The Menstruality Podcast - 178. How to End the Year, and Everything Else, with Cycle Awareness - Replay (Alexandra & Sjanie)

Episode Date: December 26, 2024

Today we’re sharing a conversation we had a couple of years back at the close of the year and it’s all about what cycle awareness can teach us about all of life’s endings; the smaller, more surface level ones like the end of the year we have coming up, and the bigger more profound ones, like ending relationships, moving house, all the way to the deep grief of losing loved ones.For those of us with menstrual cycles, each month we have an opportunity to practice ending the cycle well, aligning with the deep intelligences at work within us as we descend towards menstruation. (Or the dark moon if you’re tracking with the lunar cycle). And, as quite often happens, Alexandra and Sjanie have totally different ways of approaching endings - which we chat about in-depth!We explore:How conscious endings make all of life feel sacred.The surprising gifts of the premenstruum when it comes to endings - how this phase of the cycle prepares and tenderises us to feel deeply and acknowledge what we love and treasure. The deep wisdom that lives in the ending of the menstrual cycling years - the death-and-rebirth of menopause - and how we can all weave it into our lives. ---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 podcast. Thank you so much for being part of the community gathered around this conversation about the power of the cycle and menopause.

Today I'm sharing a conversation which we had a couple of years back at the close of the year and it's all about what cycle awareness can teach us about all of life's endings from the smaller more surface level ones like the end of the year that we have coming up and the bigger more profound ones like ending relationships, moving house, all the way to the deep grief of losing loved ones. For those of us with menstrual cycles, each month we have this opportunity to practice ending the cycle well, aligning with this deep intelligence at work within us as we descend towards menstruation, towards our period, or if you're trekking with the lunar cycle towards the dark moon. And in this conversation, as quite often happens

with this creative partnership, Alexandra and Sharni have totally different ways of approaching endings. So we'll hear all about that. And I just want to apologize that my audio was a bit rubbish with this one. I was back in the ongoing saga of my house renovation gone wrong. And oh my goodness, am I glad that has ended. Am I glad that there was an ending in sight there. And I just unexpectedly had to record this at my parents' house. So bear with the audio, please. And I hope you really,

really enjoy this. I hope you have a beautiful end to your year. How to end the year and everything else with cycle awareness. Well, good morning, you two. It feels very beautiful to be having this conversation with you about endings right now because I'm looking out at my window and there's a field that's absolutely covered in glistening ice and it puts me right there in feeling the end of this year in feeling the solstice yeah there's just so much to say about how cycle awareness can help us with endings of all kinds but before we get into that let's do our cycle check-in so where are you at shani i've lost track i know you asked me if i was bleeding and i thought well sophie's life is your house renovations it's like you can't track your own cycle let alone mine because you bled a week ago didn't you just I was with you just a few

days ago when I was bleeding so that's where I'm at yeah it's funny. So I've actually moved on from when I was bleeding a few days ago. I'm day nine. I'm day nine. And I've been at home with sick children all week, and I seem to have caught something of what they've got, and I'm coming down with it. So I always find my cycle experience is so colored when I'm unwell in any way shape or form all I feel is that unwellness and uh yeah that's what I'm feeling I'm feeling kind of heavy-headed and very slowed

down and there's a feeling of deep apathy in my system which to be fair all the hallmarks of endings so there's something as you say very perfect about having this conversation right now I'm feeling that let go yeah yeah and as we just named I'm on some other planets who knows where I am I know where I am I'm on day 18 which is really an interesting place to be because I know that the reality of my situation is about to probably hit me quite hard but I'm still in a blissful very outward focused just going moment by moment summertime mode but yeah I had to just leave our house and luckily my parents welcomed us in so I don't have child care this week but I'm still working but our house basically isn't isn't livable in and it wasn't supposed to be that way but it is and so I really am just having to go minute by minute

