The Menstruality Podcast - 116. How Menstruation Holds the Secrets for Successful Leadership (Alexandra & Sjanie)

Episode Date: November 23, 2023

At the heart of the menstruality leadership path is the power and wisdom of menstruation. Slowly over time, bleed by bleed, we have the opportunity to experience a profound kind of homecoming when we menstruate - we remember who we are and what we’re about. This sense of purpose and meaning can fuel us up for another cycle of leading with heart, power and courage in our lives.In today’s conversation we look at three secrets for successful leadership that can emerge from conscious, rested menstruation (however much we’re able to do that within the structures of our world and the responsibilities of our lives) through our own personal stories, menstrual dreams and trying to articulate the often wordless and deeply mysterious knowings we’ve experienced during our bleed time.We explore: How Alexandra’s menstrual pain in her 30s opened her up to her life’s purpose (and how orgasmic menstruation eventally became for her).Our favourite menstrual dreams and what they taught us about ourselves, our worth and our leadership. Why the first chamber of menstruation ‘separation’ is so key to accessing the leadership wisdom within menstruation; separating from the world, but also from what we have previously known ourselves to be, so that we can be fully available to encounter the mystery and infinite possibilities available to us. ---Registration is now open for our 2024 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can explore the curriculum here: https://www.menstrualityleadership.com---To get a free copy of Wild Power to gift to a friend, we are offering a buy one, get one free until 21st December: https://www.redschool.net/product/wild-power-book-bogof (We’re also offering the same deal with our new menopause book, Wise Power: https://www.redschool.net/product/wise-power-book-bogof )---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.schoolSophie 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 so much for tuning in, for being with us today. I'm with Alexandra and Sharni. We're exploring the source of power and wisdom that lies at the very heart of this whole cycle aware leadership path that we teach at red school which is menstruation

so we're looking at three secrets for successful leadership that can emerge from conscious rested menstruation however much we're able to do that within the structures of our world and the responsibilities of our lives so some of the, the bits that I loved in this conversation include how Alexandra's menstrual pain in her 30s actually opened her up to her life's purpose and how orgasmic menstruation eventually became for her. We also talk about our favourite menstrual dreams and what they've taught us about ourselves and our self-worth and our leadership in the world. And we look at two of the leadership skills that Alexandra and Sharni teach on our menstruality leadership program, improvisation and restedness. If you've been longing to engage

more deeply with this work, then now's a really good time to join the Menstruality Leadership Programme for 2024 because we have a super early bird discount which saves you £495 until November the 30th. You can find out all about the course and take your seat at menstrualityleadership.com. Right, let's get started with today's conversation. Good morning, Sharni Hugo-Wurlitzer, Alexandra Pope. Good morning, Sophie Jane. We're going to talk about menstruation and leadership and I'm so excited because if there's one thing in my life that I feel kind of misunderstood on or just really don't feel met by the world it's this deep embodied experience of being just held by

life and restored and renewed and brought home to myself on my period and when I try and explain it to people, it's just a hard thing to convey. So I've got loads of questions for you and I'm excited to see how we can just open up this whole beautiful gift that we have available to us. It's so wild and so radical. And actually, as you say that, Sophie, about being so misunderstood, I realized part of what makes menstruation so incredibly magical is that it is a hidden secret. get to know it through experience and if we haven't experienced it the whole notion of it being a place of power and potential is just kind of ludicrous really yeah you know yeah yeah yes and you're right in it shawnee you're on day three we've parted ways we were cycle synced and now i'm rocking my day 26 here you're on day three how are you doing on your day three yeah clearly I needed to jump ship from that merry-go-round a little earlier than than expected yeah how am I doing? I feel very sensitized, very sensitive. And if I'm not paying very close attention, that can very quickly become feeling kind of shaky and overexposed a feeling of like too much

but equally I am in this very light fine fine sensitized place where in the flick of a candle I can just feel a feeling of ecstasy through me a feeling of just incredible connection and aliveness and actually mostly today I've been having revelations about myself. Yeah, and I was sharing some of them with Alexandra earlier, but just it's like some sort of veil seems to have dropped and I'm going, oh, right, I get it. That's what's amazing about me. That's what my superpower is. That's what I'm good at that's those are the

