The Menstruality Podcast - 106. How to Thrive as Neurodivergent, Cycle-Aware Changemaker in a Linear World (Lucy Pearce)

Episode Date: September 21, 2023

When Lucy Pearce published her book about the power of the menstrual cycle, Moon Time: Harness the ever-changing energy of your menstrual cycle 11 years ago, she was one of very few people talking about periods, and it was one of the first books in print to speak about the Red Tent movement. Over the past decade her loyalty to her cycle has helped her as a multi-passionate creatrix to write twelve books, found Womancraft - a paradigm-shifting publishing house, edit and publish over 50 books, teach courses, create beautiful art and parent three children.Five years ago she received an autism diagnosis, and in our conversation today we explore how this had helped her to understand herself far better, have tools to care for herself and manage her life as a cycle-aware creative in an all-too-linear world.We explore:How to process a neurodivergence diagnosis, renegotiate your life and relationships and create a protective bubble to safeguard yourself.How Lucy navigated years of crippling shame which shut down her creativity entirely, by saying yes to her creative expression in small ways.The truth that real creativity happens outside of our comfort zones, and how we can lean into the stretch to meet what is truly authentic, and unearth that which has been shut down within each of us. ---Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love---The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [e-mail]---Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.schoolLucy Pearce: @lucyhpearce - https://www.instagram.com/lucyhpearce Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy

Welcome to the Menstruality Podcast, where we share inspiring conversations about the power of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. This podcast is brought to you by Red School, where we're training the menstruality leaders of the future. I'm your host, Sophie Jane Hardy, and I'll be joined often by Red School's founders, Alexandra and Sharni, as well as an inspiring group of pioneers, activists, changemakers and creatives to explore how you can unashamedly claim the power of the menstrual cycle to activate your unique form of leadership for yourself, your community and the world. Hey, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you for joining me today. It's a very big, passionate conversation today with a woman called Lucy Pierce. When she published her book about the power of the menstrual cycle moon time harness the

ever-changing energy of your menstrual cycle it was 11 years ago and she was one of the few people talking about periods back then and over the past decade her loyalty to her cycle has helped her as a multi-passionate creatrix to write 12 books to found Woman Craft which is a paradigm shifting publishing house, to edit and publish over 50 books, create beautiful art and parent three children. And then five years ago she received an autism diagnosis and in our conversation we explore how this has helped her to actually understand herself so much better, to have tools to care for herself and manage her full life as a cycle aware creative in an all too linear world. Well Lucy, I am really, really excited about this conversation, largely because you and I have been dancing back and forth for years, like over email through different guises and different roles.

And you are just so prolifically creative. And so when I thought about who would I like to speak about creativity with on the podcast and especially cycle aware creativity, there aren't that many folks in the world that you can have these conversations with and I thought Lucy Pearce, art, books, publishing house, family like it just goes on and on and on so thank you so much for for joining me I'm really excited for this conversation. Me too because of all the different kind of threads that we share it's just really exciting to actually get to be in space together and seeing each other's faces and talking. Yes, so good. Let's start with a cycle check-in. Where are you at? How is it feeling today? I am day 26, which is an interesting space for me because my cycle has been doing interesting bi-monthly things. So getting a short cycle one month and then a longer cycle the next month. I'm 43 now. I've had a very regular cycle, kind of slightly short, usually 25-26 days. So now

I'm going from 25 days one month to 29 days the next month. So it was doing that for about six months and now we seem to be into a slightly different phase again where it's getting slightly longer and then it's being completely standard so I don't quite know what to expect so I was at Zumba last night and started to feel a bit crampy and I was like oh okay so we're on an early cycle but still waiting there's more unknown which I think is kind of exciting because I've been tracking my cycle since I was in my late teens I really struggled with period pain when I was younger 15 16 and had the very helpful response and quite standard response of a doctor, you know, an older man in his 50s who said, well, it'll probably all get better once you've had a baby.