dealing with the challenges that come and I'm I'm really dizzy with it and it's good to pause with you in this moment before my inner autumn kicks in and shit could get really real and just prepare myself for that yeah for the feeling of the fullness of the chaos that's happening in my world at the moment yeah. Before Alexandra you say share your cycle check-in I just want to say Soph what's so interesting because we're talking about endings, is it is actually the summer into inner autumn threshold that is the beginning of the end. And it's so beautiful that you are mindful and pausing because once you cross that ridge, yeah, there's something that you're really confronted with which takes you into the ending good and proper so it's a powerful moment to be paying attention good one oh alexandra how about you well the full moon just peaked and i'm now in the is it the kind of shadow side of it the day it's about day 17 I think

and it's so interesting because this was my sweet spot in the cycle I used to feel like I hit my groove as I came into the inner autumn and there was grunt in my system and I knew what I was about and there was you know all my stuff until the bleed a few days before the bleed so and I feel that interestingly with the moon cycle only a little percentage compared with my menstrual cycle experience, but there's an echo. So that combined with the fact that I slept well last night, oh my God, I could conquer the world when I sleep well. So I woke up this morning feeling, actually my first thought was, I am so grateful for cycle awareness was my first thought actually because I was feeling this release

because we are coming to the end of the year and we've held so much and this week was so intense at red school it was just one event after another and then we had to get polished up for and you know prepped for and there was just so much going on. And I can't tell you the discipline I was holding in myself. And then this morning that all ended and I could feel this incredible high coming me. So I was in the sweet spot of the moon, good night's sleep, in the release, because I get a release at an ending, and kind of there's a spaciousness that comes in.

And so and the sun was shining. I mean, what could possibly go wrong today? I went for a walk in the glistening fields, as you just described, Sophie. I felt so happy and so grateful. So I'm in a very nice, sweet space. It's really interesting to hear you name the ending that we've been inside of this week at Red School. So we've had to do so much to be able to put together the launch of next year's Menstrual Anti-Leadership Programme.

That's what you're talking about, which is now open. And actually, the day this podcast comes out will be the last day to apply um in this window so there we go I'll say more about that later so that that there's that ending as in we've had to do so much work and I just want to say thank you to Lauren who might be listening to this right now for all of the amazing work that you do behind the scenes at Red School to make everything we do possible thank you Lauren we love you absolutely yeah and I'm also aware of and you mentioned this morning when we were riffing before this Alessandra of the massive ending of getting wise power out in the world and that

wasn't just you getting a book written and published and out there which is a huge feat but this is the the culmination of a massive arc of my life I feel as though I've been in the grip of something since I know this might sound melodramatic but honestly since my 20s but certainly from my early 30s when the pain the menstrual pain first kicked in i feel i've been in the grip of something i've been trying to articulate and um and we did the first big articulation shadi and i in the wild. Sorry, my first book's called Wild Genie. That was a first attempt. You see, I have all these staging posts along the way.

And Wild Power was just a massive moment. Oh, my God, you know, to get that out. But there was still this other piece that was missing. And the writing of the menopause book, Wise Power, was enormous. It was the biggest thing I personally have had to do. It asked more of me than anything else has asked of me. It was far more radical. And I had to dive so deeply.

But it was so profoundly satisfying to feel it coming together. Finally, I could articulate in a way that was understandable to people. I hope it's understandable. I think it's understandable. So it was just getting that, putting that final full stop metaphorical and literal full stop in place it's just extraordinary and then to finally see the book launched in the world i mean i'm almost speechless with the enormity of for me and it has put me into a massive unknown because this has been my life. Yeah. I mean, anyway, we can say more about that. Yeah, we'll get into how you both approach and deal with endings and your strength there and your vulnerabilities there.

But first, so I want to name the end of the year is coming. And what we want to get into today is how menstrual cycle awareness can help us with all of these kinds of endings and all kinds of endings, like the end of relationships, the end of creative projects, like you named with the book. The end of living in a certain place and then all the way to real deep grief the loss of loved ones miscarriage and then ultimately our own death we can go there you know cycle awareness is preparing us for the big full stop that is coming for all of us so just to kick us off can you describe you started this in my check-in sharni by talking about this summer to autumn moment, but can you describe what happens in the menstrual cycle at the end? is uh really it's subtle but it's really important is that move from the inner summer into the inner autumn because that's where we come out of this creating generating doing mode and we start to shift into this uh place of beingone. And it's like we reach the zenith and now it's