components of my life that have all come together to create this perfect cocktail that is me yeah you are a perfect cocktail and now you've got me wondering what you would be if you were a cocktail. I've got a kind of, like some kind of sunrise, sunset. I don't, I can't remember what it's called, but it's like peaches and reds and it's sweet,

but also quite earthy. And yeah, I think if I was a cocktail today, I'd be an espresso martini. I've got, I've got the day 26 day 26 depth and richness I feel a richness inside me like thick coffee um but I've also got a lot of fire yeah fire and energy and this is quite a vulnerable thing to share but I really trust this community around this podcast and I do feel safe to say it but I am going to be 42 in a few days and you know Aidan and I tried

to conceive for four years naturally and it didn't happen but I do always have a hope in my heart that I could conceive naturally so at this time of the month there's always a little and there's a little part of me going am I premenstrual is there any chance I could possibly be pregnant so I am I am holding that too so for anyone who's listening who you know is in that kind of holding the tension place in their lives of you know trying to conceive we can be together in this as well yeah and it means that when my bleed does come there's always you know there's often just a little tinge of oh okay there's nothing like what it used to be but we'll see and see what life has

in store in a few days yeah what would alice andrew be if she was a cocktail? I don't know. I mean, my energy is a bit low today. But there's a deep well of gratitude that I'm sitting in. But also, I realize I've gone into that empty space before something starts, you know, the void, you know. So I'm in a slight void place of you know we're about to have a conversation about something and i feel quite i come empty-handed i feel empty it's just i've stepped into the void having had you know good thoughts and you know shared lots of

thoughts with you and on my walk today thinking i have now stepped into just, I'm in the unknown right now. And so I sort of don't know myself either. And let's hope I land on something solid when we get into our conversation together. I think given that you're the real Red Pope, we can pretty much rely on there's going to be some solid ground here. And I reckon if you're a cocktail, you'd be a non-alcoholic oh yeah the non-alcoholic um she doesn't need alcohol this one uh but like a botanical like with very fine and but with fizz effervescence like the bubbles rising through it and yeah oh I'm loving that one Sophie so before this conversation you were sharing Sharni how you'd been interviewed recently and you were asked a question Alexandra was asked a question

actually about her secrets to successful leadership and you felt like you were really getting into something and then the interview went in another direction. And it would be fun to tease out some of the themes that came out to point to how menstruation is the secret sauce. That's a way to sum it up. You know, the punchline is menstruation. And what that has meant for me, of course, postmenopause. Yeah. And what that has meant for me, of course, post-menopause. Yeah, yeah. You were saying that there were three things that came up and essentially menstruation is the gateway to these three things or, you know, resting at menstruation, being with menstruation. So the first one was the first of Alexandra's secrets to successful leadership is that you have a purpose, you know who you are and what you're for.

So let's unpack that and how menstruation is helping to deliver that for you. Well, how it helped deliver that for me. Sorry. Yeah. deliver that for me sorry yeah what's interesting is I've always in all the vicissitudes of my life you know from quite young from say you know my early 20s I always had a sense of meaning that there was something meaningful at work, actually even before then. And but it had no words for it, you know, and I was kind of just trucking along with the things that were unfolding before me. But what happened was that through the awakening that I started to experience at menstruation, this meaning became ever more meaningful.

And this was, you know, through my menstrual pain just before my 31st birthday that really catalyzed me to profoundly meet menstruation and give it space. You know, I made that decision to listen to my body and to not just go down the path of drugs and surgery. And it was in the act of giving space to menstruation that, I mean, I was doing it to heal my body. You know, I just thought, okay, this way lies healing. You know, my bleed is calling, so I'm going to follow. And in the act of giving space to menstruation, and this, of course, happened over quite a period of time, because the pain, you into, into this highly charged state. And as time passed, what became very clear, what I was experiencing was coming into a place of, well,

for want of a better word, it was awakening every month. It was like this feeling of awe, a sense of being stopped and plugged in. It was like time stopping, the pressure stopping. And I would feel such beautiful feelings through me. And I started to recognize it was like an affirmation of myself, a feeling of goodness of, oh, yes. It was like, it's orgasmic. It's like, yes, yes. This affirmation of myself. And it was this dedication to staying close to menstruation

because it took me some years to, because I was in the business of getting rid of this pain forever. I mean, it was reducing and reducing, you know. And then, you know, what took over was the necessity, the power of menstruation, the importance of caring for it. And it was to sense that my life was meaningful, it had something, and that I had a knowing. It was just knowing in me of something I had to do.

