What do you do when your experience of one (or all) of the inner seasons is different from the archetypal cycle we write about? Well, we have only one rule for this menstruality work and we call it our Big Red Rule. It simply states that: your own experience is more important than anything we might say.
We invite you to drop any expectation that you ‘should’ experience the cycle in a certain way. Yes, there’s an undeniable organic pattern within our menstrual cycle, however your experience of it is shaped by a number of things (we outline these influences on your cycle in detail on pages 13-15 of Wild Power). And through practising Menstrual Cycle Awareness you’ll discover how your unique experience of the menstrual cycle gives you insight into your life stage and circumstances and reveals your talents, strengths and vulnerabilities.
Here is an example, which is taken from a Q+A Menstruality Podcast episode a couple of years ago. Although it’s specifically about the inner spring, the guidance we share can apply to any inner season you find challenging. This question came in from Kathryn…
"Inner spring is often very tricky for me. I have endometriosis and often have heavy, painful periods. So spring is physically challenging due to tiredness but there is something else at play - shame... I’m not ‘like everyone else and hopping about like a spring lamb'. How can I tend to all my physical, emotional and spiritual needs, when inner spring is often busy as I have had to break from work during winter, and now I need to start ‘getting on with it’?" - Kathryn
Firstly Kathryn, you're not alone. If you suffer with menstrual pain, your energy is occupied and menstruation can become a huge strain. Ideally inner winter is a time for us to nourish ourselves so that we can emerge into inner spring with some energy in the tank. But in your case, this feeling of fatigue in the inner spring is normal - you've been so worked over by the pain, there isn't much left.
I (Alexandra) personally remember this myself when I was dealing with debilitating menstrual pain. I often didn't feel like I was ‘back’ until I got to the inner summer of the cycle. And, as you say, it can lead to a feeling of loneliness and shame.
I don't have simple solutions, there aren't any. But I will share something that helped me. I chose to see my cycle experience and my menstrual pain as meaningful, that it was leading me somewhere - awakening me to something. I also saw that I was suffering because I was like the canary in the mineshaft - in a world full of stressors and environmental toxicity, my body was showing the insanity of it all, through my symptoms. And I think that's true for anyone with extreme, chronic health conditions. The menstrual cycle is a stress sensitive system, revealing to each one of us where we are facing personal and collective 'stress'.
This helped me to realise that trusting my cycle experience (and focusing on healing my body) was actually a radical act, a form of activism for the collective, because the imbalance of our modern life is showing up in all of our cycle's in some way. I was able to dignify my experience and somehow claim my place in the world.
If you’d like to hear more questions and answers about inner spring, we recommend listening to this episode of the Menstruality Podcast, where we explore how to hold yourself when emotional vulnerabilities and wounds come up in the inner spring, how to emerge tenderly from your bleed in a world that often doesn’t support slowness, and how to meet the rising energy of spring in a generative way, especially when it appears as anxiety and insecurity.
You can listen here: How Inner Spring Helps You Tend to Your Uniqueness.
