The Menstruality Podcast - 229. How Menstrual Cycle Awareness Can Help us Stay Engaged, Resilient and Resourced (Dr Cre Dye)

Episode Date: March 5, 2026

Today we’re exploring how the practice of menstrual cycle awareness can help us to stay engaged, resilient and resourced as we meet the challenges of today’s world. Our guest is the brilliant Dr. Cre Dye who is the Menstruality Justice and Inclusion Educator at Red School. Cre has served her local, national, and international communities with heart, mind and body activism for over twenty-five years as a mental health therapist, yoga teacher/trainer and university professor.Together we practiced deep listening to a now-famous speech from one of the most powerful voices of love in our world today, the Sikh activist and lawyer Valarie Kaur. In the speech she asks: what if this darkness isn’t the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb? In the emergent and far-reaching conversation that followed, we chatted about what it means to sit within the generative darkness of the womb, Valarie’s birthing and labour analogies and how they can guide us in dark times, and how the different phases - especially the premenstrual phase - of the menstrual cycle can grow our capacity to be with discomfort.We explore:The importance of using our imagination to romanticise, and how the menstrual, inner winter cycle phase can support us to rest and restore ourselves, so that we can step back into action with renewed energy and vision.How our premenstrual cycle phase shows us that we heal where we are loved, how to grow our capacity to be with discomfort, and how to hold the tension where there is challenge and difference. What we can learn from Black feminists like Toni Morrison, bell hooks and Audre Lourde about how to cultivate resilience in times of crisis, and how white women have a particular role to play in meeting the challenges at play in the world. ---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.hardyDr Cre Dye - @credyeyoga - https://www.instagram.com/credyeyoga

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 Sharnie, as well as an inspiring group of pioneers, activists, change makers and creatives to explore how you can, unashamedly claim the power of the menstrual cycle to activate your unique form of leadership for yourself, your community and the world. Hey, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you so much for joining us. Today we're exploring how the practice of menstrual cycle awareness can help us to stay engaged and resilient and resourced as we meet the challenges of living in today's world. And our guest

is the brilliant Dr. Creedy, who is the menstruality justice and inclusion educator at Red School. Cree has served her local, national and international communities with heart, mind and body activism for over 25 years as a mental health therapist, a yoga teacher and a yoga trainer, and a university professor. Together, we practice deep listening to a now famous speech from one of the most powerful voices of love, revolutionary love, activism through love in our world today, which is the Sikh activist and lawyer Valerie Kaur. In the speech she asks, what if this darkness isn't the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb? And in the emergent and far-reaching conversation that followed with Kree, we chatted about what it means to sit within this generative

darkness of the womb and Valerie's birthing and labour analogies and how they can guide us in dark times as well as how the different menstrual cycle phases and especially the premenstrual phase of the cycle can help us to grow our capacity to be with discomfort in challenging times. Cree, we're together again. This makes me so happy. So happy. Thank you, thank you for being here and you know how this game goes at the beginning. How are you doing on this cycle day? Oh, cycle day six. And I don't know, Sophie Jay, we probably talked about this in the past, but as I move closer and closer and through kind of like pre menopause or just this process towards menopause, it seems like my days, everything is like bigger. So a cycle day one is bigger than

my historical cycle day one. So my cycle day six does the same thing. And I love it because it's almost like it's saying, hey, you're so busy and we need you to pay attention. The small community within me is say, hey, pay attention to today. So I'm on cycle day six, which feels, which feels lovely. I'm not just like in the depths of just the feelings that I've been in. And I'm kind of starting to see, you know, maybe a flower or two or hear of woodpecker or something as I come into spring. Do you know how many animals I saw you?

yesterday just because I live in like a suburban area but down by a river I saw a stote which I've never seen a badger a kingfisher and a long-tailed tit and they're all like quite rare I was like wow yeah I'm in summertime and I'm in day 12 13 I'm not sure if I'm ovulated yet but yeah very different place to when I sent the message to you to say hey should we have this conversation because I was on fire on that day I was on day 22 and I was just like well we, let's go, let's go, what's the feeling? And now I just notice I'm in a really different place. And I mean, we're going to get into this.

This is the topic of our conversation, but how to bring our cycle awareness into our activism, into bringing our love for this world into action. And I feel like the different flavors of the different phases enable different kinds of good revolutionary love, which we'll talk about later too, to happen. And this is more of a soft, tender, gathering kind of energy I'm feeling with my activism today as opposed to the fire

let's burn this shit down kind of energy that I was feeling on day 22. All that's necessary, right? Even that place just before menstruation when it just feels hopeless, actually, is also part of it. Yes, yes, yeah. To walk us into the conversation, I've been thinking about this word polycrisis. I think it was first defined in the 70s, but it feels like it's become really popular in the 2020s, to just describe all of the interconnected huge challenges we're facing in the world.

So climate change, climate disasters, climate migration coming from those disasters, the erosion of democracy, the rise of the far right in Europe and other places, that extreme inequality that we're seeing. the wars, the genocides unfolding, and this is all on the heels of this pandemic that sometimes, like, it's like we forgot what we went through for years in the COVID pandemic. Like, it's all on the heels of that.

