The Menstruality Podcast - 219. The Rage, Grace and Alchemy of Menopause (Tanya Forgan)

Episode Date: October 30, 2025

For many of us menopause announces itself in our lives through some kind of betrayal. For today’s podcast guest, that betrayal came in the form of a dismantling of identity that provoked one particular emotion on a whole new level - rage. Our guest today is the brilliant trauma-informed embodiment guide, facilitator, and heart activist Tanya Forgan. She explores menopause as a series of portals which show us where we’re holding power and where we’re not. Her initial ‘betrayal’ phase of menopause rocked her to her core, coinciding with the pandemic and the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement and catalysing a dark night of the soul where she faced the harm she has experienced as a dual heritage woman in the UK. She goes on to illuminate the healing power of the repair phase of menopause, describing the rituals and community support that helped her to find the grace in the raging fire of the initiatory process. She shares what supported her to alchemise her anger and understand grief as the most exquisite expression of love in the revelation phase, and all she’s discovering in the visioning and emergence portals where she is exploring the kind of grandmother she now wants to become. We explore:- How cycle awareness helped to prepare Tanya for the dismantling of menopause. - What helped Tanya when she lost her trust in her body and in society, including her amazing nervous-system-regulating yoga bath ritual!- What menopause taught Tanya about the power of circles for creating belonging, especially when it comes to race, gender, sexual experience, ability in body, power and oppression. ---Join our menopause online course: Menopause: The Great Awakener---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.hardyTanya Forgan: @tanyaforgan - https://www.instagram.com/tanyaforgan

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, Alexander and Sharney, 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, thank you so much for tuning in today. So for many of us, menopause announces itself in our lives through some kind of betrayal. For today's podcast guest, that betrayal came in the form of a dismantling of identity that provoked one particular emotion on a whole new level, and that was rage. Our guest today is the brilliant trauma-informed embodiment guide, facilitator and heart activist Tanya Fogan. She explores menopause as a series of portals, which show us where we're holding power and where we're not. Her initial betrayal phase of menopause rocked her to her core, coinciding with the pandemic and the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement and catalyzing a dark night of the soul where she faced the harm that she's experienced

as a dual heritage woman of colour in the UK. She goes on to illuminate the healing power of the repair phase of menopause describing the beautiful rituals and community support that helped her to find the grace inside the raging fire of this. initiatory process. She shares what supported her to alchemize her anger and to understand grief as the most exquisite expression of love in the revelation phase of her menopause, as well as all she's discovering in the vision and emergence phases where she's exploring the kind of grandmother she now wants to become. One of my favorite bits was when Tanya described the daily nervous system regulating yoga bath ritual that helped her through her entire manopause process.

So let's get started with the rage, grace and alchemy of manopause with Tanya Fogun. Tanya, I'm so glad that I get to start my day with you. I'm really, really glad to be sitting with you. And I love talking to you anytime we get to do it. And so thank you so much for making the time. Thank you so much for inviting me in. This has been moving me all morning. And, yeah, I'm really fascinated by how something,

when it starts to get closer and closer, it starts to move us. So it starts to move me, certainly. Yes. And these are big, this is a big story. We're talking about, I mean, the story of menopause for everyone that goes through it, it tends to have some gravitas and some size to it. And the topics that we're going to be exploring today are big. And, yeah, let's dive in, but actually, at first.

Let's do what we always do at the start of this podcast, which is check in around the cycles that we're with and how they're moving us, how they're influencing us today. Yeah, I'm just going to take a moment, actually, just to tune in to where I'm at right now. And I notice as I do that already, my hand goes to my heart, so in connection with my heart space. So that's really a life for me at the moment. following the cycles of the moon, the waning moon at the moment. Heading towards the wane, so already there's a whisper of my ancestors, tuning into my ancestors, yeah, and tuning into my grandmothers, the cycles of my grandmothers, yeah, and the wisdom of the moon now.

