The Menstruality Podcast - 197. How Your Menstrual Cycle is a Compass Leading you Towards Joy (Edveeje Fairchild)

Episode Date: May 8, 2025

Menstrual cycle awareness can guide us to create more rest in our lives, including a mini menstrual sabbatical each month to renew us and restore our connection to joy. Our guest today, author, poet and teacher Edveeje Fairchild has been a devotee to rest for her entire life, having been raised in a spiritual tradition that honoured the weekly sabbath. And this non-negotiable rhythm of rest has been one of the key practices that has formed her philosophy of joy as a compass for our lives.Edveeje’s first book, Joy as the Compass: Freeing Yourself from the Seven Activist Addictions has just been published. Today we’re exploring how menstrual cycle awareness is a vital ingredient to a joy-focused life, through the lens of our environmental activist work together, and how we applied menstrual cycle awareness and cyclical living within the reforestation non-profit TreeSisters to plant a million trees. Edveeje also shares generously from the midst of her menopause transition, which has included the trauma of the sudden loss of her beloved twin sister, as well as the devastation of her small mountain town due to hurricane Helene. We explore how her connection to the ancient trees and wild nature in the ‘Mother Forest’ around her have held her in this sacred menopause territory, even when life feels like death. We explore:What it means to be the ‘dream of the earth’, how our menstrual cycles can help us to reconnect our inner nature with our outer nature and show up in our full glory, on behalf of Life itself. How Edveeje used menstrual cycle awareness to create all the policies, procedures, internal operations and organisational planning tools at TreeSisters, and anchor the theory of menstruality in very practical ways inside an emerging international non-profit. How Edveeje’s discovered that her inner spring was her challenging hotspot in the menstrual cycle, and how this eventually led her to take a long sabbatical and follow the promptings of her menstrual cycle towards deeper joy. ---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 Mentoriality podcast. Thanks for tuning in today. You know, I love all my conversations for this podcast, but every now and then I get to talk with one of my soul sisters. And our guest today, Edwige Fairchild,

is definitely one of those. She's been a mentor for me for over a decade. And she was a real guiding light for me through my infertility journey. I love her and this conversation was a great joy for me which is topical because the theme of the conversation is how the menstrual cycle can be a compass guiding us towards our joy. Edwige's first book, Joy as the Compass, Freeing Yourself from the Seven Activist Addictions, has just been published and today we're exploring how menstrual cycle awareness is a vital ingredient to a joy-focused life through the lens of our environmental activist work together and how we applied menstrual cycle awareness and cyclical living and planning within the reforestation non-profit that we worked at

together called Tree Sisters to plant a million trees. Edwige also shares really generously in this conversation from the midst of her menopause transition, which has included the trauma of the sudden loss of her beloved twin sister, as well as the devastation of her small mountain town due to Hurricane Helene. We explore how her connection to the ancient trees, to the cyclicity of everything in the wild nature around her in the mother forest where she lives, have held her in this sacred menopause territory, even when life feels like death. So let's get started with Edwige Fairchild and how your menstrual cycle is a compass leading you towards joy. So Vij, welcome to the Menstruality Podcast. It's a total delight to be here with you today. Well, thank you, Sophie. I have so been looking forward to this conversation

because you and I can go almost anywhere on a dime. Yeah, we've taken, I should think, hundreds and hundreds of hours of river walks together. Well, me in Sheffield, you in North Carolina, speaking about these things over the many years that we've been playing together. So yeah, I'm curious to see where we go. But my longing really is to get into the details of applying cycle awareness to real life work and creative and activist projects which is so your genius so yes we're going to go all over the place and that is the aim but before we get into it I'm curious to hear what cycles you feel most connected to in your life these days and how they're influencing you today because I know you're you're in your menopause journey yeah well and Sophie you know what a loaded question um you know having had you know, having had, you know, that, and I will name it as a real privilege to have come into menstrual cycle awareness over a decade ago. You know, I know most, well, let's just say

many, because I think more and more women are coming into the awareness of it. But many don't have it as that sort of internal sacred guide over the course of their life. And, you know, unfortunately, what comes with that kind of privilege is then the loss of it. You know, I'm, you know, in menopause, what a strange, strange journey it is, you know, and no menopausal journey can be compared to another one. I think they're all unique. I think they're encoded by the divine. And we just have to, like a river, flow with where they take us. And I thought I was sort of in that, what they call that perimenopause dance.

I was quite conscious of it in my late 40s. And then I went about eight months without a cycle. And I thought, wow, I'm almost to that year marker. You know, they talk about from a medical perspective, if you've gone without bleeding for a year or longer, you can be pretty sure you're moving to the other side of menopause. So eight months into it, I bled twice, you know, in July and then August. And now I'm another eight months without a bleed. So you know what this tells me is I'm deep in, for me, what is very much an underworld journey with menopause. Because as you know, I was in that first eight-month cycle when my identical twin

unexpectedly died of an aneurysm. And talk about life's betrayal. Talk about the catalyst into the underworld. And I can only look back on it in retrospect and see that that kind of trauma and that kind of underworld journey was working hand in hand with the menopause journey. So, you know, I've had quite a traumatic version of it. And, you know, yeah, I can see while I do anything to have my sister with me, I wouldn't trade this journey that even at the end of the cycling years, you know, menopause is like the great capstone. If we've paid attention over the years and we followed our cycle, it should all be leading us, you know, to this sacred territory. So I'm hoping to hit that year marker this time.

