Author Archives: Vania

The Veil of Perimenopause

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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 midlife 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.

“What if midlife isn’t the beginning of the end? What if it’s a call to adventure to shed even more conditioned layers, a journey to reveal an even more authentic self, the dawn of a new life from an even deeper place of—dare I say, wisdom?” ~ Valerie Rein

Midlife Awakening of the Mature Conscious Woman
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. 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. Learning more about the possible blessing and definite spiritual transformation that is menopause has been inspiring and also a remembering for me. Learning from teachers like Jane Hardwicke Collings and the Red School’s Alexandra Pope and Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer has provided with a stronger foundation as well as lens to see this stage of life. It is a portal to better and more, not a decline and slow death of invisibility.

For instance, i love how the reframed the 5 stages of menopause as capabilities that get born or developed at this time of life. Sure, our body does change drastically, but maybe the betrayal is not just our own body but also the story we have been taught about menopause. This propaganda and trope is to keep us distracted from the bigger truth – that our power comes with age. I share more on my instagram reel here. After we acknowledge this descent journey, we go through gates of repair, surrender and eventually emerge a a mature butterfly and Wise Woman Self. The book Wise Power unpacks this process beautifully.

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 (women and folks with wombs) 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.

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.

Following the Red Thread

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When my mom died in 2022, she left a huge hole in my heart. Not just for the void of not having a mother anymore and getting to be mothered in my older years, but also because i was left with so many unanswered questions about my motherline, ancestors and lineage, let alone have a chance to truly heal my relationship with her. I was just starting to repair our complicated relationship as well as learning more about my blood rites and motherline. There is so much that has died with her, and realizing this has awakened a long-silent part of me.

You could say her death radicalized me. It definitely was a catalyst to re-route me on a path that i now see i was always meant to be on. Some of it was about becoming more grief literate. And, even more so, it all leads back to my womb and menstrual cycles in general..

First, bear with me as i take you on a meandering path to give you the backstory of sorts, or the spiralling red thread path.

I was initiated by menarche at a mere 9 years old. I have been bleeding, somewhat regularly ever since, for 40 years. I think i have learned a thing or two about menstruation, monthly blood, and all the stages, stained undies, and stories in between. And yet with my most recent surprise bleeds at 49, i am seeing just how much more there is to learn.

Sure, I know how to use a tampon, a cup, and free bleed. Sure i know that i love having sex during my bleed. Yes, i know how to take out stains. What i didn’t know was how to listen to my own needs during the in-between times, the liminal times of luteal and follicular stages. That knowledge came many years into my relationship with menstruation, when i started to try to conceive.

I am now connecting all the red dots, and the truths that have been waiting for me to follow said dots. Kind of like the spotting that happens close to a bleed.

I am seeing the powerful teacher that menstruation is. I am becoming That Woman who talks about her menstrual cycle, and trying to change the stuck and incorrect term “period” to monthly bleed or moon time. Because, guess what? Our life doesn’t come to an end when we bleed. Our life isn’t over with a full stop – there is so much more to it that comes after the end of the period. That can mean each month as we cycle through the 4 stages of our menstrual cycle. And that also applies to the shift that is menopause.

This is where the blood mysteries come in. We are reclaiming this old truth that our monthly blood cycle is an oracle and our body is a temple. Our Womb is the altar of truth and the home of our spiritual awakening. It is a red thread, not unlike a tether or anchor that connects us to our ancestors.

I know, it’s all beginning to sound a bit woo, and guess what? I AM AND IT IS. Get over it. Move on.

Because, what could be more magical than having blood that doesn’t hurt, because there is no injury in fact. Those of us with wombs are shedding what we don’t need via our blood and it’s a river not an injury. This is an especially powerful truth when men are acting like boys and causing pain and suffering in this world as i write this, and so much blood is being spilled, and our rights to our own body autonomy are being stolen.

My mom died of complications that came from ovarian cancer. She had stomach pains for months, and so eventually went into the hospital because the doctors knew something was wrong but not what. She was 78 and hadn’t had her monthly bleed in years. I will never know when that rite of passage happened for her. One of my biggest regrets is not knowing when she was perimenopausa,l let alone when she reached menopause. We surely didn’t celebrate it or acknowledge it. It was never spoken about. In retrospect, i can suspect when she went though The Change because of the extra challenging and volatile times in my adolescence. It all makes so much more sense now..

She died because of her reproductive organs’ health had gone unchecked and unchartered for decades. Her death will not be in vain as it motivated me to learn all i can about wombs – the medical, physical and spiritual aspects of it.

These last few years, i have been quietly learning about menstrual health especially as it connects to our mental health. I support people who struggle with mood and body concerns connected to their monthly bleed. I hold space for people who are trying to conceive and haven’t been successful yet, or they have experienced miscarriages. I also companion people through their decision to have an abortion, or terminate their pregnancy. No topic around our blood rites and reproductive mental health is too much or small for me.

