In the early days of working alongside the famed choreographer Fatima Robinson, Charm La’Donna was given the ultimate test.
Robinson was multitasking and needed to focus her attention elsewhere, so she left an eighteen-year-old La’Donna alone to work with about 20 dancers. Despite the fact that she’d been dancing since she was a toddler and toured with Madonna at 17, this was still an anxiety-inducing experience for the youngest dancer in the room.
It was one of La’Donna’s first jobs working as an assistant choreographer under Robinson, who recently served as head choreographer for Beyoncé's "Renaissance World Tour" after a long career of working with artists ranging from Michael Jackson to Meghan Trainor. Still, La’Donna says the dancers immediately respected and affirmed her. “They were like, ‘Charm, you got it,’” she says. The teenage dancer led them through the routine she’d prepped with Robinson until the more seasoned choreographer returned. “Her trusting me put more trust in myself.”
Using the experience she gained working under Robinson for about eight years, Charm La’Donna has been able to make a name for herself as a choreographer in her own right. Today, she’s worked on performances for some of the biggest stages in the world.
Credit: Ro.Lexx
From The Weeknd’s Super Bowl performance to Dua Lipa’s forthcoming headlining set at Glastonbury Festival in the UK, she’s helped some of the biggest artists of the past decade turn their hit songs into memorable live performances. She’s also worked on some of the most memorable music videos of this time, winning Best Choreography for her work on Rosalía and J Balvin’s “Con Altura” music video in 2019. In 2022, she embarked with Kendrick Lamar on the "The Big Steppers Tour" as lead choreographer.
Listening to La’Donna describe her career as a choreographer, it’s hard not to feel like the universe carefully orchestrated her life to ensure her success. Working in the entertainment industry has certainly had its challenges. But there are also so many things that went right in order for her to succeed.
La’Donna was ten years old when she auditioned for her first music video and met her mentor, Robinson. She recalls nailing the routine in rehearsals, but freezing once the artist, Ma$e, walked into the room. “I just started crying. I had the steps, and then when everyone walked in…it was the first time I’m seeing artists in real life. I’d see these people on TV. Now they walk in, I’m ten years old, and I’m supposed to be dancing…blank,” she says. She went home and spent the night practicing, determined not to mess up again.
Credit: Ro.Lexx
During the summer between high school graduation and her first semester of college, La’Donna was hired to tour with Madonna. “I’d never left the United States, barely California,” she says of the experience. “It definitely opened my eyes and it made me even hungrier.” She got back to California the day before her classes started at UCLA.
Although she eventually obtained a bachelor’s degree in world arts and culture, La’Donna says she’d initially planned to drop out of college. She was already working as a dancer and was having difficulty juggling her professional responsibilities with her classes. But, in 2006, when La’Donna began attending UCLA, she was one of just 96 African-American expected students out of nearly 5,000 incoming freshmen. Her Black classmates urged her to stay the course.
It’s been a decade since Robinson’s protégé branched out on her own, working with Selena Gomez on the promotional performances for her 2013 album Stars Dance and then choreographing Meghan Trainor’s 2014 music video “All About That Bass.” (Robinson served as the video’s director.) Despite all of her training and hard work, La’Donna says stepping out on her own still came with a steep learning curve.
Under Robinson, she could focus on being creative without having to worry about the business aspects. That allowed her to cultivate her style as a choreographer. As she stepped into the role of lead choreographer, she had to come into her own as a leader and business owner. “Stepping out and then having to be the one to be the voice on the calls, the one that people are calling to get answers…I was nervous,” she says.
La’Donna credits artists such as Gomez with recognizing her hunger and encouraging her as she stepped out on her own. “I definitely have had some angels in my life and God has blessed me 100 percent to guide my path and my journey to be where I am,” she says.
"I definitely have had some angels in my life and God has blessed me 100 percent to guide my path and my journey to be where I am."