Now, I can't remember all the details of the things that sort of came to me, except that I was filled with something. And then ideas would come, you know, I would then have this idea I had to write a book, not to run the workshops. First off, I started running workshops. I didn't know menstruality was my business and i was to take this to the world no no no i was just i thought this information is that i'm experienced you know that i've gathered is good i want to share it and it just unfolded from that um and and grew from that over over

each month over year after year after year um and mean, in the early days, it was amusing because I would have these powerful experiences of menstruation and then I would get to ovulation and no one talked about this. There was no affirmation of it. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. And I'd go, maybe I'm making it all up. I doubt myself. And then i'd come back

to meditation again and i go oh no oh no no no no it's real it's real i can remember that so vividly so vividly i doubt myself i come back to the beaker oh my god no no no there's something here and um yeah so over time this uh purpose unfolded this meaning this sense of what i must do what i'm for grew and grew and i could noting it because, you know, it wasn't like a money spinner in those days. It wasn't like, you know, there was a job you could step into. You know, it was heavy going, trying to get workshops going and to get any kind of acknowledgement and not to be dismissed or ridiculed. And I'm very grateful that I was in Australia because Australia was so so open if it had been england it would have been stillborn i kid you not this would have been stillborn such a critical climate here but australians they said yes you know i got on the

radio i got in the newspaper you know big great programs good newspapers it was amazing and um it was amazing Australia said yes to my you know with time and it's just marvelous actually how it grew from that just from this knowing can I ask you a question about the knowing and this is just to getting into the detail so you may or may not be able to answer this but I'm quite keen on looking at the like how these knowings revealed like revealed themselves would it be that you'd be journaling and feel yourself writing things or would it be that you'd be sitting in stillness being and then knowings would arise or I used to be an avid journal writer. And if I go back through my journals, I might find something from that time because I've still got a box of some old ones,

which I might burn. Oh, wow. No, don't. I bet they're a goldmine. Just let's look at them before you burn them. But actually, I felt charged. I just felt, you know, I just felt charged in my being. I would lie on my bed.

Sometimes I'd just be lying there going, just the energy through me. And it wasn't so much thoughts in my head. It's so hard to describe. But I was filled by something. I'm sure there were, you know, we talk about menstruation being a visionary time. And in a sense, I was visioning something and feeling something. I mean, I always felt the magnitude of this work. That's what has kept me. So I guess that's what was coming to me, the magnitude of this work, the implications of it. But the interesting thing was, I could not articulate it to people. It's taken me 40 odd years to articulate to people what is going on

at menstruation, what is going on in the menstrual cycle? How it supports our leadership? How it's necessary for these times? But, oh, my God, did I know in my blood and bones that this knowledge was transformative and needed to be everywhere, needed to be commonplace. It was just filling me and my task was to grow down into it and find a way to articulate the knowing that I had this feels so important because I'm sure people listening are going yes yes exactly I feel it I sense it I know it it's streaming through me but I can't I couldn't necessarily tell you what it is I couldn't necessarily you know there's no five-step plan to what I'm feeling right now

this is an embodied very mysterious dance that is largely unwordable yes thank you so much for saying that that really speaks to my experience and that's why it makes it so hard to explain to people why I need time to rest at menstruation. It's not because I feel ill, actually, blessedly. You know, I'm not, I don't experience pain, but I want this. I want to feel plugged in and charged and know myself. Yes. So good, Alexandra. myself yes oh that's so good alessandra so this is so important because when we say rest administration what we're partly talking about here is separation um separation from the world

but also separation from our mind from our our thinking cells, separation from who we have been before, separation from the known world. This is really important. We're separating from the known, from our previous identity, from what has ever been before so what alexandra is describing here is what happens when we separate administration and then how in that empty space where we enter the spiritual dimensions, we then are available to really feel. We talk about this being like docking into the mothership and it's that we're plugging in to this creative charge of who we are.