I'm on day like 237. And, you know, that's really, on one hand, I want to say it's really forced me to turn inward and towards the lunar cycle. But I've always been following those. I'm very much a poetic, reflective kind of person. And so it's sort of just upped my game with the lunar cycle. And, you know, you and I did that book club together some years ago with Tammy Lynn Kent's work, Wild Feminine. And, you know, that framework and the paradigm that and the fallopian tubes and the cervix and the vagina, you know, was such an eye-opener for me. So that now that I'm in menopause, it's easy for me, well, easier to let go of that consistent cycle that comes with the bleed every month and really just drop into the prescience and the magic that's in the pelvic bowl. Because whether or not we've had a hysterectomy, we always retain that energetic center.

So, you know, I'm dancing somewhere between following the lunar cycles, sort of lining up the energy of the pelvic bowl with the lunar cycle. So it's sort of a layer within a layer. And of course, all of that is held in the greater layer of the seasons. You know, I really live according to the wisdom of the seasons. And that more than anything has helped me bridge this gap between regular bleeding and how the cycle has always guided me to being in this no man, well, no woman's land of menopause. You know, nature has been the sacred container that I can always rely on. Thank you so much for sharing about your beautiful sister. And as you know, I'm I grieve with you and I'm so, so sorry for your loss.

And I appreciate you naming her here. And I know the mother forest has been holding you, the mother forest where you you are where you are you know deep in your menopause and grief underworld time yeah that's a that's a living breathing paradox quite frankly yeah you know and i want to name the the mother forest and that phrase that I use so often comes from oral tradition of the Cherokee Confederation. And much of North Carolina and parts of the South in the United States were indigenously settled by a confederacy. The Cherokee were not just one tribe. And so they called this area, again, according to oral tradition, the Mother Forest. And it honored their sacred relationship to the land as the primary life giver. was there sacred hunting grounds where any tribe within the Confederacy could come and be safe and partake of the abundance of the mother forest, which is one of the most biodiverse places on

the earth. You know, most people don't understand that America actually has two rainforests. I mean, North America, in the Pacific Northwest and here in Southern Appalachia. So I want to name that I call her the Mother Forest in honor of the indigenous relationship that I feel like our menstrual cycle is trying to bring us back to, you know, that this connection between inner and outer nature can be so strong and such a voice of the divine feminine. So, you know, I just feel so privileged to be in a place that, you know, it's called a high mountain valley. So I have mountains, I have deep forests, I have rivers and creeks and meadows. You know, the only thing I'm really missing is the ocean and the desert. Otherwise, I feel like I'm surrounded by this sampling of the power of nature. And, you know, just by being out in her every day, you know, she has held me through such grief,

you know, not only the death of Raquel, but, you know, seven months later, Hurricane Helene came through Western North Carolina and completely devastated my small mountain town. You know, even the river and the creeks and the trees. I mean, there was almost no resting point for beauty. And there still isn't. I mean, we're still rebuilding. has really taught me how to really ground in that inner connection with life, even when life feels a lot like death. And so, yeah, I'm enjoying my irises and my roses that are growing, and I'm enjoying going through the forest and looking for the herbs that are unfolding and it it takes me out

of my grief it takes me out of where am I in my menopausal journey and it just puts me squarely on sacred territory which is our earth you make me think of that quote and I don't I'm not even sure where I've heard it now but you might remember that the earth is our larger body, you know, that we have this body that cycles, and then there's this larger body, the body of the earth that cycles, and I'm just seeing you as merging, merging with the, your larger body there. Yeah, that's, Sophie, that's just beautifully said, you know, and it takes, it takes years. It takes presence. It takes patience,

just like following our menstrual cycle. It takes a certain presence and a patience to trust there's a larger wisdom that's moving through us and informing and guiding us. It's a long game. Yeah. So you just named some of these things, but you have been and are many things in your life. So as you just named Gardner, incredible Gardner, the things you grow, a student of herbs, you know, you have your apothecary there with all your herbs. You've been a teacher, you are a teacher, a nonprofit founder, a health coach. I think at some point you were a fitness instructor too, right? Yeah, yeah. You've had many lives. A homesteader, you know, what the space that you're building there with Ken is incredible. And the creator of a woman's nature school. I'm an author, as we'll speak about in a moment you've been a long-time mentor to me but you know

the identity that I locate most with you associate most with you really is poet and I feel that a good way for us all to get to know you is through this poem which is one of my favorite of yours the dream of the earth I slept on a bed of leaves falling from the sky canopy and I dreamt I was awake walking through the landscapes of myself until I was river, desert, mountain, valley and lake. I slept on a bed of leaves fallen from the sky canopy and I knew I was the dream of earth. And my question to you, inspired by that poem, is what does that mean to you today to be the dream of the earth? Yeah. Being the dream of the earth, it has a lot to do with a word we don't hear often,