That's my teacher, the inner cycles are very different, much quieter than they used to be now, at this point of menopause. Thank you, so beautiful, especially to feel the bigger cycles of our grandmothers and all that let that they lived in my sort of the promise that they hoped for the future that is that's the cycle that we're living and then we'll pass and then the next generations continue that to position ourselves inside those huge cycles is yeah grounding I feel and also the you know a question that's arising for me as you say that is what kind of grandma do I want to be whether my girl has children or not what kind of

grandmother do I want to be in society. So it feels like that would be something good to touch into it. Yes, yes, beautiful question. Where am I in my menstrual cycle? Oh, goodness. I'm definitely in the inner summer because I don't really know and that tends to happen in the other summer. So it's somewhere around day 12, 13. And I'm in a massive creative cycle personally. I'm just teaching a big course with lots of wonderful people and I'm just, I'm really inside the summer, my inner summer personally and then the summer of this creative process and it's demanding a lot, calling for a lot from me. And I'm so bloody grateful that I know there's going to be in autumn and a winter because it means I can give my all right now without being scared as I

used to feel of burning out because I know the course will end. I'll go into my premenstrom and then I'll have my some kind of shape of rest, which is always interesting trying to carve out when you have a five-year-old and you know you're working and all those things as ever grateful for cycles yeah yeah so grateful for cycles and for the for the privilege to know cycles yeah thanks for naming it as a privilege it's so true okay menopause your menopause journey you know when we first started chatting about you and i chatting on the podcast you said menopause the great unraveling i would love to talk about that what a fucking journey that's been let's get into it and you shared this morning i hope it's okay for me to share now that you know

you were moved to tears to reflect on it this morning um because it was big yeah the the bigness of it the the fire of it feels more like it's simmering now i'm not being burnt by it still got heat but the intensity of it feels like a memory now rather than something i'm standing in this moment. I'd love us to walk through the five phases because that's something that you've connected to to Alexander and Chinese teachings and through your process.

I'm just curious before we get, like, go back to the beginning where you sense you find yourself now. Visioning, being in service now. Well, actually, it's between visioning and emergence because they're not fixed. It's not like we go through this and then this and then with this and then we're there, la-la. Yes.

And productive. yeah cycles within cycles always yeah and it's not a linear process this menopause experience the stages are like a map of the terrain that can be cycled and spiraled around that's the sense i get from from hearing folks who are inside it okay what was happening for you in the time running up to your menopause process what was happening at the beginning of it so for me menopause was a number of portals that were open to dismantle me in many ways and the first dismantling was as a result of being on the Women in Power initiation and the Women in Power initiation that is no longer active in the UK it is in other countries but it was a process that was really inviting me to look at where I was holding my power in life and where I was not and at the end of the initiatory process, one of the founders, Elisa Starkweather, who is a beloved friend of mine now, so she stood with her full embodied eldership and her white hair, and she's spoken to

the circle, which I think there were probably around 60 of us in total in that circle, and she's spoken to the circle, and I can't remember the words, but I remember the transmission of we've got work to do as women. Where in this circle are our sisters of colour? What is going on in this initiatory process that I see very few faces of colour? That's how I heard it. I'm not quoting it word for word,

but how I heard it was a jolt in my body of, I hadn't even noticed that. And then the container closed. That was the last day. It was the last circle. It was the last full transmission. And I went home from that, you know, in a really long journey of how have I not seen this? And what I realise now that happened was it was opening a portal for me to start to deeply unpack what I hadn't seen.

But what I had experienced and what I had felt. And to do so was really challenging. because I didn't know where to place it for some time. But that was the first portal. That was the first opening for me. And very soon after, there was this like full experience of rage. It was like it just turned something on and then the fire started. The rage started to come and come and come.

And so my next portal, months later was attending the Red School Menopause training. As soon as I sat down in that circle, I'm right in the middle of this fire. I'm still bleeding, but I'm right in the middle of this fire. And so I was sitting in the circle etching. I was the last woman to check in, and it was a big circle, and I was etching in my notebook, the words rage with a red pen. Rage. I've still got the book.

And I wrote the words with such fire and energy that I actually. went through the paper and by the time it came round to me you know this raid was so evident and that stayed with me for the whole weekend and so when I started to learn about the stages of menopause it was really clear I'm in betrayal I feel betrayed by society or I felt betrayed by society it's quite nice to to look back now I felt betrayed by society I felt betrayed by society I felt betrayed by the spaces that for me could have been so deeply healing, but actually weren't in many ways. There was some healing, but then, you know, the knock-on effect was often harm, not feeling safe and not feeling part of something, feeling on the edges of something. And I believe so many

of us that come to, you know, beautiful circles that are held, have a variation of that story. but mine at that particular moment in time was through the colour of my skin. It was like, how did I not see this? So from that place, I was in an ongoing unpacking. And in that unpacking of so much what was presenting itself as rage, but actually was a deep well of grief of years and years of microaggressions, not feeling safe, not feeling accepted fully by the society that I was living in. You know, it's just like, oh, okay, it's all coming up.