the return, the downfall. So it's the beginning of the end. And I love that we get the whole of our inner autumn to sort of wriggle our way into this kind of new dawning reality. I really love that because our psyches need time to negotiate endings. We really need time. That's one thing I've learned is I totally underestimated actually how much time I need with endings. Yeah. So the inner autumn takes us through this process of being undone. And you start to weed out and discern and the letting go starts to happen in the inner autumn. That's where

already you start to like cast off what's, you know, what's not quite it and you begin this process of being made more permeable and more sensitive so the whole of the in autumn in a way is destabilizing because of its dynamism because of its momentum so the destabilization starts you start to feel the wobble uncertainty comes in and all of that is opening up the wobble, the uncertainty comes in. And all of that is opening up the way, opening up the portal, preparing your psyche for the threshold of the ending, which of course happens at the end of the inner autumn. It's the place we call the void. And that is the sacred portal of endings. and the whole way through the inner autumn you're kind of getting prepped for that you're getting lowered down into that it's so beautiful what

you're saying there shiny because our psyches need time to deal with endings and what I'm aware of when I look out in the world is that that's not present we don't know how to grieve we don't know how to end consciously when people have miscarriages for example all kinds of things get said like well at least you can move on and try again or instead of really acknowledging the huge thing that's happened yeah so we're not good we're not good at this we're not it's been one of the fallouts of the lack of cyclical consciousness and the way I would say it is that we've lost touch with the sacred because we are so dismissive of endings and we don't take time to cherish and relish, we don't ever allow ourselves those moments of looking back and really seeing and feeling and

letting ourselves be touched by what we've created or what life has given us. It's that, it's such a sweet moment to do that. It's such a precious thing. For me, it's what makes life sacred is the honoring of endings. Because we've lost this cyclical way, we've lost the knowing, the instinctive knowing of how to end things beautifully together, the rituals, the sitting and pausing and breathing with someone for a minute before jumping in to try and fix their situation. And then what I heard your name was, boom, the wisdom of the cycle

destabilizes us in inner autumn so that we can't help if we're with the process our psyches can't help but be prepared for the ending that's coming so the wisdom of the thing stops. So with our cycle, what happens with our cycle is there is this, we're in something and we're in something. And then suddenly we're not. There's just suddenly a gap we fall into where we our blood hasn't come yet the bleeding hasn't started but there's um a sort of space a sort of nothing space is how you know one way of describing it because you're in a something until then. It's you being angry or blah, blah, blah.

What's coming to mind is a client of mine from years ago who she's still really rage in her premenstrual. And, you know, especially with her partner. I mean, it was poof. And then I would say, what happens just before bleeding? She goes, oh, it goes quiet. Just stops. It just stops. I thought, oh was poof. And then I would say, what happens just before bleeding? She says, oh, it goes quiet. It just stops. It just stops.

I thought, oh, there she is. She's just stepped off the merry-go-round. There's a cut. There's a cut. And that's really the signal of an ending because endings are so final. That's what I find so painful about them. There's a non-negotiable finality to it that is so confronting. It's so confronting.

And it's so, you know, the way you're describing it, Alexandra, it can also be incredibly liberating depending on your nature and the thing that's ending. Well, what's happening is that you're, yes, it does depend on your nature because this is the sweet spot in the cycle for me. I discovered when I was cycling. This is cut. And then what happens is just before bleeding,

we can fall into quite a darkness there because there is no longer a something happening. And that's where if there is, for instance, anyone who suffers from depression or anxiety or has experienced a lot of trauma in their lives, often this can be the darkest hour, the darkest hour, because there is no holding. And I say to people, oh gosh, this is big. Shani talked about this being a sacred moment, okay, this threshold,

the void, I know I can say it this way, the void, this emptiness, is another way of talking about expanded consciousness. We've just stepped into sacred time and space. We've just stepped into cosmic consciousness, if you like. You're no longer held in your sort of humanist. You're out of that, out of the sort of material kind of consciousness. And there's nothing to hold on to in this moment. And in a way, you know, that's what spiritual life is about, is being able to step into this expanded place. Guess what? Our cycle plunges us there every month. And through menstrual cycle awareness,

you bring more and more consciousness to this nothing space. And it becomes a something after a while. Not a something as in from before, but it starts to have... Something isn't the right word. Instead of it being a complete nothingness, it is, I use the word, the plenum, the fullness. There's a wonderfulness there, which I found. And then the moment you start bleeding again, it's like you land in something. But gosh, it's big what I'm trying to articulate here. But actually at menstruation, you're still in that expanded consciousness. But once you start bleeding, you have a little bit of an anchor to hold on to.

