Tag Archives: perimenopause

The Sacred Wound: Inanna’s Connection to the Stages of Initiation

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As we start to transition into a new season and the final months of the year, I’ve been feeling called to the ancient story of Inanna. She was the Sumerian queen who lived over 3500 years before common era. She went on an epic journey when she heard that her twin sister was grieving the loss of her beloved while due to birth her baby. Inanna felt it was her sisterly duty to go and support her sister, not realizing that her sister carried bitter feelings towards her. After Inanna arrived, Ereshkigal killed her and placed her body on a stake in the underworld. It was after 3 days of death that Inanna’s community were able to come and tend to her body that Erishkigal felt compassion for her sister. It was this loving feeling that played a role in Inanna’s rebirth.

And so in the end, Inanna‘s journey is one of a descent, sacrifice and a death in order to be reborn more fully whole. She is now known as the Goddess of Heaven and Earth: It was in her death that she was offered an opportunity to be reborn more fully and also without her ego. (If you want a more in-depth psycho-spiritual telling of the story, check out Rachael’s podcast episode on Deconstruction.)

Inanna’s story follows a clear map that depicts the process of transformation. She needs to walk through seven gates down to the underworld that include stripping down, and removing the material items that have symbolized her queendom. As she becomes more raw and vulnerable, she also becomes more pure and complete.

There is so much more to this story but I like to think of this process as a weaving that is unfolding the Spiral of Life:
Incomplete → Something is missing and feel called to seek it
Death Portal → Everything falls apart – the job, the relationship, previous version of you
Awakening → The aha moment of a realization
Rebirth → Stepping into a more full expression of you

Mythopoetic stories offer us a map that weaves us through a journey. The threshold awakens time of in-between, and then flowing into the becoming and possible initiation. I say possible because we are not always aware of the potential. So many of us move through life uninitiated by it, closed to the possible full expression of our soul’s calling. It is our psyche that constantly moves us towards truth so that we can come back to who we really are. I look to these ancient stories of feminine archetypes and heroines’ journeys, as well as nature, as guides when I am on my own journey that leads to a threshold where I feel stuck, and I can’t see a way out. They offer us transformation literacy, by teaching us the flow of becoming, developmental transitions, and rites of passage. I know that humans have been here before me and what feels more like a guide or reassurance is this deeper trust that this is actually meant to be a journey of transformation, of maturation of evolving.

I’m not saying that trauma needs to happen in order for us to become whole, but rather when trauma happens the healing we embark on after is what can ultimately create a new pathway, as well as help us come back to our original blueprint before the trauma happened.

Recently, I had this realization that the stages of trauma therapy mirror the journey Inanna takes to the underworld and back. She moves down and through various gates before ultimately accepting her fate. Trauma therapy, according to Judith Herman’s model, moves through a similar arc: Resourcing for safety, stabilizing our memory and mourning intentionally, and then integrating this story into our everyday life. Post-traumatic growth offers folks a chance to offer their lived experience to others who are newly on the path of healing.

I’m not alone in making this connection. I just starting finally reading Carly Mountain’s book Descent and Rising. Her book centres the Inanna myth as a way for us to see her story in us. I noticed how Carly refers to Erishkigal as the exiled parts of Inanna and it make me realize that this ancient story is a great depiction of Internal Family Systems and the healing process of integration. “When Inanna descends to meet Erishkigal she enters a healing journey to embrace what she has abandoned inside of herself.” Maybe somatic therapy and parts work is in fact the modern-day version of Inanna’s feeling her body morph as she moves through the gates. Maybe the items that she removes are protectors that have gotten in the way of her full self. Maybe it is not a coincidence that it 7 gates she must walk through – we have 7 chakras in our body.

Healing includes grief tending because trauma includes grief for what was taken from us that should’ve happened. Grieving is also holding space for what happened that should not have happened. Stages of healing need to include time to mourn, which comes with its own arc of denial, anger, bargaining, and acceptance. As the body heals in stages, so does this practice of acceptance. It can take time to heal from each stage and healing takes time.

