The Menstruality Podcast - 3. How to Transform Menstrual and Menopause Shame (Jane Hardwicke Collings)

Episode Date: October 14, 2021

Wise author, grandmother and revolutionary Jane Hardwicke Collings is passionate, provocative and also funny - even as she busts through taboos, heals collective wounds and creates a roadmap for a positive menstrual and menopause culture. We explore:The roots of menstrual shame and its impact on our cycles and our bodies.How to live and bleed shamelessly through the spiritual practice of menstruation.How to heal the menopause shame (and a surprising fact about the five other mammals who go through menopause, and how it serves their offspring and communities.)---Registration is now open for our 2021 live round of Menopause: The Great Awakener. You can explore the five phases of menopause here: www.redschoolmenopause.com.---The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [e-mail]---Social media:Red School: @red.school - www.instagram.com/red.schoolJane Hardwicke Collings @janehardwickecollings - www.instagram.com/janehardwickecollings

Welcome to the Menstruality Podcast, where we share inspiring conversations about the power of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. This podcast is brought to you by Red School, where we're training the menstruality leaders of the future. I'm your host, Sophie Jane Hardy, and I'll be joined often by Red School's founders Alexandra and Sharni as well as an inspiring group of pioneers, activists, 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. Today's conversation with the wise teacher, author, grandmother and revolutionary Jane Hardwick Collings is passionate, it's provocative and funny even though we're exploring a big and

challenging topic, how to heal menstrual and menopause shame. We explore the roots of this shame and its impact on our cycles and on our bodies. We learn how to live and bleed shamelessly through the spiritual practice of menstruation. And we also talk about how to heal the shame that can arise around menopause and a surprising fact about the five other mammals who go through menopause and how it serves their offspring and their communities and something you share on your website jane is that you grew up in the home birth world and you were a home birth midwife for 30 years and you said that your own births have taught you who you are and what you're capable of and your menopausal

experience has taught you how to focus on preparing for the great great grandchildren I really see you Jane as a as a wise elder here in the menstruality world, and you give so generously. So I really appreciate you taking the time to be here with us today. Thank you. Thank you, Sophie. It's an honour to be part of the Red School's podcast. The Red School is one of our darlings in our world shall we say you know we're looking at all the things that are on offer for women and i'm so glad that the red school exists and to be part of the podcast that's part of the red school is a deep honor for me thank you for inviting me so among your many many offerings uh and longings for for women and for menstruators is this

passionate desire to heal menstrual shame and create a positive menstrual culture which is obviously core to the heart of red school also so my my hope for our chat today is that we can do some of this work to bring menstrual shame out of the shadows but first the way we like to start is with a cycle check-in and I'm aware that you're you're now post-menopause so you're I am not cycling in the menstrual way but I wanted to ask how how do you connect with your cyclicity your cyclical nature post-menopause well so my perspective shared by many is that when we don't have a menstrual cycle for whatever reason could be pregnant breastfeeding and your cycle hasn't shown up again or hormonal contraceptions where you don't have a cycle or perimenopause when like whatever anything goes and postmenopausal and everybody else who doesn't menstruate then we

still have a cycle particularly women and that's the lunar cycle so i am in the full moon phase of my cycle, which is equivalent in energy to ovulation. So I'm feeling the way I feel that now is feeling an intensity added to everything that's going on in my life, as one might at ovulation and as one does at full moon. So I'm at the peak of my cycle right now with everybody else who doesn't have a menstrual cycle and I find myself in a place that I seem to have often found myself in my life which is I'm now in the void day 27 at the same time as full moon which is always an interesting place to be isn't it I? I feel wide open, you know, I feel wide open, permeable. There's been lots of tears. I'm also breastfeeding. So there's a cocktail of hormones. It's like, yeah, I feel the intensity of the full moon fully entering me. And it's, it's a lot. And it's a lot to just to be alive in our world anyway. So. Yeah, especially right now. Yeah, here we are. I would love to invite you to start by sharing your own personal experience of menstrual shame, if you would,

and how you began this work to heal it within you, in your life, in your cycle? Yeah, well, like most people, I didn't even know that I had any. But what I know is that we can't not be carrying menstrual shame. Because menstrual shame is actually pandemic, meaning it affects everybody everywhere. And it's part of the patriarchal culture. So growing up, I didn't know that I had menstrual shame, but I knew that I had to lay low with my menstrual cycle and not sort of make a fuss about it and all that kind of stuff and really I didn't actually awaken to the power of my cycle until I was a midwife really at around 25 and so my first quarter of my year oh that means I'm going to live to 100 that's a good idea um was was like I had eight years on the pill without knowing that was a not really ideal situation. So my menstrual shame has really been revealed to me.