I needed to remember this when i was initiated into perimenopause. Looking back, I think i was meant to devote my life and way to be of service to the blood rites and their mysteries.

We are the daughters and children of the generation that was raised to believe that individualism, hyper-independence and self-sufficiency are the ideal. That meant we never talked about what happened at home behind closed doors, be it our sex lives, our time of month, or how much money was earned. So many topics were taboo so the generation of Boomers did not benefit from the modern day red tent and community. Sure, they did aerobics beside each other at the local YMCA, and maybe even changed into their pastel or vibrant work- out clothes beside each other. They surely did NOT talk openly about the womanly ways of life. They were too busy wanting to be like men and to prove that we can do anything that men can, regardless of our body telling us each month that there was a dedicated time to rest and turn inward.

Here’s a story that will showcase this disparity more. It happened to me while on vacation in Nova Scotia last month. When i was treating my family to a whale-watching adventure, the woman (who appeared to be quite older than me) selling the tickets shared her surprise on how i could have teenage children – she was convinced that i looked too young. After sharing my appreciation for her compliment, i also offered gratitude and said “my perimenopausal body is not sure i look that young and would beg to differ,” the woman got flustered and visibly embarrassed – for me, or herself, i’m not sure. She stated something like “yikes, that’s too much information, i don’t know what to do with it.” I laughed it off and also had to remind myself that not everyone is as comfortable to talk about their bodies.
Here’s a mind-fuck inquiry for you to contemplate: If the egg that eventually lead to the creation of me was first created in my grandmother, let us reflect back to what life would have been like back then. What was infused in the cell that became me?

I learned via Jane Hardwicke Collings that how we are conceived, born and how our mother experiences postpartum all have a direct link to who we will live and make decisions in our life. My mom had several miscarriages before me, and several after, including a stillbirth. While i have a younger sister, she does not have children herself. I also don’t know a lot about my motherline, but what i do have access to is how difficult it was to live in Serbia (then Yugoslavia) when my grandmother and mother were born, between 1914 and 1945.

Our blood rites are a spiral path of our own conception, to our birth, then menarche and sexual initiation (consensual), to marriage/conscious relationship and our fertility journey and birth of our children, and then the path towards menopause.

Now, with this generation experiencing the most amount of women and people in perimenopause and menopause (it is estimated that over 1 billion folks will be menopausal in 2030), we are not silent about this very real and physical transformation. Our silence will surely not protect us (thank-you Audre Lorde).

If Jane’s theory of the connection our birth story has to how we live our life is accurate, than i can glean from what i know of my own birth that it would mean many dark nights of the soul, layers of grief and aloneness, and finding my own path alone, without guidance or support.

Starting at the wee age of 9 years old; this is when i got my first bleed. I was initiated by menarche on a warm summer day, and i thought i had an accident in the backyard while playing on the tire swing. I called my mom into the bathroom and she gave me the facts. We also had cake to celebrate, which was fitting as food and making was my mom’s love language.

In my teen years and early 20s, I was curious about the sacred feminine and ancient goddess myths and stories. I got my first oracle deck and many books, including Women Who Run with the Wolves. Because the witch wound was very much alive in me, and was an invisible wound, i hid this side of me. So, I took a side-step and devoted myself to feminism and activism, fighting for women’s rights and safety. Same but different.

That’s how I became a trauma therapist only to then eventually find my way to somatic therapy.

I love using the Narrative Timeline as a resource, so i thought it would be a great way to reflect my journey to here. If i could zoom in onto this ten-year period, like how we see on maps that get close and personal to a specific area, the ten years of 15-25 were a crucial and key demonstration of who i was becoming. Over these ten years, i was danced with the Blood Rites of Adolescence:

At 15, i supported a friend get an abortion
At 16, i moved out of home and lost my virginity
At 17, i protested for abortion rights
At 18, i learned how to experience my own orgasm
At 19, i found my G-Spot
At 20 i realized how much i love love women
At 21 i volunteered at a Tantra Sex workshop at an annual Sex Research Conference
At 22, i had an unforgettable experience at my first bathhouse
At 23, i went on a transformative trip to India where Spirit led me on a pilgrimage into the ancient temples of yoga, community service, tantra, and breathwork
At 24, i met my beloved
At 25, i started my career supporting women who experienced intimate partner violence and sexual trauma

At 16 years old, i had my first experience with sex and intercourse. It was not exactly consensual as it was forced and manipulated, complicated and it created a very messy relationship with sex. This also coincided but me moving out of my family home, in a related and connected way. But that story is another one altoghter. By the age of 24 and many sexual partners and lovers, i learned a thing or about healthy relationships and love, and met my now-husband. We married when i was 31. At the beginning of this relationship, i did so much work on myself. After not wanting to be monogamous, nor wanting children, i healed many childhood wounds and started to try to conceive. Before having my first child, i had a miscarriage at 33, then a child at 34 via emergency c-section, and then my youngest child was born at home when i was 36.