And I'm like, thanks, mate. That really helps. You know, here I am 15. That's probably going to be, you know, another 15 years away. Really helpful. I used to faint quite often on the first day of my period. Which, again, is quite scary when you're kind of you know you're feeling a bit woozy you're not sure if you're actually going to pass out and I did pass out like completely lose consciousness several times which is scary because you start to not know if you can trust your body feeling a bit anxious as it approaches so and then I had migraines connected to my cycle as well so I knew I needed to understand it more because the doctors weren't going to be able to help and so that's when I discovered fertility well first cycle charting and then later fertility charting and tracking. So I've been doing it a very long time,

which is to say, it's rather fun now to have, you know, the differences creeping in because, you know, I've got quite a lot of literacy around my cycle, around how I move through it. My husband and I have an understanding that day nine nine day nine is when my three babies were conceived it's a little bit earlier than the fertility tracking ovulation things say that one should be ovulating and stuff so that's how three got conceived day nine was always like drop everything lucy is ready whereas the last few months as the cycle started to kind of shift and think day nine hasn't become as intense and it's like oh i miss day nine yes so yeah so i i build my whole my work life my my creative life around my cycle and have done since the beginning, because if I don't, then it's, you know, unpleasant.

And I, you know, I get repercussions, you know, bursting into tears, not able to make things function um all of that sort of thing because I'm trying to do way too much like you know launch a book or do a podcast interview when I am on day one and just needing to curl up in a ball so I just I know now how to pace myself around my cycle and then because I'm neurodivergent and I only learned that yes five six years ago now I now know how to pace myself around that so when I can kind of you know feel myself becoming more and more um dysregulated when I can feel anxiety starting to hit I know the cycles now and I know how to work with them I know not to force myself not to push too hard instead to step back to learn to regulate myself um deep pressure um as in physical deep pressure um drawing um I call them peaceful patterns, which really helps to regulate my mind. And just

learning just to look after myself first, rather than last. And as women, we don't get taught to do that. We do not. And when you start, it feels very selfish, or it feels kind of silly or indulgent but when you do it as your basic practice you kind of wonder how you ever functioned without doing that you know the people around me have seen me non-functioning they've seen me burnt out they've seen me in a nervous breakdown they've seen me when anxiety is trapping me in the house for several months at a time they know that so it's not self-indulgent. It's literally medical care for myself. Yes.

You know, I'm somebody who gets shamed very easily, feels kind of like I don't belong and not normal anyway. So I kind of have enough protective mechanisms up around me now to know that there are safe people who one shares things with and there are not safe people who you mask with and you know just get by as best you can yes you know my life minimizes those masking situations but it's something that I'm very good at and I can do and I will do when I need to. Yes, to protect yourself. I really want to get into firstly your cycle aware creative process and then how your autism diagnosis has overlaid over this and your cycles of regulation. Like I really want to get into all of that. And but first, I really want to talk to you about your calling and how you would give voice to it and give us a bit of the history of it because I was just listening to a podcast episode

with you and you kind of gave a potted history of of Lucy as in the like what you what you had studied and some of your core experiences and I think it would give us all a real sense of um the grounding and the foundation of this where will this epic creativity has come from and I wanted to walk us into it with a quote from your website if that's okay please do you're like what's she gonna say always scary when people want to quote you it's like shit which bit are they gonna find but well the cool thing is all the quotes I've harvested are all amazing so this one was some say I'm a dreamer but I'm not the only one that line from John Lennon has been known to make me cry because being a dreamer in this world can feel lonely and scary we have

big beautiful dreams but learning to live them out loud helping them to bloom what shivers and supporting ourselves in the process that's the work of heroes and we often feel anything but I would just love to hear your dream I mean without sounding too self-satisfied I am literally living it it doesn't mean that every day is easy and flowers and like you know two days ago family stuff hit the fan and I was like I don't want this life I want to walk out of it I can't do it so I'm not saying that it's all beds of roses but in terms of the bigger picture I am truly doing what I feel I'm here to do which is to create my work the to create my work, the things that call to me, the things that excite me, the things that I can't find in the world and I wish were there.

And I get to do that for a living. And I don't have anybody except mean people on the Internet who I now know just, you know, to block out and not come across in the first place. I don't have anyone telling me what I can't do, which is a really privileged position to be in. And I don't take that for granted. But it has taken a lot of work to get here, inner work, outer work, building my platform, building the ways that I share myself with the world, the ways that I give myself permission to dive deep into the things that I am passionate about, owning the things that I'm passionate about, having the courage to share my voice. All of those things have been big pieces of work. But I have done done them and it's certainly not a finished project there will

always be more things that I want to do more things that terrify me but I'm like I really want to do that so it's always an ongoing thing but I get to do that and I get to make a living from it and that that is that is my dream so I'm going to answer your background question. I come from three generations, probably more back, of creative people, mainly creative entrepreneurs, people who, you know, back in the day weren't diagnosed as neurodivergent, but nowadays would be. They're the sort of kids who couldn't function in classrooms, who were sent out to do whatever they wanted outside because they couldn't be contained in the classroom.