There's a little something at work. What's coming to mind for me is the solstice and that turning point on solstice where the axis of the earth shifts and the light starts to return. Except that at the solstice there's like three days or so isn't there of no movement even though we've crossed that line there's no movement stays the same and gradually gradually so it's unknown it's all it's you're in this expanded territory and our consciousness is through cycle awareness and practicing, you know, really being aware of what happens at menstruation really prepares us for big life for any kind of ending,

but particularly big life transitions of any kind. You've named some of them, Sophie. It's really big what you're saying I know it is I'm a bit speechless now I think oops oops because I want to go right into that with you yeah and I want this to be really useful I want it to be really useful and this is a cycle is so freaking useful. I mean, I told you this morning I woke up going, oh, I'm so grateful for cyclical consciousness to hold me. The understanding I have in this moment that I've been right now.

Yeah. Let's talk about how you two experience this personally as a way into it so we were we were chatting earlier so I know that you deal with endings very differently both of you which is why it's so good that you're in a creative partnership and possibly one of the reasons why your creative partnership is so fruitful and I watch it in you so Sharni you go slowly at the end Alexandra moves quickly I don't move quickly so much as I get very ecstatic and I have to to slow right down I've learned disciplines and you and you do end things abruptly it's like I'm still there in it and for you it's like door closed over gone next we saw it this weekend that was a perfect moment this this weekend just It's like, I'm still there in it. And for you, it's like door closed, over, gone, next.

We saw it this weekend. That was a perfect moment. This weekend just gone. We went to a wedding together, the Red School team. We were together in person. It was so bloody good. And at the end, it was the morning. And then Alexandra, within a couple of minutes,

seemed to have her bags packed, her coat on, her gloves on, and was about to walk out the door and Shani had been sort of lazing luxuriously in this window seat and was like what's happening but you see what's behind that is my huge need for spaciousness to navigate the transition back into work on Monday. I couldn't spend all that time with you because I needed to have a big chunk of time on my own. And this is where our lives are different because spaciousness comes by staying there because when I get home, I've got my family. Yes, exactly.

For me, I'm also courting spaciousness. It's just much more spacious to linger as long as I can. In fact, I'll reveal a little secret. On my drive home, which was when I was in a bubble in a car all by myself and I was bleeding, I drove so slowly. I took as long as I could possibly take I stopped at every petrol station along the way just so that I could have more time and space we've actually it's reminding me we've sat out so after workshops and we've driven home from something we've sat outside Sharni's house for like you know 10 minutes 20 minutes you know just just having this precious moment before Sharni had to go back into the maelstrom of her I mean what I can share because I I've learned so much about

endings and beginnings through my cycle in fact that's that's been, I think, you know, two of the core things that I keep learning from my cycle is how to negotiate beginnings and endings because I'm confronted with them over and over. And every beginning, every ending is like a new opportunity to have a different experience. And my cycle just keeps revealing things to me but the one thing I've noticed about myself with endings is I get really invested in what I'm creating or doing I'm an all-in kind of person I really throw myself into it to the exclusion of everything else. I have

an amazing capacity for focus and to really go into something and I lose myself and I become absorbed in it. I get really taken by it. And then when it comes to the ending, there is such a, I feel this, and it's sort of below my rational mind, I'm sometimes shocked at how strongly I feel this, but this existential loneliness, as I start to feel myself pulled away from the thing that I love. Like I've been creating something I love. Or I've been on an adventure with people. I've spent the weekend with you and we're all more connected and I love you all so much. And then I feel this incredibly painful existential loneliness

