Once you’ve journeyed through your twenties and thirties and landed in your forties you may find that your inner autumn premenstrual energies start to dominate more of your whole cycle experience, which can be A LOT to manage in a world that doesn’t honour the via negativa.
However, the truth we’ve seen from sitting with thousands of forty-somethings is that you are being worked in a very meaningful way. So today we’re exploring the inner autumn powers that wake up in your forties and the potent self-care practice that helps us to channel them into your life in transformational ways.
The Menstruality life arc…
When you begin menstruating at menarche, you step into the spring of your menstruating years. Your teens and twenties tend to have the qualities that are associated with the inner spring of the cycle; self-discovery, freedom and experimentation.
Then, in your thirties you enter the summer of your menstruating years, where many of us - as with the ovulation phase of the cycle - find our groove, and start to have a ‘this is me’ feeling. You lay down some form for your life, whether that’s centred around family, or community or work. You’re discovering your own rhythm, and firming up your sense of self. And with the spring and summer life phases, you're really riding on the goodwill of youth. You have energy in the tank, hopefully.
And then at some point in your early forties, you find yourself in the autumn of your menstruating years and the atmosphere changes. There's this subtle feeling of stepping into a bigger game, as if the clock on your life is now ticking, which is why we’ve coined this phase ‘the Quickening’.
What Happens in the Quickening?
In your forties, you may experience a feeling of the methaphorical rubber hitting the road. A newfound sense of mortality can hit, which inspires you to get real about who you actually are, and along with this, it can feel like the promise of your life suddenly doesn't look so promising anymore. It’s deeply uncomfortable, and if you’re not aware, a kind of cynicism can sneak in because you’re in touch with a new level of vulnerability.
The big existential questions are stirring in you, and you’re actually coming into a deeper rooting into yourself. One of the gifts of the pre-menstrual phase of the cycle is that the ‘anaesthetic’ wears off and you're suddenly feeling things like you've never felt them before.
Similarly, the Quickening is a prolonged period of being invited into greater depth in yourself, as well as embracing greater self-responsibility, because you’re discovering what you are actually made of.
The Self-Care Practice for your Forties - which sounds simple, but is aActually very hard to do.
The self care practice we teach for both the premenstrual phase of the cycle, and the autumn of your menstruating years is to slow down. You’re going to be feeling everything more intensely, and encountering your shadow side too. If you come at this with speed, you get tripped up.
You also might notice that your energy levels are shifting, compared to the summer of your menstruating life. Your nervous system might be giving you a different kind of feedback, particularly if you’ve been over-doing it, and who hasn't?!
Imagine you’re driving a car along a country road, with the music blaring, and the sun shining down on your face, when suddenly you notice there’s a big bend coming up. You shift down a gear, to navigate the turn, and now you have more grunt in the engine. That's what's happening in your forties. You've got some very big, powerful powers at work in you, and power can go both ways. If you're not present enough, it can create a mess. So you need to shift gears emotionally, mentally, physically, so that you can come into more alignment with who you really are.
You’re being prepared for the initiation of all initiations…
And the real beauty of the inner autumn of your forties is that it prepares you for the winter of y our menstruating years - menopause. The more you can pay attention to and respect your cycle in your forties, the more fully you’ll be able to enter into (and withstand the heat of) the true completion of this work of returning home to yourself that menopause brings.
Would you Like to Access More of the Inner Autumn Powers in Your Forties?
In our Cycle Power six-week online course, we're diving into this inner autumn self-care practice of slowing down, along with the other three cyclical practices for the other the inner seasons of the menstrual cycle.
It's for you, whether you're at the beginning of your cycle awareness journey or you've been tracking your cycle for years, or if you're on the other side, post-menopause, and wanting to explore the wisdom of the inner seasons from this place in your life.
You can find out all about our Cycle Power course here.