The sort of kids who left without many qualifications or left school very early like 14 which you can't do nowadays and have gone on to become renowned potters painters glass blowers uh wood turners architects gardeners fabric artists i'm not wanting to leave anybody like we've got actors we've got a lot of different creative people in my both sides of my background so I very much fitted the mold in terms of I was always creating I was dressing up I was writing a book a year from the age of six I was always drawing and painting and playing the piano and making up dances like creativity was my thing. But I was also very academic, which was quite unusual for my family. We have a lot of dyslexia in my family.

And so I was I was the ultimate good girl because I didn't understand myself. I just knew I didn't want to get in trouble because I didn't. I knew if I followed the rules, I would be safe. And I knew that if I followed the rules, I could do really well. So I followed the rules because I didn't know how to not follow the rules and stay safe. So I studied very hard at school. I got very good grades, school, university. Some of my family were a bit kind of embarrassed or ashamed because I was such a swat and we just that's not what our family was. But I was just intellectually, academically very able within the subjects that I loved. I had no time or patience for things that where my brain didn't work that way but when I did I would put my everything into it so I learned reasonably early on to make sure I was in the situations

that I could one succeed in and two that I loved so I did far too many choirs and plays acting in plays directing plays translating plays When I was choosing A levels, I wanted to do A level art. That was non-negotiable for me. But because I was, you know, guaranteed Oxbridge student, they wanted me to do something, you know, proper, a proper subject, not art. So they made me do history of art um and I said I'll do it but I'll do it and art I'm not doing it just by itself so I dropped you know I got into my thing of very passionate multi-passionate person taking on too much I took on a drama GCSE at the same time and Italian and the 4a levels and started to hit burnout, non-functioning, obviously.

Yeah. And so dropped the history of art so that I could do my art. And for me, that was a really big deal, standing my ground against school authorities to say, you know what, this is what matters to me. Yes. And it was in that art, in GCSE and A-level art everybody else was kind of copying other painters and kind of I don't know it was kind of a little bit and I'm this this sounds judgy and I don't mean it in a judgy way it's just it's my experience of it it was a bit surface level it was now we're going to do a still life right we've done the still was now we're going to do a still life. Right.

We've done the still life. Now we're going to do a portrait. For me, there was something deep that was propelling this artwork. I was following my own. Unraveling is slightly the wrong word, but I was following my own thread in it. We would be given a project that we would have to do, and it would be the next iteration on this thing that was unfolding within me. I didn't know what this thing was, but it was finding expression through images. And it was finding expression in a way that I had never found full expression before. I did a series called the tragedy of woman and bird woman um and my the themes of what would become my work in my writing and in in womancraft

were coming out then I told you I I wrote a book a year when I was um little and listeners she she basically has carried on writing a book a year almost it's amazing yeah so about age nine I wrote a book which my stepmother gave back to me about five years ago and I couldn't believe it I need to have it here to hand actually but I don't and it's it I learned that you could give yourself a pen name and in this book I've been reading it kind of had funny pen names so my pen name was Sheila Peer right and then the next page the first page in was, this book is only for girls and women. No men can read it. Age nine.

What? Right? I mean, let's just look at this for a minute. What's your sense of, where did that come from, that nine-year-old? Like, this is, you know, she'll feel. Where did that come from in you okay so there's two levels the first level is um and I'm saying this and with immense love for my father but I haven't always a lot of the time felt safe being a girl and a woman around him.

There's a lot of judgment from him around what women are. You know, when I was a little girl, he used to call me Charlie because he kind of wanted me to be a boy. And he kind of took me out to toughen me up, walking with my feet on rocks, on the rockfalls and coastlines so that I'd toughen up. He didn't like my weakness, my emotionality. He didn't get it. And it reminded him of my mother and they were separated. So there was that element that has come right through. He's just about to turn 80 and it's still there but there was all there's it's always been tempered by his deep deep love for me

Lucy like he's always loved me always got me always been my biggest supporter knight in shining armor but the fact that I was female on some deep unconscious level, made him uncomfortable. And so in order to, oh, man, I'm really feeling like I want to cry, so I might. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In order to be able to do my work in the world, I needed to keep it safe from him and people like him who were going to judge me for the bits that I couldn't help.

