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Being Initiated by Life: The Blood Mysteries that Serve Us

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Autumn is connected to the queen, virgin, mage or wild woman archetype. It is also the perimenopausal portal for folks with wombs and blood cycles. Just like a queen or virgin forest, we are whole unto ourselves. The threshold that stands in our way at menopause is the chance to reclaim our life, and what our soul’s code was meant for. It is a time to remember what we love, reclaim what we were meant to do with our life, and also to re-wild in the best possible way.

Fall is the time where we balance light and dark. It is the time where we start to compost and shed what is coming to completion. Known as the harvest season, we honour the Earth and the Earth that is our own body. September honours the turning of the wheel, October is when we notice the veil is the thin between our world and our ideally departed. If our womb is our oracle, the luteal stage is the shape-shifting truth teller.

We are in the Chrysalis of our life. We’re turning even more towards the darkness.

I’m tired. I’m feeling the drain of my perimenopausal portal. I haven’t been sleeping through the night in months, and my hot flashes keep reminding me of the stress that I carry. I have started to love them as a conduit of the collective rage i feel on behalf of women and bodies with wombs. There is a lot to be angry about.

And so, when I don’t have the energy or capacity to do the things I like, I turn to social media as a way to feel connected with the world. And then it pulls me too far in: I have been in a relationship with my “smart” phone and it’s keeping from living my life. I had a light bulb moment that it’s a Part of me that relies on social media for company. And it is sabotaging me from actual connection. It’s a limiting belief and legacy burden of loneliness that is keeping me stuck. There are some cycles when my luteal lows are just insufferable. My most recent menstruation experience highlighted for me just how old this feeling is in me. I recalled my teenage self and her loneliness. I am becoming more like myself at 15 and 20 than in my 30s, with what interest me as well as my emotional wellspring. I lost myself there for a while, especially by internalizing patriarchy and becoming a mother. I am now coming back in alignment with my Self. Some of it is the modern-day experience of being busy and burning out because my soul knows it’s time to make an upgrade. What has changed is the version of me know has the capacity to hold the feelings.

Our core wound is the work that has to heal still. Mine is my loneliness that shows at my door uninvited, like the blood hungry vampire she is during my luteal stage. It is our soul’s calling to heal the bite marks, and also the use this wound as a portal to a bigger purpose. One way the see-saw is present is I have a Perimenopausal Part that holds wounds and a bit of guilt about not knowing more about my mother line, and their experiences with menopause.

I never got to see the goddess rise in my own mother. More so, I wasn’t able to realize that my mom was a goddess. We all are the embodiment of Her. My mother’s menopause was not honoured, a lot like her life in general. I have no idea when she moved through the portal and what her experience was like. Sometimes i feel guilty about this. And then i realize no one really understood menopause back then, let alone discussed it. So i give myself compassion. And i honour it now, i speak about her story now, i have been initiated by my own cycle, which moves as a monthly descent and initiation as it is.

Menopause is not just a physical change, a time of hot flashes, insomnia and changes in our menstrual cycles. it is not just brain fog, emotional irregularity and dysregulation. it is not just a change in our arousal and less kindness to others. Folks are concentrating so much on the symptoms that are distracting us from this bigger truth that we’re meant to evolve and reclaim our wisdom.

Venus of Willendorf and the primordial female statues were devotional goddess figures. And they were not postpartum bodies. They were menopausal and post-menopausal bodies.

Menopause is actually a spiritual transformation and an ancestral healing opportunity. It is the initiation into elderhood and it comes with sacrifice, the blood that is shed is that of our former fertility. We are stepping into our shamanic resonance, our medicine, our elderhood. Menopause is when we drop these good girl masks to step into our power. And if our own mothers didn’t get to do that, there is so much at stake for us to be able to repair and reclaim.

