Saturn Returns with Caggie - 2.4 The Witch: Lisa Lister on working with your cycle

Episode Date: October 26, 2020

In this Episode of Saturn Returns, Caggie is joined by self professed witch and menstrual awareness practioner, Lisa Lister, author of Code Red, Love Your Lady Landscape and Witch. They discuss period pride and period shame, and how our initiation into womanhood comes with complications that affect how we relate to our bodies; how hiding aspects of womanhood makes the subject taboo, and in turn denies its power. But this conversation reveals the wisdom available to us in following the seasons of our cycle and unlocking our connection to source. --- Follow or subscribe to "Saturn Returns" for future episodes, where we explore the transformative impact of Saturn's return with inspiring guests and thought-provoking discussions. Follow Caggie Dunlop on Instagram to stay updated on her personal journey and you can find Saturn Returns on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.  Order the Saturn Returns Book. Join our community newsletter here.  Find all things Saturn Returns, offerings and more here.

Hello everyone and welcome to Saturn Returns with me, Kagi Dunlop. This is a podcast that aims to bring clarity during transitional times where there can be confusion and doubt. Now I'm very excited about this episode because a lot of you have requested that we discuss this topic and that is the subject of periods and a woman's cycle. It's something that has become increasingly important to me over the last couple of years, I guess during my own spiritual journey, because it's all about recognizing and honoring the knowledge and wisdom that your body holds. I've started paying close attention to my own menstrual cycle. And when we first get our period when we're young, I think a lot of us experience a lot of shaming around it and why this is we get into in this episode

but I really want to start changing this conversation because I feel very strongly about it. We are sitting on my bed having a cup of tea. I mean I just wanted to make it feel as relaxed as possible. I think I've taken it too far never i mean never i started bringing in um some incense and candles and lisa's face sitting on my bed was like what have i walked into here like i'm being seduced and i'm okay with it it's like i'm seducing her what's going on in this episode i am joined by author of Code Red and self-professed witch, Lisa Lister. And we are discussing everything there is to know about periods. Lisa is a psychotherapeutic coach who specializes in supporting women to explore the terrain of being a woman in business, in relationships and in life.

life. But before we get into this episode, I want to check in with our astrological guide, Nora, who discusses how Saturn encourages us to authentically accept ourselves and our bodies, and how this connects to our initiation into womanhood. If Saturn's return is an initiation into adulthood while hopefully leading us into a more authentic self, then what can be more authentic and self-loving for a woman than to accept her body and every miraculous way it functions? The start of our menstrual cycle initiated us women into womanhood far before we were even capable of appreciating just how incredible our bodies are, how excruciatingly beautiful being a woman can be. Saturn returning means we are to be responsible for ourselves and that also means taking care of our bodies, our spirits, our inner magic,

accepting ourselves without taboo. So for a woman, if she hasn't done so so far, Saturn confronts her with her body and nudges her into fearless self-acceptance because Saturn rules time and time isn't waiting around. Hopefully by the end of this cycle we not only accept our periods and the magic they hide but we fully celebrate them each and every month. All the sort of wording around periods like art flow, the blob, like there's a lot of negative connotations to it. And I'm sure a lot of you sort of winced when you heard that this was the subject of today's episode. And that's because the subject is still considered pretty taboo and it can bring up a lot of shame for people. But as you will soon discover, there is so much wisdom to learn from following and working with your cycle.

there is so much wisdom to learn from following and working with your cycle. I reveal in this episode my own personal journey and story around how I got in tune with my cycle and learnt to work with its seasons. I'm from a family of travellers and I've never owned a caravan, but my lineage has. And through that, I a what's considered a third generation witch but you know what you don't need to have a lineage in order to call yourself

a witch ultimately it's anybody but you have to be a woman well no I mean I mean if my brother started saying I'm a witch I'd be a bit concerned. But honestly, that's the deal. There's a ton of male witches. There's a ton. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's where, in the book, I speak very much about kind of womb wisdom and womb witchery.

