The Menstruality Podcast - 136. What’s Going on with Pre-Menstrual and Menopause Rage? (Alexandra & Sjanie)

Episode Date: March 7, 2024

Today we're having a frank and feisty chat about one of the hot topics in our community - premenstrual and menopausal RAGE.Have you ever been driving in your car and felt compelled to wind the windows up and actually roar because you felt so wildly angry on day 24? Or, if you’re navigating menopause, have you experienced your own ‘burn-the-house-down’ moment when your fury threatened to destroy everything you’ve built so far in your life?What is going on with this rage? Why are so many of us feeling it? And what is it trying to tell us? In this episode:- Anger as an indignation of soul, bringing us closer to our essence.- Sjanie, Alexandra & Sophie's personal journeys with rage. -  How to work with rage in the menstrual cycle by practising the menstruality Leadership skill of 'holding the tension'.  ---Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love---The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [e-mail]---Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.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 Menstruality Podcast. Today I'm having a frank and feisty conversation about one of the hot topics in our community, premenstrual and menopausal rage. Have you ever been driving in your car and felt compelled to wind the windows

up and actually roar because you felt so wildly angry on day 24 of your cycle? Or if you're navigating menopause, have you experienced your own burn the house down moment when your fury threatened to destroy everything that you've built so far in your life. What's going on with this rage? Why are so many of us feeling it? And what is it trying to tell us? That's the topic of today's podcast. In the middle of conversation, I'll also share my final invitation for this year for our annual leadership training grounded in the wisdom of menstruality. The doors are closing in a week so if you've been dreaming of joining us and immersing yourself in this cyclical wisdom now is a really great time to step in. Okay let's get started with what's going on with premenstrual and menopausal rage.

So let's talk about rage. Just a little topic. as I've been thinking about this I've just been realizing how angry I am as a person and how angry maybe a lot of us are a lot of the time whether we're present to that or not but boy does the premenstruum and from what I hear menopause show us our anger or reveal or allow or you know awaken our anger and that's our that's our topic today but before we get in to that how are you both doing cyclically well it's day I think 26 probably of the moon and I was really pondering myself today. Yeah, the complexity of being me and I kept thinking, yeah, there's a sort of denseness, a denseness of material in me, which is kind of deep, but it's sort of dense too.

It's like I have to do a bit of mining, I think, too. But I'm definitely more in some sort of more complexity within myself. Yeah. And simultaneously, there's a sleepiness there despite having slept. So let's hope I can stay awake till the end. And a slight ungroundedness. It's a weird combination of forces. So it requires a certain discipline to be me today, I think. So here's hoping I've got the muscle to be me in all my complexity today. We're all autumnal. We're US 22, hey Soph?

They do, this is perfect. We hadn't even clocked this until this moment. We're all in the anger zone. We're all in the anger zone. Well, I really relate to everything you just said Alexandra I'm awakened to my complexity my um I was angry on my dog walk mainly because my dog stole someone else's ball and then wouldn't give it back to me and then my anger's always just right there right there to be woken up by Frodo and I just sat and breathed it was like yeah okay I'm angry I'm angry at what's happening in the world I'm angry at some different things that are happening in my life I'm grieving with a friend and that's awakening anger so it's yeah I'm in the right

place for this conversation I'm in the the depths I'm angry that women aren't allowed to be angry lots of things right now but I would say perfectly poised for this conversation I'm a day behind you and um yeah feeling a similar flavor to both of you and noticing that today so for the last couple of days, I felt like I've been hanging off a cliff edge, white knuckling it and really trying to hold on. But today the falling apart is stronger than the holding on. It's like gravity has won out, or we could say the descent of the cycle has won out.