Thank you, menopause. It was all coming up. And, you know, and often overwhelming my system, my nervous system, often there was, that's like, this is too much to tolerate. And then the following year, George Floyd died. And for me, that was a catalyst. to not being able to tolerate in the way I had before because not only was I in the soup of it the whole society, well it felt like it was a global wave. And then I think, and I can't exactly

remember the days, but I think not long after that, we were blessed with the lockdown. The lockdown started in March and George Floyd was murdered in May. Okay, so we're already in the lockdown. Menopause in lockdown. Well, menopause in lockdown, processing. With the Black Lives Matter movement surging, yeah. And I remember at the time, and we had a number of conversations around my experience, but all these childhood memories were coming up of, oh, I didn't ever have a doll that looked like me.

Oh, I didn't have tights that met the colour of my skin. Oh, or makeup, all hair care, all hairdresser, you know, and the list was just extensive. And part of that, what I now see as a betrayal and I was in the journey of repair was to meet the little one in me. And I bought myself a little wooden brown doll. What was your practice like with her? Holding her and allowing the memories to come through. And during lockdown, I had my last four bleeds. Looking back now, I can see that this strain.

and what was purging through me was really bringing my bleeds towards the end. You know, there was a sense of, I'm not quite ready and I'm ready and it's okay. My inner experience was that the bleed stopped earlier than they maybe would have if I'd have been more resourced at the time. But my last bleed, I remember lying out. on the wooden floor in my bedroom and there was a sense of I think this could be the last one I ever have and I free bled and I'd never free bled before and I met that met that last bleed with the yoga needra which is something that is a dear practice for me in my life and something I share often with

others and it was tender there was a tenderness to it and then it you know it took me time to realise and go oh wow it was actually my last one which was which was beautiful and I wonder how different the journey would have been to meet that point. And I'm deeply grateful for it now. You know, to be on this side of it, I'm like, wow, like that time of life, to be in the first portal of Elisa, to be in the second portal of the menopause circle, to be in the third portal of George Floyd and then in lockdown, it changed me. it recrafted my inner world completely there was a complete reorganisation within me of everything i thought

i was doing this in my hands i'm like you know my hands like wanting to restructure like yeah it's like tanya's moulding clay with her hands in the air yeah and on this side of it it's beautiful during it not so deeply deeply painful and in moments, the word that comes to me is frightening. I was actually frightened of the level of what I was holding. Yeah, it's a word that comes up a lot in these conversations is fear and terror. There's a word that comes up to. Yeah, there was a lot of that.

Somehow that fear and terror was held by rage. It's like when I was in rage, it offered a support. to be able to navigate. I was really angry. I was so angry. But underneath that, where the grief was, was where the fear like, am I always going to be like this?

Am I ever going to move from this place where these two experiences of my life, of rage and grief, are running the show? Yeah, it's full, full embodied dark night of the soul. My body was on fire. My thoughts put on fire. And so I was walking around like this human fireball of rage with nowhere to put it. I don't know where to take this story because there's no one that can meet me. Or at least that's what I thought at the time.

Yeah. It's interesting to hear the way you describe being a human fireball walking around. is my experience of you at the time was of like such grace so it wasn't really coming out maybe it was coming out in some places it was raging grace it was it was coming out but mostly internal mostly turning in towards myself

you know there was a lot of rage that was internalised yeah that as far I was wondering if it was going in because you weren't like what I what I saw you do was a lot of incredibly generous education, particularly for white women, around that phase. And the stories you were telling, I mean, I learned so much from you, and I'm so grateful to you for everything that you shared. And you and I had a good, like, consultation around my business at one point, and that was really incredibly helpful. And yeah, so what did the way to do inside you? Yeah. Well, it was excessive heat. Yeah. And I know.

know, you know, we talk about power surges, hot flushes, flashes, but this was more than a coming and going of a flush. I've experienced flushes. I still get flushes now. But I remember one winter sleeping on top of my bed and it was freezing. I was naked. The window was wide open and still I was hot. My body, there was heat, there was inflammation. And it wasn't until I started to meet that heat with the care that it's so needed to allow myself to be held and to express the rage that it started to move through and then find more of a rhythm of what may be seen as more of a healthy flush. It comes, it has a peak and it descends. And looking back, what was it that most helped you to express the rage? What supported you

that well the universe met my request of meeting brown bodied women of dual heritage i met a group of them and together we started to journey deep we started to unpack stories we started to speak of the rage roar out the rage um i was already in a community of shadow work So I had space, you know, again, a privilege, a blessing. I had space to bring the rage and be alongside others who were experiencing it to at similar phases of life or different phases. All sorts of people. You know, one of the, one of the beloved friends of mine that held it really beautifully.