The birth of my first-born was my initiation back to paganism and the sacred wheel of year sabbats, as well as Waldorf pedagogy. The birth of my youngest was my butterfly effect to trust my body and be in communion with the moon more intentionally. Her middle names of Moon honours the full moon that was a guide the night she was born.

I always knew i wanted to be a therapist, to work with women, and to help them find an empowering relationship with themselves, others, and their sexual selves. Working in the shelter system, as a first-stage crisis counsellor for abused women, as well as an outreach worker in this sector was something i was very passionate about for 20 years.

During this same time period, i worked as a counsellor at a reproductive health and abortion clinic. This was a side-step back to my calling, and then my own pregnancy lead me back to the more well-known path of trauma therapy. While i always knew my passion was supporting women to heal from relational trauma, it felt more like a place of service and not my true calling. It is something that brings me so much meaning and fulfillment, but it was confined to the parameters of community mental health restrictions and working for others.

And then, in the shadow of the pandemic, perimenopause (me) and puberty (both my kids) came knocking on the door uninvited like the emotional vampires they are.

“Being embodied is the way we remember how to listen.” Abigail Rose Clarke

It suddenly dawned on me this year that my work has always included the womb but never addressed it directly. I have been doing sexual trauma and relational trauma healing for decades. I started off in sexual trauma healing and then birth trauma, and now see I was meant to do blood rites work for the whole spiral from menarche to menopause and all in-between. This is called menstruality. This is my calling. This is more than my vocation, career, or passion. It is not just how i can be of service, but rather how i can be a voice for this ancient wisdom and knowing.

It is time to remember this again.

So, 2 years ago, when i realized it was perimenopause that came knocking on my door, i heard the knock. Whenever i am faced with something new, i want to learn all i can about it. I read, i take courses, and i self-study. In this case, i had a date with my menstrual cycle and the quiet whisperings from my womb. I attended a ceremony with Jane Hardwicke Collings, i attended Red School, and also took Adriana Rizzolo’s Womb Healer Teaching Training.

I’m not sure yet just how to incorporate it all into my work as it is actively unfolding. I do know that there was a reason in learned about sacred sexuality, somatic therapy, breathwork, and dance therapy – it is all coming together. And, if you are also on a journey with perimenopause, or want more support with how your menstrual cycle impacts your mental health, and also how to listen to your womb’s wisdom, reach out!

When i pivoted to birth trauma and parenthood, i didn’t realize then that i also needed to learn more about the womb as a way to complete this trifecta. That was the missing piece. Now as i am being initiated by menstruality due to my mom’s death and my own perimenopause, i see this piece as the missing link to it all. True healing and becoming whole is about integrating all of these pieces, and not just from a thinking and talking place, but from an embodied, body-based, and soul level as well.

I have always been walking towards this trailhead, this marker, not unlike the handprint hieroglyphics in caves found in southern France. I have always been inching my way to here, but i just didn’t know it yet. I had to be initiated into this stage of life to have the veil be removed. I had to be ready to see it.

We are cyclical beings and this is me evolving, to connect the trifecta more fully – mind, body and soul, from a red thread lens.

I am ready now. I connected the dots. I hear the call.

The Summer I Became Relaxed

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I had a realization recently that I want my kids to see me relaxing. It came after noticing how I would make a point to look busy when they came home. Not just when i was actually working from home, but when i dared to put my feet up and read a book or scroll on my phone. It wasn’t to avoid them but rather to make myself appear productive. I would see them at the front steps and run to the kitchen to look like i was cleaning the dishes or something else deemed worthy. I can’t be the only one, surely, or am i? Maybe?

It dawned on me that what i really want them to know is that I am enjoying my life: That we don’t always have to be working or busy; our value is not based on how productive we are, especially when it’s at the expense of our health. I want them to see that they ar worthy inherently and I am living a life of my making.

I also want to live a life of sovereignty and not servitude. I don’t want to be at someone’s beck and call. I wholeheartedly know that rested women will change the world. I think that’s exactly what patriarchy is afraid of. If rest and pleasure are our birthright, relaxing is the means that gets us there.

August is the time i dedicate to my own needs. To my own rest and pleasure specifically. I take off the month from client work so that i can rest my body, quiet my mind, and also tend to the dream seeds that i planted earlier in the year. They are now being born and need attention. I am so excited about what is yet to come this year!

We celebrated Lughnasadh earlier this month. It is the first harvest, where we start to collect what we need for the winter that is fast approaching. The corn and peaches are abundant. This also includes our own life’s dreams and the visions we cast for our life. What have you been nurturing and growing this year? Where do you feel abundant? In what ways have you been caring for yourself so that you can continue to work growing your own inner garden?

August reminds me to attune to my word of the year. As this year is committed to Presence, this is the time to be fully present with this moment right here right now. It is about coming ALIVE. That means we need rest to balance the service i give others. Rest restores us. It also reminds us that the life we are living is our own.