is the best way I can describe it. And it cuts so deeply in me. And mostly when I'm not paying attention, I don't notice that pain. Like I can't quite touch that pain in myself. And so I sort of do all the usual things to override myself. I'm trying to think what some of my kind of unconscious habits are but yeah getting spaced out or kind of distracting myself in some way or other but what I've noticed what I've come to learn and appreciate and this is exactly what I experienced this week weekend when we were together when Alexandra abruptly left and you both abruptly left and I was like and then I sat in my car on my own and I started to feel the incredible pain of that pull that

loneliness and I and I wept and I wept and I wept and I wept and then when finally my eyes were dry enough to be able to see I got in my car and I started driving and I felt amazing that the feeling the feelings and being with the grief and sadness just opened me up into the most expanded blissful state I was in such a place of peace and tranquility and I felt so in love with life it was so beautiful it was I mean I was bleeding which really does help for me the combination of bleeding and driving a long journey on my own are pretty blissful I have to say but let's let's just look at that so the crying was what opened up the space for the ending to complete itself and for you to like what did the crying do yeah I I sort of feel it like a river and this is

similar in the inner autumn like I feel like I'm in this river and there's a dam wall up ahead which is the finality of the ending and the water's building up against the dam and there's a sort of growing pressure in me which is actually a pressure of feeling. It's a deep stirring. I find thresholds, because they destabilize us so much, they bring up strong feelings for everyone, I would say. It's just how, well, when something really matters to us that we've been doing, the feelings will be stronger. Yeah, something really matters. the feelings will be stronger. Yeah, something really matters.

The feelings will be stronger. So, yes, I feel like I'm approaching this damn wall and the depth of feelings start to kind of pool and there's this pressure. And if I'm resisting, which is what I'm often doing, I have my foot on the brakes. I'm like, no, no, no, I don't want this to end. I don't want this to end.

Then I'm not actually letting myself feel the feelings that are there. But when I let go of the resistance and actually notice how I'm doing, the feelings are the thing that open that sacred portal. They burst the damn walls. They let the river of life flow and then I'm once again carried that's how I experience it a surrender it's the surrender that comes from the feeling such a powerful image and the fact that you were bleeding is really is part of what helped that damn wall to break yes because I was so uh sensitized and soft and feeling very fragile and your inner autumn had founded you into

a pulp I can't actually remember yeah and so so this is I mean this is something else i've noticed about myself so i have this big thing with endings but once something is over i have moved on but i move on big time you know i can't even remember people ask me what happened or if i have an argument with someone a few weeks ago i have moved on you know i don't hold things so that's the, that's one of the major strengths while there is this big buildup. Once I've moved on, I'm on. That's it. Yeah. No looking back for me. Okay. I'm going to pause this conversation for a couple of minutes to invite you to join us for our annual new year visioning retreat at red school it's on january the 14th and it's called your menstrual cycle your oracle and it's a free online retreat hosted by

alexandra and sharni it's two and a half hours of rest and rejuvenation where we're going to play dream create and vision all guided by the intelligence of the menstrual cycle as your own wise oracle. But the retreat will work for you whether you currently have a menstrual cycle or not. So if you're in menopause or postmenopause or without a cycle for another reason, this is for you too. So please come and join us. It's not your usual annual planning retreat. It's an invitation to

actually step out of strategy mode and ease into a kind of deep listening and you'll leave nourished revitalized and most importantly plugged into menstruality with your menstrual cycle your or your cycle awareness practice as your loyal source of guidance for the year to come so you can join us it's january the 14th and you can join us at redschool.net forward slash oracle that's redschool.net forward slash oracle I have to be careful around endings because I do get high um so when I'm in something there's a lot of uh you know like a creative project or I'm thinking of you know when we run a training particularly the in-person training. That was always huge for me because that demands more energetically because it's more concentrated. So I'm sort of keeping myself for

that. It's all good. I'm in something, I'm in a bubble of the creative project, but it's demanding something of me. So when something ends, there's a huge release of tension in me. And I step into this empty space. And I tell you, man, empty spaces, they just work for me in terms of things. I just immediately, ideas are popping. I'm just ideas. I don't want to action anything. I am just, it's like being a channel, channel i suppose and just things are coming to me and i am a total i just get quite high or you know the ideas are creative it's my creativity so it's like a geyser of things that kick off. There's space for them to come through.