I can't help being a woman, a girl. That's what I was born as. As I've gone on, I've realized I can't help being autistic. I tried my whole life to not be autistic but I can't do that and that thing of needing safe people for me I need and I don't think it's unusual I think it's standard we need safety in order for creativity to emerge yes it is non-negotiable. If you feel scared, you shut down. It's like when you're in labor. If you're feeling anxious or scared, your body will shut down to keep you safe.

It's exactly the same in sex. It's exactly the same in creativity. Our bodies shut down when they don't feel safe to protect themselves. Basic. We just need our survival instincts then so for me it was that it was needing to make sure that my stepmother didn't show my dad now nine-year-old me didn't understand that of course she'd show my dad because I'm his daughter he would be proud he'd be delighted but for me I needed that boundary in place in order to be able to express what I needed to express in that little book. Like it was a puzzle book. It wasn't even anything deep.

But it was just to be able to do it, it needed to be safe. Yes. And then on the deeper level, that, yeah, that, that that creative energy just i think maybe i've already it's the safety it's the safety thing it's the safety from my father but also the safety in general for creativity. So, traveling forwards then, I rejected the need for me to try out for Oxbridge and make my school look impressive by getting somebody with top grades getting into Oxford

and putting it in a school prospectus way. I wasn't up for that. I wanted to be a director what kind of director a theatre director great it's what I've been spending the last few years doing loved it had I think a talent for it um and I knew that in order to direct I needed to know how it was to act now I'd spent years and years and years acting got the highest qualification you can in the acting things like so I've done a lot of acting but I didn't I wasn't aiming on being an actor for my career I was aiming on being a director but I knew that in order and this echoes what I've done with Womancraft Publishing, in order to be the one calling the shots, you first need to know how it is to create. You need

to know how it is to have the shots called at you. You need to know what works for you and what doesn't when somebody's trying to get something to happen. So I went to drama school, lasted a year. And the first task of the new year, the second year, was we're gonna have to stand on stage and sing a solo. And I still didn't have a word for anxiety I didn't know what that thing was but I spent that whole summer in tears unable to function knowing that I couldn't do that the thought of standing on stage by myself and singing was horrific I'd had a past of you know I learned several instruments accordion flute piano I played

them happily by myself I couldn't play them in front of people as an autistic person and again I didn't know this I didn't have this framework the the gaze of somebody else is tangible it is physical and it is uncomfortable that's why we find direct eye contact like it makes me want to vomit it feels so uncomfortable um so people staring at me is my idea of hell and yet here I am with all these creative urges longing to share that creative output but but being completely disabled by my ability to be seen whilst doing it. So I'd had the history of this terror of being seen. So this was for me the ultimate thing. So I dropped out I went to

Kingston University and studied history of ideas with English literature something that I discovered online searching over the summer and history of ideas has really been the grounding of my written work. It is philosophy in a historical context, but not just philosophy, thought in general, culture in general. And so looking at the interlinkings between different schools of thought, different historical moments in a far broader, wider sense than most academic subjects usually do. And then it was a wonder, like Kingston was an ex-poly, you know, it wasn't it wasn't a big fancy university that somebody like me should be going to. And yet it was perfect for someone like me because they worked on the American system they were the only place in the UK that did this particular subject it was an American subject and so they also made you do a couple of modules each term that had no relation to your main two subjects so you got to broaden your understanding of

world and human culture even further so for me it was just perfect and heaven could you speak about the moment where you had the women's studies part of the history of ideas which made you feel awkward because you're like seriously there really should be more women like I should be hearing from more women but because of the way our history is his story has unfolded it's been the story of men and can you describe I just heard you say this in a podcast like I didn't want to hear about another fucking name of a king yes but I hadn't done history at school because of that because I was done with kings and wars and like seriously I didn't give a fuck and then in uh choices of modules one of them was women's history and I was like yeah no god that's just so like oh let's just get a couple of names

in so that we're making ourselves feel better about you know we're just going to be learning about stupid crappy things that didn't mean anything I was really judgy and really scathing about it so I didn't choose that because okay but this woman who ran that did the first or second class of one of the modules I did pick. And she walked in. She'd been a mature student. So she was recent recently qualified. She was in her 60s. She had spiky white hair and massive, colour on and she started to talk about the findings of let's call it matriarchal 1970s feminists the discoveries of pre-historical artifacts and questioning you know God as man and I just it blew my mind and I went to the the library and I got out a book which I literally, I just, I could not stop reading. And this was pre-Amazon days, so I couldn't order it like it was some old 1970s book. So I photocopied half on a student budget

because I couldn't let this information out of my hands. I think it's called The First Sex, which is a play on Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex. In it, she goes through everything that we have all just taken as fact and shown proof for what came before societies that centered the female and the feminine. And wow. So that really shifted things for me. As a child, I'd been like really angry when the girls weren't allowed to play football on the top playground because the boys were. And the girls started. I joined them first because I liked playing football and I didn't like having to talk to bitchy girls. The girls then decided that this was fun. So the more and more of us joined. Then people got hurt. Then there were too many people on there.