Actually, two of them I can think of were two white-bodied men who are like, we get it and we don't get it. But we love you and we can hold you while you all. Yeah, without making it personal. Yeah. And to stay connected to the heart. And I hear what you said about grace. You know, to me, grace can come in many forms.

It can come in, you know, there is grace in the raw. Yeah. There isn't grace in the roar if it's harming someone. But there is grace in the roar if it's like, I can hold this. So you physically needed to let it move through, through sound in your body. Sound and movement and, yeah, an expression, a lot of sound. Yes. lot of what I can only describe as, you know, we spoke about the grandmothers, the grandmother's

sounds, the ancestral sounds, the birthing sounds, the birthing sounds, the wailing sounds, the grieving sounds. My personal observation of the heat in menopause for me is that it comes through as rage and grief, rage being the primary in grief. being the secondary, but when I now experience a flush in my body, the heat, the power surge, whatever we call it, I allow it to sound. I can be making, stirring a soup and there's a, wow. How can I let this have an expression rather than, oh, this is an inconvenience to me? It's like there's something that's moving, something that wants to be expressed. So I let it have its expression.

The word that arises for me and that is that with a roadmap, there could be a level of trust and with knowing, oh, this is the betrayal stage. And when the emotions are really strong, it's easy to forget, which is where the holding comes in to remind each other. Yes. And those that are on the other side, I call them the golden gates of menopause now on the other side. On the other side of the golden gates going, you're in it. I've got one of my, one of my best friends at the moment. She's in the betrayal, you know, the depths of it. What I see is the dark night of the soul and to be here and go, I know this place. And I'm by your side. Oh, she's so lucky to have you. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, I'm one of one of one human in the whole tapestry of life.

It's like, can we just keep offering that to each other? Because now I'm like, where, you know, where are my elders? There are few. That's where my life's heading now. I'm reaching out my hand asking for elders to come forward. Take me to that next golden gate. All the way to the big golden gate. The big D. The big D is coming for us all. Yeah. Again and again and again until the big D. So there was quite a journey. So as I said that I started off in this space with the dual heritage women that seemingly appeared out of nowhere. Thank you, universe. And we journeyed. We journeyed into a place of really exploring our own whiteness and our own blackness and our brownness and the places, you know, this whole merge of what had for many of us being confusion. Who am I

in relation to how I am in the world, to this body I've been born into, into my dual heritage. and where do I find my absolute truth in my own middleway? And from that, there was a portal open that invited in other women of dual heritage, mixed race, biracial identity to come in and meet us. So we opened the door to retreats, to gathering, to circle, to singing, to wailing, to speaking through our grandmothers,

and to really meeting ourselves. such a necessary part of my menopausal initiation. I remember sitting in the first circle and there was a room of us of brown-bodied women and my whole body took an out breath in a way that I'd never experienced before. It was profound I didn't actually realize how much I needed it until I was in that moment.

And I didn't have to explain because there was a collective knowing. And then from that space came a whole new opening with a beloved soul sister of mine, Jacks. And we opened a portal, another portal opened, called Blended Roots, where we started gathering women in collective curiosity, retreat days, rituals, grief, joy, dance, laughter, fireside. And it was stunning. When you were describing then that out breath that you took, I got shivers from head to toe.