And I love how you described it Alexandra and and Sophie your kind of recognition of it and I do believe that everyone knows what they're for even if they don't know that they know or they can't put words to it because it is an unknown knowing and then the way you described it Alexandra is your work was to grow down into that to come into a conscious knowing of it to begin to grow your power and capacity for it to begin to stand for it in the world, to begin to share it with the world, articulate it. And this is what the menstrual cycle is doing month after month. It's taking us from that vastly expanded, connected place of knowing without knowing. And then each cycle day, we're getting drip fed a more embodied

conscious knowing of that in the world so it's a it's a truly this is truly the mystery school i want to say this really is the mystery school yeah yeah maybe we should rename ourselves the mystery school menstruality the mystery school I am quite liking that purveyors of the dark arts she says cackling like a witch around her cauldron yes delights me so much and so then so we're plugged in to this purpose, to this knowing of ourselves, to this charge. And then what I'm thinking of now, let's see if I can articulate it, is that in my own leadership, you know, out there interviewing people, writing, doing my thing, parenting, I don't know what I'm doing most of the time I'm making it up as I go

most of the time but there's a trust in me especially since becoming a mother actually there's a trust in me that I am lined up with myself and so I just trust what I do and how what I say and how I show up more than I ever have in my life I feel like it might be I'm just at the beginning of this but 40s might really be about this but I don't know yet um but the it's this docking in that enables me to have that trust because it it's like um yeah like you say the ducky into the mothership like all the different parts of me plug in to the source part and then i'm everything's re realigned and then i go off into the world for the next 28 days or however many until the next plugging in yeah this is exactly it

this is it because when we're talking leadership, we aren't talking about an assignment or a role that you are given. We're talking about what is emerging through the singularity of who you are. We're talking about this charge, this calling that we all have within us. And so, Anise, we are connected with that, aligned with that, having these moments of docking into that. We don't have the ground or the footing to then be able to travel with this mystery school. And what you've said there, Sophie, I think is so important just to own as a real leadership skill is this capacity for improvisation, making it up. It is, in fact, one of our core leadership skills, the dark art, as we lovingly like to call it of improvisation and we can only really call on the true power of that skill if like you we are feeling um that we're lined up with ourselves at a very deep level yeah lined up with ourselves and you know what what our line is what we're serving yeah it's having those riverbanks isn't it of ourselves yeah

yeah i mean i really want to dignify this improvisation thing i know so many people shame themselves and diminish themselves because they are making it up and what we would say is no this is true creativity this is emergence in action this is the skill that has absolutely fueled everything that we do and we often laugh hysterically about the fact that we're making it all up. And what I actually see is a lot of people thinking, well, clearly I'm not good enough because I just feel like I'm making this up. And I want to take them by the shoulders lovingly and say, keep making it up. Keep going. This is how we're all doing it yeah this is how new things happen this is how we create this is how we come to fulfill the life we've come to live is because we aren't following a tired tread already walked path we aren't regurgitating history and perpetuating

the same old stuff we're actually improvising we're making new we're emerging um yeah it's it's so i'd love to sort of qualify that more because it's it's really something that arises out of us it comes from a place of embodiment it's really important to emphasize that it's not your head just sort of managing things no no no no no no because our sort of rational mind is very much rooted in the past, what has happened and regurgitates that, you know, what we have done. It's through being embedded in myself, and that comes from knowing myself, in this moment in time, in my encounter with the situation or the person or whatever it is that I'm dealing with. It's relational. It's rooted out of a relationality, a connection with myself and a meeting of the situation.

I'm not trying to control the situation. It's very different. If I'm controlling it, then I'm not using that power, that art of improvisation. It's actually meeting it. And as Shani said, this is real creativity in action. It is. It's actually meeting it. And Shani said this is real creativity in action. It is. It's really creative. Something happens. Something comes. And that thing that comes leads to something else. And the environment then feeds something back to you. And then you have a dance with the environment.

