The Menstruality Podcast - 118. Our Wombs and Cycles as Gateways to Reclaiming our Ancestral Wisdom (Tara Brading)

Episode Date: November 30, 2023

Five years ago, when women’s educator, storyteller and songstress, Tara Brading was burnt out from the hustle culture of the non-profit world, she dropped everything and went on a pilgrimage to Ireland to connect with her Irish ancestral lineage. This trip changed her life, setting her on a path of studying mythology and honoring the earth based feminine wisdom left in her blood and bones.This episode is for you if you feel a call to reclaim the wisdom of your ancestors, to return to a way of living on earth which is balanced, to heed the call to the wild that you perhaps (like me) hear each cycle month when you bleed or during your menopause process… It’s also for you if you are committed to decolonising your mind and your life as part of your leadership path. I’ve been lucky to have had conversations with several Black and Indigenous educators for the podcast who have clarified the connection between reclaiming the cyclical wisdom of our wombs and bodies, and dismantling colonial systems of oppression (such as Latham Thomas in episode 77, Asha Frost in episode 63 and Hinewai Waitoa in episode 87). With Tara, I explore how, particularly as white women of European descent, reconnecting to our ancestral lineage goes hand in hand with the journey of decolonisation. In our conversation we explore;What the ancient myths and stories of Ireland and England tell us about the connection between women’s bodies, and the earth, as well as the leadership role we claim when we recognise that we embody the land (and how our cyclical nature gives us a direct line to this remembrance).How to reconnect to the wisdom of your ancient, ancestral bloodlines when you menstruate. The connection between our wombs and our voices and how to work with song as a way to connect with our ancestors. ---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 for being here. Today, we're exploring the ancestral womb wisdom of Ireland and England with women's educator, storyteller and songstress Tara Brading. So five years ago, when Tara was burnt out from

the hustle culture of the non-profit world where we work together actually and I tell the story of that in the podcast she dropped everything and went on a pilgrimage to Ireland to connect with her Irish ancestral lineage and the trip totally changed her life, setting her on a new path of studying mythology and honouring the earth-based feminine wisdom that she describes as left in her blood and bones. So this episode is for you if you feel a call to reclaim the wisdom of your ancestors, to return to a way of living on earth which is balanced, to heed the call to the wild that perhaps like me, you hear every cycle month when you bleed or you're hearing during your menopause process. And it's also for you if you're committed to decolonizing your mind and your life

as part of your leadership path. You know, I've been lucky on the podcast to have had conversations about decolonization with Black and Indigenous educators who have clarified the connection between reclaiming the cyclical wisdom of our wombs and our bodies and the work to dismantle colonial systems of oppression, such as the conversation I had with the amazing Latham Thomas in episode 77, Asher Frost in episode 63, and Hinawai Waitoa in episode 87. And with Tara today, I explore how particularly as white women of European descent, reconnecting to our ancestral lineage goes hand in hand with the journey of decolonization. So let's get started with our wounds and cycles as gateways to reclaiming our ancestral wisdom. Tara, it's so wonderful to be with you. You and I have a long creative history and maybe we'll begin our conversation with that but just before we get into that I'd love to hear

where you're at cyclically and how it's flavoring your experience today yeah so I'm just coming to the end of my bleed. And so, yeah, that's always a time for me when I feel like I'm emerging from the cave, right? And my womb is feeling sort of purified and fresh and ready to step into the world with new creativity. So that's where I am my cycle that's so amazing because I'm in exactly the same place on day three having had a much longer cycle less cycle than I'm used to and it's interesting because we've been dancing around finding our way to this conversation for like a good year now so I love that we ended up in the same place in the cycle. I had a big, a really big bleed this month and I wasn't expecting it or sort of planning it. You know, at Red School, we talk about planning a

big bleed where you could have two or three days to be on retreat and to really follow the process of menstruation spiritually. But I didn't plan for that. It took me and it was a real grief journey actually it was a real grief journey because I had wondered if I was pregnant because the cycle was so long if there'd been a kind of miraculous little egg that had slipped through and found a way and yeah and it wasn't to be and it I just really had an amazing experience of my bleed allowing calling taking me into grief that I wasn't going to touch otherwise and like um like a huge rainfall makes a river rush through and kind of washes all of the flotsam out of the way it's that I have that feeling that I've been cleared through and um and today is my