I can't know that out breath. I can know my version of that out breath. What just suddenly flashed into my mind was, wow, what a picture of what belonging feels like. When you said, I didn't have to explain, they just know. And then that relief in your body, that feel that was such a vivid description of belonging. for me which according to Alexander and Shani and many who teach around menopause is like that's part of where menopause is taking us to a place of belonging inside ourselves and inside the world maybe and I wonder big question maybe impossible question but let's ask

it anyway what you might say to someone who really does feel lost and alone in their menopause experience right now and uprooted and that their life doesn't have that kind of belonging. How they could be with that, how they could move with that, what they could do. Part of the medicine is to surrender and be curious. And menopause, for me, I feel really asks for us to trust. I lost my trust in menopause. I lost my trust in society, in my body, in the people around me for a period of time. And I asked, and I asked, and I asked. Some of it was subconscious, some of it was

conscious. Lay the path out in front of me so I can see where I'm heading. Show me what needs to be healed. And there was no gentleness to it. You know, when I was in the heat, it's soul-slapped from the universe. What was left unhealed at the core wound, the core wound for me and for many, and I'd go so far as to say for most if not all of us is belonging will show itself in its own format for each person your flavour will be different for mine but at its core wound when we put the roots in it's belonging menopause will show us the path in its own curious way in its own sometimes brutal forceful fire-inducing way I was blessed to have menstrual awareness by my side. I was blessed to have life awareness, connection with nature,

to the cycles of the moon. And it dismantled me. And still it dismantled me. Yes. I'm going to pause the conversation with Tanya to share an invitation with you because tomorrow is the last day to join Alexandra and Sharnie for this year's Menopause, the Great Awakener course, which explores the five phases of the psychological and spiritual initiation of menopause. The program restores the deep spiritual meaning of menopause as a holy initiation designed to deliver you home to your true self so you can meet it as an awakening with dignity. It's a six-week online journey which combines deep teaching audios, live gatherings for exploration and learning, intimate circles for sharing, practical tools for

navigating what's arising in you and guided processes to connect with the spiritual and evolutionary potential of menopause. Here's what Danielle shared about her experience of the course. The huge insight and emotional shift are received from the Menopause the Great Awakener course is that the chapter of menopause is just as sacred as menstruation. When this insight landed, tears of relief rolled down my cheeks. I can now look forward to menopause as a spiritual practice and I'm intrigued about the woman that will emerge from the other side of it. If you want to join the course, please go to red schoolmenopause.com. That's red schoolmenopause.com. Okay, let's get back to the conversation with Tanya. So we've explored some of her experience of the first two phases

of menopause, betrayal and repair. And now we're moving on to the third revelation. The next phase that Alexandra and Shani speak about is Revelation, and I feel like we're in the territory of Revelation already, speaking about your work with Jax's and blended roots and everything that was revealed to you and to the community that you were with in that work. But I'm curious to kind of track your calling, your sense of what you're here to bring and share and be. and how menopause catalyzed a new expression of that what I came to realise over time was as we said what was my flavour

for this dismantling my flavour was through race through my own lived experience in journeying deep through within that it opened me up to looking at the other places in life where people didn't feel a, or didn't and don't feel a sense of belonging.

So it opened the doorway, another portal, just like this next portal opened around gender, around lived ability in body, around our sexual expression, class, where we show up in spaces of power and really to start to explore, well, through my own journey of the place that I had experienced depression to where I might be oppressing in society. And this is lifework. It continues and it will continue to the day I die. And at its core is belonging again. Where I didn't feel a sense of belonging and I met that so deeply in myself, I could then open a wider window to see other people's stories and in that to create a deeper sense of welcoming in my work. So in doing my own work, then opened me up to the work for society, for the collective.

What does it look like for me to bring all of the gifts, actually, the gifts of the dismantling to expand my awareness into society? But how can the spaces I hold be more and more welcoming for people to come to? Not just as an idea, but as a practice for life. so the spaces that I hold are ritualistic it gives meaning for life it gives presence for life it gives a structure and emergence for life

and a love for life so I hold circle spaces grief rituals part of this journey was to go and become an apprentice with Francis Weller oh wow I didn't know you did that wow it's amazing yeah and to continue Francis opened another door

to really explore how to hold grief and something that I was taught through him. And through him, I say through him and part of his teachings was through Maladoma Some was to really start to see grief as the most exquisite expression of love. And that transformed my own spaceholding and my own connection with my heart, My own inner tagline mentor for this life is how do I, we awaken our hearts more? Some of that is in the trenches, unpacking our unconscious bias, looking to the places where we might harm another, looking to the moments of conflict and to learn and unlearn. And part of that is to really explore how to have the courage and to be with the vulnerability.

enough to actually love each other, beyond difference. Very deeply needed in these times. Yeah, very deeply needed. Well, I'm glad you're here and I'm glad you're doing that. Thank you. I'm glad I'm here. I survived. I survived.