which is glory. You know, and I have a personal cosmology and a belief that women are encoded with the glory of nature. And that as we as women step into our glory, as we fully inhabit our full potential, the earth steps there with us. And as we step back in shame, as we cover over that glory, as we let other people talk us out of it, there goes the earth. And so for me, being the dream and the earth is very much reclaiming that glory, not for my own soul's sake or for the sake of women's souls, but for our connection to nature, knowing that where the feminine goes, nature follows and vice versa. And, you know, unfortunately we look around and we have been the nightmare of the earth, quite frankly. You know, we have been that demonizing, pillaging, raping, dark, dangerous edge within the earth's evolution

rather than her dream. And to me, there's this shift of consciousness that is possible when we reconnect our inner nature with outer nature, which again is what to me primarily the menstrual cycle does. And so to be the dream of the earth, you know that the word wild is so popular and has been since Clarissa Estes wrote Women Who Run With the Wolves. And if you put an E at the end, W-I-L-D-E, for me, our relationship with the earth is wild and what that stands for is wise instinctual luminous daughters of earth you know that is our glory and if we will step back into feminine wisdom if we can reconnect to our instinctual wisdom you know that place in the body that knows what it knows and won't be talked out of it, then that's where the glory can surface. That's where our relationship as a daughter of the earth comes back center to our life. And so I think that's a long-winded way of saying,

being the dream of the earth is a vision I hold that we as women will wake up to one day. Wow. The place in our body that knows what it knows, that feels like a very menopausal sentence to me. I wonder about menopause now as the greatest unveiling of our glory, actually. Oh, I mean, absolutely, Sophie. Otherwise otherwise i mean when when you said earlier i love it you know playing the long game menstrual cycle awareness is how you play the long game over years and decades as you're menstruating to bring you then to that crown of destiny which is what menopause is meant to give us it is meant to to you, as you know, at Red School with Wise Power, to hand us the crown of our destiny,

to say, and for this, for this you were born. And to finally, with all of our broken wisdom, because life can be hard. The lessons we have to learn are not easy. But life will give us that broken crown. And then it's up to us what we do with it in menopause. And I think it can be reclaimed. You literally can't not be a poet.

Everything you say is like a line of a poem. Yeah. yeah I mean like you said that this path can be hard but your compass has always pointed very directly towards joy that's been in my experience of you as a mentor it's like you've kept coaching me back to, okay, look towards joy, follow your joy, listen for your joy. And you have written this beautiful book, Joy as a Compass, for all of us who, yeah, might feel too enmeshed with, immersed in the struggle of this life and need some you know a big sister to help us remember the joy of this existence and particularly in in the work in our work as activists you know whatever activism we're doing in the world and I'd love to hear a little bit of the story of why you wrote that book now you know that was, I imagine you're going to write a few books

for each, but why that was the first one that you chose to write? Well, you know, Sophie, I tell people I did not choose to write that book. You know, it chose me. And in the writing of it, it wrote me. You know, I began it knowing that, you know, I think many of us feel like we've got a book in us like we say one day I'm going to write my book I mean almost any woman I've ever worked with will tell me I have a book in me and I believe it's true I believe we are all walking living breathing stories that belong in the archives of humanity and so when when I finally decided, okay, this is the year I'm going to write my book, as I went through sort of that reflective process before you begin writing, and I just really sat with what are some of the truest things I know?

Not that I can cite, not that I can look up, not that I can research, not that I think will even be popular. What is it I know? And it was that experience in which the Mother Forest really began to speak to me through not just the metaphor of the herbs, but my apothecary upstairs, my living apothecary in the Pisgah National Forest, which surrounds my cabin, I began to really steep in the wisdom, the wise woman wisdom of nature. And so that's where this idea of root medicine and wild remedies just kept moving through me. And, you know, as you know, Sophie, you and I've had so many conversations around my, my rants, if you will, about how proud people are about being busy.

Like ask anyone how they're doing and they'll tell you they're busy and they're overwhelmed and it's like a badge of honor. And the soul part of us, the poet in all of us doesn't want to be busy. The poet within all of us wants to be attuned and in love with life and expressing that. And so little bit by little bit, this book just sort of emerged as a metaphor for how we heal the addictions of our modern culture through root medicine and wild remedies. You know, I like to joke with people, it took me six weeks to write the book and two years to edit it. You know, it really goes at my deep belief that we are here not to sacrifice, not to suffer, but that the axis of the world does rest on joy. And so this book is just one long dedication, if you will, to how do we manifest joy in a practical way? How do we name