We are meant to be fully alive, not just relaxed. We are not meant to always be performing and creating. That leads to toxic productivity. Rather, humans need a balance of rest and renewal so that we can integrate what we have learned and experienced. We also all need to receive care, and not just be care-givers.

This can be hard when it is so often the case that we have strong Inner Critics who are in cahoots with the overculture’s tendency to push us to be selfless and martyr our own needs. We may have more freedom than our motherline and ancestors, but have still inherited helplessness. Luckily, many of us are healing from late stage capitalism, and internalized patriarchy that tells us to keep hustling and ignore knowing this truth about these ancient ancestral embodied processes that are connected to a feminine embodied way of being in the world.

Chronic stressful situations like isolation, loneliness, bereavement, caregiving, family conflict, deplete our empathy, dopamine, and serotonin levels. We replenish by being safe, seen, and supported by others. This is done through attunement and co-regulation.

Science has been conveniently quiet on research about what women are faced with and focus on – menstruation, matrescence and menopause rites of passage. And yet, this cyclical spiral continues to evolve and includes motherhood. It is an intuitive, wild dance that is also a soulful experience.

There are many instagram accounts, books, podcasts, and programs that are rising to the task to heal our toxic productivity and internalized patriarchy. For instance, I just finished The Relaxed Woman by Nicola Jane Hobbs. In her book, she describes various ways to become more relaxed. One thing that i especially appreciated is that she reminds us that giving ourselves our own care is a feminist act. “Becoming a relaxed woman is a feminist issue because freedom is at the heart of feminism” (pg 64). According to her, freedom is the felt sense of having choice and agency to do what we want. It is about having freedom to do what i can do, not just what i should do. She goes on to suggest that “patriarchal and capital values have hijacked the authentic feminism that inspired toward a more caring and interdependent society, replacing it with a corporate feminism that encourages independence and meritocracy. Instead of free women, it has trapped us in the same patriarchal, capitalist, values, and expectations that men face.”

Hobbs shares her concept of Compassionate Feminism as a counter to this. It is support for each other, care and respecting choices, private intimate everyday moments; ack our capacities, needs and vulnerabilities; compassion leads to care so can fight for everyone’s freedom and not be exhausted. Relax and rest is paramount. We are not built to fight for everyone; but are meant to all fight for something.

This is where the Relaxed Woman Archetype may be of service. She lives within all of us, and is waiting to be welcomed and released from the clutches of toxic productivity, patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism. She is ready to be uncaged and re-wilded. She is the one who can lounge with a good book and snacks as well as know that her worthiness is not tethered to success. She is the woman who can ask for help after becoming a mom, who takes a lunch break at work (especially when it’s not paid for), the adult daughter who sets boundaries with her parents who have turned to her for help all her life.

Hobbs offers this reflection as a guide: “She is the personification of our authentic self, our intuitive self, our wild self. She knows her worth, embraces her power, and trusts her inner rhythms of hard work and deep rest, of inner healing, and outer contribution, of holding others and letting herself be held. She feels safe and free in her body and in the world.”

In her book, Hobbs shares her 6 Steps for a relaxed woman journey.
1) Restore your inner resources
2) Regulate your nervous system
3) Nurture your relationships
4) Release your limiting beliefs
5) Realize your dreams
6) Join the relaxed woman movement

Softness in belly / stillness in mind / spaciousness in breath

We are wired for joy, kindness, compassion, play and rest – stress inhibits this. “Without regularly restoring our emotional resources we can find ourselves in an emotional rest deficit, which can manifest in feelings such as powerlessness, hopelessness, loneliness, anxiety, exhaustion, irritability, unworthiness, insecurity, overwhelm, self doubt” (Hobbs). Here are some ways that I have noticed reach a felt sense of relaxation and may help you also embody the Relaxed Woman.

Track Your Own Multitasking
For three days do the following: 1) Chart the length of time per day you are able to focus on one and only one task without doing another single thing at the same time. 2) Note how many tasks you work on longer than fifteen minutes without interruption. 3) Note how many sidesteps arose because you were multitasking or allowing yourself to be pulled off task by distractions. 4)Be aware that one of the major culprits to multitasking is the abundance of thoughts that fill your mind while you are doing something else. From Sandra Bond Chapman, Make Your Brain Smarter: Increase Your Brain’s Creativity, Energy, and Focus

Know What Rest You Need
Did you know that there are about 10 types of rest – emotional, physical, social, spiritual, social, mental, sensory, playful, ecological/nature, and play/creative. In a previous journal article, have spoken about how important it is to curate the right remedy for the rest you need. For instance, as a therapist, i need a brain massage, glow moments, and emotions that land in my system with ease and spaciousness.

For instance, during my month off from work, my emotional rest includes journaling, dance, delight moments, soaking in water, and lots of beauty. Play, wonder, and joy are how i embody rest and live in the moment.