But that doesn't necessarily mean you have to have a womb to be a witch. Like you don't need my permission. You don't need anyone's permission to call yourself a witch. But I predominantly, because of my journey, because of my experience, have very much worked on the basis that a witch is a woman in her power is any woman who is willing to stand in her power now if you are a man if you are non-binary if you

are anywhere in between the beautiful spectrum and want to call yourself a witch you do that too that's the call power to the witch yeah just the power to the witch but for me i speak very much and all of the work i do from experience so it's my experience as a woman in this body with a womb you got misdiagnosed didn't you at the age of 26 well i'd been misdiagnosed for three years previous and it was in when i was 26 that i was diagnosed with PCOS and endometriosis okay and that was by sort of man in a dude in a white coat who he said like you're not going to be able to have children so we may as well whip it out and I said whip what out and he said your uterus and I was like okay and then he went on and had another conversation he was talking about a

womb and he's going to take the womb out I said what else are you taking out and he was like no your womb and your uterus is the same thing and i realized i was 26 years old and did not know that my uterus were the same thing yeah and it's from working with women now for many years and i'm recognizing that i wasn't alone like there's a lot of women that don't know i mean i'm gonna straight up say that i didn't actually know yeah we were taught a very kind of mechanical version of our body yeah this is a uterus very sciencey yeah right very disconnected from your body yeah exactly from your own body exactly which which then makes us become very disconnected specifically as women from our bodies full stop the feelings the sensations the knowing the trust that we have in that space 100 was that something that was a bit of a catalyst for you in terms of like a spiritual

journey and really understanding and getting in touch with yourself yeah it was a total like so to that point i was working on saturday morning tv and i was a journalist i was very much neck up like very okay i'll get this done i'm hustling i'm doing life this is all very good and then you became a witch the natural career trajectory from saturday morning tv to witchcraft obviously i've seen it all before yeah this is this is literally so yeah exactly so and then i'm interviewing a pop band on Saturday morning TV. Like, I was interviewing them for the magazine that goes with the programme. And I get up and someone says, from the band, says, excuse me, excuse me, you might want to figure something out. I'd, like, bled over the entire, this beautiful white sofa,

just like this white bed that you're sitting on now. When you were interviewing them? And, you know, and she was very sweet, very lovely. I was mortified obviously like our relationship to our period essentially and even like i could feel myself pausing and saying that is so wrapped up in shame largely because of you know the patriarchy society and whatever that instills in us from a very young age and whenever I think every girl, woman, has a shaming period story. Oh my goodness. Yeah, the mortification.

And it's true for so many of us. Like, we hold so much blame and shame. And like you say, it's because of patriarchy. It's because of when you recognise the power that's held in that whole cyclic nature that we have access to. Then, of course, they were going to shame it of course they don't want us to recognize the power that's held in it and this is what we're going to unpack but before we do i want to get back to like those stories because i know people listening are going to be like you know i have that and it's it's a massive thing to unpin and i'm still in

the process of doing it myself so like i want to ask you about when you first got your period, if you don't mind me asking. Yeah, of course. And what that experience was like. Did you tell your family? Did you tell your friends? It's ultimately that moment when we bleed is when we get gifted our song. It's when we get gifted our purpose in life. Love that.

Right? It's when we get gifted that truth. Now, many indigenous cultures, they totally celebrate it totally like celebrate the girl turn into woman and in this culture absolutely not in our kind of western society that's it's almost like yeah it's almost like hushed past the thing you know it's a tampon like everything's hush hush hide out yeah exactly and people still do that so for me my mum and dad had to split up and um my mum had given me a phone number and said like you can ring this number but only in emergencies well I started to bleed and I was like well if this ain't an emergency I do not know what is this is very exciting like I was

quite excited 13 to like tie it into the you know the Saturn returns thing it's like your Saturn you have Saturn squares and it's Saturn 14. So on that cusp is when that is some hard shit you go through. Right. So I'm ringing my mum. I'm like, oh, I'll get to ring my mum now. I hadn't spoken to her since she'd left because I was only meant to ring an emergency. So I rang.