Let us also remember all the versions of who we were are still in us. They shaped us. That younger child that i once was, who believed in magic and played with fairies, she set a path of magic and intuition in motion. That teenager who rebelled – she taught me i have my own gnosis and truth and deserve to follow this path. Maybe i am just born again in my middle-aged body, not quite who i was too, but i am also an integration and immersion of all of the women who i was. Now, i am called to something more and i have the capacity to fulfill my younger selves dreams.

We are not meant to be alone.

We are not meant to go to the deep end without having a harness or life jacket.

We’re also not meant to always stay at the shallow end, not taking risks.

Growth and maturation happens when we find this balance of both.

Incorporating our heavy moments with the ones that are more easeful is how we can be our true most fullest expression of self.

Inanna as the Autumn Queen
Let’s go back and remember how we are nature too. The Autumn season is known as the time of perimenopause, and second spring is the first stage post menopause. These cycles mirror the seasonality of mother earth and all her creations. It is mirrors the butterfly journey: We are in the chrysalis during Autumn and this is the underworld cave that Inanna dies in. She is yet to be reborn as a butterfly.

“The female body is its own spiritual path. We have in-built rites of passage.It doesn’t work when we dig our heels in, claw the side of the mountain, clinging, trying to stay how we were. The ego has to die. Our self-perception has to die. And that is erotic.” Kimberly Ann Johnson

When we apprentice with nature and weave a thread of connection back to our ancestors’ wisdom, our everyday life becomes a devotion our souls calling is heard. When we embrace this truth of our story and the way that we can be of service it is a rebellious reclamation and remembering. That’s why I do what I do as a village tender and community builder. I know it’s my calling to build community in an intentional, sacred and natural way.

In her lovely book, When the Ache Remains, Lisa Olivera shares a process of Coming Whole to Self. It starts with a Descent that is clearly an underworld journey. Like the story, she trusts that we need to go inward and deep and do the necessary grief work to become whole. After that, we need to Face the Depths. This is when the Portal Opens – the pain needs to be faced in order for it to soften. Just like the goo in a chrysalis, it is during this alchemical stage that offers us a door to move Out of the Cocoon. We are unfolding and emerging. Only then can Integration manifest the wounds as medicine teachers. We need to accept them and not fix the scar. Finally, when we Surrender to Presence, it offers us the fullness of life – the joy, love, the pain and the grief. We can’t bypass joy because it is a way to honour and remember our infant self, the seed of the caterpillar that remains in us, only to be offered back to the soil of life. We can still hurt and feel deep joy. This is the whole-hearted way to become whole unto self. It means integrating the shadow parts of us, not running from them. Lisa Olivera offers us this truth: “The task is to stay devoted to your own aliveness, knowing it is the true path to wholeness, knowing it is the true path of fully living.”

I feel called to pause here and share that i write from my own perspective, and these reflections are about the mental, emotional, and psycho-spiritual perspectives of menopause, and so are not medically-based. I am not here to tell you what to do with your body and developmental changes. That is for you to decide. I am hoping that by reading this so far (a big thank-you by the way!) that you see that The Change is not all about the body and what we are losing. We also have the potential to gain something – our own life.

As I have been journeying through my own transformation through perimenopause, it’s led me through a path of realizing I need to offer support during this time in our lives. I see my role as a psycho-spiritual therapist as a womb to tomb midwife, a guide for someone’s Inner Inanna journey. And yes, we are all may go through this descent. It is when we turning inward into the body, and thus into the soul that we can be transformed.

And yet, it is not a given – not all of us of transformed by life’s initiatory rites. Becoming a mother is an invitation to descend and be changed, as is perimenopause. It is when we become aware of the gift of descent that we can hear our soul’s calling. And so integration needs to happen, not unlike a plant medicine journey. Having a ceremony on the other side can also be really empowering, because rites of passage are meant to be greeted and witnessed upon the return. Seeing each person as a unique template with different needs and paths is part of village tending, for both receiver and honouree.

Where do we return to after perimenopause?

Motherhood and menopause follow on arc. Becoming a mother is a deep initiation. It can re-open past wounds and is the death of something as you are becoming something new. Moving through perimenopause offers a transformation because we alchemize our shadow parts in order to integrate us and make us whole. Those hot flashes are your body’s call to action. That rage is reclaiming your full expanse of feelings. That brain fatigue is making room for your own creations.