the activist addictions in our culture that are keeping us repressed in a psychological state of ongoing trauma? And how do we step out of that into a new reality? How do we create that for ourselves? Well, cycle awareness is one way. Yes. Well, and that's in the book too, Sophie, as you know, you know, in part three, which leads towards sabbatical. I also go into what are the faces of sabbatical? Like, how do we take this deep rest we're all longing for? And Laura Owen originally is where I saw the phrase, the Sabbath of women in her book, Her Blood is Gold. And when I read that phrase over a decade ago, the Sabbath of women, I was like, that's it. That's it. That's the magic key. And so in the third part of the book, I not only go into sabbatical, but I go into all the ways in which our menstrual cycle is sort of like a mini sabbatical. We get the opportunity to take every month. Everything you say, I have about 18 different questions I want to ask. And I want us to get to Tree Sisters next because that's where

we're really going to be able to see how we practice cycle awareness together to create these incredible results at Tree Sisters. But just before I do, I'm just curious because this comes up all the time on the podcast. Now that you don't have your menstrual cycle and that natural Sabbath coming around every month, what's your rhythm of rest

over these past eight months or 16 months where you haven't had regular cycles well you know as i said before that the larger cycle of being dedicated literally almost fanatical about what is the wisdom of each season and how do i embody it this year has held me for, I don't know, 14 or 15 years. So within the year, I'm always sort of going through what the menstrual cycle takes us through in a month.

And so I'm always looking for when and where do I need to prune back and slow down, which is the wisdom of autumn. Where do I need to prune back and slow down, which is the wisdom of autumn? Where do I need to just stop and rest, which is the wisdom of winter? And then where do I seed new dreams for the year, which is the wisdom of spring? And from that place of emergence, which is trusting the unknown at a very deep level. You know, we plant seeds in the ground and we don't see them, but we don't keep yanking them up just because we don't see the carrot top. I mean, we trust that that carrot is in there somewhere growing.

And then the wisdom of summer, which is how do we step into our full glory? How do we really let ourselves shine in a world that is so dark? You know, but beyond that, I've had the birthright privilege in that sense of being born into a conservative Christian family that kept the seventh day Sabbath religiously. Every Friday afternoon comes sundown through sundown on Saturday was a day of complete rest. It was a day to focus on joy and relationships and, you know, cooking amazing meals and having the tablecloth and the candles. And it was really a very sacred and romantic 24 hours of the week. And it was non-negotiable. It wasn't like, will we keep it this week or not? It was, we keep it every week. And so to grow up in that environment, and I've practiced the weekly Sabbath

for over 52 years now, it is so encoded in my way of being, like the menstrual cycle is encoded, that, you know, it's every seventh day, I get 24 hours of non-negotiable rest, you know, and that's what enables me then to move on into the deep creativity and the potency of the other six days. So even in menopause, nothing changes the Sabbath. You know, that's a creative principle founded in the book of Genesis. Nothing can shake that one. And, you know, it's probably been my saving grace through the grief of my sister's passing and the trauma of a hurricane is, you know what, even in the face of all of that, Sabbath keeps me as I keep the Sabbath. I knew that about you, but I hadn't understood that quite this fully that you are a devotee of rest because you have been for your entire life yeah okay let's talk about tree sisters because this is where we met

and this is where we got to really take the theory of menstrual cycle awareness and apply it to create something really beautiful could you tell the story of how you discovered this, these sacred practices around the menstrual cycle and why you felt called to bring them into Tree Sisters, our little sweet little seedling of an organization as it was back then with just four of us? Well, you know, I'd like to say I discovered them. I didn't. I was handed them, you know, on a silver platter. And it was the first Tree Sisters retreat, you know, and Tree Sisters had just been founded, you know, legally as a nonprofit, maybe six months before we had this retreat. And it was there in the Forest of Dean in Wales. And Claire, the founder of Tree Sisters, and I came to the retreat early. We were sort of creating the psychic energetic space for the retreat. And we were on a blanket next to this pond at Earth Heart. And Claire said to me, have you ever seen this? And she handed over at that time, Alexander had written this little spiral bound book called Woman Quest.

You know, this is before Wild Power, before Wise Power, before Red School. And she said, I'm interested in what you think about this. And Sophie, I completely inhaled that little booklet. And I looked at Claire, I was like, this is it. This is the Holy Gra, the chief operations officer. I said, will can do it, go for it. And that's all I needed, Sophie. You know, I went from that initial introduction to looking at Tree Sisters as a living, breathing example of what is it if the internal operations of an organization can be in full alignment with inner and outer nature. And it was one of the great privileges of my life to be able to take a theory, a philosophy, a cosmology, a concept like menstruality and say,

how do I make this practical in policies and procedures in an emerging and international organization and a nonprofit? It was such a privilege and a dream come true if you'd like to take your cycle awareness practice to the next level maybe so that you can implement it more into your work life like we're exploring in this conversation you might like to download the free red school cycle tracking chart it was this chart that helped me to finally understand my pre-menstrual rage patterns and start healing them and as avijay is going to share more later she was able to compare