42nd birthday and I feel I feel like something important has moved as I enter this this new year so we'll see we'll see what it brings I just I love that we're in the same place today okay so I would love to I'd love to pick up your story where I not where I left it because we're still connected but um for our listeners Tara and I worked together at Tree Sisters which is a reforestation organization probably for three four years I don't know I think I was there for two years actually but it felt like such a chapter in my life that in some ways it feels longer. Yeah, it was timeless in so many ways. And what I remember towards the end of that is that this is my sense of it, but I'd love to hear how it was for you, that you were being called to something different and deeper. You were being called

by your calling. Your purpose in life was taking you somewhere and you had a chance with Claire who was the founder of Tree Sisters to go and be with some indigenous people in I'm thinking it was South America and I feel like something important happened for you there and that kind of catalyzed this the beginning of this next journey you took is am I right there? That's really interesting um yeah that was a beautiful moment um of really being with the indigenous ways I suppose and the calling that of course uh you're referring to for me is really being called to my ancestral ways. And so in that way, I suppose being with some incredible Indigenous wisdom keepers really opened my eyes and my heart to that way, that path. And so yes, after I left Tree Sisters,

I actually was really in a phase of deep healing after that time. I was feeling really burned out, partly from working in nonprofit and from other projects I had worked on before Tree Sisters. And I was feeling really, really depleted. Like my body was screaming at me, like, you have to slow down, you have to stop. And so I actually ended up taking a two-month pilgrimage to Ireland shortly after I left Tree Sisters. And it was definitely that ancestral call that I was following there. And during those two months, I was deeply, deeply initiated by the land there and by my ancestors. And that's really what brought me to the work that I do now. You know, the calling really showed up in a big way.

And it was kind of like I'd been following threads of that calling for a long, long time. Like it's been 12 years since I first heard that call in a small way, but it became very loud basically during this time when I was feeling so depleted and realizing that I no longer wanted to participate in the hustle culture in the way that I had been and that my body and my spirit was calling for a different way of life.

So that's really what I yeah I was experiencing short after that time in that period of time after I left Tree Sisters and then my path really unfolded from there. I've got so many questions about that already how would you describe how your calling is expressing itself now how you are living into this leadership that's being asked of you how would you describe it in your words that's a big question really beautiful question so for context so that moment when I you know basically stopped my life and went to Ireland for two months that was in 2018 so. So we're now, you know, five years on from there. And after I got home from Ireland, I really dove deep. Like I decided

to commit to training and being mentored by Irish elders and really set off on this path and became very sort of obsessed. I think, you know, in a beautiful way, a beautiful way, like hearing that call and following it deeply. Excuse me. And having now followed that call very deeply for the past five years, you know, so much has changed for me. Like my entire life, my entire being has been completely reorganized and calibrated and there's been like this this deep remembering and coming home to myself my ancestors my lineage in the deepest of ways and that has evolved so much and I really was focusing a lot on the Irish

traditions for quite a number of years and just let's see maybe a year and a half ago I really heard the call like I needed to really come to terms with my English ancestry as well and that there was a lot of pain there. And I actually spent quite a lot of my childhood growing up in England. I've always kind of been between the United States and England, because my mother's American, my father's English, and I have Irish ancestry on both sides. And so there was this real longing to come to terms with that part of me. And so that really set me off on a journey to come into relationship with that part of my lineage as well.

And how could I hold these two lineages that there's a lot of pain between them? And so, you know, it's like following the thread of blood. Like, you know, I'm thinking about the beautiful work that you do at Red School. And when I think about, you know, menstruation and the blood that comes through us, it's also the thread of that red thread of lineage, that thread of blood that connects us back to all of our ancestors. And so at this moment in time, having been on this deep journey with now my Irish ancestry and my English ancestry, I have other ancestry as well, but those are the two that I'm really deeply holding in this moment. There's been a real reconciliation, a reckoning and reconciliation between those two parts of myself. And it no longer feels like these two threads are separate, but they're braided together,

they're woven together. So there's a sense of, there's a real sense of wholeness that I've discovered in that, in the reclamation of my lineage, even the painful parts. And so there's a beauty there that I feel really deeply showing up in my life. And so yeah, I've been in a real deepening process, especially this year, like this year for me has been monumental, huge, like life changing in so many ways. And so I feel really sort of, I suppose, proud that I've made it through that those initiations some of which were very difficult and now feel more connected to my ancestors my medicine and what I'm here to do than ever before which feels it's an amazing feeling yeah wow well I really want to

honor you for the work that you've done in this past year because so much happens in the deep underground rivers doesn't it it doesn't get seen or known or named largely because we've lost our traditions so I see you I see the work that you're doing and you know we'll we'll put a link to it in the show notes but for anyone who wants to see how Tara is expressing this inner work on the outside, I'm thinking particularly through your Instagram feed, you know, the beauty, the song, the evocative film work. I mean, it's such a feast to go and enter Tara's world. So I invite everyone to go and explore. It feels interesting to me or important to me to just bring in this decolonizing

piece here too at the beginning because from what I remember when I first saw this work emerging sorry there are two moose outside my window so I'm like oh good morning sorry to interrupt you I'm just like um yeah sorry I just have to watch them for a moment because they're so amazing I love them so much and I'm also making sure they're not going to eat all my aspen trees you can have a nibble you can't eat them all I was like maybe someone's bringing Tara tea she looks like she's really happy but no you're looking at the moose I'm looking at moose tell us where you are again uh so I am on the ancestral lands of the Ute and Arapaho people in the mountains of Colorado and I live at 9,000 feet I don't know what that is in meters, but it's very, very high.