Motherhood is at the beginning of our midlife and marks the bridge between the first half and second half of life. It can be a decent journey, but it is definitely an initiation. Not all rites of passage have a descent, but all decent mark a right of passage. Perimenopause is just after the arc and is a new descent that offers us a reclaiming of our own life and not just the roles we play. Each blood rite acts as an initiation to deepen into self.

Blood Rites of Passage in 7 Gates
Birth = our beoming
Menarche = be continue the maternal line
Sexual Awakening = be devoured and pleasure
Mother = vessel for life
Perimenopause = our renogiation
Menopause = wise elder
Death = Our rebirth

So what is the time in-between? This is the wet, impressionable Clay Time to deeper into truth. Perimenopause is the compost time to clear the path and the one chance to come into self. The second half of life is our gift to embody life learnings.

I’m so grateful that i studied human development in my undergrad degree. It focused on developmental stages and transformation literacy. When we can orient to what is changing, accept what is no longer, and build resources for this dysregulating time, we can embrace the unfolding. As Jessie Harrold shares, this allows us to eventually emerge filled with power and potential. Similar to adolescence and matrescence, this is the time to move through what Jane Hardwicke Collings has called Sageessence. This is the process of becoming a sage. That means, we need to integrate this identity into the rest of who we are. We need to weave the previous versions of ourselves into a new tapestry. We cannot go back to who we were before.

Before that can happen, we do need to slow down and grieve those old parts, paths, and identities. They shaped us even though they are no longer needed. We may carry disappointment about what didn’t get to happen, regret for what we didn’t try in time, and that needs to be held in order to be metabolized.

One way to help us embrace this new stage is to learn more about the spiritual aspect of transformation and learn some new skills and gather resources. This is not just a time for strength classes – we also need to remember what our calling is, what our magic is, what our passion is. We cannot have this wisdom without the embodied learning process. This fast fashion culture is making us lazy versions of our truest potential.

We can look back on Inanna’s story and see its relevance to the transformative power of menopause. Maybe perimenopause is the dark underworld cave of remembering and reclaiming that needs to happen. Maybe it’s not unlike the chrysalis of transformation that needs to happen in order to become more truly ourselves. Mabye Inanna was in perimenopause when she went through the gates.

We have entered an age of quick fixes. We also exist at a time of humanity that doesn’t revere our elders or mentors. We focus on the symptom and supplement without also seeing the transformative power of surrender. We have learned to want the answer without the depth and the transformation without the sacrifice. This leaves us unchanged and uninitiated. A full ascent and rising doensn’t work that way. Sorry, not sorry.

I love working with women in midlife: Who you’re becoming now is born from incorporating your wild self with your soul’s essence. Therapy and friendships that have the ability to go deep are a lot like in Inanna’s underworld journey. They can go deep and also be a safe, brave space to be witnessed in the depths. This helps us feel less alone so that when we do come back up we’re not alone.

I want to go to the depths of your sorrow so it can be alchemized as a place for healing.

I want to accompany you to the descent so that we can come through it and experience the ascension of our full self.

I want your body to feel safe enough in my presence so that you can share those things that you have told no one, so that you can experience the felt sense of the missing experience of connection, trust and being understood.

Menomorphosis and The Lost Art of Ceremony

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As part of my initiation of turning 50 last year, i gifted myself a last step of integration that came with this pivotal birthday. As i have been immersing myself in womb healing training and offerings thanks to my perimenopause awakening, i felt called to receive a womb massage called Sobada from a traditional Mayan healer. Mexico has a special place in my heart and connects me to my mother. So, i took my family to Mexico. I spoke about the trip a bit in another post.

This part of my passage was transformative. The massage and womb ceremony were just what i needed to tend to my changing body. What happened at the end is what will stay with me for years to come. During the session i received Closing the Bones medicine. My body was encased in fabrics that are indigenous to Mayan culture. They are sacred, woven scarves called rebozos that create a womb-like holding of the body, very much like a chrysalis or Egyptian mummy.