And I just feel like, yeah, there's a kind of surrender kicking in in my system. Or, yeah, I realize there's something so much bigger than me at work. And actually, there's nothing to be done but to let go into that. Your trust in life is always so moving to me, Sharni. Beautiful to witness. I know it's not comfortable. Yeah, that's so true let's distract you by having a really feisty conversation about premenstrual and menopause

yeah so we felt it was a really important topic for us to explore anger and looking back I noticed that it's not something that we've really explored in depth yet in the podcast. You know, we've spoken about the premenstrual and we've spoken about the burn the house down moment in menopause. But we really want to have a whole conversation about what is going on with this premenstrual and menopause rage that so many of us experience. And, you know, our MLP for this year is starting in just a couple of weeks now and for some of the students that come rage is a really big theme you know they really get in contact with something they haven't contacted before or able to express or understand and we want to yeah look at this experience that is so often denied especially for women in our world, this experience of anger. So I want to find my way to a question. Yeah, why are we so angry in the premenstrual and in

menopause? What's going on here? Yes, good question, Sophie, good place to start. So if I start with the premenstrual, you know, I think, well, I'm going to just talk about the whole cycle. The first half of the cycle, there's this we're being brought sort of out of ourselves. There's this expansion of energy. There's this affirmation of who we are. Energy within us, that yes force, you know, this feeling of filling out and becoming something and um uh reaching a sort of pinnacle of sort of yesness if we're sort of aligned with ourselves you know there's good energy in the system and we have capacity within us and that capacity gives us a certain kind of buffering and armoring in the world it's really important having that and it's also

strengthening our egos it's really good healthy ego development and as we get to ovulation ironically we are least connected to ourselves at that time you know or we can easily lose connection with our deep, deep, holy self or, you know, all the all our needs. I'm not saying we're out of connection with ourselves, but, you know, the multiplicity of needs that are going on within us and so on. And then as the cycle turns and we come into the second half of the cycle there is this contraction going on and sort of a dismantling an undoing that starts to happen our energy is dropping and in that we are becoming more permeable we are connecting to ourselves more to our vulnerability and ultimately we are being exposed more and more to what I would call our holy self, which is what really happens at menstruation.

So there's this increasing permeability and vulnerability, and we are feeling more. So we're feeling ourselves more. So we're feeling our repressed parts more, the parts of us that we've sort of overridden just to kind of be nice and get on with things and you know maintain harmony in the world but these parts of course still need caring for and this is where we start to feel and see them and um we are also simultaneously feeling the world more strongly this is really important to remember i don't want it to be all sort of personalized there's your personal kind of vulnerabilities your personal shadow side you're coming in contact with but your permeability is allowing basically it's allowing you to feel

so much more and therefore you are feeling what's happening in the world and in that's going to be impacting on you more strongly so um basically uh stuff can come out more easily so where there's been repression of something, you know, the lid is being lifted and it blows, the top blows, because you don't have the same kind of restraints. Actually, something I was saying to us earlier was how the closer you get to menstruation, the more your sort of polite, socialized behavior that we all try to live by. And it's important to have these codes of conduct.

But they actually basically start to break down and you become more feral, shall we say. And really, you couldn't care less. There is a moment of real abandon that comes, you know, a kind of real losing it moment before you bleed where all the restraints are off and so that's how it comes through and then that process is echoed in menopause coming into menopause we're becoming more and more permeable more because we're being dismantled we're ending a whole cyclical you know menstrualal cycle years. And it's all being dismantled. And in fact, it's even greater, the force that's going to be unleashed within menopause.

Really, rage, I would say, is the top emotion that women and people experience in menopause. I mean, there's a whole range of feelings, but it seems rage tops the list. So it's increasing permeability and inability to hold stuff down and getting in contact more and more with ourselves. I just, I feel so much relief hearing you say that because that's exactly what I feel when I'm premenstrual. What I want to say to aid, it always comes out at aid, is I'm feeling so much

more. It's a lot, feeling all of this, feeling everything that's happening in the world, feeling everything that's happening in our world. And he stays on his steady rhythm. And to hear the way you describe that, I feel honored in my experience. It makes sense of my experience. It makes me okay and not mad, not bad, not wrong for, you know, not quite knowing what to do with this charge that comes through me when I'm premenstrual. And we can talk about that later in the conversation,