And she was like, what are you ringing me for? And I was like, well, because I'm bleeding. And she was like, oh, tell your dad. This is not an emergency. You just tell your dad and he'll figure it out. And I was I don't want to tell my dad and I didn't want to tell my dad and I was just I was mortified and it really plays into the mama relationship because that mama you know you want your mama to be able to support you and hold you through that space and she wasn't able to encourage you into womanhood yeah why she wasn't able and then she wasn't able

to do that and for me that's why I believe that was the transition point into womanhood. But it wasn't until I actively created my own ceremony, actively created my own ritual to celebrate that when I was 32. But that's 32. Come on, what are we doing? I know. That we have to do that. But like you say, at 13, you don't have that sort of personal sovereignty that you Like, you go to your parents and you're like, how am I supposed to navigate this? What does this mean for my sense of self sort of thing?

And if they're like, I don't want to deal with that, go to the other parent. What message does that put in? And he was great, though. He got what I needed. Were they uncomfortable about it, though? Like, when my mum lived with us, she, you know, I knew about it though like when my mum lived with us she you know she i knew about it because she left everything out you know like the you know sanitary protection and i hate that word yeah it but it's because everything's around cleanliness everything's

around everything has to be clean everything's perfect and perfect around it and it's not bleeding is messy like it's totally messy and life is messy absolutely and when we recognize that and then you see it play out in your menstrual cycle you see that you've got all these places and that is a place for us to release it's a place for us to be messy and yet we don't get given that information so therefore we don't know it and we deny it okay so that was your first experience my i was telling about yours i was 15 so i was pretty late to the period party it's not late that's perfect and then i remember when i got i think i was just relieved because everyone had it and i felt really like i wasn't a woman and all

my friends were you know i don't even think i ever told my mum wow and it's interesting because we had like a relationship then when i felt like i didn't share that kind of stuff and it wasn't close. Now I think she's literally like, can you please stop sharing all your secrets with me? I'm literally like, and then I did this and then I did that and then this happened. And she's like, I didn't think I need therapy right now. But I think it's a reactionary thing. Like you said, it's like taken me 31 years to suddenly be like I don't like need to live that way and just because that's what I experienced then doesn't mean I have to continue to experience that now okay so that was the first time you had your period did you have anything

with boys that was a kind of well for the longest time I would never have had sex with um on your period when I was on my period absolutely not and it wasn't until I think most people listening would agree that i've got some girlfriends they're like oh that's disgusting i'm like it's so much better you're more sensitive for sure you're more like in tune with your body and it's such a sacred time like if we recognize that i mean i wouldn't let anybody be putting anything in and days one and two but days three and four if like i'm in a relationship with loves who are going to treat that as sacred then i'm not shaming you absolutely because it is a sacred act if you know if you allow someone into that space while you're bleeding that's such a sacred act it's such a ritualistic beautiful you know priestesses back in the day like that's power they're going to be

gaining some of that power yeah and that's not that's that is also like anyway i think that women should have that absolutely you have to earn my body and gain my trust and that there is something you know karmic and sacred about that why do you think that we're told that they're bad dirty shameful why was that narrative created around it let's take it back to like the witches yeah yeah but that's why because we were powerful like women would use that blood there's a book called the red tent and it was a conceptual kind of idea of women gathering specifically at their bleed time to bleed together super beautiful super

ritualistic i mean and if we all bled at the same time it would still it would be just like the best thing to do and so recognizing that anything that is considered dirty and taboo is because it's got power attached to it and so it makes total sense to make it is to turn people against their own power make them think it's dirty make them so they cut off because you and it's a dismembering of our power unplugging them from source forgetting that we're connected to nature this is really interesting and i think you know this is nicely leading onto that because through my 20s i was very disconnected i was behaving in a way that was like out of alignment and then stuff started to shift and i started to go onto a different path and then I

went to see Steph I've mentioned a couple of times as one of my best friends I went on this retreat with her the quarter life project and that was like a massive massive like okay I'm like in this and that's one of the ones I've taught on so this is good yeah exactly and then after that then I was in a relationship and something started happening towards the end of the relationship. There was like something niggling me in my body that was something that was like off. And then what started happening is I'd always had quite normal periods. I didn't get that much pain or anything. It was quite regular. And I started getting this thing around when my period came.