And I feel my heart activated alive, you know, I feel my heart activated alive, you know, listening, bubbling with you. And it's something to do with the pauses that you take between your words and the space and the including. There's, you know, you're transmitting something, Tanya. It's palpable for me. It's delicious. Thank you.

Yeah, I imagine our listeners can feel it too in their way. I have two more questions. Let's see. Three more, actually. I wonder if you can remember a ritual that helps you in the midst of the darkest parts. Mm, yeah, straight away. So clear. My bath ritual, followed by my massage ritual, followed by my Nidra ritual. So water for me holds my body, invites me to release to be. It's deeply regulating for my nervous system. It's a grounding. So I take a bath every day and I know that is an absolute luxury. Good. with salts and lavender and I immerse myself in the water.

Often I will do my yoga practice in the bath. Oh, God, I've never heard that. I love it. I highly recommend it. Try it. It's beautiful, but I will take my practice into the bath to be held by the water. To me, feels like I'm being held in a womb. Yes. And then to massage, this time of year, we're in that autumn, winter is beautiful sesame oil.

in my life many, many, many moons ago, I trained as an aromatherapist, so I love scent, I love oils, I'm in love with plants and so, you know, sometimes there'll be nature that makes its way into my bath as well, some rosemary, if I'm feeling tired and want to be energized, lavender to rest, but to have that space as sacred, that is my space where I go and, you know, As soon as I hear the taps run. It does something to your body just to hear it beginning because your body's like, because we're animal, we're animal. And like the animal of our body needs to know that it's safe.

And like I'm just imagining the taps turn on your body. It's, oh, okay, we're going to our place. Yeah. Ritual can take many forms. There's something about a collective ritual that is stunning. It amplifies. and there's also something so deeply needed and nourishing for our own individual rituals and for each of us again it will have its own flavour.

Oh, so good to hear. I relax. I relax hearing you. And even like for those listening, even if it's once a week, like a 10, 15 minute moment to ourselves, like that is non-negotiable, isn't it? That's what I hear again and again. In menopause, it's like carving out some space and time. And feet on the earth.

it can be one minute, feet on the earth, feet to the soil, or even better still, getting down onto your knees and smelling the earth and the sweetness of the soil is a beautiful practice to have. Yeah, I was digging up my potatoes the other day. Just like, oh, this is such a great moment every year. It's like dark, brown earth and these little gold balls just come out. Like, what? How did this happen every year? How does all of this happen? How does all of that happen?

All of this. It's magnificent, isn't it? Utterly. And you actually touched on something there for me, which is awe and wonder. It's a game changer to find, even in the depths of the dismantling, to remember awe and wonder. Poetry has done that for me in my darkest times. There's that poem by Rilke. And if the world has ceased to hear you, say to the silent earth, I flow,

to the rushing water speak I am What would you say is coming through for you now in these visioning and emergence phases that you're finding yourself in? That's a beautiful question and what I'm with as you ask that question is I have an image of like a bundle and in that bundle are all the gifts that I've gathered

through this process and way before like my life bundle but all the gifts that this say process but this initiation of menopause that still works me but it works me much more gently and if I look into the bundle what I see is the healing gifts. and potential and possibility and life force energy of circles. For me personally, being in circle with others, in presence and love of whatever is alive, be it in the soup that we swim in or individually, is a way of really meeting ourselves and each other in this life.

Otherwise, what are we doing? Why are we here? Are we here to bumble through and get to? to the end and say, I wish I had, or to really awaken to our potential, our possibility and our love of each other. And for me, that's the gift that I've received personally again and again from being in circle and that I breathe out into the world now. And each circle that I hold has a different flavour. You know, maybe a grief circle. It may be a circle for healing and reparation across difference.

It may be a restorative circle where we get to share another love of mind, the practice of Yoga Nidra and restorative breath work. It may be that we're, you know, just in the presence of life and what's alive without having any intention as such other than to see what wants to breathe us alive in that moment. I've also been holding some circles to explore how we navigate conflict with grace so needed. And within the circle, the circle is the me. It's like this the circle has been my training school to be a good human and become a good grandmother and a really decent elder.