Basically trees stop growing at around 10,000 feet. So we're really in the mountains, really in the woods and it's such a beautiful wild landscape and I feel so blessed to be here. I'm an uninvited guest on these lands and I'm always very aware of that. And yeah, since you were about to bring

in the decolonizing piece and so part of my journey too as well as coming into relationship with my ancestral traditions and my identity in that way is also coming to terms with my identity here on Turtle Island as a settler, as a coloniser, and how to be in better relationship, right relationship with the Indigenous peoples of these lands. So yeah, that's where I am. And how are the moose doing now? They're moving along.

They're not eating all my trees, so that's nice. Thank you, friends, for coming to visit and blessing our conversation. Yeah, I'm remembering back when you began expressing this whole new world that was opening up on the inner for you outside. And I remember feeling so moved because there's so many of us now actually I'm thinking particularly in North America who have appropriated practices from other cultures because because of lots of things but a lot of it is because of our own traditions have been lost and it felt like what you were playing an important role as a white woman as a white woman with a colonizer identity in North America in helping to reweave the threads between those people and their ancestral lineage, their ancestral practices. Has that been a core part of your intention too?

Yes, absolutely, yes. And it's really interesting to me because I think people, many people in North America, Turtle Island, who are of European ancestry are under the impression that our traditions are lost. And that's actually not true. And I don't think that people realize what is true is that there has been a huge amount of ancestral disconnection. And part of, and there are many reasons for this, one of which is the wound of emigration, which is something that I talk about. And of course, there are many

different reasons why our ancestors emigrated from Europe to these lands, and some of which are very painful. You know, I'm thinking especially of many people of Irish descent in these lands whose ancestors emigrated because of the famine, you know, millions and millions left because of the famine, which is not really a famine, but a genocide. And so there's a deep amount of pain. There's been a rupture there in the lineage. And when people left Ireland to come to America, let's say, you know, they left their language behind them, they left their culture behind them their traditions you know and so a lot was a lot was lost in that way but there is still such a well of wisdom

that is rooted in our homelands that is available to us um and there's you know a whole conversation about how to be in right relationship even with our own ancestral traditions and not playing into that same mindset of extraction like how do we truly be in right relationship just because it's of your ancestry doesn't mean that you can't appropriate and extract so there's a lot of deep reflection that needs to come into these threads as we embark on this journey. And it's, this is something I'm forever, you know, you know, have my ear to like, how can I be in better relationship? How can I be in right relationship? And so that's an ongoing journey. And, and really, you know, there's so much for us to come to terms with in terms of

why we've become disconnected. So I've just spoken about, you know, the emigration wound, but there's also so much around being the colonizer and having to adopt certain identities to assimilate. There's also, you know, how we play into these systems of supremacy, white supremacy, colonization, patriarchy, like all of these systems are interwoven and have deeply impacted our lineages. And so there's a lot for us to look at and recommend. And so this journey goes, this journey of ancestral remembrance and reclamation goes side by side with the journey of decolonization as people of European descent and obviously there's so many different histories and stories within Europe like it's hard to talk about Europe you know as a whole

because there's so many different there's so much there you know there's no no two stories that are exactly the same in terms of culture and history and what have you. Yeah. Yeah. I'm so grateful to you for committing to this because yeah, one of the consistent messages I've received from black educators, from indigenous educators is connect with your own lineage, connect with your own ancestry. And I feel that you are really, you have so much to offer to us here. Yeah. And I'm profoundly grateful for how it's coming through you and that we get to have this conversation now

so when I first got in touch with you to have this conversation my thought was I wonder what Tara knows about the ancient menstruality teachings, you know, the teachings around the cycle and menopause from England, from Ireland. And then one of the first things we explored was, well, they've been lost. So in terms of you being able to share from the traditions, that's not so possible. Could you say more about that? Yeah. So just a minute ago, I said, you know, our traditions, we still have traditions that they haven't been lost.

And while that is true, there are certain things that have been lost, and this is one of them. And so there really isn't, there's really nothing for us to connect with, to be totally honest. And that is obviously deeply, deeply something for us to grieve because this is such an important part of many of our identities as women or people who menstruate. So there is a grief there. There is one mention of menstruality in the Irish traditions, which I'll quickly mention. So there is a character, she's both a sovereignty goddess and a queen and was

potentially a real person as well from the first century in Ireland, called Queen Maeve and there is a very epic story which features Queen Maeve called the Tán Be Cúlnia, the battle, the cattle raid of Cúli and in this epic story she ends up leading her people, the people of Connacht against the people of Ulster, so two neighboring kingdoms. And her enemy is this hero, this warrior called Cú Chulainn. And basically, there's this big battle taking place, and it happens over many days. And at one point, Cú Chulainn, he finds Queen Maeve in the woods, and he has the opportunity to kill her because she's a warrioress, by the way. So she's, you know, she's quite fearsome. And so he has this opportunity to kill her. But she's menstruating.