Mental health crises, poverty, like, there's a lot to face. And in this conversation today, when I thought, I need to talk to someone about this, I need to talk to Cree, and the topic in my mind is, like, how can our cycle awareness practice help us to stay engaged? with it is easy to want to turn away if we're privileged enough to be able to. How can we stay engaged? How can we stay resilient? How can we stay resourced? Are you up for that, Cree? I'm up for it. And as you were talking, for a second, my breath got tight in my chest because I know that

feeling and just all the things you started listening. And then I just took a deep breath because you know what the second thought, the first thought was what you share. And then the second thought, I was thinking, my sister, don't you know that depending on the people group, especially for people of color, the polycrisis has been here. Like it's been, you know, I just think about like the things historically that have been happening for indigenous people or like, you know, just islanders. And, you know, I was just sitting here thinking about as you were talking, like, for some people, this polycrisis has been here.

And it's now that people of just, European descent or white people are like, oh, wait, we're filling it too now. And so as you're talking, I just took a deep breath in. I'm like, yeah, it's been here. And because it's been here, it means that there are leaders and communities that have been working to create the kind of resilience that we're going to talk about here for hundreds and hundreds of years. Yeah, so there is new under the sun, sis.

there has always been some extreme poly crisis going on for some people groups. And the best thing we can do is to look towards each other and say, how do we handle this? Right. We look towards just how do we do this? There has always been violence. There has always been, all of these things have always been present. And if you think about, even if we think about global experiences, think about the first time someone came and, and affected the lands of the Hawaiian islands. You know, like this has always been, you know. And so it's just a matter of us saying, how do we navigate this and make sure that we, as long as we have breath, we feel like things can get better and having hope in the good and not necessarily having faith in the negative.

Yes, yes. See, this is why I knew you were the person to talk to about this. I'd love to start, if it's okay with you, to hear about what's been happening in your community over this past year, say, a couple of years and how you've been showing up and what's been calling you in your community to tend to where your activism has been taking you.

Yeah. So when I think about my community, the first thought, I was thinking just locally, the city that I live in, but then I was just thinking, sister, all the communities that I belong to, right? Like all the peoples that I belong to. And so locally, of course, it's a challenge. I'm here in the U.S. and I'm in the state of Kentucky. And when we look at, it's a big deal in the U.S. to talk about red states or blue states, right? It's a big deal to talk about if it's a traditionally Republican state or a Democratic state. And so in this state,

we have a Democratic governor, Democratic governor with a Republican state. state. So it's a beautiful mix of like really all the people and all their different thinking, right? And so locally, I stay active with so many groups. We have a group in the U.S. I don't know. This might be international indivisible. It's focused on no kings. We don't want any kings. And so a lot of the marches that have taken place have been organized. We have Sochi branch of Indivisible. And I've been active with that. And I'll take a breath as we go into this. just dealing with so much damage that ice has been doing, right? And I have to slow my breath down and breathe as I feel about what is happening where we have humans going and snatching other

humans out of their houses and separating families and taking away from families. And a lot of the work I do is supporting different lawyers and immigration lawyers who are working to support those families. and as best as I can step in as a therapist to support through documentation or through some type of communication of how this is harmful for them mentally and emotionally harmful for families. I've been trying to do that. But there's a long list of all the things that I'm participating in as I get to live in this life with other humans. And then there's the other side of that says while there are big things going on in the macro, in the micro, I make sure that I romanticize every moment of my life. Like I romanticize this breath right now and say,

ooh, that's a good breath. Oh, that breath was so good. And I romanticize in the moment, whoever I'm sitting with and just observe the goodness of them. So in order for me to stay balanced, I make sure that I remember like, just like my ancestors did in this moment, in this moment it is good enough of what I have.

while also participating in these bigger moments of this world and what are happening, what's happening broadly, you know, and globally, like you said. So I think I covered the question. You did so well. And that word romanticize, that feels so fresh. Because I think a lot about cultivating joy or reaching for hope. But that word romanticize, it's like, ooh, like we can bring the imagination Absolutely.

In anywhere, into any, into the darkest corners. In actuality, the imagination is always here with us. You think about how we misuse our imagination, where we start worrying, right? Isn't worry just a misuse of our imagination and creativity? Right. It's like we just, we put every single thing that could go wrong in front of us, right? But we can also imagine the good. And that's what I've been working with my students and humans that I get,

to work with as a therapist is can we have more faith in the positive than the negative? Right. So it is just the creativity. It's always here. And it makes me think, sis, about the feminine is the creativity. The poetic, it's always here. It's just we live in a society that will pull us more towards this rational mind and this patriarchal energy of just, you know, get in line, stay in order and there needs to be structured.

instead of the poetic dance. It's always here. It's just a matter of turning your head and saying, I see you, beauty. Yeah, do you know what I've been doing a lot that's been romanticizing my life? Is I've been writing down my dreams as soon as I wake up.