Tiny Experiments of Rest
Nervous system resourcing helps us to stay connected to our present moment. It is not the goal to be calm all the time, because our body is meant to let us know when things happen outside of us that have an impact. We don’t need the time we give ourselves rest to be outlandish. A mere two minutes can go far. We need to titrate rest so that we can titrate with rest.

Taking care of ourselves heals our nervous system back into regulation and also gives our mind, body and soul the care it needs. When we relax with what is present it helps us be more mindful about what it is we need.

Another helpful practice is to rest with others. Body double with someone to really embody this. Cuddle with them, have a nap, read at the beach, float in the water together.

Make Rest Happen with Rest Rituals
Giving presence for the sacred in daily life can be an intentional pause on the couch and orienting your eyes to your immediate surroundings. This helps titrate your capacity for more rest. What makes it a ritual is to do it with intention and awareness.

Have you heard of the goddess Kuan Yin’s Royal Ease Pose? I have been sitting with this practice this summer and it has been one of the most beautiful, simple and potent rituals. If you feel inspired, try it – sit on the earth and maybe even open your skirt and have your real seat be on the land. Again, i am guided by Hobbs reflection that “rest is an act of trust and surrender.”

We become what we practice. What we practice, we become.

Maybe make a rest nest, something like the well-known ‘man cave.’ This nest needs our tending and also the agreement of our partners. Men also need to heal from the norms of masculinity by cultivating a more sacred, healed masculinity that also rejects patriarchal views of dominance. This includes participating more in the household. This means also breaking the cycle that our fathers modeled – to not be involved in the family life and tasks of being an adult and parent.

Rest -> Relaxed -> Restored -> Freedom -> Alive -> Sovereignty

One of the main reasons i take time off in August is to be present with my favourite season. Another reason is to ensure i don’t burnout nor suffer with compassion fatigue. In my line of work, active hope is a requirement. Spiritual stress is when we no longer find sources of meaning, peace, comfort, hope or connection. So the antidote is spiritual rest by creating a sense of meaning.

When we make a point to rest and be relaxed, it doesn’t only heal us, but also heals intergenerational trauma and sets the stage for our children and future descendants. How do you want to be remembered? Do you want to be remembered as compassionate, being relaxed and having joy or your service becoming servitude and being stressed and tired? I have had clients commend me on the long break i take for myself in the Summer. It gives them hope, inspiration and the modelling that is so important. As we care for ourselves, we embody the changes that we all need to heal from internalized patriarchy. This is also not about fixing anything that is broken in us. “Rather than fixing ourselves, we are becoming ourselves.” (Hobbs) We are becoming more relaxed, and feeling safe helps our authentic Self awaken.

Now when i hear my kids coming home, i keep my feet on the coach and look up with a smile to greet them exactly as i am: relaxed and content.

Blooming Together: The Growth of a Relationship

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This month honours a milestone for me – my partner and i have been together more than not, as we celebrate 25 years together. A quarter of a century. This also comes with other moments to celebrate: My partner and i are officially in mid-life. He turned 50 last year and my own big day is around the corner this year. We see the evidence of mid-life as we have embraced our grey hairs, change in eye sight, my own new friend Perry – perimenopause – as well as the less obvious changes like our soul awakening and the shifts that have happened with our children.

With midlife for parents comes the graduation of no longer being school-age parents. I am now a mother to teenagers. One kid is half-way through high school and has their first summer job, and my youngest is entering her last year of middle school. We are celebrating some magical numbers in my house indeed – 13, sweet 16, and 50!

Our wedding celebration is in mid-July, and in the wise words of Stephen Jenkinson, it offers a punctuation of sorts, a time to pause and reflect on who we are becoming as a couple, as well as honouring who we once were. It is more of a semi-colon rather than a full stop, as life continues to spiral and dance in this meandering way.

Over these last few years, i have been a student of the sacred feminine and well as in soul school. With this comes a lot of confusion. On my part because i never grew up religious or spiritual, and definitely in the eyes of my partner who grew up in a very religious community. As i immersed myself in learning about Mary Magdalene, i was met with curiosity at the best of times, judgement at time, and also just mere fascination at times. With these studies came a learning about the Sacred Union and twin flames concepts. In spiritual terms, a sacred union is when both partners embody both genders energetically.

I’m still digesting what this all means. What my own studies have shown me is the concepts of individuation and differentiation from Carl Jung’s work. It has also offered my partner and i a chance to embody a stage in our adult development that is connected to our deeper sense of self, one that has a (red) thread to our soul.

My partner’s first glances were of concern and confusion with my path but his next steps have helped him find his footing in his own path. Not only do i no longer need his approval, but we know have a felt sense of belonging to ourselves and also belonging together. We fit perfectly together, as the crown of my head rests in the exact spot near his heart and should for me to nestle in.

This is our version of a sacred union. We don’t have to be twin flames of sameness to also mirror each other.

