the world of women.

I grew up in a man’s world, where the rhythm of my brothers and father dictated the movement of my family.

Somehow the cycles of my mother were molded to fit them. I never even knew if she was on her moon or not and when she was pregnant she kept working until close to her due date. Her belly grew, but she didn’t stop or adjust her daily activities.

When I began to bleed at age 10, my moon came every month like a volcanic eruption that stopped all of my activities and forced my family to shift theirs as well. Month by month, moon by moon, my body was telling a story.

I went to countless doctors, had exams done, blood drawn, was admitted into the ER … and still no one had an answer.

“It’s normal, you’ll grow out of it.” followed by “Here are some birth control pills, they should help” were common “answers” I was given. But I was a stubborn teenager - I never took the pills and I didn’t believe it was normal at all.

Instead, I abandoned hope that it would ever change and I accepted that this was my cursed fate, the great martyr I was.

Then with time, I abandoned hope that anyone in a white coat would give me an answer at all and instead I began to look into the forgotten places - the plants, the water, the soil, the sky, my womb, my flesh.

& there I found the stories of my mother, my grandmothers, and the women before me. Never written in books, never spoken out loud, but asking for a voice every month through my body. Through the pain, and later, through the pleasure.

The woman’s body has infinite stories to tell, infinite lessons to teach us, infinite creations waiting to be birthed into the world.

I did not “cure” myself, I did not “fix” myself. I have no breakthrough stories to tell.

Even after 25 years, my bleed still asks me to lay down and pause all of my activities. The pain has decreased over the years & instead of being overtaken by a biological catharsis, I have found the innate magic woven into the space of such physical and energetic openness and release. Month after month, I sit in the mystical realm within my flesh & embrace the pause and silence in an otherwise un-cyclical world.

I would like to believe it happened through my devotion to my flesh and womb, through my relationship with my blood and plants, through my bare feet on the earth. Through creating a life that adjusts itself to my rhythms, not the other way around.

Instead of seeing my body as something that needed to be fix, I learned the listen her and the stories that she was telling me. Symptom after symptom, sensation after sensation. I learned the language of my body and how to speak to her.

When my right hip starts to feel tender, I know that I feel pressured to act in a way that isn’t correct for me. I stop and pay attention to my surrounds and to my inner world too. I make adjustments where needed. When my bleed comes with a sharp pain that brings me to my knees I know - my cervix is tense, I have been spending the last cycle braced, stress overtaking my body. I make adjustments, massage my womb, drink tea, lay on the earth, shake my hips, vow to give myself more space for calm, play & joy in the cycle ahead.

Although I grew up in a man’s world, my north star is the world of women. Where we sit together, bleed together, dance around the fire together, sing under the stars together, sit on the earth together, develop greater intimacy with our body together and remember the strength and softness that lives within us. Together.

I want the conversations I send into the world to be around that which is cyclical, fluid and mystical in nature - the woman’s experience on earth.

It’s the only way forward for our world, my womb tells me so.