And I thought I was seriously misusing my imagination in my dreams because I thought they were all anxiety dreams because they were just the ones I was remembering. Oh my goodness, when I really track, there is so much creativity, so much life, fecundity, strange, weird, amazing things happening in this like imaginable landscape that we all enter when we sleep. It makes me think of to bring cycle awareness in right now is when we bleed and however

we're able to do it in our lives when we drop out for a while, when we drop our bundles, when we lean back into ourselves, we create more access, maybe more openness, more possibility for that romanticizing, that poetic, that imaginable. As you were talking, I just closed my eyes, sister, and I just thought about the moments, like you said, lean back, or when I just come back home, when I just pause into my body, right? And it's also just like being in the chamber. It's just like, I just close my eyes and I just be in this moment

to see what my inner landscape has going on. And I think about all those moments that my grandma, to tell me, just take a pause. Just go sit down for a second. Just have a moment with yourself. You know, like I just think and then I hear her accent, like her, the way her cadence coming out as I say it. Just like, just be still. Like, child, be still. Like go sit down. You know, like what our ancestors used to say, like how critical it was to just take a lean back and not always be in this action, go and movement, like the energy of just what we get in the stillness. Because there's so much calling to all of us to step up, to stand for, to pour our love into, to speak out for or against.

It can feel never ending like we have to keep going and to have that reminder from the ancestors of be still. And to have the reminder from our mental cycles, be still. I don't know who's quoted is, but be still and still moving. I always think about myself as being still and still moving. recognizing the harmony and the disharmony are necessary. And I think about like cyclical living. I think about the seasons, right, and how there's this harmonizing and disharmonizing

and the harmonizing and the harmonizing and how critical it is for us to be able to be a part of that process of the seasons changing, right? The moments of yes and the seasons of no and how the yes is so important and how no can be just what beings. becomes our way of knowing. And what if we don't participate in the yes? Like what happens and how there's an imbalance when we don't? So just I know it can feel kind of lofty as I talk about all these things, but I just, I just see it all before us all the time, sister. I see the possibilities. And as long as I'm breathing, I can always start over again. Like I just say that over and over and

like in this moment, as long as I'm breathing, I can change this. Like every single choice is a portal. Every single thought can be a portal for something different, right? It's just a matter of sitting still and listening, right, while also knowing that there is action and work to be done. Well, also knowing, so it's within. It's like the feminine being within the masculine and the masculine being within the feminine, right? And while also knowing that action is taking when I am in stillness, right? So it's just

bringing it all back together. The pendulum has swung so far one way. And we know that for some people, it needs to get so uncomfortable, right? I was just talking to my students yesterday about becoming a therapist and how people come to see you when it just gets unbearable. Like it's just they come when it has to get so uncomfortable, that's when people usually take action. Yeah, which brings us back to what you were saying earlier about some people groups in the world haven't been touched by the different aspects of the poly crisis, whereas there are people who've been right there at the core face of climate change for decades already. Of personal, right? Very aware of it, like when the waters are shifting. Like I just think about some of the islands and how, you know, people that live closest to the earth are the ones that become so aware immediately when we're doing, when we're making decisions.

because they live so close to the earth, they can see it. Just like we can see the sun rising in the morning, they can see the shift in the waters or some of the animals who have not come that usually come to the shore, right? Like if you just think about when we come back to Earth, Mother Earth is just like coming back to our own bodies, which is our earth, right? Yeah.

And how you stay away, you don't know what's going on until there's an extreme, extreme storm or something really big that's happening. Yeah. because we taking the time to be with it. And this is where my activism has called me for the last 20 years of my life is for Earth, for the trees. I know we share this love for the trees. What I never imagined, and I could have imagined,

if I'd been a historian, I was talking to my twin brother about this because he's a historian. I didn't imagine that it was going to be the rise of the far right in my part of the world that was going to take us away from all this powerful action we could be doing to mitigate climate change. Like we have all the solutions for climate change already.

I've been reading this amazing book that I've talked about on the podcast already, but what if we get it right by Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson, who's a climate scientist, marine biologist. We have all the solutions. We need to put our energy into them and our attention. And so where my activism has taken me lately is like, ooh, there's so much polarization in my country, which is coming from poverty, really.

You know, there's like one. and six kids in the UK are experiencing food insecurity. And so there's this big separation happening now where folks are thinking, because of far right parties like reform, they're thinking the problem is the people who are coming to our country. The problem is immigration. The problem is for these white folks, the black and brown people.

And there's this massive polarization happening. And all of my, I'm shaking, as I say this, because all of my heart is pouring into, how can we create togetherness? Like, how can we face these problems here in this part of the world around poverty and around inequality together instead of going into these splits?

There's this big March happening at the end of March. I'm really excited about it. I feel like it's going to be huge, like millions of us down in London. And I want to put a call out to anyone in the Red School community who's here in this, country in the UK to come and join me like let's have a red school contingent down at this

together alliance march you know you speak of the no kings march and how amazing they've been that's where i'm being called and it's to build bridges because there's a part of me especially when i'm premenstrual that gets angry at all these flags that are appearing England flags. And actually in a podcast with amazing Tanya Fogan recently, I said there's part of me that wants to rip those flags down.