Last year, right after he turned 50, my partner and i started pulling tarot and oracle cards together, as well as did a red thread inspired hand fasting ceremony of sorts under the feet of The Lady of Woodstock. It was our commitment to each other, to stay true to our path and also a way to honour our shared experience.

“To love someone long-term is to attend a thousand funerals of the people they used to be. The people they’re too exhausted to be any longer. The people they don’t recognize inside themselves anymore. The people they grew out of, the people they never ended up growing into. We so badly want the people we love to get their spark back when it burns out; to become speedily found when they are lost. But it is not our job to hold anyone accountable to the people they used to be. It is our job to travel with them between each version and to honor what emerges along the way. Sometimes it will be an even more luminescent flame. Sometimes it will be a flicker that disappears and temporarily floods the room with a perfect and necessary darkness.” Heidi Priebe

We have gone through many seasons as a couple – a long distance honeymoon and early initiation that almost broke us before we truly began, highs like uniting together while living overseas in Kazakhstan (ask me about this life-changing experience if you like), and the ebbs and flow of parenthood. There have been griefs, shared orgasms, and everything in between. And each stage offers a death stage of the one before.

I like to think of my relationship like the growth process of a rose. This perennial flower that grows each year has to go through stages in order to blossom again and again. It needs to be nourished, seen, harvested and pruned regularly. May your relationship have the chance to bloom. It is called a symbol of love for a reason!

Something that can help is the Rose Bud Thorn Seed practice that many of us use as a way to reflect on something, be it at work, for our children or as feedback in a group program. In the context of an intimate relationship, these questions can be used beautifully. I have created some prompts that may help you:
Rose – What is blooming and alive in your relationship right now?
Bud – What is something in your relationship that is newly growing and you are excited about?
Thorn – In what area of your relationship is there something that feels stuck or challenging?
Rosehip – What is something that needs tending to or nurturing in order for your relationship to get
to a new place of growth and bloom? (think of this as a seed that needs to be planted)

Couples go through stages that can last weeks, months or even years. Similar to our inner seasons, a couple’s season can be stuck in a liminal space of no longer honeymoon playfulness and not quite break-up worthy. We are in the in-between, like the goo of a chrysalis. This happens often to partners who are parents together. When we don’t recognize or acknowledge the relationship for having gone through an almost invisible rite of passage, we can experience a lull. Knowing about the stages relationships go through can be very helpful as they offer a map of sorts. We are meant to be becoming new, evolving and maturing. Our becoming is also our undoing.

When i get lost on my spiral path, i remember that i have been here before. And wiser folks than me have created maps for us. I am inspired by Carl Jung’s alchemical change with spiritual development and Arnold van Gennep’s Rites of Passage theory.I am also inspired by Jessie Harrold’s take on rites of passage with her Stages of Radical Transformation. She uses the elements very wisely in her book Mothershift, and her example of motherhood breaks down the way the process flows beautifully. I think it can be pivoted well for relationship that moves toward deepening and enrichment. It’s a more elemental and magical way compared to Susan Campbell’s Stages of Relationship Building that i spoke about in a previous journal article.

These stages of transformation offer a perspective on how we can evolve as a couple, so that we may mature and re-align together. For many couples, one party may be evolving at a different rate. That might be in their career, hobbies, or spirituality. This happens often when couples become parents together, and one is experiencing matrescence in a more transformative way. When both parties are dancing at a similar pace and process, it helps them go through a transformation together. They are becoming something new together – The relationship experiences a rite of passage of sorts.

In her theory, we start by landing on Earth. This is where we get our feet grounded in the soil to help us anchor and really get a lay of the land, if you will. What has changed about the landscape of your relationship, what has remained the same? This is a good moment to take stock and do an inventory of sorts. We need to know where we are before we can map where we are going.

Next, we flow to the element of Water, which honours something we know is now ending by sitting with grief. This pause gives us space and intentionality to really see with a ‘grief lens’ what has come to a natural end. It might be well merited or heartbreaking. It still needs to be composted and released to the waters. We flow more fluidity when we are with our loss first. Using the example of having children, it helps to grieve that freedom you may have had as a young couple to go on dates, to stay up late, or to not feel tethered to parenthood.

Now we move towards Air, where the saying could not be more apt: everything truly is up in the air. This is a perfect moment to course correct and also give a change to a new way. We are just moving through the liminal space of that was then, this is now. Air is connected to our thoughts and what is held in our mind. Since change happens through the experience of a catalysing moment, it’s helpful to reflect on what brought your relationship to this point. More specifically, what has gotten in the way and solidified by default? This step cannot be disregarded or bypassed, and it usually is because so many of us are afraid to do the new thing, the third option of taking risk and finding our growth edge. This is what Susan Campbell calls Stabilization, we continue around in a broken loop. Air offers us a chance to come to the surface and not drown in our default.