So the headmaster decided, well, the girls aren't allowed to play football anymore. So I took a delegation of girls up to the headmaster's place, age 10, and said, that's not fair. You cannot say that girls can't play football, but the boys can. That is outrageous. I would have so tried to make you my best friend

because I'm 42. So we possibly would have been in the same year. I would have been like to make you my best friend because I'm 42 so we possibly would have been in the same year I would have been like I want to be best friends with her I'm going to pause this conversation with Lucy just for a moment to share a last minute invitation. So today, Thursday the 21st of September, we're beginning the first round of our brand new live program at Red School. It's called Your Creative Power and it shares a menstruality creative toolkit for life to support you to actually step out into the world in ever fuller ways to express your calling and although we're starting the journey today if you happen to listen to this on Friday or Saturday or Sunday just drop us a message at info at redschool.net and we will

definitely sneak you in through the back door if you'd like to join us for this six-week soulful, fun, revelatory immersion into your creative power. You can take your seat at redschool.net forward slash creativity. That's redschool.net forward slash creativity. Right, back to Lucy. Okay, I realised the second part of the question you asked a while back there is a thing in me that arises that if I say no to it and shut it down I start to die inside and if I say yes to it it gets bigger and bigger and it comes out and it makes me do she makes me do things that little lucy my daily self would find kind of scary but it just comes through and i can embody that

and i do embody that and when i do i can do stuff like march into the master's office and say this is not okay um and that I'm not I'm not in control that's not me so to speak that is whatever comes through me um and learning to embody that has been the work of my lifetime and will continue to be the work of my lifetime because it's pretty spectacular when it does come through me but it's also pretty it can be very scary um you don't know what's going to happen um and it can be overwhelming because like it comes through with a race of energy which then afterwards I can feel very depleted I'm imagining there's a huge charge that your nervous system has to contain yes massive and so when people see me on stage for example they see that coming through they will see me walking on stage physically shaking they will see me close to tears at some point, maybe even in tears. And then they will see the whoomp of it coming through and it will change my body.

It will change, you know, and I'm just in the zone. And it's a really, really exciting place to be. And and like right on the edge of, know because it's coming through me so I'm the person who takes the flag if I say shit that isn't okay it was her it was her you talked to her about it yeah it does sound kind of split personality ish I get that but it's just that is my experience of it is that you know in my day- day I am somebody who is multi passionate who sometimes has huge amounts of energy and sometimes has zero energy like non-functioning no energy but this extra warmth

comes through in the times and places where it needs to and I have made an agreement with it to say yes to it um that happened it's happened many times in small ways here and there but it happened very strongly um on my birthday I'm guessing it was 2013, and I just said, bring it on, I'm ready, let's do this, six months later, and I didn't connect them at the time, but six months later, Womancraft was born, in a moment of, an unplanned, unthought-out moment of, I was in a conversation with somebody I was working for I asked for a pay rise they weren't able to give me a pay rise I said that's fine I'm going to go off and start a publishing company there'll be no discussion it was just like that's what's happening it's like

your life is like an improv theatre show you know where you have to keep in improv you just have to say yes you just have to keep saying yes you're like right okay that door is closed I will say yes to this one but the door wasn't even closed the door wasn't closed I was the one who said nope and it was fine like you know I could have carried on working there for that money not a bother it just had to be done it was like this is what is happening I was like okay this is what is happening so when you ask kind of what's behind the work that I do you need to know all of those different threads you need to know that genetically I have a neurodivergent line a creative mind line with its pitfalls and its its gifts you need to know that I was brought up in a culture

of creativity. So creativity in our family is normal. And yet the sorts of creativity that I was doing were a bit kind of fringe and weird and on the edge. But, you know, like, you know, my potter and woodturning people don't really get writing books about periods and goddess. They don't really get that. But they are yay for you because you are creative, entrepreneuring and running a successful business. That is your dream. You need to know the intellectual of fear that I am working with and against to be able to put myself out into the world in order to feel safe enough to be in the world and you need to know this deep underlying something that comes through me in my work and when you get all those pieces then you get me if you kind of