And Tanya said, I get curious about the people that are putting the flags up and where that's coming from. And I feel like that's the kind of activism that comes from the wisdom of the womb, the wisdom of the cycle. Sister, that's what I've been sitting here thinking

when you were naming these groups. My mind goes to curiosity. my mind goes to what is it that they need? Just like when I work with a client as a therapist, when there's this like extreme, what we would call maladaptive behavior, my question is always like I wonder what happened to them and also what is it that they need?

And as you're talking about this group, you're saying like there's poverty. In reality, the problem is capitalism. It's not poverty. Capitalism is what's creating the poverty. And it took my mind to an interview that I recently heard, and I'm going to think of his name, but it's a young man running for Senate in Texas against, what's her last name, Crockett. He's running against her, but he's a committed

Christian. And he was challenged because, like you just said, the black and the brown people and the people coming to this country are the problem. And so one guy sits to him and he says, well, what are we going to do? We have all these welfare queens. We have all these people that are just like taken from us. And he said, actually the only welfare queen in this country is the big corporations. Those are the welfare queens that are taken from us that we should be worried about. And as you were talking, I was thinking about like, I'm curious about what does this group need? What are they afraid of? And we all know that at the root of it, it is fear and how fear can capture the mind.

So then my question would be like if we talk about the far right or, you know, just what does that mean when you say, far right. It's the people who are saying that we are so afraid and we have to join together as a race, not ethnicity necessarily, but race. And we have to find a group to be against and make the problem because we are so afraid. What do you feel about that, sister? I think you're right. It makes me think of aid, my husband, and his activism, he does like pub activism. So he goes to our local pub and he just sits and talks with folks and they're often reform voters so the far right party in the UK and he says what's going on like how you feeling what are you thinking and they talk because he's he's so skilled at this he can just he he wants to build bridges too and he learns like what the

problems are that they're dealing with they want to feed their kids they're afraid for their jobs like there's all these different things going on that's what it makes me think of is okay there's there's a paradox here. How can we come together and build bridges? But also, how can I put my body in the right place to show the wider community what I stand for? Like, I will go to this march to represent the together alliance, you know, the people who are saying we don't want the far right in this country because that feels like I'm putting my body in the right place. Yeah, but I can see there's a paradox there. It's not, it's hard to reconcile those two for me. Well, as you talked about just the question of they want food for their families, I think one of the tricks, and I think this is part of capitalism and also like extreme patriarchy, is that there's only so much food like there isn't enough.

The story of there's not enough. When in actuality, we know that there's more than enough. And so again, it takes me back to what is the story? I wonder what happened to them. And who are they here? listening to that we believe that there's only so much and it's only available for so many people. I think sometimes what happens during these moments of we need to go march, I think marching and protesting is important, but I think sometimes it's like we want to fight, but we also need to bring the word progress to sit right next to protests. And we need to talk about what would progress look like and how do we move? Because these protests are good. Like they inspire us, right? They inspire us and we all get together.

We know we get the feeling that supports our nervous system and say, okay, I'm not alone in this. However, we also need to sit progress and the process of progress, like what that looks like to sit down and look at the steps of progress and say, what do we need to do to be able to experience that progress? One of those things is you just said it, like sitting and talking and trying to understand what is it that the far right wants. Like, what are they afraid of? The other thing it makes me think of is a moment that you and I have gathered around before with Valerie Cor, who we both love the Sikh activist and lawyer, and how recently she was protesting outside an ICE facility. And she was laying flowers at the feet of the soldiers, actually,

who were guarding this facility. And she was saying, you can fire rubber bullets at me you can fire tear gas at us, but you can never make me deny your humanity. So, sister, I don't know if I want to say, I want to challenge you a little bit, but I do want us to like softly sit knee to knee for a moment. And I've taught my students this often.

When we start using labels, it feels almost like it's a process of dehumanizing. It's a practice of othery. So as we even talk about the far right or these groups, when I hear people talk that way, it feels like a process of othery instead of just like me. And so as you use the language of far right and when people use language of the pubs or the dims, like I usually try to pull back from that because I think just like me, there's a need that they have. So just like when we talk about the humans and the far right, it's like and just like me, there's a need. that they have and that there's something that they're seeking. So I try to put myself as close to them as possible. And you know what's funny I think about some of the people I talk to and I say, you know,

Donald Trump, just like me, like he's some mama's baby. And they're like, I don't want to, you know, and they're just like automatically, I don't want to. And I'm like, no, in reality, yes, there is, he's some mama's baby. That's some mama's baby. Right. And so can I keep seeing a human in them and keep just, noticing, sensing, and feeling that it's just something that they're needing. And how do we move to a place of progress and not just stay in protest? Because the fight can't just, we can't just stay in a state of fight, right? And I think that's the dance moving. Like I talked about the big world going on around me and being here in the moment and romanticize it.

So I can't just stay here in this romantic world and act like nothing's happening. I need to be able to move between the two. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I think, I feel, I notice, I sense I'm aware that for a lot of groups, people of color, for people who have been historically oppressed, like we didn't have a choice but to know how to dance between these two places. And I think that's what's happening now is, and that's what I want to encourage you to do to say, how do I dance between these two? It's like code switching. Like how do I move between these two places because both are necessary? for you to be able to hold on to yourself and be able to see the good that is now, but also be active in these bigger things, but not let the fight consume you or let the fear consume you where there's no progress. There's just protest and no progress.