you know, what to do with this um there was something you were saying earlier Shani about the connection here to vulnerability that was so moving um yes I'm going to find my way there just picking up this thread of losing it because it I've just sort of heard it in a new way when you were describing that Alexandra that there is um a kind of time and place for our psyches to be orderly and controlled and to play the game and cooperate with society and you know to create harmony there's a time and place for that we could say the first half of the cycle is really serving that need in our psyche and that need in the world and then there's a time and a place for uh being overcome by something much bigger than us that is beyond us and sort of outside of our

control and almost too much to hold and there is a time and a place and a necessity in our psyches to completely lose it with the enormity of that alexander and i were talking about this morning how important it is that we as human beings have places safe places where we can vent it like and it's not just our psyches that need that it's the world that needs that you know that complete wild uncensored loss of control and the cycle has that built into it. And it's intelligent. It's intelligent because it's allowing, well, it's allowing us to evolve essentially. Because when we stay in our kind of tidy places and spaces

where everything is controlled and you know within our like you know what our mind wants things to be nothing ever changes so actually this uh rage that's unleashed in the second half of the cycle is it's the the life force of evolution it's like it's what's needing to be seen or recognized or felt that hasn't been acknowledged so it has a profound um purpose i want to say it's really you know it's life force yeah alexandra what would you say about vulnerability in this context as i was saying earlier you know you're becoming more uh permeable as we come into the premenstrual phase which is another way of saying this is we are becoming more vulnerable we're actually also becoming more human because if we remained in that eternal summer energy it's deadness ultimately and numbness and loss of feeling and

loss of our capacity for feeling others feeling feeling for others, you know, resonance with others. So it's like our humanity is waking up in the second half of the cycle. And for our humanity to be alive, we have to be in touch with our vulnerability. And being in touch with your vulnerability is not always a comfortable experience and if we are if we are um you know if we struggle to value ourselves if we have a low sense of self-worth and um and goodness knows we've all got a little dose of that going on somewhere you know sometimes bigger sometimes smaller but yeah um where we're struggling to sort of really value who we are and feel comfortable and safe in who we are so if we've had a lot of trauma too you see it may not feel safe to be who we are to be in ourselves so as we come into that

vulnerability we're coming into a lot of complexity of feeling. And some of that feeling may be simply too much and our vulnerability. And yet there is life force wanting expression. You see, just because we don't feel great about ourselves, our essential essence is still alive and going, I need expression. You know, to come out into the world. And if our sort of wiring of ourselves is not, I don't know, I can't even finish that analogy, actually, but, you know,

where we're fighting who we are and not really able to value ourselves, there isn't a sort of clear channel for that energy to flow and so it you know comes out um so our anger anger can be our defense against our own vulnerability not wanting to feel that and wanting to project it out onto others um and to yeah to blame others or whatever um yeah do you want to pick up from there shani um yeah that's beautifully described yeah so just i guess it's important to say that if we aren't pacing and tracking our own vulnerability our anger um can sometimes be an acting out from that place um yeah so it's good it's good to keep asking yourself really what's really going on here. And to dare to be honest and real with yourself. And in a way that brings the power back to you. Yeah, something you said, Shani,

when we were chatting before this conversation was the more capacity we have to feel safe within our own vulnerability the less likely we are to safeguard ourselves with aggressive reactivity or turn it in towards ourselves as as anger towards self which i know i did for so many years. And I really think a lot of my chronic illness was anger turned in on me when it, I learned how to turn it out. And these days I'm learning how to hold the tension with it, but it's, yeah, there's been, there's been a lot of healing in that for me, but that I look, I was so moved when he said that. Okay.

So as we expand our capacity to feel safe with the vulnerable tender parts the less we're gonna explode with yeah this aggressive reactivity and another thing that you said shiny oh fount of wisdom I'm so glad you're writing these things down just taking dictation from the universe by um is that anger is also a natural healthy response to um violation within ourselves to the violation of human rights in our world to the destruction of our natural world to the dying away of species to the you know the outrageous things that are happening and you know collectively and the outrageous things that happen individually and I'm especially thinking of anyone with a marginalized identity right now you know anger is a very natural and healthy response to the structures of oppression.