“After decades spent waiting, she took her place as an Elder when those elder than her had not, because those elder to them had not. She initiated herself so that one day she could initiate someone else.” ~ Rebecca Campbell

My eyes were covered the whole time, and this offered me more internal visioning. It brought me down and through. It was during this descent that I felt the presence of my grandmothers. As my bones and body were put back in place, my red thread line joined me. My mother and grandmothers came to be with me from beyond the veil. They sat at my feet and offered me company, presence, and the missing community i have been searching for. What they also shared with me was gratitude for my decision to provide myself this loving touch because in doing so, i was also healing them. My healing was their healing. And i received the closure i needed, as well as the confirmation that i am on the right track.

What a true honour to be held this way. This session offered me the clarity and confidence i needed to step more calmly onto my next stage of life. In more ways than one, i am evolving.

Our ancestors knew something about gathering and marking times of change. No matter where your people are from or what they celebrated, it was with reverence and ritual. Births and deaths were honoured, sacred unions were celebrated, and all were seen as sacred passages of initiation and transformation.

We have lost this art of being in sacred gatherings. Our mothers and grandmothers maybe didn’t get to have this honouring as ageism and misogyny stole this from them. I never got to see the goddess rise in my own mother. Moreover, I wasn’t able to realize that my mom was a goddess. I am healing this mother wound and gate of grief in real time now, even after my mom’s death.

In a few days time, i will be offering a ceremony for women who are standing at the menopause threshold, or have already crossed it and didn’t get to experience an initiation for menopause. It is never too late to experience the ceremonial medicine that marks the blood rites of passage. I am doing it as a way to honour my mother and what she didn’t get to receive. I feel like i have her blessing now that she has been present during this stage of my becoming.

My mother’s death was a catalyzing experience for me. It created a shift in my timeline, and i think ultimately brought me back to my original blueprint. For the last 4 years, i have been learning the sacred art of anointment, both as a way to fully embrace my priestess path and spiritual devotion as well as honour my lineage. My mom was a chemist, and studied aromatherapy and essential oils. I inherited her many books and supplies about aromatherapy, herbal medicine, and plant allies. I will never know the whole story about her inspiration, but i do know she wanted more for her life and turned to creating art like this, so this is part of my motherline. I am finding my own way with it, by incorporating the oils i make with love and intention as part of my rituals and ceremonies, and regular devotional practice.

The stages in between times of transition, of blood rites and rites of passage like adolescence and perimenopause are thresholds. They are the liminal space between two landings. This is like the chrysalis stage in the story of becoming a caterpillar. Known as clay time as things make more of an impression of who were becoming in these rites of passage, we need to be held during this messy and tumultuous time.

In the book, The Menopause Brain, the author shared coming across the word “menostart” as an alternative to menoPAUSE. I appreciate this reframe because it is not true that things are only ending at this stage of life. So much also begins. Or at least there is the potential for it. That’s why we need to honour it with ceremony in order to reclaim this stage of life with the reverence it deserves.

I came up with a word that truly encapsulates this change for me – menomorphosis. It creates a helpful frame for the transformation that comes with menopause. There truly is alchemy in the goo that is perimenopuase. It is not just a fertile void or hot sweats – it is the fire that is coming back alive to help create something new from something old.

Thresholds like perimenopause offer us a chance to slow down and find intention in the initiation. Similar to pregnancy and birth, they offer us an invitation to step into our full experience in this rite of passage. Rites of passage are initiatory acts of crossing from one chapter in our life to another; from maiden to mother, to sage and crone.

“Initiations are a sacred offering of what needs to die so that we can live what is ours to live.” ~ Blaire Lindsay

Perimenopause offers us a reset. It is a time to step into our power as a woman and it offers an initiation of a spiritual transformation. The act of being witnessed through the change offer us the chance to step more confidently into the next chapter of our life story. Otherwise, we persist in a spiritual purgatory of sorts, a liminal space between two worlds. When we are not held in community, our soul and psyche struggle to find a place to land; it is our soul that is in crisis.

Pause before the Change
Developmental stages are physiological changes we all go through. Rites of passage fuse the science and biology of developmental stages with the spiritual initiation that is meant to support it. When we bring ceremony into the change, it facilitates a deeper initiation and ultimate ascent. We have lost the language and relevance of ritual and ceremony. This may be because we wanted to separate church from state, but i think it’s also because men in power didn’t want the strength and expertise of women to shine. It is in medicine, shamanism, ceremony and gathering that women are strong after all.