It was like so painful. And it, you know, it was like months of this. And I was then going to see my boyfriend as I was on my period. And I was having this pain. And he just got back from this trip. And anyway, I was in so much agony. And I didn't want to go. And like my body was just like responding quite aggressively to something.

And I was like, what the fuck is going on I then that day or the next day found out something was going on like behind my back and didn't connect it to my period at all obviously because why would I and I was on the phone to Steph like a week later or something and I think I don't know the period thing had come up I talked to her about that and she was like like, I guarantee it will go. It was like your womb's wisdom telling you something was off. And I was like, no way. Next time I got my period, completely back to normal. And it could be a coincidence. But I don't think it is.

Because she's an oracle. Your womb is an oracle. And our period, especially that second half of the cycle, that's when we are at our most intuitive and yet again we don't know about it right so when we do know about it it's like oh okay and that's what that whole premenstrual phase is about pain is a messenger for us to wake up always and then also what happened after that is as i like really lent into my practices and stuff and so you know paying attention to the cycles of the moon I then was aware that you know your period is supposed to align with the moon or like

it historically historically absolutely yeah and now it's like completely in sync with the moon with the new so I bleed on the new moon so it's like you know it was yesterday so bleeding now conveniently I told him this whole podcast everyone's like stop talking about blood it's not going to happen for at least another half hour and I think for sure

if you can and if you do bleed on the new moon which is historically like you say ancestrally how it used to be but that was before

we had street lights it was before we were using blue lights on our phones all the time computers and the contraception is in the water so if you drink tap water then you're you know you're that's a good point you're like literally taking in those hormones so we can't control a lot of our

outside um influences regarding that but what we can recognize is that each of the moon phases holds its own medicine so i bleed for the last five years when I've been putting books out, when I've been sharing my wisdom specifically outwardly. I've been bleeding with the full moon, which is what that bleed time is for. So if you bleed with the full moon, it's calling you to share with the world, to be of service to the world. Throughout your life, you'll bleed in tune with lots of different moon phases. So what does it mean to bleed with the new moon?

If you bleed at the new moon that's inward that's calling you in that's asking you to really pay attention to your needs and wants if you bleed when the moon is waxing it's an invitation to get curious try something different look into things a different way and if you bleed with waning moon that's an invitation to edit like to really kind of get very clear about what's necessary it's a very much of a truth teller so if you bleed around that time maybe not want to be around too many people if they don't want to hear the truth okay i was recently on holiday with um some friends and one of my friend's brothers who was there as a scientist and we got in a bit of an argument because he was like there is nothing out there that suggests that there's any correlation between

a woman's cycle and the moon i was like but my fucking body is completely in sync with the new moon so surely i'm evidence that that's well 70 water the moon rules water like how can we not be affected by the moon's you know tidal kind of nature you know so humans are affected by the moon like you know my husband um is a nurse and he works in an emergency room so he can categorically tell you that if a moon is full people are mad wow like literally the people that come in there is a level of madness that is not seen yeah because i remember when i did steph's um retreat one of the segments we did or one of the like modules was about womb wisdom yeah and within your period there are seasons just like the seasons of the year and then you know people