So there's a yeah, there's a rightness to the anger, too. It's to temper what we just said about the aggressive reactivity. Yeah. Yes. There's a righteous anger. I mean, I often speak of an indignation of soul. And I feel that's what's fueling the outrageousness that many feel at menopause. It's anger just comes out of nowhere. And it just feels like centuries of, this is particularly for women, but anyone who's felt oppressed, it's like centuries of, it doesn't feel like it's just even this lifetime, it's so much bigger. I just remember it myself as a kind of revelation of just, it felt like a revelation of the sophistication of oppression, of patriarchy within my own psyche.

And I'd always been someone who was, you know, out there and outspoken and standing up, you know, things. And then I got to see such deeper levels, how it had got to work in me. And so there's that layer of it. And then for me, there was always this other layer. And this is purely intuitive. It's purely come from my dedication to this menstruality work. But I profoundly feel, and it almost wants to make me cry, that at the heart of the heart of the anger,

beneath all that patriarchal stuff, lies this indignation of arriving at menopause, never ever having had the spiritual path and practice of the menstrual cycle named and validated. Because menopause is the final stage in that journey it is the culmination of something and you know no one would be able to articulate this this is just my deep feeling and knowing having sat with this work that at some deep level our beings are just outraged the betrayal that they have to meet this initiation this awakening at menopause and they've had no preparation and i i feel that very very strongly in my core i can feel it now the the outrage of that it's so visceral it's so alive in me and actually is what motivates me so much with this work because actually all of us with menstrual cycles know deepest level of our being, something profound going on. And when that's not

named, when we're cheated of that, oh, the rage, oh, the rage, oh, the rage. And what if a lot of the menstrual symptoms we have, the premenstrual and some really, you know, PMDD, our menstrual and some really, you know, PMDD, our menstrual pain. What if at the heart of the heart of what's going on here is not only not named it's shamed now that's the final insult I mean I hear you and I feel you and it feels important before we start talking about okay how to work with this anger with through the menstrual cycle and through menopause to just talk about why women are feeling so angry um and how anger again this is something you said earlier, Shadi, anger in men is validated and anger in women is dismissed. Can we unpack that a little bit, especially for people listening who don't feel in touch with their anger or it's coming out sideways in moments, in hot flash, like hot flash moments and then get shut away again. Like there's a lot of shame around anger.

There's a lot of conditioning for girls to be quiet and good and polite. And we carry that with us into womanhood. Yeah. Can we just speak into this a little bit? so when i think about anger and my experience of it is that it is such an immense force that is so wild and non-conforming and very provocative I mean it's very provocative anger even at the beginning of this conversation so if when you started talking about all the ways you feel angry I felt myself getting more and more angry about it all it really incites something it's actually very contagious I would say it has a very powerful effect and so that speaks to me of power

and it's power that can't be controlled. So I'm just aware of how, you know, the kinds of things that we as women have heard, comments like, what's wrong with you? You are, you completely lost it or you're completely out of control. She's hysterical. She's getting hysterical yeah yeah all these kind of dismissive diminishing comments made in response to you know our anger and um yeah so there is a lot of shame around it all the time in the political world when male politicians get angry they're kind of courageous and like warriors and they're leading everyone and then when women politicians get angry they're sort of harridans and hags and fish wives you know it's like yeah yeah so frustrating for it is, anger is a sign of life for me.

It's like, when I get angry, I go, oh, someone's home. It's like suddenly I'm back in myself. Now, you know, it's telling me that, it is, it's telling me I'm alive in a way, you know, it's touched a nerve. And so there's something, so it's information, it's life, and it's information, but it's something in my being that's fighting back. There's been some kind of sort of violation of boundary, however subtle, that's happened. And then, you know, then my inquiry has to happen around that, when I feel it,

is it, you know, because I realized that, you know, some of my anger has been sourced from me not asserting myself enough, me not knowing fully who I was not valuing, not valuing my worth and holding my intelligence back. And I had felt so much rage. I haven't thought that directly, but only when I've sat and unpacked it, it's led to that sense of not valuing my own worth. So although I've reacted to something in the environment in that moment, it's actually indication of me going, oh, it's a sign of me just not loving myself quite enough. And I've just not cared for my own boundaries. So there's that level of inner work around anger. And then there's anger where, you know, someone really has violated my boundaries in the world in some way.