her charts to understand her own challenging hot spot in the cycle in her inner spring so you can download this chart for free at redschool.net forward slash chart. I just want to pause around that moment of inhalation of WomanQuest. Same thing happened to me when Claire handed me the book. But it feels really important to name that there's that moment of knowing that happens for each of us. I imagine for each person listening to this podcast right now, they had this moment of, of course, of course, there's wisdom in my cycle. Of course, there's wisdom in my cycle of course there's wisdom in my womb and I just I just feel called to name that that this we all have that beautiful moment of awakening and knowing I had

it in east west books when I picked up her blood is gold that you mentioned earlier Lara Owen of just of course of course and it just makes me so grateful that we're having this conversation and we have this podcast and everything that you did at tree sisters it's yeah it's a it's a long time coming the the real like spreading like wildfire of this of this intelligence through all areas of life and particularly in our work and our creativity. Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, a long time coming, but a strong time coming, you know, that the, the deeper a tree can root, the more it will be able to withstand. You know, I see here in North Carolina, the trees that were only superficially rooted, you know, were just swept over. It was the trees that took a long time growing, that rooted deeply in the earth that are able to withstand. And so, you know, this emergence

of menstrual cycle wisdom, to me, it's like a great and mighty oak tree with deep, deep roots. Yeah, and deep roots tended by the indigenous cultures and peoples who have long known this and had these teachings in these ways across the planet. Yes, yes, yes. Okay, so Tree Sisters, you said, let's bring cycle awareness right into the heart of the organization. So what were some of the ways that you did that? and how did it benefit us as a team? Yeah, well, you know better than anybody. I did it because there was an amazing team to do it with. You know, it was one of those things. Claire had attracted to her a unique circle of women who were ready for that kind of experiment. And, you know, so all I did, you know, and sometimes it seems like the way my whole mind works is one living book club.

You know, here's a book, let's do a book club. You know, and what I mean by that is we each read it and have our experience of something and we bring our individual wisdom. And so the wisdom of the book club becomes greater than the individual. And so as you may recall, you know, first we had some conversations, we got team agreement, like, oh yeah, we'd love to do this. And to me, you know, that's part of the face of the

patriarchy is always telling people and organizations and nations and countries what they ought to go do instead of saying, what shall we do? What wants to emerge here? And so it was, you know, being with a priceless circle of women who saw the, not just the benefit, but the gift it would be if collectively we could bring this wisdom, the wisdom of your pelvic bowl, of my pelvic bowl, of Claire's pelvic bowl, of our cycles to the table. And, you know, I have to say at that time, I have to really bless the work of Miranda Gray. When I read her first book, I think it was Red Moon, I think it was called. And I found it on the shelf at Earth Heart and I almost dropped it because it was so, to me, woo-wooing out there.

I was like, oh, my Christian grandmother is going to turn over in her grave if she knows I'm reading this. You know, it just felt like such an edge, a dangerous edge for my psyche to go to. You know, and yet I, again, as you're saying, like we all have that moment, it was like destiny took my hand and said, you've got to read this book, whether you're afraid of it or not. And I think, you know, it, it hit for me that, that part of our psyche of the feminine, where we were burned as witches for this kind of wisdom. Yes. And so while I'll say my first experience of Miranda Gray shook me to my foundations, the second book, I don't know that it's the second one she wrote,

but the second one I came across was called The Optimized Woman. Different kind of vibe, right? Yeah, totally different kind of vibe. And what I loved, she was going right where I had gone. Like, how do we take this mystical, cosmological, feminine wisdom teachings and how do we make it practical in the world? And so I said to the team, hey, check out this book. Why don't we do a book club? You know, and we read the book together

and we followed Miranda's advice and we began to slowly co-creatively redesign how team planning worked, how the structures of our week went. I mean, as you may recall, you know, we even had that collective map so So we'd know what day everybody was on every team meeting, we checked in with what day are you on in your cycle? And what does that mean to you? And so we could orient that week's planning around, okay, if Sophie's on day 23, we know Grumpy Gertrude is in the room with us. And she's supposed to be doing this particular piece of work. But you know, that's just not going to work doing this particular piece of work but you know that's just not going to work with grumpy gertrude so let's see if rita can do that piece and we would

shift things around to try to accommodate each other to get the overall work done in a way that worked with our internal cycles so to me that was the real brilliance around team planning of our cycles. And of course, every week, it was whatever the moon cycle was, was the theme of that week's team planning. Because we looked at the unfolding of the organization through an annual lens that could be broken down into the seasons, that then could be broken down into the lunar months. And then the menstrual cycle naturally fit in that organic pattern. Let's get to that seasonal planning and lunar planning. Thank you so much for jogging my memory here. Like, my memory is so bad. And I have to just hope that it's because I'm a very present moment person. Or maybe like, I'm 43 now so I've got the perimenopause thing going wow it's beautiful to

remember it yeah I forgot how we reorganized the work depending on what was needed by each by each woman and we also had a policy of a day of menstrual rest that was for our own personal rest but also for us to dream for the organization because we were working in a massively co-creative emergent way where and it's messy and a little chaotic at times a little bloody shall we say whoever you know whoever had inspiration they could bring that inspiration to we were we were circular in so many ways so often we would dream something in those menstrual rest days and it was such a so meaningful to know that I could contribute not just with my productivity and my creativity and my hustle which I was very had ingrained very deeply in me at that point