leave a piece or two out then you know you don't quite get what I'm up to um it's a fantastic thank you for walking us into it because it's fantastic to hear it does answer my fundamental question which is how the freak is she so creative so it does it paints the whole picture I have a question from your own experience of this of navigating the fear of knowing that the safety is needed what would you say to one of our listeners who might be feeling like I can feel that when I don't say yes to this pushing through inside me I die a bit inside but I don't know how to say yes or I don't like someone that's in that dancing can feel the battle inside what would you say to them as like a next step in terms of their creative process well what I'll say

is firstly that I get that completely so the bit I missed out of that story, the bit between university and starting woman craft was a couple of years of deciding very, very clearly. And this started towards the end of university. And I need to be accepted and I need to live a nice, gentle, quiet life where. Where I don't stick out, where I'm not weird, I need to just I just need to turn that stuff off, which is making me uncomfortable and making other people uncomfortable. Let's just be normal, Lucy. And I dressed in grey and, you know, I tried really hard to just turn it down and turn it off. I didn't write. I didn't paint. I didn't draw. It was really shit. But I made a very, like very conscious, conscious agreement with myself that I wasn't... Here come the tears again. I wasn't going to be myself.

I mean, basically I was committing suicide while staying alive. That I was such a shameful thing, such an imperfect thing, that I couldn't be in this world. And the only way I could be in this world was to be entirely not myself. At other times, that wasn't an option either, and I just thought I needed to kill myself because because

being me is so fucking hard being me and being seen in this world is horrific so I get that conscious or unconscious conscious switching off of your creativity saying no because it doesn't feel okay it doesn't feel safe and the only way you can change that is you saying yes to it again and the only way that that is going to work is by doing it in a very safe way so you do it by yourself in your bedroom with the door closed and you don't tell anyone what you've done and then you start to build your voice about what what is meaningful to you you share your truth in whatever way that is whether it's by writing or painting, whatever is meaningful to you. You make that you do that. And you might need to do that by copying other people first, by learning from other people.

So by doing an e-course in your bedroom, not telling anyone you're doing resonates with you and you recognize it might be just a gem, just a line, just a word, just a stroke of complete truth that authentically reflects you, your experience, your expression. And you are so alight with that, that you have to share it. You have to share it with your partner or your best friend or your mom, maybe even your cat. You know, you have to share it with somebody who means something to you because they will get how meaningful that is. And you keep doing that process. You do it by yourself. You learn, you figure out, you try, you long to share, you share.

And each time you open that sharing circle just a little, just as much as feels safe. So I always say creativity happens on the outside of our comfort zones it doesn't happen where we're feeling deeply comfortable stuff has to be churning and moving we have to be reaching the edge of what we think is possible what we think is expressible that's the only way that we're going to hit what is really authentically true to us the stuff that we've silenced and shut down because until when you're feeling safe completely safe in your creativity it means probably that you are either copying somebody else's thing you're following rules or you're repeating something you've already done yes that's so true ah yes when you are creating something that is new and true for you

there is a fizz and a buzz and a you feel like you're holding your breath but you can breathe for the first time and the blood is rushing through your veins and you think you might vomit and your head is spinning and your whole body your your being, energetically, physically responds to that of, fuck, did I just write that? Oh, you get that. But what I'm saying is that that requires the safety, the physical, emotional, energetic safety around you to be able to get to that point. So the feeling of authentic creative expression is getting outside of our

comfort zones but it needs to be done within a safe place so beautiful so beautiful lucy thank you wow and once you have created something precious to you don't go off and share it in a really public forum like instagram unless you have a circle of people there who will meet you where you are and appreciate it if you are creating vulva art and you have a page which is dedicated to i don't know cooking then you're going to get a lot of people that oh my god that's disgusting whereas if you have developed a following of people who that is their thing then you are going to be received with love because whatever you create isn't going to be for everybody it's a horrible hard lesson to learn but it's not going to be and people who are not expressing themselves usually get very judgy and very attacky at people who are

doing things the way that they wouldn't do them so they're the people who usually get at you whereas if you are sharing in safe space however big that safe space is then the feedback you're getting is usually from people who know what you're doing both the the expression of it and what it takes and there for the feedback that they give you is feedback that you can trust how would you say your cycle awareness how how do you see that playing a role in your capacity to let this, like, let's call it she, let's call her she, through you? Is there something about how you have honoured your menstruation that has allowed her to come through? Is there something about this learning to pace yourself? How do you see that connection?