And where I need to speak out in some way that, so there's an anger that has to be used in the world. Yeah. And, and, and, and it's really, it's really like, I think of it like a sword and you've got to learn how to use that sword because a righteous anger can really shift the dynamic in something. It can really wake others up. But it's a nuclear power in your hands. So we have this extraordinary, you know, anger is power,

and there's a real intelligence of work. But we've got to be home in ourselves to be able to hold this power and channel it wisely and not splatter power everywhere in the world, because that is, that doesn't, I mean, you do need a moment of losing it, but you need to, you know, it's like, yeah, I've done that. You need to be able to just let off steam somewhere. And then to come into a place of, okay, well, what's mine to own here? What am I being confronted with? What am I discovering about myself? It doesn't look as tidy as this in real life by the way i'm saying it if only but we're getting there and then there's you know there's there's the anger that then has to be spoken the trouble with anger is that um you

know it'll come out before you've had a chance to think it through. And that's the nature of anger. But I also like to think that the more you get to know yourself, and of course, that's the wonder of cycle awareness. Each month, you're kind of growing into this premenstrual power a little bit more. You're getting more comfortable with yourself. And then menopause gives you a super duper workout in that department. So that there's more of you online so that when you feel the rage coming through, there's a level of self-awareness going on with that rage,

because rage can just wipe out all awareness and just comes and just obliterates everything. So it's about our capacity to come into, coming into presence with ourselves more. And that, of course, involves being more and more comfortable with ourselves, feeling safer in ourselves. I mean, that's really important. If I'm not feeling in a safe place, I do not want to be shamed okay I'm going to pause the podcast just for a couple of minutes because the doors for this year's menstruality leadership program are closing in a week we have an amazing circle forming and we'd love to tell you a bit about what you can expect from the program if you're thinking of joining us. So this is for anyone who feels drawn to being a leader in the menstruality field, who is seeking personal or spiritual development or greater meaning and purpose in your life and you sense that cycle awareness could be a powerful lens for this. Anyone who's yearning for a deeper

understanding and embodiment of the feminine in the world, anyone who's longing for a deep dive into the world of menstruality and who actively wants to participate in a like-minded community of cycle savvy people, you can find out more and join at menstrualityleadership.com and here's a short story from one of last year's graduates Lisa and afterwards we'll get back to the conversation with Alexander and Sharni. Hi I'm Lisa, I graduated from the MLP in July 2023 and I came into the program really having realized that I at 47 was probably at the beginnings of what I come to know as perimenopause. So the MLP really put me in touch with so much of that. It really aligned me with both my bleed cycles and my cyclical nature, as well as working the energetics with the externals in my circumstances and in my life. I would say I know myself so much better now since doing the MLP,

because the level of holding that you have provided through both Shani and Alexandra and all of the mentors and all of the participants on the group. And I have so much more confidence now as a woman operating in this world with this dominant culture of do, do, do. And also where mothers are not valued they're not valorized and i had real self-esteem issues around that actually i couldn't recommend the course highly enough some of the dark arts now for me are second nature i kind of have a very quick um pull down list of tools that I can pull out of my toolkit at any given moment and I know pretty much what to do in most situations and if I don't I know that I don't and I can um take appropriate steps around the not knowing and it's okay to not know

so I'm much less reactive I'm much more confident and courageous and I'm able to hold myself and hold others as well on their journey so if you are at all considering doing the MLP go for it it's life-changing. I mean I feel like I've been angry in my premenstruum since I since my late teens and I was just tracking it back this morning and realizing that in my late teens I had two you know relationships as much as anything's a relationship in your late teens but with two men who were both emotionally and physically abusive you know there was assault happening in in both of these relationships so very young serious boundary violations and it really set the tone for my relationship with men in the world, obviously. And as I track back through the relationships I had in my twenties and early thirties, I,