Yes. Thank you. I love sitting need to need to you. And I'm sweating. You know, my palms are sweating. My armpits are sweating. I'm more sweaty in perimenopause. Maybe other people are facing this too. The sweat, man. The back of my neck will just say, drenched some days. And I'm like,

a nice little, I'm pretending I'm in a sauna, I suppose. I romanticize it. That's classic romanticizing perimenopause. So yeah, I'm sweating. My body's shaking a little bit because it's, yeah,

I'm growing. You're helping me to grow. Yeah. And I'm going to take us with Valerie because I think she's got something powerful to bring to this conversation around cycle awareness in that the cycle comes from the womb and the ovaries and she, in this incredible speech that she gave back in 2016

although it feels completely relevant for today where she spoke like the language of the womb and she used these birthing metaphors and I think I'm going to play it. I'd love to do a deep listening with you, sis. Yeah, tell me about that deep listening. Just the deep listening, this process, again, is the poetic. It is the interiority, like going inside.

So to be able to listen to a sound or to a griot. Like, I just think about our ancestors again, the storytelling that some people groups could only do because they weren't allowed to write things down or to, like, record, like, make record of. So they've just told each other. and the deep listening is being able to sit and to be in this space of where this creator is attempting to take you. So with her words, where would she like to take us? And we sit in a deep listening and participate in wherever it is, she wants us to go.

Let's do that. Okay. And so the mother in me asks, what if? If this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of what? the womb. Night, you are brave. What if this is our nation's great transition?

Being able to just be in the darkness, the womb, and how fruitful it can be. You know, when we allow ourselves to just essentially hold the tension and encounter what is in this moment. And then asking ourselves, what is minds to do? What is minds to do? And I think the more at home we are with ourselves, the more connected we are to ourselves, we understand and know that, you know, there is something for us to do and how each of us needs to show up in a different way, in the way that in this moment feels like this is what I am to do. Not a guilt of like, oh, there's some people out there marching and so I'm at home and I'm being a bridge builder. like each one of us has something to do, right?

And that's where I think that I think that we have to remind ourselves of the macro and the micro of like we're all connected. That's it. The far right people are our people. Because all people are our people. This planet, this earth, this world, we're all connected. Right? There's nobody separate from me. When it rains, it just doesn't rain on one man's.

house, everybody is impacted. That's the deep lips. That's what I received. Like, I'm in the womb. We're all in the womb. What did your deep listener give you, sis? It took me back to my birthing experience with my son, because the way she was speaking, it felt like she was giving birth.

And that the labor pains, the wisdom of the pain of labor, that in order to bring something new into the world, we have to be broken open, stretch, stretch, stretch, stretch, maybe not broken open, stretched open. And those contractions, like in my birth experience, they didn't actually stop, it was just one long contraction because I had a back-labour, back-to-back labour. But that, yeah, the contractions are necessary for the birthing.

That's where it took me. and it's a place, she's gifted me and all of us, I think, with such a resource. Is this the darkness of the tomb or the darkness of the womb? Because those of us that have been with our cycles, we know the darkness of the womb. Because we visit it every month in whatever way is right for us. What are we gestating in this darkness? What are we, what new possibilities are we? conceiving and pouring our natural innate love into to make, to make this future that all,

like, don't we all know there's a world that's more beautiful? If you'd like to hear more from Dr. Creedy, I invite you to explore the two-part series we did on the podcast about the cyclical wisdom that Cree received from her grandmothers. In episode 138, Indigenous Cycle Wisdom and Menstrual rituals, we heard the story. story of Cree's granny of First Nations descent. And we talked about why in many indigenous cultures, women and people with wombs gathered together in moon lodges to listen for the dreams that came at menstruation. And then in episode 160, What Black Cycical Wisdom can teach us about hope, peace and belonging? We explored cyclical wisdom through the lens of the life story of an

extraordinary woman who left a profound legacy of a cyclical, intelligent, for Cree, Cree's mama, her African-American grandmother, and how through every single moment of adversity she faced as a black woman, she found her way to claim rest, to rise up and to embody hope in the face of hate. They're both such great episodes, and you can find them at redscore.net forward slash podcast.

And if you'd like support to connect more to the courage and resilience that comes through the practice of menstrual cycle awareness, Alexandra and Shawnee are hosting a free event soon called How to Awaken Your Cycle Power. It's on April the 1st, and you can register at redschool.net forward slash cycle power. All of us as humans, we try to avoid the discomfort, right? If we go to black feminists and just go look at their work, we can really learn everything that we need to know. Like you said, the answer are already there for climate change.

The answers are already there for these issues because black feminists, like, Tony Morrison and Bell Hooks and Audrey Love, like they've already made it clear what needs to take place. But here, let me just share with you what I was thinking about what Tony Morrison talks about how the navet, like just the navet of white women. And she said historically they've been afforded by virtue of being looked after by women of other ethnic backgrounds. And you know what I believe. I believe that it is white women being uncomfortable that will change all of this. Because it is the white women who are the closest to the leaders of the far right. Truth.