She's squatting down. She's bleeding on the earth. And so he doesn't kill her. Which is very interesting. And I find this very small reference to be quite beautiful in a way because so sacred was the flow of her blood that he didn't that it wasn't right for him to kill her basically that he could not interrupt that flow right not even to you know um yeah to defeat his enemy so I find that to be really interesting so that is the only reference I've ever come across in our mythology from either Ireland or Britain that actually mentions

the menstrual cycle so there is this tiny little piece um I mean even hearing you say that does something in my body to imagine this woman free bleeding on the earth, as you know, many of the women and people who bleed in our community have experienced themselves. And to know that deemed such a sacred act that it stopped the flow of activity, you know, that clearly had a huge amount of intention behind it. So that does something to my body, even to receive that alongside the grief of imagining what we could have learned from our ancestors if those lines hadn't been broken.

Yeah, absolutely. There's a thread here I feel called to follow. So the bleeding on the earth, right? This is something that many of us are bringing into our spiritual practices, our menstrual practices, however you want to call it. And this giving of our blood to the earth being this sacred act that really weaves us into connection with the earth in such beautiful ways. And this little scene that I've just described with Queen Maeve, as I mentioned, she's a sovereignty goddess, which I'll speak about in a moment.

And there is this sense of deep connection between that flow of blood, between the womb, between the goddess, between woman and the land that is so abundant in the traditions of Ireland and Britain. And so I want to follow that thread because there's actually a lot to reflect upon within these contexts and within the stories that we have that teach us about this connection between woman, goddess, womb, and the land. So I'm going to share some wisdom, some stories to kind of help us connect into that living experience, because it's more than just a concept. It's actually a living experience and one that many, many women are wanting to remember in these times. And of course, there is a shared experience in some regards between the bodies of women and the body of the earth, and that we have both been desecrated in a variety of ways right so in Ireland and Britain as uh I just want to clarify

here that my specialty is in the Irish traditions and also in the reclamation and piecing back together of English traditions and I'm using quotations for English because England has only been England since the 10th century. Anyways, but I do hold some wisdom from Scotland as well. And so I have a sort of a broad understanding of Ireland and Britain. So I'm going to speak about it in that way. So within these traditions, there are lots and lots and lots of stories of women who are the personification of the land, or goddesses who are the personification of the land. And one expression of that is the sovereignty goddess in the Irish tradition specifically. So the sovereignty goddesses which is like a class of goddess like a category if that makes sense

they are they embody the sovereignty of the land and are usually connected to a regional area so in ancient ireland there were five provinces or five kingdoms. And even today there are, well, there are four. We won't get into that, but there are these very specific regional areas that have their own identities. And so the sovereignty goddesses are an expression of that regional identity of the land. And there is, as part of these traditions in Ireland,

the sovereignty goddess is married ceremonially to the ancient Irish kings. So we find this flowing through the stories, through also historical rituals. So this is both mythical and also historical, if that makes sense. So there was this ancient rite in Ireland called the Banasriha, the wedding feast of kingship. In this ritual, a woman would stand in the place of the sovereignty goddess and give her blessing to the king. And so these rituals are happening in different kingdoms and different provinces. So they were sort of local, but then there was also like a high king of Ireland who ruled over all of Ireland, and so there were sort of different rituals happening in different areas, and in these rituals, the king and the goddess were essentially married, ceremonially married. And the king lay with the goddess to seal his promise to

her, a promise to uphold his sacred duty to the land, the people and the spirit of life. And it was actually said that the Irish kings could not rule without the blessing of the sovereignty goddess. And this tradition, this rite was so important to the Irish way of life that it lasted into the 1600s in some parts of Ireland. So well into the Christian era, even though this is very much rooted in our more ancient pagan past. And so essentially there is this union that happens in these rites where the woman who's standing in the place of the sovereignty goddess who's embodying that energy and is personifying the land she's also acting as a bridge between the land and the people between spirit and form between feminine and

masculine and so there's this sacred harmony and balance that comes forth as a result of these rites. So there's a lot of really deep spiritual concepts woven into this. And if the king fails in his duties to his people and the land and the other world, which is the spirit realm, which the goddess of sovereignty very much represents as well. If he basically displeases the sovereignty goddess, then it was said that the land would perish, that there would be a wasteland, that the waters would flood, that the crops would fail and what have you. And there's even some potential

historical archaeological evidence showing that the ancient kings may have been sacrificed if, let's say, the crops failed because it was believed that he had failed, he had broken his promise basically to the sovereignty goddess there's one example i'm thinking of in connacht specifically where there was a man of very high status who was ritually killed and so there's speculation that this was the context if that makes sense and so this is this is a really deep aspect of our traditions that is so beautiful and speaks to this deep, essential need for there to be harmony and for women to really stand in this very important leadership role