Birth → Menarche → Sexual awakening → Motherhood → Menopause → Death

Not all rites of passage are physical but the ones that are also connected to a lineage of red threads. Our birth is connected to our mother’s personal red thread. In fact, at the half-way point of her journey, we are born. My womb was in my mother and before that her mother created the seed that became me. My womb carried my children: I love how our stories are woven together in this way.

The transition from maiden to mother is the first rewiring of a woman’s life and yet it’s one that we are wanting, that we asked for, that we have chosen to be initiated by. It’s one thing altogether to be initiated by perimenopause because it is a wake-up call or reconfiguration and a possible complete rewiring of what we thought our life was.
For an uninitiated maiden, the sacrifice is their full self. They chose to be the good girl or pretty one. For midlife, it is their former self they are sacrificing in order to step into their full power – to become the conscious virgin.

If matrescence is a deep initiation and identity shift, perimenopause is the invitation to our own death’s dress rehearsal (thanks Kimberly Ann Johnson for this reference). It is an opportunity for us to look back at our life at this moment in time and notice what we might want to still do or what we might want to change or become. This is why it’s called initiation into the second act of our lives.

We are living longer than our ancestors did. The average age at death is 78, so that is at least 20 years post-menopausal. Surely there is a reason we survive after menopause. We are becoming more seasoned by life, a well-seasoned woman is one that has lived a long life.

The Seasonality that Lives in Us

With this current reality, i turn to other species of nature that have existed long before us. The mother trees, Inanna’s story, metamorphosis, roses. Each has a season, a cycle of birth, death and rebirth. So too do we – each stage of our menstrual cycle has a connection to a season.

For instance, the follicular stage is known as Inner Spring. It’s when we have more energy and access to our creativity, and possibly a lighter mood. There’s a fresh energy similar to someone on a maiden journey.

Summer is associated with ovulation as our body opens a pathway where creating life is possible. It is not just about being pregnant with babies, but with life, with tending to our gardens and our dreams, cultivating the life we want. Summer is the halfway point of a year just like the initiation of motherhood is the halfway point of the stages of womanhood. It is the balancing act between two halves of the story.

The Autumn time is our luteal phase, when things start to feel darker and more heavy. The luteal phase is when everything that hasn’t been addressed rises to the surface. PMS is not a dysfunction in the body – it’s a message that some work to do to cleanse and clear. Sometimes it’s because you’ve taken on a lot that particular month and you are overwhelmed. Sometimes it’s because there are emotions and needs that haven’t been heard or honoured. This is the time to prune and compost what we no longer need and also harvest our potential, our purpose, our passion project for our life. This is the time that is needed before the winter years of our life. It serves as the portal to the descent. It is like the third stage of metamorphosis, that in-between time of no longer being a caterpillar, and not yet becoming a butterfly.

This flows into our menstruation time in Winter when we’re shedding and releasing, but also needing time to rest and cocoon just like winter offers. Every time we shed skin or let go in menstruation, we release something that is no longer needed and gives us more spaciousness and ease for what is becoming, and emergent. It is a messy process, destabilizing at times and also a cleansing for the next stage. This is the rebirth that comes from death, and is similar to our own monthly bleed and cyclical nature. It doesn’t have to be painful but it is a spiral descent and ascent process.

We are encoded with the birth, death and rebirth transformation in the depths of our body. Menopause offers recalibration, as it is a redefiner of our life. It is an opportunity for us to look back at our life at this moment in time, and notice what we might want to still do or what we might want to change or become still. This is why it’s called initiation into the second half of life. It starts with our body trying to get our attention.

These seasons continue in our post-menopausal time of life. Known as the Second Spring, this new season of life is no longer creating life outside us. It is a time for us to reclaim our own creativity. What we’re creating now is our spiritual awakening, our leadership, and stepping into our soul’s purpose and power.

When we enter perimenopause, this is a reckoning that takes place. Perimenopause is the last reproductive threshold for women. It’s the final opportunity to receive a report card, showing us how we have navigated our fertile year. What we have learned about our body via the menstrual cycle and monthly blood. It is a different type of blood test.