These are their wives and their daughters and their mamas. Right. And I think that when white women get uncomfortable, so uncomfortable, then that is where we start when we want to change the hearts and the minds of those who are so afraid. They are so afraid. So here, I'll tell you something. I was thinking about Sophie Jay. I was thinking about who's signing up to be in ice?

Like, who wants to be nice? And I sat and I was getting my tire change that, I don't know, whatever tire company. And I was just looking at it was working an entire place. it was just like these men who want to do a good job that were working there. And they, you know, really kind. They're being kind to me and their service. And they're just, they're moving, they're moving about and they're hustling. And I was thinking about these are the men that will go and work for ice.

Because in this tire, in this company, they're not making a lot of money to take care of their families. Yeah. They want to do a good job taking care of their families. But this is the only job that they can get right now. And so if they are getting a proposal to say, we'll give you this much money so that you can take care of your family, it's almost like in their fear, it's like, you know what? It's worth it because I can take care of my family. Do you hear me, sister? Yeah.

So I go back to look at how capitalism just builds this place of how we all can stay separate because all of us are just actively trying to survive. we're just trying to live. And we've been told by big corporations that there's only so much pie and that you need to get your piece of the pie. That's what capitalism tells us. Like we can't talk about all these things without talking about capitalism. The extreme unhealthy patriarchy. Like we have to just look at that. And so going back to white women, being closest to these men, when, when, when, you're,

when that gets addressed to the people who are so afraid, to the people who are feeling inadequate, not able to take care of their families and the stories that they're believing or the stories that they're living in. Are you able to follow me in this? Yes. This is how I dream about all of it without demonizing or dehumanizing any person. Yeah.

I mean, it feels like, it feels like the womb language that Valerie was speaking, you know, she also talks about revolutionary love. This is the revolutionary love when she lay down the flower and said, you can't stop me from seeing your humanity. You're speaking on her vibration. That's what I'm receiving. And I'm hearing you, and we have talked about this before,

the discomfort of white women is a vital ingredient because of white women's proximity to the power that is driving a lot of this division separation. These men who are enslaved by the social system and how the white women close to them can become, like they can adopt the same thinking and until they get set free. You know, it's just like it's a chain, it's a relationship and how valuable that is. As a mama, you and I talk about being a mama. I'm a mother of a son. and I get to raise my son to have a sensuous knowledge, to be able to be in touch with the

soft poetic, to be able to be aware of him as a man and just the influence he will have as a man. You know, like I'm a mama who gets to teach him that, who gets to impart that. So that when he goes and engaged with a woman or just even in his life and what power looks like, Like the reality that true power is self-power. It's not that what you have over another. True power is self-power. To teach him how to study his self and to show up in this life after he's studied himself, to be able to talk after he's listened to himself first, right?

That's what we get to do as mamas and as women. Right? Because, yes, the men are enslaved by the social system. they're not they're enslaved right and then we get enslaved and it just continues they've been victimized that to the superman syndrome yes you see can you see it says like it's really all the same yeah i'm back to bell hooks it's the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy that is the the driving force behind all of it i'm telling you yeah the black feminist of all sudden they've known. We just need to read the black feminists. Just go read it. Yeah, just read it.

I was watching a little video from you on Instagram because you're doing meditations now. Can we all come to these meditations? They're open to anybody. You just join the Zoom. They're free. They're 30 minutes long. You don't have to turn your screen on. This is a part of, like you said, you're a bridge building. This is a part of my work. Yeah. Every Wednesday, every day. Every single Wednesday at 1230 central time, I lead a guided relaxing, a meditation. And usually I integrate a theme for us to look at it. So it is a very therapeutic 30 minutes. But it's us coming back home, decolonizing ourselves in a sense of what is it, our body, our earth, like gaining our geography back, gaining our psychology back, right, from what has taken us. So we're decolonizing ourselves

when we come back to our breath and just have those moments with ourselves, 30 minutes for free, for anybody, right? And nothing is asked of you. You just come and breathe. So we had these amazing directors at our public library system that, listen, sister, our library is beyond just books. So all of us are walking libraries, right? So our library has expanded into just services for the community in so many ways. And part of that and where I partner with them, is we have a wellness place. We have a theater. We have so many things that's bringing, just bringing life and culture to our community, especially for those who don't have resources. And so it's all usually donation-based. Like my meditations are actually free,

but like when I teach my yoga classes or I teach workshops on women and just the life of women, those are all donation-based. Like it's just people are coming. We have so many classes. We have Cuban salsa, we have karate, you know, we have all these things for the community through the library. Amazing. Let's come back to community because I feel like this is like, this is the belonging that we're all heading towards and all need to embrace and lean into and build. And I just want to bring this quote from Audra Lord because I heard you bring it in the meditation. You brought part of it. We've been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings for the demands of our released expectations lead us inevitably into actions, which will help bring our lives

into accordance with our needs, our knowledge, our desires. And the fear of our deepest cravings keeps them suspect, keeps us docile and loyal and obedient, and leads us to settle for or accept the many facets of our oppression as women. And you were saying, how do we say yes to the yes inside ourselves? That was a big theme of your last meditation. And just how sometimes the yes can scare us because it's so powerful. And how many of us have been socialized to not even have a relationship with the yes inside of us. Right. So that's why it feels so scary.