of embodying the land and embodying the spirit realms and being that bridge. And we find this tradition less obviously, but also in some of the stories from Britain as well. So in the Grail stories, for example, there are very, very similar themes with the women of the grail representing that power that sovereignty and there are other stories as well like i'm thinking of um a beautiful story from scotland where there are these two goddesses who represent the land and they actually represent the season so we have bride who represents the warm season of the year, and she holds that sovereignty of the land in that season. And then we have the kailiak, who is the representation of winter and embodies the land, the spirit of the land in that way. And bride is depicted as this

young maiden, and the kailiak is this old hag, this wise woman. And so this is also a theme that we find in the sort of depiction, the embodiment of the sovereignty goddess in her many forms of there being two faces to her. So she either is sort of embodied as a young, beautiful woman, that's usually how she's described, or as this ugly woman, this old hag sometimes, like there's different ways of that they appear, but that's sort of the essence of it. And the idea too, is that this is a woman, a goddess who shapeshifts. And so sometimes they're kind of depicted as the same goddess, the same energy, but in different forms. And this is something we see over and over again in the traditions. There's one particular story. happens when the king goes against this sacred union and disrupts the harmony that comes from this union, right? When he disrespects the sovereignty goddess. There are actually,

yeah, a few stories now that are coming to mind where we see what happens when that sacred promise, that contract between the king and the goddess, the king and the land is broken. So there's one story from the Grail mythology, which speaks specifically about England. It's sort of a representation of England. It's called Logras in the mythology, but it's basically Lagras basically represents the lands that were once England in terms of where the Anglo-Saxons were. And anyways, so in this story about Lagras, which is basically England. There are these well maidens who tend the sacred wells and they have these grails, these golden grails that they use to serve water from the well to whoever's passing by, to whoever needs that nourishment. And there's this deep sense that they're not just offering

water, but they're offering spiritual nourishment as well. There's a nourishment on all levels, mind, body, spirit. And one day, this king, King Amangons, he comes with his men to one of the wells, and he rapes the well maiden. And as a result, the water from the wells dries up and the land, Logres, England, turns into a wasteland. There's a similar story in Ireland where this king called King Bran basically is looking for this treasure. He's seeking this treasure at the bottom of a well. And the well is protected, tended by these women, these spiritual women, again, embodying that sovereignty of the land. And this text is actually lost. But basically, the summary of the story implies that the king is not kind to these women, that he desecrates these women. And as a result, the well floods and creates lock foil.

But there's a sense that the flooding creates this kind of chaotic energy of the wasteland, like a land that is desecrated. There's another story about a sovereignty goddess in Ireland called Anya. And she is desecrated by a king as well. And in this story, she rips off his ear afterwards and basically says, you know, you did not hear my no. And so she takes his ear. And so there's this very fierce sense of the sovereignty goddesses holding these kings, these men, these predatory men accountable. But there's a deep theme of violence that's found in these stories that is really the

antithesis of the sovereignty goddess, of that union, that harmony that is embodied in these women. And specifically, there's this theme of desecrating the womb, right? Desecrate the wells are also that representation of the womb, the womb of the earth. So there's this desecration of the feminine form in terms of desecrating their wombs. And there's a lot of different threads we can follow around violence. And, you know, this speaks also to our history of colonialism in these lands,

whether, you know, in the identity of England, of course, we have the identity of the colonizer. And then in Ireland and Scotland and Wales Wales they have the history of being colonized and in both of these cases it's the violence that breaks that sacred contract and severs women from their sacred role and the wisdom that they hold in their wombs the wisdom they hold in their connection to the land and so I find the practice of going all the way back to where this tangent began, to this practice of bleeding on the earth or giving our blood to the earth. And I find that this practice weaves us back into connection with that ancient memory of being the embodiment of the earth, the personification of the earth,

our wombs and the land being deeply connected in a very spiritual way. If you're feeling stirred by this conversation and you, like so many of us, are hearing a call to restore this ancient nature-based wisdom of living in balance with each other, with the land in our modern world today. And you have a feeling or a knowing or a sense that your cyclical nature, your menstruation, your menstrual cycle, your menopause are a gateway for you, we have an invitation. The doors are now open for our 2024 Menstruality Leadership Programme which starts in March next year. It's an immersive apprenticeship to menstruality as it lives inside you, to the wisdom that we all know deep down, consciously or not, in our blood

and bones, that it's time for each of us to unashamedly claim the power of the menstrual cycle and menopause and use it to serve and stand for life itself. We've been sharing the words of our graduates recently in the middle of our podcast episodes about how the MLP has transformed their health, careers, parenting, sense of purpose, way of living and being in the world and the feedback that we're sharing today from Yasha speaks so beautifully to the mystery at the heart of this work and feels very woven into the themes of my conversation with Tara today. So I'll hand you over to Yasha in a moment but if you want to explore the Menstruality Leadership Programme the place to go is menstrualityleadership.com. Okay here's Yasha. Hello I am Yasha. I decided to join the MLP program based upon a pull within my being.