but also that I could contribute through my rest and my dreaming yeah you know and that I want to give honor to you know that is very much a principle of the Cherokee Confederacy. You know, many people don't understand the Cherokee were matriarchal in nature. You know, women could serve on the war councils. Women chose whether they wanted to put their husband out of the dwelling. You know, divorce the children stayed with them the Cherokee people were very patriarchal and they looked to the wisdom of the bleeding woman and her dreams you know so there there's a thing we came up with in Tree Sisters that was new under the sun the genius was putting it all together into a functional organizational structure. And we should tell the Grumpy Gertrude story a little bit. That's your story to tell. And I have told it on the podcast before, but since you named her, you were there at the naming of her. Let's tell it again. So one of the things I was really working with at that time, because this is, is this like 10 years ago? I'm really not very good with time, memory or time. Oh, this is probably 2014. So 11 years

ago. Yeah. So I was very much immersed in my premenstrual healing journey at that point. Deep grief, rage, rage mainly. I was just outraged for four or five days a month just fury pouring through me because a lot was coming up in my pre-menstrual phase from from past trauma that wanted to be healed and I you know menstrual cycle awareness has helped me so much and now it's my and has been for many years my happy place in cycle. But what we clocked was when I was showing up to team meetings on around day 23, but anywhere from day 21 to 24, I was bringing an energy of fire that could very easily become criticism, disgruntledness, frustration, just not really a team player, let say on those days but we clocked that if we

you clocked if we brought some humor to it that we could say in a warm-hearted way okay let's give her let's give her a name grumpy gertrude she's here so that means Soph needs some space. She needs some, some love and some care. And she'll be back. But just for these days, she needs some space. And it was, I mean, I can, it's like I can hear those listening who struggle with premenstrual times and really struggle at work in those times. What an immense blessing that was for me it brings tears to my eyes to be able to be myself without shame with all those messy unkempt difficult emotions and to be held by the circle of the team and met with some humor and good-heartedness it was transformational. Yeah. You know, and it's, I want to name, no pun intended, I did not name her Grumpy Gertrude. You did. I just said, let's give her a name. You came up with that. I'm like,

oh, that's going to enrage her even more. Who wants to be called Grumpy Gertrude. But yeah, humor went a long way. And I think every woman can relate to that part of her cycle, which is not always the inner autumn. It's not always premenstrual. You know, for me, it was always the inner spring, that week after my bleed time, where I went to that very critical and judgmental and hard place. And of course, that doesn't make any sense with the archetypal menstrual map, unless you understand, as Alexandra has said, if you've had a traumatic maidenhood, let us say, coming in through menarche, that that can impact your experience of that monthly inner spring. And so through that awareness and being able to, and I have to say this one, Sophie,

by tracking my cycle and seeing repeatedly, like you're saying, that rage and that destruction that can happen. I mean, we can not just unweave the tapestry of our life. We can just burn the whole barn down. When I kept seeing in my menstrual mapping that was coming up every springtime, I started noting in the context of Tree Sisters, what were the projects I was working on? Who were the people I was surrounded with? Who were the people I was surrounded with? Like, what was the overall environment or the ecology? I kept repeatedly finding myself in and I was looking for that connection. I was saying, okay, I'm not being destructive on purpose here. I'm not just trying to be an ass in the middle of a team meeting. My wisdom, the soul is trying to say

something and it's getting more and more desperate. What is it trying to say to me? And it was by looking back over, I think, six or seven months, I literally put all of my menstrual wheels together and I could name what was happening. And it wasn't immediate, but that insight is what led me to take a sabbatical from Tree Sisters. I realized there was not going to be a quick, easy fix of what my menstrual cycle was pointing me towards, that I needed some deep, deep root medicine. And so, you know, the wisdom of the cycle, if we will bless it and honor it and listen to it, will bless and honor us. And it will show us how to listen to our soul's truth. And to me, the whole point is to realign our life towards joy.

And so, you know, my menstrual maps, instead of, you know, recording my dreams or whatever, I use the emotional guidance scale, which you just Google that and you'll come up with like 20 of them. Some of them are quite artistically done, but in essence, it just maps 22 emotions from joy to grief. And so in that menstrual cycle, I started naming the emotion of the day. And if you look at a guidance scale, it'll give you a number for every emotion. Joy is one. Grief is 22. And so I literally just started adding up the numbers for the week and dividing by seven to begin to see my emotional pattern and to begin to connect when I am most joy-based. What am I doing? Who am I with? Where am I at my cycle? Versus when I'm seeing a whole lot of like frustration and

irritability and overwhelm show up. Where am I at? What am I doing? What's the overall ecology of my life at that moment? And, you know, little bit by little bit, month by month, it led me to make some radical choices that I have never regretted for a single moment. That is some serious menstrual geekery there. That's why we love each other, Sophie. We're geeks. That's next level. That was great.