But it's also transformative for life. I mean, as far as I see, circles change lives. That's powerful menopause medicine. And it feels like it connects back to the theme that you've been weaving throughout around belonging. in circle space when I'm with others I get to see the places I don't feel a sense of belonging the stories that I self narrate when I was in a circle recently I was in Sweden and in a huge circle and I noticed the story came up for me around I just don't feel like I belong here I don't really fit here and I could feel it somatically in my body that my body just started to get

smaller and smaller and in the circle and through my practice I was able to notice it and hold my little one and hold my adult self and say this is not true I do belong here and bring myself in that space and I believe that so many of us have that story at some level that comes into into the circle space when we are in that space of presence where it can feel you know often somewhat vulnerable and there's not so much doing and busy and distracting the stories have space to arise and then they can be met in love. Can I circle back to the thread that we've been with was the beginning of your menopause initiation, the rage? I imagine experiences of being in circle where that rage could be met perhaps. Yeah, been held beautifully in rage,

actually, really, really beautifully in rage. And I've had many, many experiences of meeting the edges of my own rage from a place where it felt that it was all-encompassing, that I was sinking in the rage, to actually being able to use this rage as a power for life. Wow. To alchemize the rage and, you know, the things that have created this energy are powerful. and to use the rage to heal and not to harm. And to find, again, I keep coming back to the word of grace. It's like, how do we find grace even in the rage?

Not a question. You know, and it might look really messy. It might look like absolute chaos. And through that is the possibility for transformation and for release and to awaken our hearts even more. and to find the truth it's so suppressed in society and as I look certainly in the UK rage comes out sideways it's it's not clean rage and that's fine you know it's fine to bring that rage that can come out sideways in a held space but it's harming a lot of people yeah it's

rising in the in the UK right now in time yeah with the different kinds of far right process that are happening and the St George's flags that are flying that I just want to rip down, but then I guess that's coming from rage to, yeah, it's like how to, like you said, how to alchemise the rage? I want to say, Tanya, how do you do that? But I think that's like, that's the work that you've been doing, isn't it? Like, it's multi-layered for all of us. And actually, I'd share something with you. So I have a practice around the flags at the moment, because there's certain streets near me that there are a lot of flags. And I see this, it started off as, this like irritation and just me noticing the level of suffering that was arising from that

and actually now starting to see the flags as as a as a form of oh I wonder what the person that put that flag up was going through what lens they're seeing through and how that can have the light of love shine upon it to bypass it and you know make it all lovely and pretty and put a bow on it, but actually to realize that's a human with their stories, you know, I see a lot of fear. Difference and judgment of difference at its root is fear. Somebody's going to come over here and take something that's mine. Look like this and so I need to get you as far away from me as possible. Your lived experience is not right.

So I need to walk away. You know, all of these, at their root of. it's fear. Which brings us full circle back to, yeah, the beginning of the conversation and the beginning of your menopause process. It feels like, and I can feel the deep, deep, deep, deep work that you've done to be in this place now to be able to ask those questions, huge questions that have, that holds so much promise in terms of creating belonging in a world that's feeling more and more

fragmented. So I know you're doing lots of, you're doing lots of belonging work, lots of circle work. Can you tell us a bit about what you're doing and different ways that people can come and connect with you if they're loving, hearing you? So there is a sentence that walks alongside me now in life, which is to awaken the heart of humans. And that has to start with me. and that's, you know, the journey I've been on. It has been, how do I continue to awaken my heart to love? And so the spaces that I hold now invite people to come in with the same inquiry. How do we meet each other?

And that may be through a conflict I hold embodied peace workshops where we get to share and speak about how we navigate conflict with grace. I love that this word is like a thread through this conversation. this conversation. How do we navigate with grace? Even in the moments that have fire and heat, can we stay in connection, even if we need to take a break and come back? And then I also hold restorative spaces where we just get to rest in between this work. We get closer to the land. Let the lap of the mother hold us. So lots of, lots of beautiful rest spaces with my beloved practice of yoga nidra. And you have one of those coming up in December around the winter

solstice. I have a winter solstice restorative retreat in Sussex which is divine. It's my favourite retreat of the year and it seems to me I've been running it for many years like the out breath at the end of the year. When the world gets brighter and noisier and louder just before Christmas. It's the 19th to the 21st of December. So it's right before Christmas on winter solstice. When the world gets brighter, the noise turns up and this frantic energy builds, we do something different. Turn the lights down, light the candles, get closer to the earth, share time and space together, light the fires, walk to the sea. It's right by the sea. It's right by the sea. And then next year there'll be more circles.

