Alright friends- let’s dive deep into the power of the female hormone cycle. If you know me you know that this is one of my big passions, after a really toxic relationship with my cycle for most of my life, around 6 years ago I took a deep dive into menstrual cycle awareness, and wow what a transformation, I began to understand myself better and over time I learned to hone in on and harness the power, magic, and wisdom of each stage of my cycle, not only that but my relationships got better, I understand others better and I am a much better friend and leader as a result! 

Over the next few weeks, I want to share with you some of my learnings, these are an amalgamation of my own experience, teachings from the incredible women I am surrounded by, and the wisdom I’ve gained from working with people who menstruate for over 10 years. 

Even if you don’t, never will, or no longer menstruate I’d encourage you to read these blogs they may offer reflective healing on your menstrual days and hopefully help spread wisdom and guidance that will allow us to support those who do. 

I have a lot to say ( no surprises there!) so I’ll be breaking things down into parts that are easy to read and digest and today I want to start with some reflections and considerations on why most of us find it so tough to work with our cycles and not against them. 

The main reason?

We don’t live in a cycle-friendly world.

We are expected to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and get on with it. A lot of this comes from medical misogyny and basically the lack of awareness and education around female hormone cycles and the impact they have on us throughout our lives. Because women weren’t given equal access to education whilst the medical system was being formed, most of the research that has been done has been on the experience of men, who in contrast have a 24-hour hormone cycle as opposed to a 28-day one. This has left us in the dark and as we move farther and farther from a holistic approach to our health (full disclosure I am not dismissing modern medicine, I think it is wonderful and that both functional and modern medicine can co-exist-  multifaceted approach, always people!) we move farther and farther from our understanding ourselves and others.  

Going past the medical world and looking at how we live our lives - The 8-hour working day isn’t designed for women’s hormone cycles- it’s designed for men.  Men have the same hormonal cycle throughout a 24-hour period, so on a hormonal basis, they are feeling the same at the same points throughout the day whereas women have fluctuations across 28 days which means that they perform differently, feel differently, react and respond in different ways from day to day based on where they are in their cycle. Take into consideration the 5-day working week, where you get 2 days off- the same two days every week and even that doesn’t really suit women’s hormone cycles as ideally we’d want to take the first two days of our bleed (when it is generally heaviest and estrogen is at it’s lowest) as rest days - and then how about the calendar? -  originally our yearly calendar, before the current roman system was 13 months per year with 28 days per month which correlate to a woman’s hormonal cycle rather than 12 months per year with a different variation of days every month, The old style calendar was much more in tune with our menstrual cycle, as well as being in tune with mama moon, I would love to see what that felt like and the impact it would have on the decisions we make and the way we live our lives. 

So next time you are beating yourself up about why you feel so exhausted, why your period and PMS are so intense, and maybe even wishing that you didn’t have to bleed, take a moment of pause and self-compassion, remind yourself that we live in a world that at the time of set up didn’t take your needs or experience into consideration and that maybe the problem isn’t having a hormone cycle but in fighting every day against what you intuitively know you need because there feels like there is no other way- that my friend is allowed to feel hard - it is hard and whilst you cannot immediately change the world- you can go forward being gentle and kind to yourself as opposed to feeling like you are at fault. 

Before we dive deep into the menstrual cycle itself I’d like to first talk to you about tracking and getting to know yours, so this week I have a gift for you - a presentation on how to get into tracking and understanding your own cycle. Come back and meet me here next week for a deep dive into cycle specifics, the energies, and inner seasons.