Let’s recognize the midlife transition as an initiation of the power and magnitude I had not experienced before. It is the invitation for individuation and sovereignty. Those of us with wombs and regular blood cycles experience a rite of passage each month, a ritual and ceremony offering, and an initiation if we are open to the blood mysteries underneath the physiological experience.

“The body is the ground of our being. When we listen, it tells us exactly what we need.” Marion Woodman

It’s time to gather, to sit together and learn from the elders, to be mentored by each other. It’s time to challenge ageism and the misogyny that co-exists with it. Our elders are not meant to run around but bestow wisdom from a body of rest. Let the young folk run around. They have the stamina for it. We need women in different seasons of life to come together. In order to recognize what season we are in, we need women in the same or other seasons. This is where our hormones dance and weave a shared tapestry together of mutual support and appreciation. The interplay of hormones, the mitochondrial DNA in women, the endocrine systems that reach towards each other, that send subliminal codes from one womb carrier to another, to sync up our cycles.

Perimenopause is known as the second puberty as it mirrors the influx and overhaul of hormones similar to adolescence. It is also a time machine portal because old traumas and emotional wounds can come back up to the surface.

Remember that connection we have to our mother, that womb that was our first home? Going through the perimenopause portal can bring up these earlier wounds of attachment. If our own mothers are our first experience of attachment, identity, safety, and relationality, these memories get stored in the body, especially in our womb. We need to offer ourselves care and that may mean we need to put down the hat of caretaking when it is at our own expense. Maybe this is why our hormones fluctuate during the stages of menstruation and drop more fully in perimenopause. If progesterone sedates us from feeling the heavy feelings and estrogen is the bonding hormone, it may serve us that they are depleting with age.

“Old family dynamics become harder to tolerate. It becomes harder to ignore the impact of changing yourself to maintain relationships. Memories from childhood resurface in unexpected ways and you start to consider you future and past in new ways.” ~ Sian Morgan Crossley

Our mom may activate us more when we are perimenopausal. It may be old wounds from her that have transferred onto us. We start to dissolve the daughter identify and become more embodied as the adult in the room. “If your mother suffered in silence, resented her life, never spoke her truth, you may be carrying that inheritance.” Shavita Kotak offers this truth bomb as a stark challenge to us to pick up the baton and do the work of healing.

Gone is the daughter archetype. The mother role is also now dissolving. You are becoming. Menopause isn’t the end but the beginning of selfhood. I may be a daughter but i am also an adult in my own right, stronger and more evolved than my own parents. And that is the way it should happen. And yet, why do we regress in the company of our mothers?

Perimenopause awakens past trauma and unhealed wounds as our body starts to shift and metabolize in midlife. The coping strategies that have accommodated and hid our wounds for so long start to not work as well. And at the same time, the roles we have become to identify with (namely wife and mother) start to lose their significance. It is at this life stage that we start to see unresolved wounds more clearly. The invitation is to turn towards them and heal the younger versions of ourselves now, when we have more clarity and time. This is why mid-life is an awakening and feels like a crisis – because it once was and we are lucky enough now to know what to do for our younger self.

Perimenopause is this opportunity to give ourselves a corrective emotional experience.

The second half of life is when we fine-tune our wisdom, we narrow down our niche and specialization. We move away from peak intense learning where our brain can take in a lot in our 20s and 30s. Our early adulthood is about enterprise and landing on what we want for our life. It’s in our 40s and 50s that we start to specialize as we can’t take in as much information. This is the time for contemplation and pausing so that we can start embodying all that the first half taught and gave us. That’s why we also need to start pulling in our soul self that seed within that lives underneath, so we can discern our own purpose and not be sued, but external move from ego to individuating. That’s why we call this time midlife crisis an emergence.

“At menarche a girl meets her power, through menstruation she practices her power, at menopause she becomes her power.” ~ Indigenous saying, author unknown

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.