You're sort of co-creating something together I'm going to pause our conversation for just a moment to share a bit more with you about the menstruality leadership program as I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast today we've just opened the doors for 2024 and we have a special early offer, especially for those of you who have been waiting for this and you know you want to step in right away. There's a £495 discount until November the 30th. The Menstruality Leadership Programme is an immersive apprenticeship to the wisdom of the menstrual cycle and menopause as it lives in you and your body and your life. It's for you at any stage of life if you're hearing the call to a radical new kind of

leadership, one that is cyclical, sustainable and rooted in the wisdom of your body. The fruits of the training look really different for each person who goes through it. So over the next few weeks we're going to share some words directly from our graduates. And here today is Kate Shepard-Cohen's experience of the menstruality leadership program. If you'd like to explore the program for yourself, you can go to menstrualityleadership.com. That's menstrualityle dot com hearing the information the cycle work as alexandra and shiny teachers just gave me that safe holding to experience my trauma and so i started you know just that kind of penny drop moment of of the seasons of the cycle reframing the cycle as something that is positive and actually

something to embrace and that it's your friend it completely changed I mean it completely changed my world view I mean it completely revolutionized every way I think about pretty much everything from my body my mental health how I operate in, how I access my creativity, how I can be with my children and my partner and my family. It was a completely new worldview. And so it was completely life changing. And actually, I feel like we're part of a wave that is going to be explored for generations and generations to come. It's really exciting to be part of that at any stage, you know, to be part of this profound philosophy that is coming out of the Red School in terms of cyclical living, in terms of menstrual rest, in terms of

the void, and seeing how that manifests, actually, practically speaking, in the lives of those who've actually gone through the programme. It's just incredible to see how it's now coming out in the form of the movement in all of the different fields. Yeah, the thing that I'm feeling as we're describing all of this particularly particularly the necessity of the unknown and being is that for the parts of ourselves that really need to know and understand that really need familiarity and um reliability in order to feel safe this is a real edge and i know that's true for many people when it comes to leadership. Me too. Yeah.

We could say it is the evolutionary edge. It is the threshold or the initiation that we're all standing on the precipice of, you know, daring to trust the unknown. And there's that word, trust, in fact the second thing Alexandra that you said in response to that question around what your secret to successful leadership is you spoke about trust as being really core and I know you're someone who innately trusts. Really, you seem to have come into this lifetime with a trust in life, with a trust in life. And I know many people don't feel that same level of trust. And so this question of if we don't trust the mystery, I mean, it's one of your superpowers, Alexandra, you do trust the unknown.

But if we don't feel that trust, like how can we learn to trust? How can we develop this trust? I would love us to speak to that a little because it's a big hanging question I mean it's core really the word trust is absolutely core to everything I do trust in the unknown and you know I'm very very human and fall into terror on occasion where trust abandons me. So I'm exercised in this.

You know, I am exercised in this. But the thing is, there's enough evidence, if you like, that has sustained me. And it comes back to menstruation again. Yeah. Tell us about that. Tell us how menstruation grows trust. Actually, Sophie, suddenly I feel like I've taken on your job,

but I want to ask you the same question. Do it, Sharni. You go. I'm loving it. Why don't you do it first so because yeah i'd like to how has menstruation or even just the practice of cycle awareness grown your trust because i really hear how you are trusting the unknown and how you're trusting something bigger at work the place i go when you ask that thanks for asking is actually think of my years of trying to conceive

which feel like my version of your menstrual pain Alexander in some ways uh because I was taken into a very very prolonged dark night of the soul where my trust in my body and in life was deeply questioned. And speaking of trusting the mystery and not being able to articulate, I'm not sure I can articulate how and why it has enhanced my trust. Because it wasn't like I got the prize of a natural conception that made me go see I just persevered and then I got my goal it wasn't that black and white you know it was a blessed experience of IVF that brought Artie here but something about committing to being with my bleed even as I was sobbing and grief-stricken and in the dark very much in the dark I'm just gonna have to say I can't articulate it but I know and I will know later in my life

I get the sense that I will know more about this maybe menopause will show me a lot that that has worked me and has made me trust something deeper that it's like deeper than my wants and desires maybe deeper than what I think I deserve deeper than all kinds of beliefs around right and wrong and what I'm owed and all of that just that I trust that life is working something that I can never understand and that's real evidence the infertility challenge so now when I bleed it's just like a falling into it sounds scary but it's like a free fall into just this completely blank open this does not sound good but it really is completely blank open space of

infinite possibility and I don't I I I know that I don't know what I need I think you know and so that's another't know what I need, I think. So that's another way of saying I trust life because my head can't figure it out. It's beautiful hearing you describe that, Sophie. You know, the thoughts that are coming to me around this word trust, let's see if I can articulate them. around this word trust.