were having to connect with like what they feel is right for them for me personally it's like autumn it's when I like it but most people like their spring summer do you know what that yeah absolutely so this is kind of what my work is grounded in really is understanding our relationship with nature so understanding that we are a total reflection of everything she is we can map it with the seasons we can map it with phases of womanhood as well so there's the maiden is the spring phase that's our pre-ovulation phase and so that's the time when we can take risks we can be dynamic like she's happening yeah she's like check me out she's frisky so that pre-ovulation phase we move into ovulation that's the mama that's the creatrix and you don't have to make babies that's not the deal but you can be creating like business yeah

exactly projects business for me it's writing books doing retreats and things like that they're my babies these are the things that i'm putting out in the world this is when we are most attractive we are like basically wonder woman so that's summer and like how you respond to those seasons will say a lot about how you respond to those seasons will say a lot about how you respond to that phase of your menstrual cycle too. So if you love summer, that means that you're going to be able to handle that ovulation a whole lot better than maybe if someone like me, for instance, used to find summer very bright. Are we talking about literal summer or metaphorical summer? So if you find summer really really bright then it might be a bit too

much right so it might be that when you ovulate when you ovulate in 13 days time frames for instance or maybe whatever whenever it is in your cycle after you've bled it's like that could be a little bit more challenging and it might be for others our relationship to the seasons can also then be a mirror to our relationship to the season of our menstrual cycle too and so we then go into that pre-menstrual phase that autumn phase my favorite season right and this is the wild and wise phase and it's dangerous because we're untamed like our tongue is loose like we haven't got a filter in this phase of our menstrual cycle and as the autumn it's saying you know the leaves drop and so we're starting to drop all the masks that we've been wearing in that first half of the cycle we're in the second half of the cycle is an invitation back inwards and we start to kind of

like want to be more with ourselves we don't want to be out in the world we want to be like just tending to ourselves but you know we're called selfish this is indulgent so then what happens is we get frustrated because we're not allowing ourselves to listen to our intuition absolutely and yet anger is another thing that we you know western world does not expect women to do and that's and so if we're looking at the face of the womanhood that's also also because it comes out in that like segmented part of the cycle right so men are just like that's the the only expression apparently that that you know that has its out in that like segmented part of the cycle. Right, exactly. So men are just like, that's the only expression. Apparently that, you know, that has its own issues that like men can be angry and that's their emotion.

Yeah. Whereas women are like, lovely, lovely, lovely. And then as soon as they say anger, it's like, it's her period. And they're not wrong, which is hilarious in a way. You're like, no, it's not. Wait, it is. But that's why we have this cycle. So we ebb and we flow so that we you know we rest and

digest and so that we can then be out in the world and do and be in action but when we don't bleed you know she's the crone that's the wild woman that's winter like that's when everything is bare like there's no i hope that i hope this like sets fire to like a whole group of girls that are going to go home to their boyfriends and be like it's the crow and i'm bleeding and like because also that's a massive thing about like i think we can all and anyone listening that's a woman that bleeds is like gonna feel empowered by this conversation but then at the same time you factor back into like society even like i you know my ex-boyfriend some of them would be like grossed out by me being on my period and even saying the word

so it's like a massive thing that we have to like gently reintroduce these absolutely words and our energy behind it because then that can have a positive shift in effect and so many people have said oh like how do i get my husband my boyfriend any of the like even my sons like you know the men in my life on boards and i'm like why don't they get it and i'm like because we don't get it not properly yeah not yet because they're responding off the way we're communicating and we're and you know if we're kind of sneaking around if we hide hiding the tampons up the sleeves if we you know if we talk in hushed tones you know like in code red i'm like i want everyone to be talking about it over a glass of wine with their friends i want this to be super

normal for us to be like how is that for you so we are tapping in so we have an understanding and so in code red like I asked rich my husband to write how it is for him you know he's lived with me for 10 years and so he wrote like a two-page thing for men like you know she was insane but he was like you know we often say why do women not come with a manual they do like they absolutely do come with a manual you're just not reading it buddy exactly if you just spend a little bit of time getting to know a menstrual cycle it's really easy like it's super easy to understand like what's going on for her you realize it's not your fault so when she's like pre-menstrual phase and she's like gone mad because you've left a towel on the floor which you know he does and it does you know it's not personal he believes it saved