my premenstruum would awaken such rage at whichever man I was in, you know, and you still hear it now, I still talk about aid you know it's still happening but I'm I'm tracking the process more but this rage would come out and it was rage at them but it was sorry it was rage at you know some whatever wrong thing they'd done but it was really the rage at these men who had violated me and more than that it was rage for all the women who have been violated and for all of the ways that patriarchy violates all of us men women people of all genders it's it's uh yeah and then I was reflecting on how when I learned how to practice cycle awareness and be with hold the tension be with this rage listen for it and all of the you know we'll go into this next you know how we can actually work with the cycle to be with our vulnerability to to do the things that we've spoken about but I managed to start to find ways to take this rage

and turn it into something generative in the world so I've always for a long time I was very drawn to Eve Ensler and the vagina monologues and her V-Day movement you know because it's so directly connected violence against women and girls and it made sense of my experience so you know I've been connected with her throughout my whole life and one day we'll have her on the podcast it'll be such a great day I can't wait but I found out about a project that is a V-Day project in Congo, which is a place called the City of Joy. And it's a centre, a leadership centre for women survivors of sexual violence. And they come to the centre and they receive healing for their trauma. And then they're guided and taught and supported to become leaders to go back into their communities and lead in their communities it's so beautiful and one of the

things I started to do was fundraise for this organization and there was one one time where I was able to send a thousand pounds to City of Joy and the feeling of kind of at the completion of a loop yeah was entirely inspired by my rage by my premenstrual rage by my capacity to to honor it and yes I looked mad and crazy and there have been times when I looked completely mad and crazy to these lovely men who I was in relationships with. But, yeah, as I as I learned how to work with it more, it's it's becoming more and more generative. Yeah. I mean, that's a super story, Sophie, of channeling your rage into a generous, as you said, a generative force, a creative energy to change make change in in the

world i mean that's what i mean about anger is very motivating it's in you know it brings us alive as i said it's like it's like saying i'm alive i'm here yeah and I see it in the woman who runs the city of joy Christine her name is and she is she is awake this woman you know she is alive she has life streaming through her and again obviously you can't look at what's happening in the in Congo you know what's happening there it's really because of our smartphones and our computers and the mining that causes the civil unrest and the disruption that leads to the sexual violence it's all we're all complicit where it's all it's all connected but you can't not feel rage in the face of it but she's taken that rage and she is she is creating turning it into love you know turning it into love yeah that is so beautiful, Sophie, because your story is also speaking to of this other piece, which is that our anger illuminates what we care about and what matters to us.

It wakes us up to our calling as much as it is this life force moving through us. If we really come into it, we know what it's for and we know what we're for. We know what's being asked of us. And that's exactly what you felt. You had that personal experience that was being incited each pre-menstruum and it was connecting you to this kind of deeper calling in you, which is your activism, which is your love of women and girls, which is your love of human rights, and you know, the care of life. So it really brought you into something of what you're for and that's I have definitely

felt that for myself because I think the most angry I have ever felt well there were two moments um I mean I felt you know angry with people which has been very angry but the most angry I've ever felt at this kind of big scale was after the birth of my first daughter when I felt that betrayal of why had I not been prepared for this. And for me, that meant menstrual cycle awareness, because menstrual cycle awareness is the preparation for the initiation of motherhood, just as it is for the initiation of menopause. And the rage that I felt when I realized that no one had told me that I hadn't access. I mean, it was a force that I I mean even

thinking about it now I can see it was enormous what I felt and um yeah and it's speaking to me of my calling yeah and the other time that I felt that level of rage was in connection to the power of menstruation. After having an incredibly powerful bleed, where I felt the enormity of what's possible at menstruation, the love that I felt there. You know, hot off the heels of that was the rage and indignation I felt that not everyone who menstruates knows about this power and is supported to experience it so I'm really relating to your story as rage being a signpost it's really good to our calling yeah I'm also thinking of the story you often share Alexandra of during your menstrual pain of raging at the patriarchy and how your partner held space for you to to rage and rage and rage at the patriarchy yeah let's speak about how to work with rage I mean this conversation has been