I didn't have a clear end goal, but I simply allowed this pull within myself to take me on this initiatory journey and this life-affirmative and life-transforming journey. Simple as that. Through this program, I've redefined the word leadership as not something in how you lead others, but leadership now is how I lead myself. So the way they teach is something I'm very, very attracted to. And I would say that it's two core foundations in the teaching. One is that we're equals and the other is that it's experiential. And I am trusted with and empowered with the knowing that I know this within myself.

It's just a matter of being shown where and how it is. So if you're still deciding, I can only say that there's only win in this process. You will be empowered. You will be handed your own power to yourself and there's a saying that you don't choose your master the master your master chooses you and i feel this way about menstruality that you don't choose menstruality, menstruality chooses you. So if you feel this calling from your womb and from menstruality, it's because you're ready. What I'm imagining some of our listeners are feeling as you're talking is a sense of

being seen and honoured and known because what I hear time and time again from the women and also the gender expansive people in our community too is a sense of there is this wild that is calling to me or there is my voice wants to be released and freed up or I I feel my body my womb my blood telling me something taking me somewhere but I don't know where it's taking me and I wouldn't be able to give voice to it but it's kind of this feeling of I just want to howl I just just want to sit with other women, other people who bleed and sing and grieve and laugh and cry and weave. You know, there's such a yearning, there's such a longing that I hear. I feel it in me, in my friends and in our community. And as you speak and you share these stories, it does this beautiful sense making for me of, well, I'm remembering something, not with my conscious mind, but my body is remembering something. This is the language that you're speaking in, isn't it?

This is a reweaving and a remembering that comes through our bodies more than our conscious minds. Yeah, absolutely. I also call it ancestral remembering because there is this deep sense that our ancestors, we have to go back quite far. That's a whole other conversation which I won't get into but we have to go back quite far to really find that that culture where women and their cycles and their bodies were revered in a way that was sacred and so there's this ancestral remembering this reweaving of that sacredness that wants to come through so many of us, I feel. And the ancestral piece to me is always so important because of what I was sharing earlier about that thread of blood and that we are not alone in this world. We walk with our ancestors always, even if we're not conscious of it. And for many people, that brings up feelings of discomfort, like, oh, well, I know that

my recent ancestors were harmful. There's pain there. There's trauma there. And so there's often resistance to connecting to ancestors because of that pain. But it's also important to remember that there are these more ancient ancestors. There's so many ancestors who embody this deep wisdom, this sacredness of how to be in right relationship with the earth, of how to honor our sacred place in our lineage as a great rememberer, as someone who's here to disrupt the lineage and to bring forth a new way, a new way that's very old, if that makes sense, and to be the one who reweaves this sacredness into our lineage, whether we have children or not.

There's so much healing that can happen in the line as a result of this kind of work that we're talking about, this deep soul-body remembering. And for me, it's been very clear to me that our ancestors are calling us to remember this because it's so deeply needed, so essential. You know, I was talking about the wasteland earlier, and I very much feel that we are living in a wasteland, that we have lost our connection to the earth. We've lost our connection to spirit. we've been intentionally severed from that and we've been intentionally severed from our medicine and so there's there's so much that wants to be healed within that sort of larger context within the collective And how do we restore and bring balance back to our way of living that is truly in harmony?

Because that's, as I was sharing, what the sovereignty goddess really represents is that harmony, that balance, that right relationship. And colonialism is at its root, I feel, the denial of relationships, the severing of relationships. So there's this deep wound of separation that is really deep in our hearts. So when we gather with other women, when we come together in a collective field and we feel that sense of remembering, there's so much that can be healed that is beyond words right yes it feels like we're sort of consciously naming two different pathways here to reclaiming and reweaving this so there's the the path of the stories and the histories and what we know.

And again, just so grateful to you for the work that you're doing to be with those stories and translate them and bring them to us and the language and all of that piece. And then this ancestral remembering, which is an intimate relationship with ourselves and our ancestors that can only happen on the inner. It could be guided by others but it's our work to do just to weave this back to menstruality it feels like we each get an opportunity with our menstrual cycles or with the menopause process if that's where people are to be invited into that sovereignty be invited into the connection with the land be invited into how the seasons and the changes and the transformations in nature exist within us as they do outside and there's kind of one specific thing i'm thinking of right now which is something

that seems to have happened with alessandra and shani around the grail and they speak about it in wild power and i just wanted to read this you know perhaps this is their um i'll have to ask them about it but perhaps this is sort of some ancestral um wisdom that they've they unearthed in the writing of this book and they say through the ages the Holy Grail has been concretized as a cup or bowl with extraordinary powers. Humanity's search for the Grail is a symbolic way of speaking of the psyche's longing for the return of the feminine.

