“At her first bleeding a woman meets her power.
During her bleeding years she practices it.
At menopause she becomes it.”
- Traditional Native American saying
― Lucy H. Pearce, “Moon Time: Harness the Ever-Changing Energy of Your Menstrual Cycle”
Dear Wise Women,
Welcome back! As we enter the third week of our five-week spring journey, I would like to remind you of the tone and theme for our spring circles.
In week one I invited you to “fall back into the arms of Grace”… to simply relax and rest in the heart. As relaxing does not seem to be the theme of our mainstream society, it is my wish that our gatherings provide a much needed sanctuary and respite. A place to see and be seen. A place to listen and be heard. A place to honour and be honoured. A place to receive the power of feminine connection.
In week two, we peeled back some of the long-held misunderstandings about the true meaning of feminine and masculine, yin and yang, dark and light. Slowly, we are remembering and revealing the truth and power of Divine Unity, where the Sacred Feminine and Sacred Masculine within everyone and everything is revered, honoured and balanced.
As we continue, I now wish to unbury a treasure that lies within the feminine collective and, likely, within each of us. A treasure that many of us were told was not a treasure at all, but was rather a shameful aspect of ourselves that we should hide and even despise.
“Menstrual blood is the only source of blood that is not traumatically induced. Yet in modern society, this is the most hidden blood, the one so rarely spoken of and almost never seen, except privately by women.”
- Judy Grahn
The information I am sharing is crucial and it needs to be shared - the way it was always intended to be shared, within a women’s circle.
Whether you are still menstruating or not, whether or not you have given birth, this information applies to you, it applies to all of us. The power of understanding our menstrual cycles and the phases of a woman’s life is just that “power”.
We cannot reclaim and embody the sacred feminine without healing these wounded aspects of ourselves. When we heal this wound within ourselves, we heal it for our mothers, grandmothers and great grandmothers. We heal our daughters and our sons and their daughters and sons. We break an old cycle of suppression and we begin to live and teach a new one.
In our society we value a portion of our menstrual cycle (the follicular and ovulating phase when our energies are naturally expansive, outward and productive) and devalue, even demonize, the other half (the luteal and bleeding phase when our energies are naturally contracting, inward and intuitive). Similarly, we honour and worship the first phases of a women’s life, the Maiden and Mother phases, and dishonour and shun the second phases, the Maga and Crone phases. In doing so we reinforce the imbalance of energy that exists within us and within all of society.
We cannot have the flower without the seed, the full moon without the new moon. The more we reclaim and honour the dark, the feminine, and the inward the more radiant we rise!
This topic is a passion of mine, and I have long desired to delve into it. Today and the next two weeks will just be an introduction…and I am curious to see where the wisdom of our circles takes us!
With endless love and gratitude,
Patti
“In the tradition of the Native American People's Moonlodge, the community waited for the wisdom that the women returned with from their 'moontime' retreat. They would come back with information about when and where to move camp, about where the buffalo were etc. The community valued this highly and made their plans around it, they honoured the wisdom of the feminine.”
- Jane Hardwicke Collings, “The Spiritual Practice of Menstruation”
“Once we start to work with Feminine power we begin to see that it is not our minds that are in control of this power – it ebbs and flows with the movements of the planets, the procession of the seasons, the moons and tides, our own internal cycles of menstruality, anniversaries, the events around us. All these and more impact our experience and expressions of power. We learn to become aware of these various patterns and their impact on us and work more consciously with rather than against or in spite of them. We learn that they are all part of the same process. We open towards the energy, rather than shut down to it. We learn to trust the flow.”
― Lucy H. Pearce, “Burning Woman”
P.S.: When transcribing the above quote, I had to google the word “menstruality” to see if it existed (even my spell check said it was not a word). Sure enough it is a word, a word that I wish I had learned at the beginning ,rather than the end, of my menstruating years. “Menstruality is the process of tracking the cycles in your life and noticing how you change through your menstrual month, this is known as menstrual cycle awareness.”
P.S.S: The sanskrit word for menstruation and season are the same - “ritu”. The root word for menstruation “mens” is the same for moon, month and measurement. The first measurement of time, the first calendar was based on the menstrual cycle.
The Menstrual Cycle is a Cycle within a Cycle
“Understanding the way of cycles brings with it an awareness of the flow of energy, the wisdom in that flow and the opportunity to be in synchrony with that flow.
I believe, honouring her fertility cycle is a woman's responsibility. It is in fact one way she can participate, in helping to correct the imbalances that have been created through not honouring the feminine. An issue that we must address so that we can live harmoniously on our planet.
Through honouring your menstrual cycle, you help heal the "wounded feminine" the symptoms of which ravage the Earth and most of her people. By honouring her cycle, a woman honours the feminine, the dark, the juicy, the mysterious, the feminine power of creativity, sexuality and our Mother Earth.
The menstrual cycle is a cycle within a cycle. The bigger cycle is the woman's life cycle, her life seasons, which are just like the Earth's seasons. Every cycle is the same as every other cycle, just different lengths. (Note: as we have developed over time and our life expectancy has increased, the ancient tripartite divisions of Maiden, Mother, and Crone has been expanded to include the Maga or Queen phase).”
Maiden Phase (menarche to around age 25), “Spring”, Fertility and Sexuality
Mother Phase (around age 25-50) “Summer”, Nurturing, Caring, Giving
Note: The energy of “mother” is characterized by the energy of giving birth and its surrendering and nurturing aspects, and does not require that we give birth to a child.
Maga/Queen Phase(around age 50-70) “Autumn”, Harvesting, Sharing
Crone/Sage Phase (around age 70 - death) “Winter”, Wisdom , Reverence
- Jane Hardwicke Collings, “Honouring Rites of Passage in a Woman’s Life”
Our menstrual cycle is connected to the phases of the moon and, as the moon waxes and wanes, our bodies also transition through these four archetypes of womanhood each and every month.
Journeying through each stage of womanhood each month can feel as if we are having the rug pulled out from underneath us if we are not aware of the transitions that are taking place. But if we begin to see this process as an invitation to embody each of the feminine archetypes (the maiden, the mother, the wild woman and the crone), everything changes. As we move through each of these archetypes we are being invited to reclaim all aspects of who we are as a woman each and every month. To surrender to what is blooming and rising in us as well as what is falling away.
Connected to the moon and the mysterious force that controls all of life, your period has the potential to become a monthly initiation in deepening your potency as a wise, creative, powerful woman.
- Rebecca Campbell “Rise Sister Rise”
NOTE: We will talk more about how to reclaim and honour the different phases of a woman’s life cycle next week. In the meantime, if you would like to read more, here are a few great articles:
In Praise of Menstruation
if there is a river
more beautiful than this
bright as the blood
red edge of the moon
if there is a river
more faithful than this
returning each month
to the same delta
if there is a river
braver than this
coming and coming in a surge
of passion, of pain
if there is a river
more ancient than this
daughter of eve
mother of cain and of abel
if there is in the universe such a river
if there is some where
water more powerful than this wild water
pray that it flows also
through animals
beautiful and faithful and ancient
and female and brave
- Lucille Clifton