our marriage which i you know i'm i'm into as well and i think we have to be in tune with it for sure you know if you are super sciency and some of the more kind of woo woo ritualistic stuff it's too much kind of is too much just understanding that like if you know you literally physically cannot do as much as you did in the first half of your cycle in the second half of your cycle otherwise the body's gonna tell you yeah and it will it will show up in pain and discomfort and when you move into that second half of the cycle when like you're perimenopausal and you're not quite as attractive as you was back then and actually when you stop bleeding when you go through menopause yeah when you go through menopause that's when you get your power you don't need to bleed anymore you've got a 360 on everything that's why you're the crime that's why you're the wise woman because you've got

whole knowledge you are the power source and i think we're starting to work with our cycle and mapping it out and actually being like okay that's what phase i'm in there it also takes the pressure off because we do live in a society that's just go go go and like say we are in our spring someone we feel like we can go go go then every day it's like go that little bit more and then a little bit more and then you just crash and burn because it's not sustainable it was actually again steph that really like allowed me to for lack of a better word indulge in my cycle i mean we'd be on the phone and be like okay i'm gonna come visit you in spain on these dates and she'd be like no you're not i'm bleeding and i was like oh good work you know i base everything i do coaching session when i book a retreat all of

those things around come into play yeah i know when i'm going to be at my best i'm going to be of service i also know that i'm great in my premenstrual phase but you need to be aware that if you're going to book a coaching session with me if you're going to want me to show up for you then i'm going to be in my fiercest mama kind of like that truth teller energy yeah energy and so you tell them that yeah but i mean i'm blessed right this i walk my work so if i didn't you wouldn't be right yeah exactly so mostly the women that come to work with me want to understand their cycles better anyway and so when we recognize that and we honor it and we just say like look you know i'm bleeding this is just not going to happen today what i'm thinking about and it's like i can hear people listening that like in

quite strict um nine to five like business and it's like it's very easy for you guys to say when you're sitting on a bed with some incense talking about astrology and the moon but what about people that are having to like you know show up in quite a male driven job and everything they can't be like oh by the way next month on the 5th of january i'm i'm bleeding yeah so i'm just gonna sit at home and eat chocolate all day see ya but this is and so there's there's things in place now to start looking at kind of period leave like everything honestly yeah yeah for sure like it's such a leave and i'm all for that i'm into it i mean i have chosen a career around my menstrual cycle yeah and so by doing that i've empowered myself right so i'm and i'm really truly aware

that that's a privilege i work really hard for it but it is a privilege and whereas if you're in a nine to five job for instance totally get it it's the acknowledgement even if it's just like sneaking off to the toilet for five minutes and just being like yeah we're bleeding today we're just going to take a minute and also recognizing you are just not going to be able to do as much work as you would be before and nor should you not like oh you couldn't of course you can anyone like there's a memes where it says like i can do anything you can do bleeding good why would you want to though like you absolutely don't have to and you might and like honor yourself yeah but i think it's such a big part

of it is also being able to communicate that with men for sure because they may have their own uncomfortableness around it but that's largely because they're like I don't have a freaking clue what's going on with her and they're just speculating and guessing yeah yeah so actually it's like about delivering it in a way that's calm and that's digestible for them but this is like what goes on you know actually educating them as well is just as important right absolutely and I think I mean I've been asked to do lots of workplace conversations about um going into people's workplaces like will you come in do the conventional awareness workshop and if you keep it practical everyone gets it and then if you feel the call which you know i definitely do and i know a lot

of the women that i work with do to kind of make this more of a ritualistic more of a kind of spiritual experience you know like our menstrual cycle is the oldest religion there ever is it's like if you understand your menstrual cycle if you understand the phases and the energy that's available the power that's available in each phase and then also like the hot spots that you'll experience in each phase which i share in the book it's like everything becomes so much more easier like you recognize that okay so i can meditate here but i'm going to need to go for a 12 mile run here or do you know what i'm going to just need to chill out here like you know i've worked with personal trainers who now train women specifically according to their menstrual cycle i found with things like a member of vocal coach