Credit: Ro.Lexx
One of the things that has been so fun to witness about La’Donna’s career is how her work with artists such as Dua Lipa and Kendrick Lamar has pushed them out of their comfort zones and opened them up to dance and move in a way that fans might not have expected. “I love working with people who don’t have a dance background. There’s a type of freedom to the body. There’s no expectation. When they move, you really get to see who they are with no training, right? I get to cultivate and help nourish what that is,” she says. “I love when people say ‘This person can’t do this or can’t do that’ and then we show them otherwise. For me, that’s the best.”
"I love working with people who don't have a dance background. There's a type of freedom to the body. There's no expectation."
@charmladonna Rich Spirit | Choreographed By Yours Truly 🫶🏾 #charmladonna #choreography #richspirit #kendricklamar
“Sometimes when you work with people who are super trained with dancing, they have an idea of what it should be already because they have that knowledge,” she continues. “Instead of being like, this is my body [but] I don’t know how I want to move, let’s figure it out. That’s when you get the raw, and you get who people are.”
Charm La'Donna is on set for an undisclosed project when we speak in early May. She says there’s a lot of new creative endeavors she’s working on that she can’t reveal just yet, but her work with Dua Lipa and Meghan Trainor will continue in the coming months. She choreographed a performance for Chloe x Halle several years ago, but says she’d love to work with them again on a larger project if they release more music. She’d also love to work with Beyoncé, following once again in Robinson’s footsteps.
As she continues to grow in her career, La’Donna says she feels compelled to mentor aspiring creators along the way, as an homage to the women who helped make her career possible. “I’ll stop what I’m doing for any of the kids I mentor,” she says. “I can’t imagine my life without a Fatima [Robinson] or without a Madonna believing in me at such a young age. Or without my mom, my grandma, and all of these people who believed and supported me. It’s not even an obligation. I just do. I know my calling. I know why I’m blessed.”
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Featured image by Ro.Lexx
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These days, it's for a completely different purpose, though. Now that I am in the hopefully latter stages of perimenopause (I’m not sure because my mother had a full hysterectomy at 29, her mother died at 53 and I don’t deal with my paternal grandmother because…chile… ) — although I have always had relatively easy cycles and I could definitely set my watch to them, about two years ago, my periods started to show up whenever they felt like it and it was damn near a crime scene once they did.
It was driving me crazy, and so, my nurse practitioner recommended that I take progestin-only pills to shorten, if not completely stop, my cycle: “After a year or so, we can wean off and see if you are entering into menopause on your own.” (Whew, perimenopause, chile.)
Although the first five months of being on this particular pill made me wonder if it was worth it to take this approach, I actually re-upped for another 12-month cycle because the extra progestin (a synthetic form of progesterone) has benefitted me in other areas as well because I am sleeping more soundly and my weight is more stabilized (by the way, when these things are “off,” they are signs of low progesterone levels). However, I did ask my nurse practitioner if, once I do decide to wean off of the pill, would there be any issues.
Her response is what inspired me to write this article because, until she said “post-birth control syndrome” to me, I had no idea there was such a thing. Anyway, if you give me a sec, I’ll explain to you what it is and why you should care if hormone-related birth control is currently a part of your life.
Yes, Post-Birth Control Syndrome Is a Very Real Thing
GiphyOkay, so it’s important to always remember that the way that birth control works is it “manipulates” your hormones so that you can significantly reduce your chances of conceiving. This means that taking them could result in some side effects including nausea; weight gain; headaches; irregular periods and/or spotting; increased stress; depression; blurry vision; breast tenderness, and/or a lowered libido.
That said, even though birth control pills are basically 99 percent effective (when taken correctly and consistently), if the side effects that you are experiencing are making you close to miserable, you should absolutely share that with your healthcare provider because…what’s the sense in preventing pregnancy when you don’t even feel up to having sex because you don’t feel good or your sex drive is shot? More times than not, your provider can find you another pill brand or option that will help you to feel more like yourself.