woven through with with examples of this but particularly around holding the tension and just before we do I want to point people to a couple of episodes that may be helpful if this conversation is really like oh I really need to know more about this in episode 58 the power of your premenstrual phase we looked at the power of the inner of inner autumn so in more depth and really really unpacked it and then in episode 64 how to awaken your premenstrual power there's a lot of how to around how to handle this phase of the cycle and I feel like we probably spoke about menopause in those conversations too but we have an episode 98 with Sophia Stile and Gemma Polo who are in a lesbian relationship going through menopause together or you know in the

in the run-up to menopause and they speak about how they're how they're dealing with the rage that's coming up together which is really fascinating so just some some some other references for if you want to go into this in more depth but can we speak about what it means to hold the tension with rage and and how to do that through a cycle awareness lens. Yes, this is quite a muscle to flex. And the thought that I had just then when you asked that question was, it's real. It's the real work of alchemy it's like holding the tension is your capacity to be uh sufficiently present with this force that's moving through you and to have some

self-awareness around it and to be able to um manage the charge of it rather than just exploding, but holding the charge of it. And in that act of just staying with the anger, staying with it, it's not about repression. On the contrary, it's about actually staying alive and allowing yourself staying really present with and alive and feeling it and um in that act of holding the tension it's like an alchemy takes place you start to come inside something you can sort of unpack it a bit i'm really dreaming into my own experience here as i speak um but it's allowing me and it requires a degree of um this coming back to self-worth again and that safety of being it's sort of predicated on one's capacity to take one's own side and to have some self-worth in there um and um as i so yes to be able to meet the charge and to really um sort of question it or let just delve into is what's this about

basically you know what what's really going on here what has actually been touched in me and um and sort of playing with it really and uh you know what needs to be spoken here because i don't dismiss it i don't make it all about uh me you know it's my shadow side i'm just acting out i don't actually it all about me, you know, it's my shadow side. I'm just acting out. I don't actually. I think it's very important not to do that. I think it's important to face that side of things.

But actually, you're also having a meaningful response to something in the environment that's really got you. And what needs to be addressed there? What's not happening there that needs to be addressed? What's the shadow in the relationship? For instance, so this is actually really interesting, in relationships, in couples. In this case, I'm not actually sure in same-sex relationships, but certainly in heterosexual relationships, I suspect the woman often becomes

the channel for the unexpressed within the relationship, especially premenstrually. I don't want to say that men can't be, but if they haven't, you know, premenstrually particularly, we've got greater permeability going on, as we've spoken about. So it's like the hidden tensions that are in the field of the relationship. It's, you know, it's seeking, they're seeking release, and they go, oh, here's a little vulnerable one, we can come through this one. So actually, it isn't just

about you, it's actually about the relationship as well. And it's so important for the partner to respect that rage and to recognize it isn't you losing it, inverted commas, there's something wrong with you. But it's actually communicating something in the field between you, something even as the man you're not expressing or sharing and your partner is now becoming the channel for that. I often used to experience that actually. Well, not often, but I did experience it. Yeah. And thinking of the stories from women and people in menopause on the MLP, I'm thinking that menopause is a huge moment for this, for all that is not aligned in the relationship to come up and come

through it's absolutely it's massive sophie this is the moment of feedback and um it can be really tough i want to just really acknowledge the partners in all this because um you know you're both responsible for the shadow side it's just that you know the one who's in menopause or the premenstrual is just that much more vulnerable but it requires a real holding on both sides and i have to say one of the greatest gifts that my partner gave me at the time the the guy that used to hold me in my period pain whilst I was cussing the patriarchy, was that he met me in my rage. He bloody fucking met me. best gift to have this solidity of not trying to control me uh you know just real presence and receiving the rage i mean i totally love him for that i love that guy alexandra i love him so much for you and for all of us oh can I say he was doing whole serious holding the tension work and I say you know really helping me to alchemize something you know there was something waking up