I think the answer is probably on a very simple level yes it was a very leading question um but I mean this saying yes and this coming through predated me being a menstrual person yes so this was happening when I was a child and I have no doubt it will continue to happen when I no longer bleed so it is absolutely a part of it a large part of it but it's certainly not all of it um what I've noticed very much with cycle awareness and I wrote about this in moon time and I know it really helps a lot of women who hadn't come across the shift. For me, my work is about energetic stuff. Whatever I'm working with, I don't have a training in any, you know, Reiki or energetic background. That's not my thing.

But I have an intuitive sense of energetics is what I call them. And so for me, understanding my cycle, a lot is to do with energetics. And for a lot of people reading Moon Time, that was a big kind of aha moment, the shifting energies that happen during your cycle. One of the ways I really like to understand energeticsics because I'm a visual person is through archetypes and so you know it's now really commonplace to see the four archetypes of menstruation everywhere you've got to understand when I put out um moon time 11 years ago like I was only in a couple of fringe books in kind of various iterations like it wasn't mainstream people weren't like people

weren't talking about periods like moon time has gone through three iterations now it's in its third edition and when i put it out mine was the first book in print to talk about the red tent movement what red tents were i mean that's where were. Now everyone and her mother has been to a red tent and led a red tent. Nobody had heard of them. I found out about them on the internet when I was researching this book. You know, trans issues weren't an issue to do with menstruation at all because you know none of us had met a trans person. Like it was such a niche, niche subject. Neurodivergence and menstruation wasn't an issue because nobody knew an autistic person we didn't know we were autistic do you know what i mean like

seriously so it's people and then periods weren't talked about like we were still at the time of blue blood on on the adverts for menstrual pads nobody had menstrual cups or anything they didn't exist period pants didn't exist um and people didn't talk about their periods to talk about your period was weird and disgusting and kind of strange and then by the second iteration of that book, there were laws in Korea about menstrual leave. And by the third iteration, Spain was bringing in menstrual leave for civil service. And, you know, Davina McCall was doing, you know, stuff on the menopause on primetime television. Like this was such a big leap perimenopause when I wrote it wasn't really talked about as a word it was it was you know it was there but it wasn't really a thing by the second iteration five years later um it was becoming a thing now like there's books and

podcasts and specialists on this so I people really need to understand quite how much of a journey our culture has been on during the time of my career writing this. And, you know, I very much see myself as a bridge. Another bit of background you might need about me is that I live in Ireland I was born in Ireland I grew up in the UK I've always moved between these two cultures and never felt like I fit in the same with being neurodivergent I'm always you know I'm not autistic enough to you know appear autistic to your average person on the street when they first meet me they just think I'm a little bit weird. But so I fit into the normal people ish and I fit into the autistic community ish.

So I'm a bridging person and I'm the same with kind of alternative thought, new age thought very much. There are bits of that which have, you know, really hold a lot of potential for our culture, which have also been muddled up with all sorts of other messy things. And there are mainstream ideas, scientific things that haven't found the light of day, haven't found, you know, the general public that need to come out and so I'm a bridging person between those two things trying to kind of integrate this knowledge and and weave together those those two paths so for me moon time was really about that weaving of those two yes yes it has to be informed by science by understanding by things that we can see and touch and taste and things have to be

informed by lived experience by the intuitive by the spiritual realms like we need both sides in for things to make sense we can't opt out of either and there are fringe people in both there are quacks and and people with their own agendas in both so you have to do a lot of picking so to go back to what i was saying i the way that my cycle awareness really helps me is by knowing that in the first couple of days of my cycle I'm going to need to have it really calm and quiet around me preferably plan on working from bed if I can or snuggled up in an armchair I have the privilege of being able to work in that way and I know not everyone does whereas if I'm out and about on my feet and having to make decisions,

that is not going to be a good move. I then know that mid cycle, I'm going to have a massive whoomp of energy. I'm going to be wanting to connect with people. Teaching will be fabulous. Speaking will be great. I will probably, you know, be able to put together a course in two days because one. And then slowly the energy starts to dissipate. And that's the time when, you know, I've got a good mind for editing, working quietly by myself and really, you know, kind of. Pulling stuff apart and putting it back back together that's where the energy is at then then the couple of days before my period if I can really kind of slow down I can get some incredible insights that I just I don't know where they come from but they do things land

