I (Alexandra) experienced menopause as the greatest initiation of my life. As I started to explore at the beginning of this email, it was a long journey of great reckoning with myself illuminated in moments with such high clarity and excitement that while very challenging at times, ultimately brought me home to myself.
Menopause is searingly powerful, and this power awakens great potential. But along the way, it demands a great deal of us. And on top of that, we’re all suffering from the absence of a dignified framing and language to name the power that’s erupting inside us in this huge life transition. Your inner holy self is calling, and you aren’t being sufficiently supported or resourced to follow that call.
That’s why, in our Menopause: The Great Awakener course we complete with a simple yet profound self-anointing menopause ritual at the end of the course. It helps to seal in the insights, learnings and knowings you receive during the journey through the map of five phases of menopause, but most of all it is a sanctified moment of claiming your own authority and power in a world that isn’t acknowledging the profound transformation you’re undergoing.
We want to share this ritual with you today, to support you to name and claim your own initiatory menopause process.
The menopause Self-Anointing Ritual
This ritual is a way of taking sacred time with yourself to actively recognise and celebrate yourself. Out loud. It’s a ritual of anointment and announcement of yourself. Rather than waiting for someone else to recognise and acknowledge you, you’re taking the authority that is yours, to deem yourself as ‘ok’, to appreciate all you have lived and loved and achieved.
(The more reverence, seriousness and focus you bring to it, the more it will move you, come alive for you and impact your life moving forwards.)
One: First, take time to create a list of the qualities that you appreciate and celebrate about yourself, as well as your achievements and the things you have created and loved in your life. See if you can find your way to a ‘self-anointing statement’: I, (your name) anoint myself as….
Two: Ideally in a beautiful place in nature, mark a circle - your sacred ritual place
Three: Tune into yourself and your intention, and light a candle, to signal your readiness to begin the ceremony.
Four: As you connect to a sweet spot within yourself, read your list of qualities and your self-anointing statement and say your self-anointing statement out loud.
Five: Let a colour, symbol or image emerge that somehow captures the new space you find yourself in.
Six: Give thanks to the space, to yourself, to the great mystery and whatever you feel grateful for, then blow out the candle to close the ritual.
(Feel free to adapt this and embellish it in any ways that call to you. May you enjoy it and come away with a new kindness and respect for yourself.)
When Anna did the self‐anointing ritual, she had a powerful experience of knowing that her ‘self‐witnessing and love was enough. As profound as anything I’d ever get from anyone else. I knew I was good enough, healthy and whole. Doing the ritual was the best antidote to sexism. It was like falling back in love with my life.’
On Menopause: The Great Awakener, once we’ve journeyed through the five phases of menopause, I guide you in detail in how to create a self-anointing ceremony to seal in the power that has awoken in you through the course.
We’d love to have you with us for the Menopause: The Great Awakener journey this year.
Who is Menopause: The Great Awakener for?
The course is for you if:
You can find out all about the course here >>
