October hosts a number of key dates, namely World Mental Health Day on October 10, and World Menopause Day on October 18. For me, a feminist therapist who specializes in reproductive mental health, these two days could not be more fitting together, like two puzzle pieces that go together perfectly. The season of Autumn is also known as the Perimenopause Season for all that we are starting to shed, release, and let go of. To really saturate this analogy, perimenopause is also the equivalent to the Luteal stage in the monthly menstrual cycle. So, we are in the Luteal stage of this month as the moon phase is also luteal (the New Moon of October lands on the 21).
As we get closer to November, the veil is thinning between our world and the dearly departed. I find this time of year to be so resonant for me, and i can feel in my bones how it truly is the Season of the Witch. The veil between our present and past life is also thin, as a way to remind us that our whole life is a series of deaths and rebirths.
Take our monthly menstrual cycle as an example. Each month, or about 28 days, we go through a cycle of creation, fertility and also cyclical ending. New life comes from death, we are death doulas of our own body, offering life where an ending was shed.
Marion Woodman viewed menopause as another chrysalis period of transformation. The shift in hormones offers a new type of goo in the spiritual chrysalis so that we can accept the death of our old life by stepping through the threshold of a new one. This creation is a form of Alchemy: the transformation that comes with menopause.
We are our own personal duet of being a Death doula of old life at the same time as a new life rebirth midwife.
“In that experience of being formed anew, I may often feel torn asunder; old aspects of my self-conception must die in order for my new transformation into selfhood to take place,” writes feminist professor Penelope Washburn. Much like the leaves, plants, and flowers, we too go through a death of our former Self at this time of year. I’m dancing under a Veil Of Knowing this more, that our life is an endless flow of unveilings. As the mystic Hazrat Inayat Khan shared in the early 1900s, “the soul is covered by a thousand veils.”
The veils i wear are connected to feminine mystique and the delicate balance between what is seen and cannot be seen. Autumn and its mirror season, Spring are known to be in balance because the scale of day and night is more even. And yet, as October itself is such a transitional month, it’s hard not to notice how much descent we go through from September to December.
Midlife Awakening of the Mature Conscious Woman
Marion Woodman coined this stage of initiating into the Conscious Woman as the “Virgin” – whole onto herself; The archetype of the Sovereign Woman, Queen, Mystic or Mage is fitting here. I also love to channel my inner Warrior or Wild Woman here as a way to get closer to the life i want for myself.
We are literally experiencing the end of something (our fertile years) and that also becomes a threshold of our becoming something new. We are meant to evolve and shift, change and grow. The fact that our monthly blood stops and we continue to be very much alive, is a testament to this new phase. Our blood remains for us, to nurture what our inner life is meant to birth, and not the caretaking we give others. This is not being taught in the bigger menopause discussions, where the focus is on the remedy for symptoms.
We are living longer and now have this 4th archetype. Our ageist society hates getting old, and has demonized women’s rage and anger, making menstruation a dirty word.
I am stepping into my Queen Era, my Virgin time, and my Magehood: NOT the acronym but the archetype of a woman in midlife who is whole onto herself.
We call midlife a crisis because we have been conditioned for so long to follow along, be productive and traditional. When we enter our virgin and queen era, it is a direct threat to patriarchy so we are taught it’s a crisis.
We (as women) are not in a crisis, they are (the patriarchy) because they are afraid of the veil being taken off. We are reclaiming our rightful place of rest and pleasure, of not dressing for the male gaze, of doing things with herbs and knowing what our bodies need. We are prioritizing our own sovereignty and not the caretaking role we have been placed in.
At least that we are doing when not distracted by the menopause can be slowed down and we need to keep our estrogen in abundance propaganda.
Blood Rites
Let’s recognize the midlife transition as an initiation. Of the power and magnitude I had not experienced before. It is the 40s decade that we come into our own, and also integrate the soul seed that has been dormant for many of us. This could not be more true for me.