And I can get overstimulated because my nervous system is, you know, sensitive. So I have to be very deliberate and conscious about moving slowly and having spaciousness around things. And I just have to have spaciousness around any transition. You know, Shani knows me. I get to everything early. I'm just, you know, hopeless. When Shani's travelling with me, it's hell.

Because I can't do things quickly. And so at the ending, I just have to give myself lots of space to come to land with the charge and then what can happen so for instance the end of our in-person training i get it so well now so i have to really pace you know i take time to say goodbye to the venue now you know go through this ritual of going through all the rooms we've been in and just have a real sense of taking it all in and then the drive home is I have to drive slowly because like Shani in a car but I don't bleed anymore but you know I am high so I'm. And then and there'll be ideas coming and so on. And then I get home. And then, yes, then there's a kind of the book, well, one, I know it passes. I know it's just a feature of this phase,

and I just need to just be, you know, I just am very gentle and sweet with myself. But I'm thinking about the book. I went through the same pattern with the book. That moment when it was launched, I mean, what a sweet moment. And then, you know know the kind of acknowledgements we were getting and you know we were like little we were stars for a few you know for a little while stars with hay house you know you have your moment in the sun with the publisher and

you know it's like that and then and then it goes quiet because of course people have to read the book that now we get feedback when people are writing to us and saying i got a wonderful message yesterday from someone about the book so there's this gap of silence and that that's the emptiness place so for me coming as i said earlier coming off writing the book has been, you know, it was the end of a massive cycle. So there's a huge big silence for me. And I felt it was big. It was very big. I went into this real space of, oh, wow, I've just completed a mission. You know, what the bejesus is my life about now never mind that i have a whole

business you know red school and all our creative projects and things but there was something deep that had gone an organization that had been holding me and i'm in that space right now but i'm not feeling um because of course there's lots of activity on the surface but I'm actually pacing that I am really allowing myself to to let my psyche come to land it's almost like I'm coming to land with that ending and really just staying close to myself at a deep level and this is where cycle awareness has given me so much. I trust the empty space. I know, even in that really sort of death moment, I felt trust, the new kind of guiding light for me,

the new impulse of what these next years of my life are going to be. So I'm in that now. I'm curious about what I'm really about now. I'm navigating that. So I'm in that void and it needs a patience. So I'm patient. It needs a lot of silence. I have a lot of silence in my life. And it's not like I'm not like looking, thinking, what is it? What is it? No, no, no, no, no. I just go around very simple living and rest. I actually have to physically let my body recover.

That's the other thing. After a project, I've got to let it complete, not just in my psyche, but in my physical recover. That's the other thing. After a project, I've got to let it complete, not just in my psyche, but in my physicality. And that ecstatic side of my nature is a bit dangerous. It's great because it's great. But it's dangerous, because it could seize me and just take me and have me gallop off or something. I'd love to name and summarize and unpack some of the threads that we've pulled out here about how cycle awareness is helping us with these endings, the small endings and the big endings. And how it can help us with this ending of the year as well. So we've named how inner autumn tenderizes us, prepares our psyches, and makes us feel the things that we might not know we need to feel, but are always there in endings.

Culminating in this void, which gives us this pause moment moment like the winter solstice that's coming this space to be with all of that and from what I was just hearing you saying Alexander this spaciousness this open space is a place that where we can build trust in ourselves build curiosity and all these different kinds of resiliencies that help us make the completion and trust that there will be something on the other side of the ending and a couple of other things that are really important to meet that pause and that empty space are the slowing down so that's the other thing the inner autumn does is it slows us down and you know we tap into this power of no so what happens is we actually carve

out space so you've heard alexandra and i both say this in different ways you need spaciousness with endings but you also need to be going slowly enough that you can notice what's really going on because it requires a lot of attention to track this deep process in ourselves so it's the slowing down and the spaciousness that help us and with that comes presence and to really drop into that pause to really feel held in that empty space we need to be present so that's the other thing then autumn is uh really um supporting us with there was a beautiful story that you thought to bring in here shiny from colette yeah so actually this is the other piece which you touched on there which was to do with being able to be with the feelings as a way of um moving with what's happening. And I have a friend or had a friend called Colette Nolan. She actually did our first menstruality leadership program back in,