If we are so lucky to find a life jacket, and come up for air, we get the gift of alchemy. The Fire that reminds us of the passion that brought is into the relationship in the first place. This last stage is dedicated to the element of Fire. This is where we most often skip to or skip altogether. We forget that the excitement of fire needs to be tended to so that the embers don’t fall away to ash.

Here, Jessie offers the practice of Tiny Experiments. These are small and more doable incremental things that you can practice. In the context of a relationship that is evolving, here are some possible tiny experiments:

* Couples Meetings – Call it what you will, a Moon Meeting or Relationship Ritual – but i stand by these meetings that are NOT dates. They offer a chance to do the managerial parts of life without making them the only time to be together. Sit with your calendar and create a shared one, discuss upcoming appointments, plans and tasks. If it sounds like a business meeting, it is – the work of your relationship needs it.

* Mini-Dates – Take turns to create one each week – a song and drink, sitting on the front porch or balcony. These are called mini for a reason, a tiny and doable way to get quality time together. I expand on this below.

* Reach Out when Apart – The Wise elders that are the Gottmans have a term, Connection Bids. I find that so many couples don’t speak the same language, so their requests for connection pass each other like ships in the night. This happens too with words of affection or appreciation. More often than not, what gets articulated are our complaints or criticism, not our admiration or compliments. Send a text throughout the day, or a funny instagram reel. It doesn’t have to be big to let your beloved know you are thinking about them.

It’s important to remember that the stages are not linear per se because they live more in a spiral path, and they unfortunately don’t flow in an organized and even rhythm. Some relationships may live in one elemental stage for years. Maybe one of the elements jumped out at you and resonated with you?

If that is true, don’t worry, there is hope for you yet. This is where relationship therapy, couples counselling, retreats, and so many other resources come in. You don’t have to go to therapy to work in your relationship, but all relationships do require some work – elbow grease and all! If it’s not scary, it’s not intimacy – it requires growth and finding an edge so that you move past comfort zone.

We have to nourish the relationship, tend to this rose garden, and it takes work, just like a garden that needs to be tended to, or our own body that needs nutrients.

As a therapist who works with couples, intimacy, pleasure and healthy relationships, i practice what i preach and live by example. My partner is a non-violent communicator by training and we are both dancing with grief and soul work. So we come by this milestone of 25 years together honestly and humbly. We have learned a few things along the way though, and so i wanted to share some key take-aways from us.

1) Communication is the Key Ingredient
I am pretty sure i have said this before here, and yet it always merits being the first thing i suggest to folks. Learn how to communicate so that you are heard, not just being able to say what is on your mind and in your heart. Communication is more than speaking and it requires active listening on both sides, as well as modelling what we need. It is not just what we say but how we say it, and that doesn’t always mean with our words. Our action and non-verbal cues speak volumes.

2) Make Time for Pleasure and Presence
You may be sharing a life together but maybe it has started to look more like managing a business together rather than an intimate life. When was your last date or shared experience of pleasure? I don’t just mean sexual intimacy but also a shared laugh, cry, mutual delight in a road trip or watermelon? And of course, finding what turns you on sexually can start with the senses that make you feel alive in your everyday.

How do you take time to be present with your beloved? This is a good time to think of these Tiny Experiments i mentioned earlier. How do you microdose pleasure so that you can be more present with your partner?

3) Spend Quality Time Together and Alone
Speaking of spending time together, this is when you pull out your shared calendars and intentionally book time off to be together. You can co-create the date or take turns. What matters is that you take to experience joy, pleasure, and tend to that fire that brought you together in the first place. We need to prioritize shared experiences and appreciate each other’s company. When we forget to do that or take it for granted, the work of relationships forgets the point of it – we are on the same team and we love each other.

We also need to spend time apart as well as together. It is healthy in relationships to have some independent interests and hobbies. This is what Carl Jung calls Differentiation – the ability to stay secure about each other’s interests especially when they are not shared.

4) Notice Which Part of You is in the Driver’s Seat
When we learn what our needs and limits are, it helps to stay in what Internal Family Systems calls ‘Self’ energy. When we can hold this energy, we feel connected, calm, curious, compassionate, and clear about our needs and the moment at hand. So often, our Parts get activated by a conflict or potential one, and it is them that are arguing with other people’s Parts. When we start to be mindful and attuned to our personal Back Story, the Parts don’t take the front seat.

The next time you are in a heated discussion with your partner, as yourself if this feels like the familiar shutdown of your teenage self, or a tantrum of your former childhood. These are Parts that carry burdens, fears and agendas for you know. They can be incorporated into you and have a new role and more appropriate agenda. If you want to learn more about how to get to know your Parts and how they show up in intimate relationships, this book is a fabulous resource.

5) Appreciation
We all have basic needs to matter and be valued. This is hardwired into our body, in our nervous system’s social engagement system. Our basic needs of safety, security and being seen as infants evolves into this more rich need to belong, to truly matter and be celebrated. Similar to missed connection bids, our words of affection or appreciation do not always land as they are meant.. More often than not, what gets articulated are our complaints or criticism, not our admiration or compliments.

