We’ve been dreaming into this idea for the last three decades, and never has there been a more important time to listen for the answer.
Although great work is happening to raise awareness of the climate crisis, our top scientists are clear that it’s time for radical action - the last decade was the hottest in 125,000 years, CO2 levels are the highest in 2 million years, and we’re losing 1.2 trillion tons of ice each year. (According to earth.org)
What role can our intimacy with our cycles play in our work to restore our eco-systems, mitigate climate change and tend to our earth?
ONE: Cycle awareness keeps us sensing and feeling.
The first way our cycle awareness and menopause process can re-create our relationship to nature and earth is its capacity to bring us into contact with the full spectrum of who we are.
It awakens our animal nature and invites us to be in the ground of our body, alive to the fullness of this life force moving through us.
This prevents us from becoming hard and armoured and allows us to stay awake to the world and be sensitive to all of life, which in turn inspires care, love and action for all Life.
Clare Dubois, the original founder of the reforestation charity TreeSisters speaks to this in her interview about her menopause process for the Menstruality podcast >>
(As part of our earth-tending, we plant trees through organisations like TreeSisters. Our ‘Menstruality Forest’ in the tropics now totals 22,892 trees, and we aim to plant a million or more in our lifetimes 🌳).
TWO: Cycle awareness makes us sustainable living mentors
It coaches us in sustainable living, so we can model it for our families, colleagues and communities. As you work with this cyclical consciousness within yourself, you’re restoring cyclical consciousness for those around you, and for the world at large.
You’re reigniting a responsiveness to life, and a pacing that allows a sense of spaciousness. This is powerful medicine in a world that lives in a 24/7 top-gear mode.
The mainstream 'do-do-do' mentality creates an armouring that shuts out the world; deadening ourselves, our souls, our connection to the mystery, our connection to the feminine.
On the other hand, loyalty to the cycle awakens us to the ineffable, to that which is mysterious, and to a sense of life-affirming rhythm and flow from which truly fresh and creative responses to our current crisis can emerge.
Lazola MaDuka, who is part of our Menstruality Leadership Programme team, and the lead of our BIPOC peer support circle, explores how cycle awareness can teach us how to live sustainably on earth in her Menstruality podcast interview here >>
THREE: Cycle awareness restores a sense of belonging to life, and belonging to earth.
Menstrual cycle awareness teaches us about cyclical life in a very intimate and precise way, embedding us in the experience of and trust in all cycles, great and small. In the nature of cyclicity as the basis of life itself.
As we restore our cyclical nature, our inner ecology, we restore our sense of belonging to ourselves, to the earth and to life itself. Belonging is that sweet sense of being able to rest with ease in your own skin, feeling a connection to the Earth, to the particular patch you inhabit. Experiencing your place in the great ecology of Life.
How affirming to know that each time you connect to your cycle or your menopause process, or your deep, cyclical self post-menopause, you’re committing to a powerful re-awakening of life-affirming consciousness that is calling us home to balance with the natural world.
If you’d like to connect more deeply to the power and wisdom of your cyclical nature, we invite you to join us for our Menstruality Leadership Programme.