was that 2011? It was. She was pregnant and I was actually with her the day when she started miscarrying. And the following day, I got in touch with her and I asked her what she needed and if there was anything I could offer to support her. And what she said to me was that what she really needed was ways, help. She needed help to cry. She needed help to let go. She needed help to grieve. And she asked if I'd make her a playlist of songs to cry to which was such a joy for me to create I love music and I love pulling together music and so I created her this playlist and I've actually since gone on to really build that playlist and in my own understandings of endings I found all kinds of tracks music that speak to the different aspects of endings and that really can support you to let go and to um to cry and to honor and to respect

and to move tenderly and all those things that are really important. I think I'd love to pull a few of those together for everyone listening because I think as we are coming to an ending, you may enjoy having some songs to let go to. So we'll share that in our Spotify playlist on Red School. Yeah, good movies to cry to are another way. Yes. What are your favourites favorites I don't have favorites I'm not somebody who watches a movie more than once really no never do anything twice I'm trying to think of mine my favorite crying movies oh I know there's it's so sweet aid never cries but I know when he has a build-up of emotion he needs to release it because he watches the animated film up it's so beautiful it's essentially

about this couple who can't have children it is very uplifting and joyful but there's just this thread of sadness and he must have watched it 10 or 15 times and I'll look over at him and he'll be quietly sobbing while we're watching this film and I know I should just make it a sort of every every three or four months just suggest that we do it so that he can have his cry mental cycle poor buggerers can't do it oh that's beautiful and I get we'd be remiss to not talk about menopause

we're talking about endings and there are going to be many people listening who are negotiating the ending that is menopause yeah menopause is what can i say i mean it's death and rebirth i've only written a whole book about it what can i say well it's the end of your menstruating years let's just say that that's a big deal especially

if you've loved your cycle you know what I was saying about how the more you care and love something the harder the harder it can be to let it go yeah so that's yeah the end of your menstruating years I know when I was pregnant the loss of my cycle in the first three months in the first trimester was a huge grief and a huge disorientation for me yes so it is along with that end of your menstruating years is it's a massive signal that ending to the fact that oh I'm no longer in the young club because for a long time into your 40s and your late 40s you can kind of fool yourself you're in the young club because for a long time into your 40s and your late 40s, you can kind of fool yourself you're in the young club. But menopause is such a clear marker point of getting older. It's like you can't avoid it anymore.

And our bodies change, so it's ending of a certain kind of look. It's incredible, actually, on all sorts of levels. And so with that sort of physical ending, you know, of the cycles, the hormones changing, there's this psychological ending. There's a real sense of needing to cut and go and it is the end of a cycle the end of a cycling year so you go into the void that we were talking about and you have to remember that the end of a cycle the energy is at its lowest all the chi has been used up that was in that cycle you know has been used up and you step into an empty place of low energy and wow that's where in that empty space you are subject at an ending all your buffering falls away

because you're defenseless yeah you lose all your defenses you know that's why there's so there's so much feeling that comes up you know it's the ending of identities you've had that have held you that have framed you that have given context to your life and all those fall away and you don't have that anymore and you're just you're going whoa you know who am i what am i you know and because no one talks about this until now uh yeah um it's profoundly shocking but of course just like the pre-menstruum prepares you for that void just before you bleed the autumn is preparing you for endings actually the lead up to menopause is preparing you for that cut and um it's a preparation ground which is why I'm not really comfortable often. You know, we're quite specific in how we describe the stages of menopause because that lead up time is a sort of country of its own.

But I don't like getting mushed in with menopause because menopause is so singular. It is so distinct and extreme, strong. And that cut and that emptiness you go into. And you sort of flirt with it, a bit like you're flirting in autumn with it. But, but, but, but, cycle awareness profoundly prepares you for that death moment that ending at menopause and i have to say you know because i had been rooted in cycle awareness menopause was not a trauma for me there were challenges you know i faced all sorts. I had to really question who I was in my life and so on. But it was all, it felt, I felt inside something rather than being slapped in the face by something or, you know, completely disabled.