It's almost like we see a ghost like, oh my gosh. Whoa. That big. I've been feeling this came from actually from my listening partner, Cicill, but she talks about big ovulation along with the big bleed. And I've been experiencing more and more that I sit with that idea, like the big yes that awakens in me around ovulation. And how can I say yes to it, receive it, see how massive it is,

and live into it a little bit more each month. I think it's a cool practice. I think it's a beautiful balance for us to really look at our seasons of no and our seasons of yes. yes, right? And how we need the time of no. And I think that in the time of no, it builds, it builds our, it kind of grounds us and gives us receipts and belief that we can believe in ourselves. And then when we practice the yes, we also go to seats, right? We need both of them are ingredients for us to live out our yes. Like I tell my kids all the time, like, well, you just

did that, you overcame and now you got a receipt. So now you know you can do it again. So let's keep building those receipts. That's what I tell my children. I love that. Receipts of belief. Yeah. Receits of belief. Let's come to community. I feel like all the amazing, mostly black feminist folks, women that are educating me these days, just keep pointing to its community, it's building community. And it's obviously been the theme of our conversation. And if it's true that belonging is at the heart of our cycle awareness practice and the fruit of our cycle awareness practice, then how can we lean into our cyclical wisdom

to build community wherever we are with whatever we're doing? Every time I walk to just what cyclical wisdom looks like for me, sister, I look at how it just, it's an intimacy and first a belonging to myself. Right? And a belonging to myself to be able to belong to me first and to be able to hold and see me. And then, you know, sometimes I ask the question, what, what, who or what do I belong to? And when I think about belonging to myself, I belong to my creativity. I belong to my power. Like, I could just go down the list of who or what do I belong to. But then I always come back to, like you said, community. Like I belong, we, I belong to each other.

I belong to my ancestors and my descendants. And being able to see that, like even everyone around me in my community, that I belong to them and they belong to me. Essentially, I'm responsible for them and they're responsible for me. And I think that's what my cyclical wisdom, my cyclical awareness tells me that things are going to change in their seasons. and how that's all a part of like just, just life. And belonging is telling my story and being seen and heard and value. Belonging is seeing how other women are experiencing similar things as me and that we heal where we are loved, right?

To not be apathetic to another just because they don't think the way that I do. Right? belonging is having a felt sense of power, safety, wholeness, and being in my body. Like I just, I could go on about just belonging, but one thing I know is that I need to do it with others. I have to. We are social beings, like in our creation. And when, like, even the idea of when we're in dialogue, we're most human, like, when

we're doing this with each other, we are most human, right? And I do know that fear will have us and fear will tell us the story that we need to isolate and be separate, right? And it takes courage. And I think about this thought and what I've been telling my students, fear when it looks around, it looks for scary things. While courage, when it looks around, it looks for surprises. Right. So in my courage, and that's what cyclical living definitely. gives me the courage to, it's the death and the rebirth to go in and then to come out again. And every time I come out, like I'm on day six, I'm coming out of the chamber. I'm coming out. And every time I come out, it is a courageous experience. And so now I got receipts.

I got receipts that I can go inside and I can come out again, right? You see what I, you see what I mean, sister. It is belonging is our social invitement to our soul nerve. Like I need to be connected with y'all. I need, I just think about, I need to go out and be a part of communities. And I need to understand and feel and sense what's going on with another to hold space. And, you know, it's funny because I just think about all of these, just black scholars again, like their language, like I think about Tana Hosti Coates and he said, but I always had my people.

Right. And then I think about Kanye West saying, we all we got. And even though that's not because Kanye need his mama, that's what he needed. He changed that. But we need each other. Need each other to learn how to be. Belonging normalizes and repairs us, right? It allows us to see who we are and what we need.

It's accountability, it's inspiration. Like, we need each other. But it takes me back to during COVID, where a lot of people were experiencing agoraphobia where was this sense of like they were afraid because they didn't have any practices. They didn't have receipts with being out and being amongst others and feeling safe because we were isolated. Yeah. Yeah. So how do we build up our receipts? How do we take little moments to go and be around others so that we can bring that belonging, that sense of safety back to ourselves? So we don't just walk in fear. Right, sis? Right. I feel

to recap, I've been taking some notes as I am a nerd as we know. I feel moved to recap some of this wisdom. I'm starting with the breath that we both needed to find at the beginning when we were reflecting on all we face and as you brought in all we have faced as a global community though some were touched more than others. And then the romanticising, poetic, the imaginal, and actually how our menstruation each month can connect us into that. Yes. And then the wisdom of the womb from Valerie Kaur, is this the darkness of the tomb or the darkness of the womb

and the birthing analogy for what we're inside of as a global community? What is minds to do? That we each bring beauty through, like you said, through our mothering if we have children, through our auntieing, if we have nieces and nephews, through our community engagement, through our work, through, it looks so many different flavors and that all those flavors are needed.

