGBTQ+, transgender and gender-diverse, neurodivergent, polyamorous and ethically non-monogamous individuals are warmly welcomed, as are those seeking kink-aware care.

Gender, sexuality, neurodivergence, consensual practices, and relationship structures are respected as part of each person’s lived experience.

Care is guided by the individual’s concerns, goals, autonomy, and sense of wellbeing.

When a person’s needs extend beyond the practice’s areas of expertise, this will be discussed transparently, and options for thoughtful collaboration or referral will be considered together.

The Clinical Lens Within Women’s Mental Health Care

MoonPhase helps bring these patterns into view-

Illuminating the biology shaping midlife

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Clinical Integrity & Professional Standards

MoonPhase is grounded in established standards of psychiatric practice, ethical prescribing, complementary approaches, and responsible clinical documentation. Care is informed by ongoing professional education, risk-management training, and continued advancement in women’s mental health, reproductive psychiatry, menopause-informed care, and integrative practice. This commitment to lifelong learning supports care that remains thoughtful, current, transparent, and well structured. When appropriate, care also includes consultation, collaboration, and referral to other clinicians whose expertise may better address needs outside MoonPhase’s scope.

Selected training includes:

• Certified Women’s Mental Health Specialist

• Certified Integrative Women’s Health Provider

• Menopause Management for Nurse Practitioners

• Nutritional Psychiatry Certification

• Motivational Interviewing (MI) Certification

• Somatic and Limbic System-based training

• Certified Hatha Yoga Teacher

• Certified Laughter Yoga Teacher

• Certified Usui Reiki l/ II Practitioner

• RiskFit® Essentials for Health Professionals Certification

• RiskFit® Essentials for Advanced Practice Registered Nurses Certificate

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Practice Details

MoonPhase Wellness offers four distinct pathways, each with its own purpose, scope, and availability:

• Women’s Mental Health Care— psychiatric care provided to women located in Massachusetts and is primarily offered by tele-health, with limited in-person availability when appropriate and scheduling permits.

  MoonPhase also offers complementary educational and nonclinical pathways, each with its own scope and availability.

  The MoonPhase framework is informed by current literature in women’s mental health, menopause, psychiatry, and neurobiology, together with clinical training and experience in reproductive transitions and integrative care.

  a woman’s rhythm may show up through mood, sleep, cognition, reproductive stage, medication response, and symptom timing

  Limited hours | By appointment only

• Menopause Mapping & Education — nurse-led education available virtually where MoonPhase is authorized to provide registered nursing services

  a woman’s rhythm may be expressed and show up through cycles, transitions, patterns, and changing needs.

• Women’s Whole Health & Wellness Education— broader nurse-led health and wellness education available virtually where MoonPhase is authorized to provide registered nursing services

  a woman’s rhythm may emerge through energy, sleep, movement, appetite, sexuality, stress, and daily capacity

• Women’s Rites of Passage — nonclinical transition support available virtually, with select in-person offerings in New England

  A woman’s rhythm may become visible through voice, timing, endings, emergence, threshold, and the pace of transformation

MoonPhase recognizes that women’s lives and bodies move in rhythms—biological, emotional, relational, seasonal, and developmental. These rhythms are not always linear, predictable, or easily separated from one another.

Across all four pathways, the work begins by noticing what is changing, when it is changing, and what the woman herself is experiencing within that movement.

The aim is not to force every experience into a fixed timeline or single explanation, but to create enough space to understand the pattern, respect the pace of change, and respond in a way that fits the woman and the threshold she is moving through.

Each pathway is intentionally distinct. Some are clinical, some educational, and some nonclinical. Women may enter through the pathway that best reflects what they are seeking and may move among MoonPhase offerings over time when appropriate.

Begin where you are

Explore the pathway that fits what you are seeking

The MoonPhase Pathways

Women’s Mental Health Care

Menopause Mapping & Education

Women’s Whole Health & Wellness Education

Women’s Rites of Passage

You do not need to know exactly which pathway is right for you before reaching out. Requests are reviewed to help identify the most appropriate next step, which may include a discovery call, psychiatric evaluation, educational consultation, or Initial Rites Consultation depending on the pathway and fit.

What Happens After You Submit a Consult Request

Requests are reviewed to help identify the most appropriate next step. Depending on the pathway, that may include a discovery call, educational consultation, psychiatric evaluation, Initial Rites Consultation, scheduling information, or referral guidance.

• All prospective clients begin by submitting the Consultation Request Form before scheduling.

• MoonPhase reviews each request with care and discretion.

• If what you are seeking aligns with MoonPhase’s scope and current availability, you will receive information about the appropriate next step.

• If another type of service or level of care appears better suited to your needs, MoonPhase will let you know and may recommend another resource or clinician when appropriate.

Submitting a request does not establish a provider-patient relationship or guarantee acceptance into a MoonPhase service.

MoonPhase does not provide emergency or crisis services. If you are experiencing acute distress, thoughts of self-harm, or a medical emergency, call 911, go to your nearest emergency department, or call or text 988.