Yeah. So cycle awareness. One of the things we've heard lots of people say and certainly this has been my a lot of people in menopause have said how they felt confronted or that they've really turned to face their own death and that's something I felt often at the end of my cycle is uh it's sort of like the delusion of my invincibility falls away and I suddenly go, wow, I'm mortal. I'm going to die. And it gets really real. And I've had lots of death dreams at the end of my cycle. So it seems to me as if when we come to endings, big endings, it opens up this portal to all the other losses and all the other potential endings in our life. I think that's why

endings can be so strong. That's a bit of how I've made sense of this profound existential loneliness that I feel sometimes with endings is that it almost feels like it's not just of the here and now and it's not just mine it feels like the human experience it feels so archetypal and so big. And when I say all that out loud, it kind of makes me appreciate for people in menopause, but for anyone going through any kind of ending, just how big the exposure is that we go through and actually how much our psyches are having to go through. I was feeling such compassion

for people on my drive home at like the sixth petrol station that I stopped at on my way back from the wedding. When I was really with my existential loneliness, I looked around at all these people and I thought, oh my goodness, all the stuffing down that they're having to do you know for all the times that they're tapped into this existential loneliness and they don't know they don't know that it's okay and that it's as it's meant to be and that it's that's it that it's meant to be it's meant to be that is so important sorry Sophie you come in I'm thinking of what happens when people get to the end of their lives and you know there are those five biggest regrets of the of the dying and they're so simple so simple they're just about I wish I'd been with the stuff of my life

basically yeah and perhaps because of this which I totally relate to, Sharni, that existential fear and dread that we feel at the end of things, we avoid it as much as we possibly can. And then we get to the end. Yeah. And we go, shit, I wish I'd been present to all of it. Exactly. So this is what I think our cycles teach us profoundly. Back to my comment about how endings make endings, good endings, endings well, make life sacred. Yes. Because every time we go through an ending and we pause and we look back

and we honor what has been. It's like we suddenly become awake and alive to the awesomeness of life, which it's so easy not to notice, but there's something about that reflection that makes everything so real and so precious. I can't remember where I heard this, but this is so true for me, that an experience isn't an experience until you've reflected on it. Nice. And, yeah, it's like that layer is so important, and I would possibly even use the word more like acknowledged, yeah, it's like that layer is so important.

And I would possibly even use the word more like acknowledged, celebrated experience. Yes. Well, speaking of ending things sacredly, we need to practice what we're preaching right now by somehow ending this conversation. I think what I feel moved to ask is, you know, what is something, we'll all have our own ways of doing this. But I'm curious for me, so I'll ask it. What's something that we can do whether it's in the dissolving smushing moment of autumn or in the void or when the bleed comes what's something that we can do to acknowledge the ending as the cycle ends to bring that sacredness alive and to harvest the gold and the richness that's what we said earlier give space just give

space and there isn't actually for me almost anything to do it's it's actually not doing it's just having space to be in the emptiness and then perhaps to feel whatever is there you know whatever feelings are coming up but it's just to give it its due mine is similar in that for me it's all about being with the feelings that i'm having and what's so beautiful about that is the grief and the loneliness that I feel for me really reveals how much I love and care for something. So those two things go hand in hand for me. As I feel deeply, I'm tapped into my heart and I'm really connected to how much I value what has been and what I'm letting go of really opens me to love so for me the feelings are the thing yeah would you need time and space for that

thank you you too this is the ending of our podcast for this year so we'll be back with a podcast about beginnings in January that's going to be a fun conversation wow you mean no podcast for a couple of weeks that Talk about throwing everyone into an empty space, Sophie Jane. I resisted it for a long time. Well, may we all feel the love. May we all feel the love we have for the Menstruality Podcast in this gap. And may we all share the love we have for it in the reviews on apple podcast oh i like what you did there

beautiful well see you all next year bye-bye thanks for joining us today just as a reminder, please do mark your calendar on January the 14th for the annual online free visioning retreat with Alexandra and Sharni, Your Menstrual Cycle, Your Oracle. You can take your seat for free at redschool.net forward slash oracle. Okay, I will be with you again next week. We're going to be exploring how to start 2025 beautifully with cycle awareness. So more about that soon. But until then, I hope you have a beautiful end of your year and keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.