That's what I heard in where it's minds to do. Yeah. All of them are needed. Yeah. It's like when we talk about like building the matrilineal or coming back away from the extreme patriarchy, we're not trying to get rid of the patriarchy because we know that that form of knowledge

created our encyclopedias and our universities and, you know, all of those things. So we need that, but we need them both to be in balance with one another. We can't be in this extreme rational world that doesn't value and appreciate the poetic, the artistic, the intuitive, right, that we just are stuck in the rational. Yeah. The womb, the language of the womb. It is being in the womb together. We need to be in the womb together for a while. Yes, we need to just ate and then a couple of other things I'm harvesting are this discomfort you spoke about, particularly discomfort for white women, for the white listeners and me, and that that discomfort is necessary and we need to be with it. And I think of pre-menstrual experience and all it's

teaching us about how to be with discomfort, how to be with, how to hold the tension and how we can lean into that. We're building muscles with this through menstrual cycle awareness. It is critical to be with the discomfort. And you know that I come from the world of recovery, right? And so what I've found that so many people find things to get to run away from the discomfort or to numb or to just. But let me tell you some, sister, this is critical because I see a lot of white women. What do they use to get away from discomfort? It's process addictions like shopping, going online, ordering.

They go get that coffee. They go get that coffee. they go get, you know, another cup of coffee. But this is the problem with that. When you're trying to numb the discomfort, you're also numbing your access to your joy. You're also numbing your access to your connection and just to be able to look deeper within yourself.

You're numbing so many other things when you're trying to numb and not feel the discomfort. You see, sister, that's what I've been telling a lot of people. And that's what I've always seen with working with clients. which I understand this pathologized environment does have us at a state where I just need a break. Like, let me take a drink, right? But at the same time, you're also numbing the things that will help to heal you. Yes.

Yeah. And the joy and the access to the romantic. I experienced it yesterday. I was so overwhelmed with it all yesterday, but I went to pick up my son. I'm committed to just being with him for an hour and a half as we walk home through the woods. I felt so uncomfortable inside, so just awful in my body. And I was like, sit with it. Just watch him play in the water.

Watch the water. Feel it. It feels awful. Feel it. And it moved because it does. It always moves. That's what my grandmother always told me. So I believe I hear her voice when I'm in the discomfort.

You know, like you've heard like people say pain don't last. always. Like it don't last always. And it's just a matter of trusting that it will move, right? And it really is the grandmother, the indigenous wisdom. It's the grandmother wisdom that tells us it's not going to stay, baby. Like, I just think about my grandma like, this pain is going to go. It's not forever. You're going to make through. Like, I just hear her phrases. Like, you won't get on the other side. Just be patient. It's coming, right? And one thing my grandma always says, Sophie Jay, And I mean, that lady would just, she's telling everybody, she said, and what's going to do? You're going to sit.

You're going to sit on the pot or you're going to piss and get up and go. Like, I know it's extreme, but she said, you're just not going to sit on that pity pot. You're going to get it. You're going to make something happen. And I know, like, very explicit sometimes, but the discomfort of her language that usually, I used to think like, oh, my God. It's real. It's real. It is so real.

She said, what you're going to just sit in it? You're going to sit or you're going to get up off the pot and live. Like that was one of her, I just think about her language of like, you got to get up and live. Now go live every day. And that's what I say to you, Sophie Jay. Like you got to get up and go live. Right? You got to live.

And in those moments, yes, I'm feeling this. And I think about the times I'm crying out to my grandma, Sophie Jay. I mean, I've had some hard days in 2025. And I literally would be like, mama, tell me. what to do right now. I don't know what to do. And then I just sit and I cry and I listen. And I just hear her still saying, you can sit in it.

You stay in it for a little while. But then tomorrow you're going to get up and you're going to go. Right. So I didn't mean to go on to that rent sister, but I just feel her presence so strongly and the need for that grandma energy. Like you said, Valerie was saying to us, these grandmothers are right here behind us. I will always listen to you.

Talk about Mama all the live long day. And if you want to hear more about Mama, our first conversation that we had, you shared the story of Mama. And I'll put a link to it in the show notes. It's so good. Let's close with that wisdom of Mama because as you were sharing,

I was going into that deep listening mode of receive this. So take it right into yourselves. Because she, yeah, she is carrying, was carrying, is carrying still through you now. Let me tell you. something that Mama used to say. She said, as you move through this earth, you don't have to

function for approval, but from approval, because when you were created, you were already approved. And I always think about that. Like, I don't have to function for approval. Because upon my creation, I was already approved. She said, when you were made, baby, you were made just right. You are just right. That's for all of us, Sophie J. Like, when we were made, we were made just right. people on the left and the right, right? When we were made, we were made just right. And it's just a matter of us coming home to who we were originally created to be. And that is love.

We all came to this earth as love. And some of us just have temporary deviations from love's perfection, but we all came as love. Thank you. Thank you so much for tuning in and for listening all the way through to the end. I'm really, really curious to hear how this episode and everything that we explored with Cree landed with you. You can always reach out to me at sophiaatredschool.net to share your feedback and your thoughts. I'd love to hear from you.

And if you enjoy this episode and you know someone who could benefit from hearing it, please do share the episode. Forward it to your friends. It really helps the podcast to reach more people and we really appreciate it. And that's it for this week. I'll be back with you again in a couple of weeks, and until then keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.