was like you shouldn't ever perform when you're on your period and stuff like that because it's like affects your vocal cords I work with lots of singers and we've seen the patterns of what comes up and it's it's so interesting and again we live in a world where how is that possible well we have to create the world where that's possible I had like just something came to my head it's like this idea of sort of like very a male dominated workspace and something in like in the boardroom something like Susan I know that you're on you know spring next month why don't you date this bitch and then being like sure John I'll do it and then just being like Julia I know that you're like not going to be like I have the energy to do this when you're like on day 28 so like let me take that why don't you do that Peter

yeah but she's gonna but Julia would be way more productive in day kind of 5 through to 14 you know probably make like work go through the roof honestly I've seen it over and over and over again the women I work with just recognizing their productivity a really handy thing for people to do is like start journaling around it right and then they can actually start to see a pattern and like oh yes and also not to think that you're going to see that pattern in the first month either like i say subtle it's super i mean sometimes it'll come and kick you in the ovaries and other times it'll be super subtle absolutely and you get to explore that and understand how it is for you so that you can then live life accordingly okay so i i want to just go on to the thing that we started talking about when you first arrived you you do well my

mama was called it a sky reader so it's like an astrologer like my mama taught me how to read the planets like feel the planets so really understand how they make us feel like the sensations they create in our body so i asked for your date of birth so i could do and i work really closely with venus and with chiron but for you it's specifically i did a chiron reading which is that about so chiron was chiron what's that about i mean do you want me to share you i think so i'm just checking so the chiron is the wounded healer and so that placement in our in our astrology chart will give us an indication of our deepest wound so the wound we come in with there's going to be a wound and there's going to be a gift so if you look on your astrology chart you'll see where there's a chiron placement your chiron was in cancer

so for you you've been in cancer the the wound is abandonment let's just live that moment let's just let that hang there for a second. And the gift is compassion. Because what happens is that it's a placement of the heart, which does mean that you feel grief and you feel pain more than most. It means you're hypersensitive physically and emotionally. I am hypersensitive. So it means, but in a beautiful... I've always been.

I think my parents parents when i was growing up and they say to me now they used to say to each other how on earth is kaki going to survive she's so sensitive and i numbed it for a big you know chunk of my life but then that's what people do i mean with this placement you'll find that there'll be more people that have a tendency to either overeat to to med self-medicate to do whatever needs to be done in order to not feel because the world is way too feely for them 100 um and so what's great about it is that it means if we master it if we work with it we recognize that that heart chakra is actually where we yeah it's actually but it needs boundaries it needs fierce boundaries it's actually, but it needs boundaries. It needs fierce boundaries.

It's got a massive connection to your relationship with your mama. And your relationship with your mama will dictate how that plays out. In terms of what? That could be a past lifetime. It could be from your relationship with your mama this lifetime. You know what's so weird? I can't believe I'm going to share this, but I'm going to. I did ask whether you wanted to do this I forget that this is actually airing like every everyone that wants to listen to it because we're just in my

bedroom so I'm like this is a really private personal conversation um I have a thing with relationships that they would go through these like nine month cycles and suddenly I was like hang on I've had quite a lot of nine month relationships right and I was speaking to a therapist that I was seeing about it at the time and she was like it's the original wound of abandonment from your mother giving birth to you yeah and essentially abandoning you on some level and it's like you're paying it out every time it's like damn and it's in your chart and that's why I think for me I always want to work with people's chiron um when you know when they come to work with me because this plays out in your period of it yeah yeah it works with your

period it works with your experience as you know so many of us have got that tendency to want to heal or give to others or share with others. Yet actually the idea of tending to ourself, to our wounds, like to even get in and figure out what those wounds might be. That's like painful for a lot of us. But actually, if you look at it in a more astrological sense, sometimes that's like a nice entry point in. And it's interesting you said that could be from like another life. Absolutely. Can people look up their chiron placement online?