It's a yearning to shift from an experience of being an onlooker of life to a deep sense of belonging and intimacy with this whole living, breathing presence called life and a deep sense of belonging and intimacy with this whole living breathing presence called life and a recognition that all is holy which makes me think so much of those stories you were speaking about and then they say um this gives us meaning and place a holding within the cosmos we become vessels through which the soul of the world can speak asking us to unfold and evolve for the sake of all drinking from the grail is the soul of the world can speak asking us to unfold and evolve for the sake

of all drinking from the grail is the experience of exquisite intimate and loving union and they say if the cup is anything it's the pelvis the womb or better still the container of our menstrual cycle process the alchemical vessel in which we forge our capacity to enter this place of union. I guess what I'm excited about is wanting to deeply honour the lineages and at the same time deeply honour our own capacity to be with the reclaiming and the mysteries that are emerging through our own bodies. I imagine that that's a tension you're holding all the time, I imagine. Yeah, I feel that those two things are woven together very deeply. And that through our exploration of ancestry and our bloodlines,

there is like we're remembering these ways in very personal ways. Like there's such a deeply personal element to this where we're coming into that sense of sovereignty in our own unique ways. And I love that beautiful passage you read about the grail and yeah, there's I think these rememberingsbrances can weave together in really beautiful ways. And yeah, for me, there's a commonality in the blood, right? The bloodlines and the blood that we're shedding through menstruation. And that's actually sort of an invitation for anyone listening is, you know, next time you are menstruating to really think about that bloodline and yes maybe there's

pain and that pain is also reflected in our menstrual cycle you know through cramps and through the discomforts that we go through in the cycle and there's also so much beauty and so much wisdom and so for me there's a there's a deep weaving that can happen there that can be really profound thank you for offering that practice because that was gonna that was gonna be where I was gonna go next you know for those listening who are really feeling called to this and feeling stirred I am and I imagine they are too what can we do what action can we take other than that beautiful invitation that you just shared I think I'm just going to expand on that invitation so if you feel the call to kind of tune into your bloodline as you're bleeding.

My invitation is to remember that despite recent generations and the trauma that you might feel, or the pain you might feel, or the resistance you might feel, there are these ancient ancestors that are very much present in the blood, in your blood and bones and they are really really supporting your reclamation of sovereignty and your reclamation of your connection to the earth and the medicine you hold and the ways that you're here to be a disruptor in your lineage. They're kind of like your cheerleaders. It's like they're really praying for this change. And so I invite you as you're tuning into your menstrual blood and your bloodline to reach back to a sense of those ancient ancestors. And you might have to go back very, very far, but they're still there. And to even, you know, as you're journeying with your blood and, you know,

you're maybe visualizing, like, what do these ancestors look like? Can you see some of their features? Can you see, you know see the clothes they're wearing? Maybe they're wearing animal skins, let's say. Maybe they have special jewelry or special items with them. How do you see them and what do they feel like? Often I find that these ancient ancestors, because they lived so close to the earth, they embody different aspects of the earth, whether that's animals or certain plants or trees or what have you. And that's part of the nourishment that the earth provides throughout her seasons, and also gratitude for your ancestors. You know, all of the bones of your ancestors are in the earth. And so again, there's a deep connection

there. You know, they're literally in layers under the soil and so giving thanks to your ancestors to the many sacrifices they made to all of the the bleeding people who birthed you right because without that thread of blood you would not be here and that's just a very simple truth to connect with and so may there be that sense of gratitude for them even if you know that there are harmful people in your lineage know that that is like a that's a speck of dust in the greater depth of your lineage your lineage is so much more deep and so much more ancient and wise than you realize. And the blood holds these stories. They hold ancestral stories, but also personal stories of your ancestors. And you're continuing that story. Like you're part of this greater story that is both cultural, collective, and also deeply personal within your ancestry.

And so really connecting to the blood as this keeper of the stories. So that's my invitation. Ah, our blood is the keeper of the stories. That's exquisite. I know one way that you connect to your lineages through song and you've studied the art of keening and a few different song traditions could you just tell us a little bit about that and your experience of it yeah absolutely as I'm sure many of you are aware in this community, there's a very deep connection between our womb, our pelvis and our voice.

And so the act of singing, I think it actually physically, like the womb responds to the act of singing on a physical level. And there's also, of course, a very spiritual aspect of singing from the womb which is something a practice that I do sometimes and so through these different sort of song traditions that I've connected with especially from Ireland again there is this deep ancestral remembering that happens

and when we sing we help to activate those stories within us, those stories in the blood, and we help to activate that remembering, that ancestral remembering. And so, you know, I'm always like singing and making up songs and chants and things like that as a way of honoring my ancestors. Like the ancestors love it when we sing, especially when we sing to them. Right. And so, yeah, perhaps that's an additional invitation. Maybe as you're offering your blood to the earth, just sing, sing whatever is in your heart. Like it doesn't have to sound good. It's just about how it feels. And vocables are such a universal way of being in relationship with song. Like every culture around the world uses what's called vocables.