We need to endure the hardships in order to embrace the gifts that come with menopause.

While we surely need to embrace this inevitable change, we need to grieve our former self and what is now over. I’m not even talking about our bodies here. Don’t get me started on that, or maybe that is another journal yet to be written. This transition does come with a change in our energy and capacity as we clean house so that we can shed what is no longer needed. Luckily, with this loss comes an awakening – the birth of our “I Don’t Care” part – that had to grow out of the burn-out of the Good Girl and What About Me parts of us. What may be a consequence of that is the added loss of relationships as some folks who preferred us nice and polite will struggle with our new-found liberation.

A Way with Words – The Etymology of Words
The word sacrifice offers a hint to what is at its core – The root word of sacrifice is ‘sacer’ – to make sacred. So, when we sit with this reframe, we can see initiations as a sacred offering of what needs to die so that we can live more intentionally with what is still alive in us now. Sacrifice requires courage, devotion, and trust. It helps to think of our body as a story book character experiencing a fairy tale arc of surprise, surrender, and transformation.

Rituals bring us back in rhythm with life, and offer more harmony with nature, life, each other, and spirit itself. The word ‘rite’ bleeds right into its home in ritual. The Sanskrit word for ritual is rta and means ‘cosmic order’ or a natural flow of the universe. If we want to reclaim this ancient and universal understanding, this primordial truth, we need to remember that rituals are designed to honour significant moments and transitions in our lives. Be it starting school, graduating, our first job, or break-up, our home, all are thresholds we are meant to be walked through, not step across alone.

There is a song i love that keeps reminding me that life is a ceremony. We don’t need to host extravagant galas or go on expensive retreats to live a ceremonial life. The root of the word ceremony is ‘caerimonia’, the Latin word means sacred rites, religious worship, and a felt sense of awe and reverence. It is no wonder then, that being in ceremony changes us. It is meant to as it offers a deeper connection to our wombic home. Ceremony weaves us back into the original fabric that is our full aliveness, and it offers us a reminder of our shared existence on this living earth.

I have spoken before that ritual and ceremony are the first practices of therapy, of mind and soul medicine. In their beautiful book, The Seven Circles: Indigenous Teachings for Living Well, Chelsey Luger and Thosh Collings share a detailed list of benefits that ceremony offers folks. Participating in ceremony as a witness as well as the main guest of honour offer similar balms for ourselves. It can strengthen our community and re-villaging hopes as it restores our relationships and strengthens morale; it fosters both spiritual health as well as reminds us of our place within nature and the land, by also expanding and deepening our worldview, and it regulates our bodies to prepare for other life transitions.

It is through the practices of ritual and ceremony that we can mark a clear arc and story – through a beginning until the end. There is a clear container and they are meant to change us.

“A woman’s initiation includes many moments of crossing a threshold. This threshold is the bridge to our feminine soul, and crossing over is the beginning of becoming.” ~ Sue Monk Kidd

We are meant to be seen in our new skin upon stepping through the threshold. Group ceremonies that gathered folks together offered the witness element that is so missing now. Where are our elders, the village aunties who can pass down their wisdom? It is no wonder that social media is having a hay day with perimenopausal folks sharing their experiences – gone is the sacred ceremony and instead we have Instagram and Tiktok. This loss of feminine rites of passage has made way for a fabricated and soul-deprived world, and this loss highlights the even bigger theft that is the degradation of the Sacred Feminine.

Body and Soul
Since we are a body and also a mind and soul, it merits understanding that our identity also adapts, grows, and ultimately evolves with each threshold we step through. In order to become whole onto ourselves, we need to find our centre, that soul self within so that we can come into balance. This is where we can focus so that our self energy will be strong against the tides of change and external dis-ease. This is where ritual comes in, as a way to deepen into our devotion to our life.

For women and womb carriers, we have our own unique reproductive codes that mirror seasons. Starting from our mother’s conception and birth, flowing through to our own conception and birth, all the way past our birth, menarche, sexual initiation, and possible birth of our own children, we weave a tapestry of our lives right within our body. Each month offers a rite of passage with the phases of the moon, as well as our menstrual cycle – rites of separation, transition, and integration. Surely these are physical transitions and they are also emotional and spiritual. They are also relational simply because we are relational beings who thrive in connection, and become more fully actualized and initiated when we are witnessed and held.