Let's see if I can articulate them. They're not, it's sort of come from listening to you. There's something about the discipline of staying, keeping a fidelity with your cycle, which is keeping a fidelity with yourself, you know, keeping a fidelity with cycle awareness, just this ongoing pattern of energy and mood that you ride each month. There's something about that, you know, the go and return, you know, going out, coming back to yourself, and the constant riding of that that i feel something grows or

strengthens in us it did in me and then i have to say menstruation and that plugging in and yeah feeling the possibilities. You said, what was it you said? The possibility, wide open to possibilities. Infinite, infinite possibilities. Yeah, this infiniteness, this expansion. And it was like I'm in administration. I was wired for the cosmic.

You know, I'm rewired back into the cosmic. And that's where the trust is into the cosmic and that's where the trust is you know that's where the trust comes from so there's both this experience of menstruation every month of feeling myself and feeling myself more than just my human body but connected to something so deep deep and spiritual um that just is this fuel that fuels me it's the trust fuel and it is the rhythm of the cycle each month because you go through that moment you know like a doubt i used to get the doubt and then i come back to the bleed and I'd discover it was there. And the patterning of that and the remembering, it built something in me. And similarly, you know, there's the, just at the end of the cycle where you fall into darkness, and usually that's where the critic

has a field day because you're most vulnerable and tells you everything's shit and you're shit and, you know, it's all darkness and and then you bleed and and you're restored and it's the sort of coding of that it's like your cycle codes you for trust it codes you for trust in cyclical consciousness and cyclical consciousness is the pulse of the planet you know it's of earth of the earth that is it it codes you for trust in cyclical consciousness and that means it codes you for trust in life and in death in the easy and the I'm getting what I want and the hard and I'm not getting what I want and I have something that my practice of cycle awareness has given me

occasionally it delivers me these little mantras or prayers and I'm reminded of one right now which really speaks to this, this thing of, you know, when life is going well, and I love your story, Soph, about your infertility challenges. And as you described that as like a dark night of the soul. When life is going well, it's easy to trust life life our trust is not being exercised right so our capacity for trust is what it is if we want to trust life more deeply we need to be taken into these places where we feel betrayed by life, where what we think is best, what we want, what makes us feel good and comfortable is stripped away.

And the second half of the cycle from ovulation to menstruation, every damn month is doing a version of that. And it's a very powerful invitation from life to dare to trust in the face of everything going so-called wrong like according to our ego or our will everything going wrong I'm feeling so just very very moved by this conversation because because what I've really come to feel, and it's a trust that I now lean into all the time, and this is the prayer, this is the mantra I have, in life and in death, God is with me. And that's what menstruation shows us month after month it takes us to that cliff edge where we die on some level and even there we are not abandoned you know even there we are not forsaken and that's an experience of trust unlike anything

else it's not conditional it's not to do with our will it's to do with really having faith in the creative power of life, in the bigger organism that we're a part of, in the fact that we are part of a divine harmony. And I think when it comes to our leadership, unless we know our place in that way, we will never really have the humility or the compassion or the depth of trust that's needed to do what leadership is going to ask of us. And we don't like to go on about this too much because we don't want to put anyone off, but leadership is really hard. It has its moments.

I'm going to come in. I'm like the, you're just like the 13th fairy, Shani. You've just come in and gone, you're going to be cursed. You're going to die. And I'm the little 14th fairy that came afterward.