“Initiation is a rite of passage, a crossing over, a movement between two worlds. For women on a journey such as this one, initiation is the Great Transition,” writes Sue Monk Kidd in her book The Dance of the Dissident Daughter. She goes on to share that “Initiation is a sacred disintegration. Despite its pain, we carry the conviction (often only faintly) that even though we don’t know where we’ll end up, we’re following a soul-path of immense richness, that we’re supposed to be on this path, that it’s required of us somehow. We move in a sense of rightness, of lure, of following a flute that pipes irresistible music.” Sue Monk Kidd
If you’re feeling stuck with your life and you need an update, start with yourself first and what is in your control for instance it might be a hobby or our class or a way that you take care of your body and health. Ask yourself what lights you up! And then move out from there maybe your job needs to change, or maybe your friendships need an update or change. When you start to notice that maybe your partner might also be inspired in that interdependence could be a catalyst for them to change and evolve as well. If they don’t, it might mean that it’s time to sit with that hard question around this relationship you have with them. Is it still serving you and aligned with your life?
Maybe it’s time to take the mask of comfort and familiarity off. In order to find what you want you have to know what you are. You need to take off the mask of fitting in, of the uninitiated.
“That ‘Mask Crack’ actually has to happen in your Midlife Passage. Carl Jung calls the first half of our life the Accommodation Phase. You accommodate others to please them, you accommodate to survive. The mask is the Persona. But by midlife – the Person, the truth of us, once buried, begins to rise, and demands its time in the light. Often after a lifetime of lies. I often say Midlife Women are like volcanoes, there comes a time when they must let the white hot lavic truth flow. Anything and everyone who holds them back from that truth, has to go.” ~ Sarah Durham Wilson.
So many of us are aching for more, a better, a more full life. Because that ache has not been fulfilled, we start to numb this pain and instead turn our focus outwards in order to not feel as hurt in our unmet needs. We start to over identify with the roles and labels of how we give to others so that we don’t feel the hurt and not also being on the receiving end.
We are not just cups or vessels, but the wellspring of flow and feminine energy. Our womb is in fact the site of all creation, a chalice that is meant to birth new life, ideas, and purpose into life.
My Body is My Home
My body is a safe home (haven) for my soul and sanctuary for my mind. My mind is my body, they are not separate. My body is a sacred vessel. When we reconnect with our bodies, especially their womb and menstrual cycle, it offers the gift of reclaiming our full life knowing more about our cycle and the various moves energies and helps us be more intentional and alive, and have a care for herself and live in this broken world
It is time to come home to yourself. It is time to reclaim being in the body – Embodied. I am bodied.
A big reason i’m sharing my own dance with perimenopause so much is that i want body literacy and knowledge about our menstruality to be the norm for all women, and folks in general. It serves us all to carry this wisdom. This knowledge is not meant to be kept in the shadows or the fringe of our society.
For those of us born with wombs, a female reproductive system, and female physiology embodiment, it is still a challenge to trust what our body’s wisdom is. We live in a world designed for male bodies which is out of alignment with our female body’s natural rhythms, and how we as women are ultimately meant to thrive.
One of my teachers, Kimberley Ann Johnson lead us through a hands-on the pelvis class when i went to her in-person retreat. It was a reparative experience for me – to be touched by my peer and hold her bones as well. As a psychotherapist, it is not something i get to do. As a woman, it is very much what i want to do. As Kimberely shares, “when we hold each other’s bones, we call home and call forth whatever is in our pelvis, from all the thresholds we experience as women.”
Being initiated into motherhood was a catalysing moment for me. What radicalized me was learning about why my mother died (i shared more about this in my last journal article). What i now see in my full being is what is my soul’s calling – a shift in my work towards the blood rights. What is my service – body literacy, reproductive mental health in its fullness, and centreing blood rite ceremonies.
As i get closer to turning 50 in December, i can feel i’m entering late-stage perimenopause, the portal that shifts the goo of the chrysalis to the mature butterfly i’m becoming.