in me you know that yeah that's holding the tension in action actually that's a very good example to talk about it you know between two, the holding the tension thing, because it's holding the tension is different to acting out and expressing one's anger. Because when we do that, we're actually subtly displacing ourselves from the source of that anger. It's very interesting. I mean, it feels powerful in the moment. It's a lot easier to direct that energy out at another person. But actually to take responsibility for that rage is a lot harder. And that's what holding the tension is you take responsibility for it and you feel it and be with it and let it work you I had an experience earlier this week with it with exactly this where I would have just loved loved to lash out at the other person, you know, and instead I just felt it and felt it and felt it.

And the more I felt it and my car is a really good place for feeling this because nobody can get to me. You know, I'm not going to be interrupted. I'm not going to disturb the neighbors. And I felt it and felt it in my car and felt it so much and so deeply that it brought me into myself and into what the feel it kind of cleared the cobwebs the illusions and kind of made me realize what was going on for me which I hadn't been conscious of. And if I just lashed out at the person, I wouldn't have had that insight for one, but two, that connection to that place in myself,

which was a place of great valuing of myself and dignity in myself and respect of myself so it really brought me back into my worth and worthiness um so I was changed by that experience and if I just acted out actually the other person probably would have acted out in response to me and we would have replayed the same old usual drama. And all gone away without tails between our legs, feeling ugly and bad and, you know, having heard someone we love and no one the wiser, you know. And when you were feeling and feeling in the car, what does that look like for you? Is your breath helping you?

What's going on? I take off all the brakes around my feelings and I really let myself experience it. So a lot of that is internal, but sometimes I would speak and say what I'm feeling. And in fact, that can really connect me to what's really going on. If I can kind of follow, follow the words, follow the impetus. Yeah. So it's following the movement of energy in my system. And sometimes that might be screaming and shouting. It's quite nice to imagine the person in front of you and what you would really like to say or do or do you know

it's often we want to strangle people we want to kill people you know but in our imaginations we can really feel all that in our bodies we can really feel all that yeah making low sounds helps me like you know like really letting it come out and feel my root the root of my body helps me too yeah yeah yeah I definitely need to move in some way yeah wow well thanks you two oh hey just we go, let's mention that holding the tension is one of the menstruality leadership skills that you teach on the menstruality leadership program, uh, along with 11 others and that it's starting in a couple of weeks. And just want to say a word about how you're feeling about it

yeah about it coming up oh yeah we are both feeling so good because this is such a juicy deep dive into all the um nuances and possible experiences of menstruality which is always revelatory and very creative and yeah we have so much fun we do it's very powerful it is it is so lovely seeing our work meet these individuals that come and what gets stirred and awoken and the revelations they have and the unfolding from that. of really working this initiatory dynamic of the cycle and what it can open up. It really, it's that in action that is so thrilling to see. Yes, very satisfying. It's very satisfying. It's just so revelatory.

It's like, oh my God, yes. Oh, oh, we're so powerful. Like what's going to happen? And if anyone's wanting to hear some examples of this, then on the menstrualityleadership.com page, there's several stories from graduates of the past sharing the kind of revelations they've had, the kind of insights they've had, how the MLP has helped them to transform. So you can find those at menstrualityleadership.com okay well I think we should say to everyone if you have questions about the cycle and anger and menopause and anger that have come up out of this please send them to us because I would personally love to do a part two I feel like we've only just got started actually that would be amazing just to hear people yeah questions and experiences yeah and challenges and yeah we can we can explore that more so you can

email me at sophie at red school dot net okay and we will angrily make our way into our pre-menstrual dark moon days yes our anger plugging us into our callings yes that's great that line thank you so much for listening all the way through to the end today please subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen and leave us a review on apple podcast it really helps to spread the reach of this work. If you're interested in the Menstruality Leadership Program, there's one more week to join and you can find out more at menstrualityleadership.com. And that's it for this week. I'll be with you again next week. And until then, keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.