“Without rituals to make a firm demarcation between the profane and sacred, between what is us and what is not us, we tend to identify with archetypal patterns of being – hero, Father, Mother, etc. We forget that we are individual human beings; we allow ourselves to be inflated by the power of the unconscious and usurp it for our own. And we do this not knowing what we do and that we do it.” ~ Marion Woodman

It is the birth of our soul self and nurturing it that we come back in right relationship with ritual and the sacredness of each day, moving it from mundane and ordinary to divine and universal.

It is our soul seed that waits for us to find her, to nourish her, as it is this deeper connection with ourselves that allows us to move through descent and ultimate initiation. When we take time to listen to our inner knowing and wisdom that resides there, we can be met with our fullest self and move through life with more intention, presence and joy. It is a reclamation of coming home to self. When we drop the ego away and remember that our soft strength is in that seed, the soul guides us. We need to only listen.

Our body experiences this rite of passage so it’s more of a descent than an evolution. Like postpartum, we are not meant to bounce back. If we can reframe developmental stages as initiations, we are not as surprised by the sacrifice that is left on the altar. In this case, it is our former body.

If our body is a map, it is also a temple. I liken my womb to being my oracle so i treat her like an altar. I have learned to bow at her wisdom, and hold reverence for her story, as it is not mine alone. It is also my mother’s and all the mothers who came before me. It is also my children, and those that have yet to come.
Midlife is a threshold to get back on track.

“There is a time in our lives, usually in mid-life, when a woman has to make a decision – possibly the most important psychic decision of her future life – and that is, whether to be bitter or not. Women often come to this in their late thirties or early forties. They are at the point where they are full up to their ears with everything and they’ve “had it” and “the last straw has broken the camel’s back” and they’re “pissed off and pooped out.” Their dreams of their twenties may be lying in a crumple. There may be broken hearts, broken marriages, broken promises.” ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

We have forgotten that it is in mid-life that we are meant to retrieve our soul. Human developmental theorists like Carl Jung, Marion Woodman, Rudulf Steiner and Bill Plotkin show us this clearly. They also suggest rites to honour these bookends, or chapters of our life. It can be pilgrimage, quests, or sacred fire and moon dances. It can also look like a fresh hair cut or boudoir photo shoot for your eyes only.

I don’t need more information and content creation from 20 and 30 year olds who know things, surely. I love them for their passion and commitment to living their best life. What i need are elders who have walked a similar path to me already, who know something about life. Who laugh at the ego that gets in the way and instead embody eros without a second thought.

“Sagescence brings with it many gifts. We become more self-focused and motivated to take care of ourselves. We are gifted with the opportunity to heal all the unhealed parts of ourselves.” ~ Jane Hardwicke Collings

Healing is indeed a part of this process. We need to heal what is not repaired so that it stops being the force that moves us through life. That means we have to remove the internalized patriarchal lens about how we have been living our life till now.

It also means needing to heal from our own past experiences and trauma, as well as ones we inherited.

I don’t want to grow bitter or resentful, and fade away quietly, unseen and ignored. We need to shed the roles that keep us nice, polite, oppressed & repressed. (Thanks Sarah Durham Wilson for this phrase).

We need to remember it is our own life we are here to live. We aren’t here to take care of others and not rest or attune to our own pleasure, only to exhaust ourselves and die after a life of stress.

It is never too late to offer yourself a ceremony. Any time we do something with intention and ritual, our soul seed blossoms. This also allows for more healing and completion to happen, especially for the blood rites from our past that were not honoured. Maybe your menarche was not celebrated, or your baby shower was more a party than a women’s circle. It is never too late to complete the initiation that is woven in your womb – they are all connected as one red thread after all.

If we can walk our human journey called life with our eyes wide open, with a consciousness of knowing about where we’re meant to be going, we don’t just find ourselves in mid life stunned about how we got here. We can instead arrive at it with more surefootedness and clarity.

Being in ceremony offers you this commitment. You can’t go wrong when you commit to yourself.

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.

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.