Yeah, you can yeah but you want to make sure that in terms of like what i'm sharing you want to make sure that you can find an astrologer and a practitioner who can really dive deep into it with you because otherwise you might get stuck well you just might get stuck in the in the wound and not in the gift because there's so much medicine in the gift i guess what I'm actually experiencing a lot at the moment and like the last two months have just been crazy in terms of like lessons and things and it's me really having to step up to a space of like vulnerability and accepting like my imperfections and showing up in relationship like that and for me that's absolutely terrifying. Right. That's where the medicine will come in.

If you know that going into that, the major fear will always be that you're creating these relationships and knowing that you're not hanging around because potentially they're going to abandon you. Someone's going to abandon you. It's like, okay, well, how do I not abandon myself first? That's the work.

And then if I'm never going to abandon myself, then I can let other people in on my terms yeah and if they choose to share my heart rather than like give it yeah because i think this is an interesting one i always love ending up talking about relationships but we do go into relationship thinking like oh if this person accepts and needs me then i can like accept myself yeah and then you create this sort of trauma bond almost and it feels very intoxicating and like love but actually I'm realizing again it's like it's not supposed to feel like that actually you've got to do the work in yourself to get to

a place of like acceptance and self-love and I can invite in a partner and of course like you'll be in pain and sad if they leave but it won't derail you in your entirety basically because you love yourself and then and I think you know just going back to kind of knowing your menstrual cycle when you know your menstrual cycle it's such an it's such a beautiful way to then start taking care of yourself to start understanding like oh so in that phase I show up like that is that healthy for me is that good for me oh okay maybe maybe not okay what do i need to do and that's what the tracking will help with it's almost like you become your own therapist you become your own life coach yeah

so you can support yourself in being able to come back home to who you are so that in relationships with others whether that's with partners whether that's in working relationship whether that's like in love and sex then it's like you're going to be able to know who you are and know what it is you need i think that's a beautiful thing to wrap up on thank you so much for for coming on and talking to me and sitting in my bed with me thanks for letting me lay on your bed and drink tea it's been a pleasure I'm in my own right and if you want to play a drinking game after this when you drink every time we say period or blood go right ahead go ahead you're gonna be having the best time I love this idea of working with the seasons of your cycle which makes so much sense in how we feel because we're not supposed to operate from this go, go, go mentality all the time,

which is a very masculine state of being that's like we have to be 100%. And actually the takeaway that I got from this episode and something I'm trying to learn to practice is it's cyclical. You know, we need to work in alignment with nature. Everything isn't linear. It's not just like one path of go, go, go. We need to work in alignment with nature. Everything isn't linear. It's not just like

one path of go, go, go. We need to slow down. We need to rest and recuperate and begin again. And I think actually when we realize like our periods are so in sync with nature, the fact that, you know, I have mine in sync with the moon, I think is such a beautiful thing. And it allows me to, you know know work with that energy as well what do I need to let go what am I trying to manifest what am I trying to call in where do I need to you know go into my winter and sort of cozy away and when am I ready for my spring and summer to come out and execute things and make things happen so I hope that you guys can feel a little bit inspired about this and that you found this

conversation empowering I really love getting all the lovely messages from you guys on social media it makes me feel like I'm really part of this community and every time you say that you've shared it with your friends and stuff it really means a lot so thank you and I time you say that you've shared it with your friends and stuff, it really means a lot. So thank you, and I hope you continue to do so. If you'd like to follow me on Instagram, you can find me at kaggy's world, and Lisa Lister is at sassylisalister. And also, if you'd like to get a reading from our astrologer, Nora, you can find her at starsincline.

Saturn Returns is a Feast Collective production. The producer is Deborah Dudgeon, and the executive producer is kate taylor until next time thank you so much for listening and remember you are not alone