Just before our bleeding time we feel a plunge in our energy levels. They are at an all time low. What is going on hormonally inside of us is reflected in the darkest night of each month, when the moon is at its thinnest. There is a stillness, energy moves inward. At this time, ideally, we would be able to just go deeply into this truth, into this wisdom of our womb.
Unfortunately, given “modern” society’s rhythms, this is often not possible. We still live in a predominantly goal oriented, linear society.
To tell you the truth, I was one of those women that had no clue where her energy levels were at different times of my cycle. I had a plan and I was sticking to it, and my body was surely not going to slow me down, much less a relationship, love, or anything else. I was goal oriented, linear, and had no clue about emotions, cycles or rhythms.
Even after I left my career and left the United Nations, I didn’t know any better. At one point I was flying to a different country every week the majority of the months of the year. So what happened? My cycle was thrown way off. It had always been like clockwork on the dot 28 days, and now it was irregular. Ironically, this was happening at the time I had started to open to motherhood! How on Earth was I expecting to ever get pregnant this way?!
I had no sense of seasons, because I was flying between countries in different hemispheres with different climates. I was way out of touch with the rhythms of life and the rhythms of nature, including and primarily, my own! My body was screaming at me to stop, slow down, feel it, hear it, pay attention. It took some time, but I FINALLY did! I dropped it all. I realized the way I was living was not healthy even if it was for a good cause.
When I look back now I can’t believe I lived like that. I don’t know how I managed. Now, as I enter the menstruating time of my cycle, I feel that dip in my energy so strongly. It is as if someone unplugs me from the electric socket! It’s so tangible! Sometimes I cannot think or write, I cannot focus. Sometimes I don’t want to engage in conversation, I don’t want to go anywhere, I just want to be.
And this is our body’s invitation to go very deep within. This time in our cycle is related to the winter season, to the Wise Woman Archetype, to the Crone stage in our lives. It is a time when we are more receptive and sensitive, and deeply inwards. We may be able to connect to the spirit world more easily. there may be messages in dreams or channeling may come through us. At this stage in our lives we have greater access to our innate wisdom. Having gone through the ups and downs and adventures of womanhood, we connect more to our Soul and to Spirit.
And just like this, every phase of our cycle has its beauty, its magic, its profound gifts for us. The Maiden, the Enchantress, the Great Mother, the Warrior, the Wise Woman. These are the main Feminine Archetypes. They are reflected in our womb cycle, all of them, every month! They are also reflected in our life’s cycle. But why wait to get there in age, or lament that that life stage has already passed? Learn to access this energy, clean it, bring it into balance, refine it, harness it, every month!
Rhythms of life, like us, are cyclical, each spiral an opportunity to go deeper, a portal! This journey is marked in our wombs as women, from the first bleed. What does it mean to be a woman? What does it mean to have a womb? What have you discovered? What have you embraced? What remains to be included, loved, made conscious?
The Seed contains the whole tree! The roots, trunk, branches, leafs, flowers and fruits are all already there! All in one little seed! What has sprouted in your sacred garden sister? What still needs to be cultivated and nourished?
If you are interested in learning more about Womb Wisdom and the Feminine Cycles, watch this informative interview I gave on Sunday, February 24, 2019:
https://www.facebook.com/rememberyourself.live/videos/590255688114866/
Ah… the journey of womanhood! What mysteries have you unveiled? Embodied? Integrated?
“I am almost a hundred years old; waiting for the end, and thinking about the beginning. There are things I need to tell you, but would you listen if I told you how quickly time passes? I know you are unable to imagine this. Nevertheless, I can tell you that you will awake someday to find that your life has rushed by at a speed at once impossible and cruel. The most intense moments will seem to have occurred only yesterday and nothing will have erased the pain and pleasure, the impossible intensity of love and its dog-leaping happiness, the bleak blackness of passions unrequited, or unexpressed, or unresolved. You get old and you realize there are no answers, just stories…”
Photography: Ania Powalowska
Meg Rosoff/Garrison Keillor`s quotes