sudden ideas seeds land and I can have really know, kind of my visioning process really opens up there, too. So kind of being able to express stuff in image really helps, too. So. And life happens, you know, my cycle is changing short, long, short, long. long so whilst I try to plan for allowing that the reality is that I've booked a podcast interview you know eight weeks ahead and I could be anywhere in my cycle but then I have to give myself permission to be whoever I am in that cycle you know I'm I might not be full of energy that day instead I might be very intuitive I might be very emotionally connected and that will give people something else and I'm not going to give myself a hard time that I'm not bright shiny full full lights on Lucy you know it will be something different and that is me too

yes and in these last couple of minutes I'd love love, if you would, to share some thoughts about, like, for the people in our audience who have recently received a diagnosis or think that, or are experiencing themselves as neurodivergent and haven't yet received a diagnosis, how to navigate this is a huge question in a couple of minutes. But from your experience of the last five years of integrating your diagnosis and, yeah, living your life and your creative life with this lens that you've always had, but now you had it in a different way. Yes. Some advice would be amazing, Lucy. OK, so I've got several things I want to say and I want to try and so one of them is going to be words one of them is going to be lenses one of them is going to be integration okay we will remember that okay so the first thing is congratulations congratulations on learning this about yourself, because you may have spent your whole life being criticized by other people and judged by other

people, wrongly judged, people constantly trying to change you because you weren't quite right, because you weren't doing it right, because you weren't being it right, because you weren't OK. And suddenly you have been given the gift of seeing yourself more clearly. label which some people hate labels but when you share that label with people who understand what that label means not the people who only think that autistic people are only five-year-old boys banging their heads who can't talk that there are many many expressions of autism and that is the expression that our culture knows then you have the ability to become yourself in the world rather than shut down yourself and second guess yourself which you have probably been doing your whole life so you get the gift of a second chance, a second start at life using this lens of neurodivergence, of autism, of ADHD, whatever your diagnosis has been, or your realization. Because to be honest,

not everybody can access diagnosis. Getting hold of doctors is is hard being able to afford it is hard so I get some people are like oh you've got to have your diagnosis no if you have done your research you know then trust that trust that that is your truth so that lens will help you to be able to understand yourself far better. And it will give you language and tools in order to be able to care for yourself and manage your life far better. Because all of these things that you thought was some fatal flaw in yourself, you will discover are actually common presentations of whatever your diagnosis is. And there are hundreds of thousands of practitioners and individuals around the world who have had to learn to work with these challenges and have tools and

methods to be able to do that and have language that they have made up to name it. So rather than all of these weird things that you don't know what they are, that you thought was just you and something wrong with you. No, it's a thing. And then you know how to unpack it and work with it. And in my work, what I've learned is that when we can give language to things, things change fast. Because things that are silenced within ourselves or things that do not have language cannot be expressed except usually through behavior. Whereas when we have language, things can change because we can work directly with them, with understanding. And the final thing I will say is about integration. My very lovely psychologist who diagnosed me and my daughter and is potentially going to be diagnosing another member of my family very soon um said to me Lucy be gentle with yourself it takes about a year from first

diagnosis to feeling like you're kind of starting to find your feet it takes that long to integrate because what you're doing is you're working through all of those memories from the whole of your life and if you're older if you're in your 60s or memories from the whole of your life and if you're older if you're in your 60s or 70s like my mother was when she was diagnosed that's even more life that you've got to process that you look back on and go oh god that's why I did that oh that's why I responded in that way that's a lot of stuff to process so it's not going to be diagnosis boom everything's great it's going to be diagnosis muddy murky trying to understand yourself like you have to kind of almost renegotiate your entire life through the lens of that your self-understanding your relationships

your work it's a lot of work to do that so be gentle with yourself when you and give yourself the grace and the time to enable that process it's not something that can be rushed thank you that's so incredibly helpful as I said at the beginning I knew I was just going to want to talk to you for 10 hours and you know I would just be so grateful if this could be a part one and we could continue this down the line. I'd love to speak to you again. And thank you so much for everything that you've shared. This has been like a wild safari of a conversation I've enjoyed so much. Right.

Thank you, Lucy. Thank you. You're very welcome. I learned so much in that conversation. I'd love to hear how it landed for you. You can always email me at sophie at redschool.net. Okay, so I just want to share one final invitation for your creative power, which starts today. You can find out more at redschool.net forward slash creativity. And that's it for this week.

I look forward to being with you again next week, hopefully. And until then, keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.