And by vocables, I just mean sounds, you know, like vowels and, you know, put together with consonants. And it's not logically doesn't make sense. It doesn't like communicate a specific meaning other than the energy of what the song is bringing forth. And so you can bring vocables into that practice of singing. In the tradition of keening in Ireland, there are specific vocables that are used in different regions to express grief, for example. So one of those vocables is a-chón, a-chon, a-chon, or a-roon is another one. And so, you know, these vocables can be woven into our practices,

even if you don't know, you know, if there are traditional vocables to express what you're feeling. You know, you can make up your own, basically, is what I'm saying. So there's an additional practice of really just opening your heart and singing vocables as you're offering your blood to the earth honoring the ancestors and yeah just feel what that awakens in you because that's something that will be deeply personal to you would you be willing to share some sound with us as a maybe an invitation for those of us that don't know well this does actually happen to me quite naturally these days

I'll be putting my blood in the river and I'll just find myself just and I'll just find a tune that I just start to repeat and then I open my mouth and just you know there are dog walkers walking past sometimes so I just go a bit quieter but just you know I just I don't even know what's happening I just know that I want my voice to to fall out of me and I just let it flow but I wonder yeah if you could maybe maybe share a song with us or a or a vocal ball or yeah how would that be for you Tara yeah I'm just feeling into what would be the right thing um for this moment okay so I feel called to bring forth, it's sort of my ancestral prayer that I use to connect with my English ancestors, my ancient ancestors from what of course would have been Britain rather than England. And it's in the chanting that I use for this, the language that I use is proto-Celtic. So I just need to share a few

words about that before I share it. So proto-Celtic is a dead language, but we have some, there are some words that have persisted and have been put back together by scholars. So we have a variety of lexicons is what they're called with these proto-Celtic words. And proto-Celtic was the language that was spoken through different parts of Europe before Celtic languages emerged. So modern Celtic languages include Welsh and Cornish and Irish and what have you. So this language is basically the language before that. And so it's beautiful because lots of people of European ancestry can connect to it. And I really want to honour a woman called Carolyn Hillier,

who lives on Dartmoor, who is really weaving this language back together and bringing new life to it. So if you're curious to learn more about proto-Celtic, I really encourage you to find her work. She has a beautiful book called Her Bone Bundle that includes lots of words that she has collected from lexicons and what have you. So this is my ancestral prayer. So I invite you to close your eyes. And you will not understand what I'm saying, although I can translate it in a minute. But really invite you to open your heart and just feel the energy of it.

And in essence, you know, this is an ancestral prayer. So it's a call to the ancestors. Asghar no khajo, biwo khajo Naibon nani, naibon wero Asghar no khajo Biwo khajo Wasis tam wit su Wasis tam windawidju Wasis tam witsu Yi kas miru

Naibonani Naibowiru Nāi Bōwērō A-skar-nō-kā-jō Bī-wō-kā-jō so the song the lyrics mean sacred grandmother sacred grandfather sacred bones sacred bones sacred life protect the wisdom protect the medicine

heal the marrow of ancestral memory thank you so much thank you for having me. What is the best way for people to connect with you and your work? Yeah, I just want to offer an invitation for those who feel called to connect with their ancestors from either Ireland or England to come and explore my work, come and follow me on Instagram or on Facebook. My website is tara-wild.com and you'll see my different offerings there. I have an offering that's always open, like the doors are always open for those who want to

connect to their irish ancestry and ancestral traditions which is called the roundhouse and then i have another offering for women of english ancestry which is open um will be open roughly once a year and we've just started that program so it's been such a beautiful learning and exploration so far and we really go into that program so it's been such a beautiful learning and exploration so far and we really go into the grail mysteries in particular and looking at our history and archaeology of our lineage really piecing back together our ancestral traditions which have been so fragmented in England in particular the Irish traditions are much more intact. So there's different approaches to reclaiming those ways, those ancestral ways.

Thank you so much. This has been such a delight and I'm going to play that song back and just drink it in. It's so full of beauty, as is all of your work and as are you, Tara. And it's been such a joy to be with you and have this time with you. And thank you for everything that you shared. Thank you, love. Mila Buihas, thank you very much.

Thank you for joining me today. Wasn't that song so beautiful? I feel really touched by everything that Tara shared I'd love to hear how this lands for you you can always email me at sophie at redschool.net or get in touch with me on Instagram so I want to share our invitation again if you're hearing the call to this work as Yasha shared really beautifully in her feedback about her MLP experience so many of us feel called we don't know why but to follow that impulse then head on over to menstrualityleadership.com to explore the

menstruality leadership program okay that's it for this week I'll be with you again next week thank you so much for being part of the community gathered around this work and this podcast and until next time keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm