The idea of loving your period is a radical one.
Especially if you’re in your thirties, forties or fifties. Because most of us have it ingrained in us that periods are bad.
And for a lot of us they have been. Painful. Difficult. Something we dreaded the arrival of.
The media hasn’t helped. We’re told constantly how terrible periods are, how hard it is to be a woman. And yes, it is hard. But our periods were never supposed to be the reason.
If your periods are painful, I see you
If you have painful periods, if you have endometriosis, PMS, PMDD, or anything else that arrives with your bleed and takes you out, then finding love for this time is going to be difficult.
Of course it is. It’s painful. It’s hard. And I’m not going to sit here and promise you that changes.
But I do think there’s something worth pulling apart.
There’s what is genuinely difficult in our menstruation and our luteal phase. The real pain. The real challenge.
And then there’s what we’ve learned.
From our culture and how it describes this time. From what got passed down to us by our mums and our grandmothers. From the men who ignored it, or who refused to talk about it at all, because it was disgusting. Something to hide. Something we don’t mention.
So is the story yours, or was it handed to you?
That’s the question I keep coming back to.
The story you carry about your bleed, about your inner winter. Did you arrive at it yourself, or did you inherit it?
Because there’s something in reclaiming that. In deciding for yourself.
What I found when I stopped listening to the story
I have learned to love this time in my cycle.
And my luteal phase too, which I also used to dislike. I found that when I listened in to what was actually happening, rather than what I’d been told was happening, something else was there.
I get incredibly vivid dreams in my luteal phase. Some of them are utterly wild.
I get real insight when I’m bleeding. A deep sense of love and beauty and understanding of the world.
And my body tells me when I’ve shifted into these dreaming states. My energy changes. I get more tired. I get clearer. I get more ratty and more ragey, of course I do as well.
That’s the point. It isn’t all soft and lovely.
The thing I ignored for years
Before I understood any of this, my intuition was talking to me in my luteal phase every single month.
I just wasn’t listening.
It didn’t feel like something to trust. It felt like being difficult. Or tired. Or too much. So I ignored it, cycle after cycle after cycle, until it got loud enough that things broke.
And it was only afterwards, looking back, that I could see it. My luteal phase had been telling me exactly what I needed to do. For months. I’d been getting the message the whole time and I wasn’t connected enough to hear it.
That’s the bit that gets me, even now.
With darkness must come light
None of this means there are no challenges.
There is still grief. There is still mourning. There is still pain. There is still the dark side of this time.
Whichever season you’re in, whichever part of your cycle, there will always be dark and light. And there always has to be. One doesn’t work without the other.
But if we can find more of the light, and hold it alongside the dark, some really beautiful things can come from it.
Your cycle won’t look like mine
Your cycle will be different to my cycle. Your experience of these times will be different to mine.
That’s what makes it so rich.
But it starts small. It starts with one month of paying attention. One cycle where you notice what’s actually happening in your body, rather than what you’ve been told should be happening.
That’s the whole beginning. One cycle of listening.
And then when we all start doing it, the creativity, the artistry, the intuition, the discernment, the clarity that comes out of that.
My goodness.
That’s how we shift the world.
If you want somewhere to start, the Breath & Cycle Check-In is a 10 minute guided audio and a monthly calendar. It’s £7, and it’s the smallest possible way in. Just you, your breath, and one cycle of noticing.
The inner seasons framework I use comes from Red School.