And I'm going to say, what am I going to say as the 14th fairy? Oh, yeah. I know what I'm going to say. Well, the real kind of about leadership is i was going to swear there but i won't the real thing about leadership is um you can't because it's your calling because it's sourced from you you can't abandon it unfortunately so the 14th theory is saying you have no choice no no i'm going to say more i'm going to say more no no say more because that doesn't sound

like good news no it doesn't sound like good news but i that was a sort of added extra on the side um actually the thing is your my i think of my leadership as my creativity. I'm like an artist. And if I can't do my art, it's horrible. It's like this is what I'm made for. This is what I'm good at. And, you know, it's truly like being an artist and being deprived of the tools of your trade.

You know, you can't paint your pictures or whatever it is that you love to do. Yeah. And it's deeply fulfilling and it's deeply meaningful. Yeah. And if one wasn't experiencing that, I mean, really, you know, I wouldn't hang in there. I wouldn't hang in there.

I'd stop. What do you mean? If someone's engaged in something and they're not having any spark of? Well, if you lose the meaning of what you're doing, if you're not, yeah, don't do it. Do you know, something happened for me in the dark, dark infertility phase where my life just felt very small. Like I deliberately shrank my life to reduce stress, to try and get pregnant.

And I just felt shit, sorry for swearing, basically all the time. And I went through another cycle, had bleed went through the grief and then about on day three I had what I now call my renewal dream which I will never forget where I found myself on a stage in front of hundreds of people in my underwear also wearing any clothes feeling so jubilant thrilled with myself just delighted by myself and I started singing like with a full like as loudly as I possibly could and there was a there was rapturous applause a standing ovation from these hundreds of people with me alone on the stage in my underwear singing and I woke up feeling great I kept feeling my own goodness and my own beauty and my own brilliance and it was I just really feel it was my

menstruation putting me back in in line with myself you know after this you know latest difficult month and I will never forget it and that's like she works in such mysterious ways you know through these kind of dreams that have humor and lightness and joy in them you know we never I never know how it's going to show up but I treasure that memory oh wow gosh I've just remembered my own, one of my most profound menstrual dreams, actually. Seriously. I am out on the moors of Northumberland, where I used to live in Northumberland when I was a child. And I'm exposed.

I'm amongst all the heather. And there is this, I think he's a cowboy, actually. He's just a man. And he's, there's nowhere to hide because there are, to hide because there are no little stunted trees and things. It's just heather. And he's trying to kill me, and he's throwing stones at me. I often have dreams where people are out to kill me. But this was transformative, this one.

Mostly they're just the freaking mafia, and there's no redeeming features to them but he wasn't the mafia I think he was a cowboy and he was throwing rocks at me but was I mean he was just pure masculine energy just very clean and clear and he was throwing rock after rock at me and I was just dodging and dodging and dodging because I could not go anywhere and then something happened and he's holding me in his arms and I am feeling a love like I have never felt before oh my god I woke up from that. It was profound, the experience. It was like an initiation.

I passed the initiation and it was a menstrual dream. And in that dream, I felt like I'd been forged, actually. It felt like I underwent an initiation and I did not duck. I mean, I did duck. But I stayed facing him. I didn't run away. The trouble was I couldn't because his aim was so true. His aim was so true. And in facing that, I got the love.

I got the union. It was union. It was so exquisite. You know what I am loving about both of these dreams and you've reminded me of one of my dreams but I'm not I'll save that for another conversation but what you've both reminded me about with your dreams and this is really the other secret to leadership successful leadership, is feeling one's own worthiness. And that's what you both felt. You both felt your own bigness, your own almighty capacity to really stand inside yourself and be seen or to face the challenge and to really experience a union with life and with love

and this is unless we feel that we we just it's like how how do you go about doing anything unless you feel some degree of okayness within yourself and we can't make that stuff up and this is why we feel so passionate about menstruation because it is gifted to us we have dreams we have experiences when we're bleeding and fill us with this is what I was experiencing today I was saying this kind of revelation of myself I'm going right wow okay I get I get I get something of my own brilliance like I've never seen it before and that has just been gifted to me oh yeah I want everyone to taste that I do too I really really do yeah wow so the final thing the third secret to successful leadership that you explored in this interview was that you respect and value rest and restedness. And that it's menstruation which has taught you the importance of rest and this dark art leadership skill of restedness. Menstruation actually calls us into rest

you know we we feel it that it's actually the call to rest it's the call to stop and so you rest and and in that resting you open up this portal out of which comes all these wonderful feelings and so on that we've been talking about um but just rest in and of itself is absolutely foundational and and when i say rest um it's uh it's spaciousness it's nothing time it's time where i have no responsibility, no nothing. You know, my brain isn't sort of whirring away on something. There's zero stimulation, you know, sort of ideas and things. It's really empty space. It's just having emptiness.