I didn't realize that was happening. I love that. I feel like one of the fruits of the intimacy that we were able to cultivate as a team through practicing cycle awareness together it was a kind of magnetism like looking back there was something deeply magnetic about tree sisters the idea is magnetic can women come together from across the world to reforest the tropics you know when I first heard Claire speak about it I got shivers from head to toe and I burst into tears.

And Claire is very magnetic. The way she speaks is so evocative and provocative. of women until it was actually 200 000 or more of us around the world to care for this for this vision and something beautiful happened which i think we should speak about through the lens of the seasonal planning approach because that was an extension expansion an expansion of this, how we were able to launch our big campaigns. Could you walk us through how you developed that? Yeah, and I want to affirm, you know, what you're saying, the magic. You can't strategize magic. You can't plan for miracles.

You can't orchestrate life showing up the way that it did within Tree Sisters. And honestly, I believe it's because we honored the sacred feminine. We put life at the center of the organizational map. And, you know, to me, we never spoke of certain things. You know, I think Tree Sisters was just a cool name for gathering a bunch of women together. But at the deeper energetic level, we were invoking an archetypal energy of the divine. You know, when we think of monasteries, when we think of abbeys, when we think of the priories where women committed their whole life to a vision of the divine and working in partnership to support each other. And it was usually always in stewardship of a large tract of land. And so, you know, I would always in the deep places of my own heart acknowledge that we had summoned an archetype to the center of the organization that we didn't talk about publicly,

but was certainly present there. And so when you have a circle of women committed to the sacredness of life, magic happens, miracles happen. So I want to honor and name that is what made it possible. You know, the rest of our geekery, as you call it, helped support it, but it did not generate it. It gave it a structure. You know, it was not the river. It was the riverbanks.

And it's as easy and as simple as it sounds. You know, looking at, and what made it interesting is because Tree Sisters was founded in England. So the energetics again are already Celtic year begins in the autumn, not in the spring. It begins in the autumn, in the harvest time, with celebrating what has occurred and what has happened, the abundance of life. But then we go immediately into the energetics of saying, okay, what is no longer serving life? What needs to be cut back, pruned back, let go of? Where do we need to slow down, not speed up? You know, so the energetics of seasonal wisdom with the Celtic year is counterintuitive to our modern culture. You know, most people in organizations will begin strategic planning with how do we want to grow? Where do we want to go? Where do we need to get faster? Where do we need to put more effort in? The wisdom of nature says, no, where do we slow down? Where do we prune back?

Where do we course correct? Where do we let go? All in preparation for moving into winter, which is the time of resting and visioning. So from an organizational lens, we would reflect on our year in autumn and say, okay, what worked? What didn't work? Let's be ruthless, like with a pair of pruning shears. Let's cut the dead wood. Let's acknowledge what didn't work. And that created the space, whereas we moved into the winter months. Remember, that was the time we would say, if you're looking for that extended time off, winter is a good time to take it, because we're going to slow the organization down to like that primal heartbeat rhythm. Not like we're doing the, you know, the marathon race anymore. We're

going to slow down as much as we can. And so winter became that time organizationally with the board of directors and all of the team directors to vision into what do we want this next coming year? Not from a place of forcing and efforting, not from a place of strategy, not from a trending place, but from a what is our deep feminine wisdom that emerges from a place of rest. When we put life back at the center of our personal lives, we put life back at the center of the professional lives, which puts it at the center of the organization. And that's what winter was about. We did our board of director meetings. We did our dreaming into what could Tree Sisters be? What does it want to be organically if we follow what's emerging?

And so then that leads naturally to spring being a season of, okay, let's tenderly start to set some seeds in the ground, i.e. goals or objectives or outcomes. You know, and we would look at it through a tender lens like with tiny little shoots in the garden rather than through the you know mass market farming how many carrots can we get in the ground how fast it was more how do we let something grow in the dark all alone without trying to make it be what it doesn't want to be. And so through the course of spring, we would really note, like, what's taking off? What are the projects? What are the initiatives? What are the things being said in the network?

What are the suggestions that seem like they've got a life of their own? And we would grab hold of them, and then we'd put them in that nice little organizational structure people like. Boards of directors love it. Funders love it. But it was coming from a completely different place. It was coming from that organic soil of what to tree sisters as a living, breathing entity composed of tens of thousands of women. What does tree sisters want to be? And so following that, you naturally come into a time of summer where you just, you have more cherry tomatoes than you know what to do with. I mean, growth just happens on its own if you just give it the conditions it

needed. And so from a chief operations perspective, you know, my job was just to give it the sunlight, give it the water, give it the time it needs, and then follow where to build, build it in the spring. Well, we started to plan it in the spring, really build it out in the summer. And then in the autumn, we did this big campaign, which was so robust and full because it, like you said, it had been incubated in the dark and then nurtured through the seasonal flow and before we knew it we went from planting 4 000 trees a month through a small circle of donors to having hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of women actually people of all genders investing each month in planting trees so that we could start planting a million trees a year and to this day tree sisters I think is somewhere around the 30