With that out of the way, think about it — if going on the pill can produce side effects, why would going off of it…not? And this is where post-birth control syndrome comes in.
For the most part, it’s what can happen to your body once you decide to come off of birth control. Typically, the symptoms will last anywhere between 4-6 months and, although the symptoms seem to present themselves most intensely as it relates to going off of the pill, any hormone-related birth control (like IUDs, injections, patches, the ring or implants) could produce similar outcomes.
Outcomes like what?
- Irregular cycles
- Breakouts
- Excessive gas and/or bloating
- Weight gain
- Anxiety and/or depression
- Fertility issues
- Migraines and/or headaches
- Shifts in your libido
- Sleeplessness/restlessness
- Hair loss
Whoa, right? And if a part of you is wondering, “Okay, if this is indeed the case, why have I not heard of this syndrome before?” It’s because it’s not a term that conventional method uses nearly as much as alternative medicine does. Still, it makes all of the sense in the world that if your body has to adjust to an uptick in hormonal intake, it would also need to adjust to removing those extra doses of hormones from your system as well. COMMON. DAMN. SENSE.
Anyway, if you were thinking about taking a break from birth control and taking all of this in has you feeling a bit…let’s go with the word “trepidatious” about doing so, I totally get it. There are some things that you can do to make experiencing post-birth control syndrome either a non-issue or a far more bearable one, though.
7 Home Remedies That Can Make Coping with Post-Birth Control Syndrome Easier
Giphy1. Take a multivitamin.Something that’s fascinating about what going off of birth control can do is it sometimes has the ability to lower your nutrition levels as it relates to certain vitamins and minerals; this is especially the case when it comes to vitamins B, C, E and minerals like magnesium, selenium and zinc. So, if you don’t currently take a multivitamin, now would be the time to start (along with consuming foods that are particularly high in those nutrients as well).
2. Up your vitamin D intake. Speaking of nutrient levels, a vitamin level that commonly drops after going off of birth control isvitamin D. This is hella critical to keep in mind as a Black woman since many of us tend to be naturally deficient in the vitamin as-is and vitamin D is important when it comes to fighting off diseases, regulating weight and keeping your moods stabilized (for starters). So, make sure that your multivitamin has vitamin D in it. Also make sure to consume vitamin D-enriched foods like fatty fish, eggs, mushrooms, yogurt and fortified orange juice.
3. Drink herbal teas. Since going off of birth control will cause your hormones to be all over the place for a season, consider drinking some herbal teas that will help to stabilize them. Black cohosh contains phytoestrogen properties, Chasteberry can help to level out your prolactin levels and green tea can help your hormones out by helping to balance out your insulin (which can sometimes directly affect them).
4. Keep some ibuprofen nearby. The headaches and migraines? Until those subside, you and ibuprofen are probably going to become really good friends; although I will add that ginger tea and inhaling essential oils like chamomile and lavender can help to ease migraine-related symptoms too.
5. Do some meditating. Waiting for your hormones to get back on track can be stressful as all get out. That said, something that can get your cortisol (stress hormone) levels to chill out is to meditate. If meditation is new for you, check out “7 Meditation Hacks (For People Who Can't Seem To Do It).”
6. Get massages. As if you needed an excuse to get a massage, right (check out “12 Different Massage Types. How To Know Which Is Right For You.”)? However, there is some evidence to back the fact that regular massages (somewhere around once a month) can help to lower your stress, boost your dopamine, increase blood flow and drain your lymphatic system so that you will have more energy.
7. Sleep/rest more. There is plenty of scientific research out here which says that sleep deprivation can throw your hormones out of whack — and since your hormones are already trying to stabilize themselves, you definitely need to get 6-8 hours of sleep and not feel the least bit guilty about taking naps sometimes too.
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Post-birth control syndrome may not be the most pleasant thing about getting off of birth control yet it is manageable. So, now that you know all about it, you can feel more confident about taking a birth control break (or getting off altogether) — without the surprises that can come with doing it. Give thanks.
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