And it's letting my whole being recalibrate. Because, of course, I am post-menopause and I don't have menstruation anymore to remind me of this. But I have been tutored in cyclical consciousness, funnily enough. And I may not have a menstrual cycle anymore, but I am embedded in cycl cyclical consciousness and i just know the importance of that cyclical rhythm and i build that into my day uh you know into my time overall this care for the empty space um because when i rest just apart from just my whole being needing to recover, I mean, just non-negotiable folks, absolutely non-negotiable, you have to do it. It's also about my psyche resting, so my physical being resting,

but my psyche just tuning out of everything um but it's also when i rest it's the um it's like the i'm going to the creative part where all the ideas lie in the unknown you see so it's not that i have ideas when i'm resting on the contrary and i'll be nothing but i kind of get up and I go and then suddenly I'm popping with thoughts again so it's it's just good old-fashioned rest that then builds this quality of restedness in myself that I aimed I don't I'm not always successful with this but this is this is my ongoing dark art practice actually the dark art of restedlessness it's about actually as I'm going about business as I'm doing things I always have this thought in the back of my head how rested am I in myself in this moment how and that's rested in my own goodness it's it's about

restlessness in my nervous system how's my nervous system doing but it's how rested am I in just my own goodness my own knowing so it's for me the absolute foundational dark art at the moment yeah the leadership how has menstruation awakened this restedness for you sean well i love that menstruation is the great interrupter in my life it's very inconveniently gets in the momentum of doing which there is a very strong momentum of doing um and it comes along and calls me to separate and to stop and to dare to believe that nothing is urgent. And I love that particular risk every month of going, even the deadliest deadline, even the most seemingly urgent whatever, I love coming to that moment and going, no, I'm just daring to drop it, to believe it's not urgent. And in terms of this kind of skill of the dark art, I feel like I'm working this muscle every month in myself of really deeply

questioning the power of doing versus the power of being. And bit by bit, you you know month after month I'm really trusting the power of being as being as necessary in my life and creativity and leadership as the power of doing and in fact I'm starting to hedge my bets on doing less, being more potent and more impactful and more productive. So it's sort of a rewiring that's happening for me personally, but I feel like it's a cultural rewiring that's happening for me personally but I feel like it's a cultural rewiring that's happening that really I want to say pisses in the face of our do-do-do culture and a culture that completely valorizes action over being is this rewiring happening in me and um yeah i the rebel in me just loves like yesterday you know i just spent the whole afternoon in bed on a working day where there were so many things to do and children to be fed and I just yeah

uh really as an act of incredible trust in the power of rest that was my little my moment of activism my moment of rebellion um yeah well done yeah so good so good beautiful wow I didn't know where this conversation was going to go around these like secrets to successful resilient leadership and menstruation but it's gone into all kinds of incredible places and I feel really inspired and um galvanized and encouraged and held to let myself drop in a few days if and when my bleed does come thank you and I hope everyone listening feels that too those who have cycles right now yeah yes yes to menstrual rest thank you you too thank you so much hey thanks for listening all the way through to the end. I really enjoyed that one. I especially love the part about improvisation and remembering that when I think I'm winging it, it's actually a

powerful leadership skill. I loved having that affirmation. I'm curious to hear how the conversation landed for you. You can always reach out to me at sophie at redschool.net. And a final reminder that we have an early bird offer for the menstruality leadership program on until November the 30th you save 495 pounds and you can find out more about the course and book your place at menstrualityleadership.com okay that's it from me for today we'll be with you again next week with two episodes first our wild power series part two which is from when alexandra and sharni first launched the wild power book and they're sharing nuggets of wisdom from the book through these conversations and then our usual thursday episode but until then keep living

life according to your own brilliant rhythm