million mark now which is very exciting because that's a lot of trees that our beautiful earth so deeply needs but that will always be evidence to me that this way of working is although it's slow and quiet and terrifying sometimes it's it's so fruitful it's so fruitful yeah I completely agree with you and we did follow the that organic wisdom and you know what I want to say now in retrospect, that's part of what led me to writing Joy is the Compass. That campaign also unfolded really in the midst of a lot of stress and a lot of overwhelm and a lot of forcing and a lot of efforting. It was like we had part of the puzzle brilliantly in place and what we didn't realize, and this is only from my perspective, we didn't know the seed we had planted in the ground. It's like if you plant,

you know, a carrot seed in the ground, you can expect within 30 days, you're going to be seeing topside stuff. And, you know, within one season, you've got your carrot. And that's great because, you know, you've planted a carrot. That campaign was like planting, from my perspective, an Aurelia plant. years to see its true above ground growth. It goes deep and deep and wide and wider. You begin to think it's dead and it's not even ever going to come above ground. But the Aurelia plant just takes a longer cycle of growth and maturity than a carrot does. And so I think we could have been even more successful if we had to understand those energetics of true growth. And I think we could have been even more successful if we had to understand those energetics of true growth. And I think we could have done it with a lot more joy and a lot more presence and a lot more sustainability. And for me personally, while we accomplished a lot, it was also at what price did we accomplish that? that. And if the whole world keeps trying to regenerate in this fast-paced, forcing and efforting kind of way, we're going to destroy ourselves. It's not sustainable. And that campaign

actually for me, Sophie, was the big wake-up call. We can apply a lot of wisdom. We can get a lot of things right. A lot of things can be in place and we can still be doing damage long-term because we're not understanding the energetics beneath what we're doing. And, you know, and that's what led to my taking a sabbatical, quite frankly. I could not continue that pace without clear cutting my soul. And I was the one on the team and, you know, and I felt like the black sheep to say, you know, and I felt like the black sheep to say, you know what, I think, I think this goal is beyond us. I think we are pushing it too fast and too hard. And we had set things in motion. We were accountable. People were

excited. There are a thousand reasons why we continued to pursue it. And I had to make that personal choice as a woman. And that's where our menstrual cycle will lead us to our personal truths in spite of what everyone around us may think and may feel, or even where their menstrual cycle is pointing them. And we have to be true to that still quiet voice. And that's when I started pulling back my hours. And that's when I said, you know what, I think I need a seven-week sabbatical. My nervous system can't handle this. And I could see the disintegration of my optimism and of my joy because of the pace of what we were moving at and trying to achieve. And so for me, that was the beginning of the real magic. That was life saying, okay, Vij, great theories, nice job applying it to an organization,

but will you be true to your own soul and live at the pace of your own soul? And then that's what led me to sabbatical and to what I think is my deepest contribution to activism, which is how do we ground our lives in rest and how do we root them in joy so that we are restoring this earth from a glorious and a potent and a sustainable place. Well, I'm very glad that all happened and that you listened so deeply because now this book has been born.

So yeah, how can people find out more about the book and connect with you? Well, I did a separate website for it. So joyasthecompass.com is the title of the book. Yeah, go there. I have some lovely gift offerings for when you order the book. One of them is a three-part retreat series called The Art of Sabbatical, which is really how do we bring everything, Sophie, you and I have just been talking about, how do we bring the wisdom of the seasons, particularly autumn and winter, into our lives so that we can begin to root them in rest and ground them in joy. So it's my gift for anyone who orders the book. It's a three-part retreat series. And there's also, oh, Sophie, I'm excited. You know, I've done a five-part

interview series called Walking Permission, which is with some amazing women who've made radical choices, you know, in how they're living out their activism. And so that's also, you can find that on the website. So the easiest way is just go to Joy is the Compass and just find your way through there. Hopefully find your way to the gift offerings. And yeah, I have to say, I still laugh and giggle every time I see someone send something about my book. I'm like, wow, my book is like alive and breathing in the world. Congratulations. And thank you so much for not just for the writing of this book, which I know was a, yeah, a giant quest. And I am so grateful that you had the ten the bold uh just yeah wild is the word wild wisdom that you have brought to so many of us um and to the tree sisters organization and for all the ways that

that's rippled out into the world and thank you for being the gorgeous mystic mountain poet that you are i'm so grateful to you personally and I'm so grateful for all of the gold that you poured into this conversation today it's going to be gorgeous for our community and I love you very much thanks for you I love you too sweet pea thank you so much for being with us today thank you for being part of the community that's gathered around this podcast and this conversation to put the power and the wisdom of the menstrual cycle and menopause right back at the heart of our lives i always love hearing from you if there's anyone that you'd love me to interview or any topics that you'd really love us to explore you can always email

me at sophie at redschool.net and we always really appreciate your ratings and reviews either on apple podcasts or spotify they really help other people to discover the podcast and this work so thank you so much to all of you who have left reviews we really really appreciate it okay 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.