I have heartwise circles, which I'll be holding online and in the local community, which is a way of really just exploring the nature of the human heart. How do we learn to love more, inside and out? I also hold grief circles as well in the local community and grief book clubs, which supports people to really tune into the quality of grief. Grief to me is the most exquisite emotion a human can hold. And I say emotion, I'd say more an expression, actually. It's a beautiful expression.

It tells us how much we love. So it all comes back to the heart. And then finally next year is a new circle support space for women to learn how to hold circles for others, to support in the awakening of human hearts. To learn together, to share together and to bring their flavour, their unique essence of circle holding and the transformation beauty of it into their local communities. To find deeper places where we can become the village, where we get to experience belonging and our love of life as well as the ebbs and flows and challenges and holding that. every every town village city needs a circle yes yeah there's a lot of talk and longing for

more community recreating the village and this is a practice that can we can call the village around the hearth of whatever you know whatever we're building and that's how we're weaving community that's how we can actively weave community in the world yeah absolutely and and devoted is the call for the village holders yeah yeah those women that are feeling the call to come in and to really step into a space that they're holding from a space of understanding across difference of what may show up in that space of how to find their courage, their truth, their love. So yeah, I'm really looking forward to it. It sounds absolutely amazing and incredible to feel the arc of your menopause initiation

and maybe that this is part of the fruiting of it. Like who knows? Maybe next year's second spring for you we'll see it's feeling that case it's heading that way certainly yeah thank you thank you so much for all of the all of the ways that you weave us together and call us together for the wisdom that you that you bring you know that was just so beautifully displayed in that flag conversation it's like wow yeah the wisdom place that you're holding yeah and and who are your circles for tanya who who is welcome in your circles my wish for the circles is that they open the doors to anyone that feels called and that anyone that feels that call can feel enough safety and enough welcome to step into the spaces and the work that I've

really journeyed with across my own experience of difference and really taking the time to listen to others and their experience of difference and not feeling so welcome has really deeply supported me to get more and more curious about what is it to feel welcome when you come into a circle space? What is the knowing of the person holding it? We said of the village holder, the one that holds that space. What is the knowledge of that person, of what can show up in that circle. And I believe a circle will only ever be able to hold as much as the person holding it. Yeah. And so it's really important for the person holding it to have some sense of difference. What could show up around our neurodivergence, physicality, skin color, race,

gender, sexual expression and more to have an understanding. I mean, we only have a certain amount of time in life to journey with this. This work for me is life work. Yeah. But the circles I want to go to and the people I want to support to hold spaces feel and know the importance of this work. Yeah. Of this life journey of understanding what it might be like for someone from a marginalized community to step into the space. And so that is held at the heart of the circle I hold and the, support of those that will be going out into the world and holding for others. And it's not to perfect. It's to know that we can't, you know, we can't always get it right and we will make mistakes and there may be moments of harm, but at least to have this

as a practice of being willing to listen, being willing to learn and most of all being willing to unlearn. And my wish for society is that we have these spaces where people can come together in more of a loving connection in more presence and those that hold the circles those that call the village in can take this beautiful gift of the circle anywhere in society so they're not just staying in the same places for those with the socioeconomic ability to afford them necessarily but they're also going to places where there are marginalised communities, perhaps into prisons, to support workers, into care spaces, you know, and I could lay out a whole list of places. I would love to see circles, but I think it's time to really change

the dialogue of who comes and who they're for and to start to expand the field of awareness too. These are transformative for all people. So can we start to, you know, open. open the lens now and shift this story. Beautifully said, yes. Thank you for everything you've shared and all the honey and all of the, yeah, the transmuting of the grit and the pain of this into the gold that you're bringing. Thank you so much. Of grit and grace.

Grit and grace, yes. Thank you, love. Thank you. Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you know someone who you sense would benefit from this conversation, please forward it to them. And if you'd like to help this podcast to reach more people, we'd really appreciate it if you could leave us a rating and a review wherever you listen to it, but especially on Apple Podcasts. All right, that's it for this week. I'll be back again next week, where I've finished the month of So we're moving back into menstrual cycle conversations. So I'm excited to share one with

Alexander and Shani next week. And until then, keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.