We need to be seen, and seen in our goodness. Similar to a deficit in nutrients, we may experience a “nourishment barrier” when the care that is being offered to us isn’t felt in our body, whether it is an insufficient amount or an inadequate offering.

Is it hard to receive love and compliments because you have barriers to being nourished? A trauma imprint gets in the way of nourishment because we continue to scan for safety. It becomes a core wound that imbeds in our body, like a parasite that gets in the way of being nourished by love. This may lead to struggles with low self-worth and feeling like you don’t matter or deserve praise. How do you receive compliments? Does it feel awkward to have attention on you that supports you, validates or recognizes you for your amazing work? Do you turn inward, blush or push away the kind words? This type of barrier can be a way we deny ourselves kindness or appreciation because it makes us feel vulnerable and exposed.

I know that these suggestions are bite-size tastes to what you can do if your relationship is stuck in a rut, or in a long Watery Winter season. I can assure you that when you all agree to the work of tending to your relationship garden, you can grow a beautiful perennial rose garden. And if roses aren’t your jam, wildflowers and a plethora of options are available – just stay away from the foxglove (wink).

Speaking of what may be blooming, i have exciting news! My partner and i have been growing together and i’m so grateful that our gardens co-exist and compost together. We have found an inner rose garden to tend together. Inspired by our 25 years together, we are co-creating a workshop for couples who need a bit more support with their relationship garden. If you live in the Toronto area, stay tuned for some delicious and deep offerings this Fall, where we can help you care for your relationship. We will blend traditional couples counselling with non-violent communication, nervous system support, ritual and a microdose of pleasure and play.

Folllowing My Flow: Our Stages and Phases of Life

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I have been dancing with perimenopause for the past few years. Having had my period since i was 9 years old, i assumed i would reach menopause earlier, mainly because i never would have guessed to have my menstrual flow for over 4o years. Forty years. Clearly, this is something i am meant to know intimately, to be an expert in, to embrace even. I am learning that maybe having my moon bleed each month is one of my talents, or something i know intimately well. This year, i have bled twice, when i was convinced it would be my last year, as i am in my 5oth year on Earth.

Each month that i have shed this year so far has been a lesson in patience, surrender, and reflection. This month, i bled unsurprisingly at a women’s festival where i was in the country, on sacred land, with 250 other women. Oh, and i was guiding women through a menopause circle while bleeding.

And it’s a full moon as i write this, while still bleeding. It’s been told that those of us that bleed with a new moon do so because they have something to learn and reflect on. Those of us like me, for many full moons over the years, bleed with the full moon as act of mediumship, shaman work to teach others something.

I think this is the lesson i am gleaning from this recent bleed: What has been lighting me up these last few years is the metaphor and guidance of cyclical living, of the moon phases and seasons that spiral. I think i’m meant to dive deeper into this knowledge to teach others about this connection of the moon phases, our menstrual cycle, the seasons and our own feminine archetypes. It’s all connected.

I love when I can see that I am exactly where I’m supposed to be. Whenever I am wavering, I look at the moon or the seasons as a guide. Now in my season of perimenopause, the maps and cycles have given me such guidance, care and reminders. Perimenopause is the beginning of an initiation into elderhood. It is a portal where the veil that hides us from deeper truth is removed.

Marion Woodman coined the term Virgin as the time between Mother and Crone, when women can reclaim being whole onto ourselves. Others call in Mage, Queen, Wild Woman. Whatever the term, i am so here and ready for this archetype. The triple goddess story does not reflect our human existence anymore. We have a whole season between earlier motherhood years and cronedom. This is the space, the liminal, the inbetween. The ages of 40 – 55 are when we typcially go through perimenopause, and we are definitely not early mothers nor are we old yet.

Perimenopause is a hormonal as well as spiritual experience, an awakening and possible transformation. It is a portal as it is an initiatory gateway so that we can hold the opposites of who we are and who we were meant to become. The soul journey is the blueprint for us before the imprint of our life got in the way. We get to course correct even month with our shedding (menstrual time) and when we miss this experience, the luteal stage reveals our biggest truths and wantings. Sure, we have reframed it at “PMS” but it is in fact our deepest truth waiting not so patiently for os to get back on track. When others call is pre-menstrual it’s because our mood and behaviour is confronting a story or need they have at our expense.

We need to remove the veil that has been placed before us, and step into the portal. In the wise words of Jane Hardwicke Collings, this includes rescuing the menopause story from the dungeon of patriarchy. I was so honoured to be in her company when she came to my city recently, to sit together and marinate in her wisdom and impassioned embodiment about all this menstruation.

“In order to reclaim our full selves, to integrate each of these aspects through which we pass over the course of our lives, we must first learn to embrace them though our cycles.” ~ Lucy H. Pearce

When we know more about our bodies, we are empowered. We are strong. We remember.