The extent and the depth of my menstrual shame has been revealed to me more in how menstrual shame affects us, if you know what I mean. So like I was a very, in terms of how I looked after myself when I was bleeding and through the rest of my cycle, I wasn't really that aware of it as a teenager or as a young adult, as I said, but I know that I was carrying the rest of the shame that menstrual shame brings. And that's because what we know is menstrual shame leads to body shame and body shame leads to all manner of psychological issues and wounded behaviours, and so low self-esteem, body dysmorphia,

and wounded behaviours that in the extreme can lead to eating disorders and self-harm and actually risky and dangerous sexual decision-making. So we know that to be the case. How it was for me, though, I think that I just stuck with the body shame aspect of it. And like everybody else that I was growing up with, our bodies weren't the way that we thought they had to look or behave or, you know, all that kind of stuff. So I feel like my own experience of menstrual shame was more about body shame, which I know was related to the menstrual shame. And what I've done about that is, well, having babies really sort of showed me that my body is a miracle performer.

And that kind of gave me the opportunity to reset how I felt about my body. But, you know, to be honest, I still suffer, and it is a suffer, of feeling like at my weak moments, so to speak, that I wish my body looked a different way. And, you know, like that's so ridiculous. I know that that's ridiculous to my own, you know, in my own mind. But I know where that comes from, from this kind of ideal feminine, which is or female body, which is part of the whole menstrual shame thing, because the ideal feminine body doesn't even menstruate so um it's been something that I've um worked on in my own self and in my relationships like how I have presented myself when I've been bleeding and whatnot but yeah I think um

I think that's probably the answer to that. Thank you. There's a picture of you in your Instagram feed. You're wrapped up in a sort of a beige shawl and you have a backdrop of this deep, lush greenery. And you're looking in the eyes, like right into the lens with this look of authority and power and I think in the caption it said something like it was your Mona Lisa portrait and I spent a long time looking at it because it was it was transfixing you know to see a woman owning her power I said I felt like this is beauty this is it um so for the record I think you're absolutely gorgeous oh thanks thanks but you know like that's it right beauty comes from

within and and standing there for that photo I was really owning my power for sure I'm glad it showed you can feel it yeah yeah um I remember many years ago I had a colleague who told me that her partner was going through her handbag to try and find something and he happened across a tampon which was unused it was in a packet still uh and he when he realized that he was holding a tampon he went and threw it across the room oh dear right so this showed me and it's really stayed with me because I think that it shows the extent of the shame that is in our world around the menstrual cycle and you began to hint earlier about the roots of this but you know you speak so powerfully about the roots of this shame could you talk more about where this comes from sure so I've pulled together a whole lot of information from lots of different books about the effects of the patriarchy on women and the feminine.

And it's called Her Story as opposed to His Story, His Story or History. Get it? His Story is History. history get it his story is history and so what I wrote was this little booklet called her story and I created this decades ago as a way to answer the question that I had which was how do we get into this situation that we're in? And like the Buddha says, and I'm just going to have to paraphrase it because I don't know what the Buddha actually said, but something like if you want to understand why you are where you are, then look where you've come from. And one might add if you want to figure out where you're going, then look where you are.

So where we have come from as a culture is the story the her story is that the patriarchal culture is is a new thing it's it's only been in force or um that's probably not the right word but in in situ maybe for like not even 5,000 years, right? So like that might seem like a long time, but that only seems like a long time from our lifetime. And our lifetimes are pretty short when you come in, when you think about how long humans have been around for. And humans with the same brains as us, so it's the same kind of people we are, have been around for 200,000 years apparently. That's the latest estimation. When they do more and more figuring out it gets longer and longer. So basically humans were living in different ways to how we are living

for longer than we've been living like this and we kind of think that this is the best because we've got the most technology and the most this and the most that but that's because we think that having the most is the best and And, you know, clearly that's not the case. But so where we came from and therefore where all of this menstrual shame originated was basically back in like BC time, around the time of the bronze and iron Ages, which was around 3000 BC, when the goddess cultures were the way it was. And what that actually means is that the people were living egalitarian, in egalitarian cultures, just started agriculture. And, you know, like everyone living as equals, and women were respected. And, you know know there was no sort of power over scenario of

men being better than women it was egalitarian so this we know from archaeologists and them translating the art and what things there were that were written and all of that kind of stuff. So back in the day before patriarchy, women were honoured. And then around the time that the patriarchy began, women were enslaved and exploited and exiled, stripped of their positions of political authority and decision-making making and their leadership rules were taken roles were taken from them the priestesses of the goddess were forced to marry the leaders of the patriarchal tribes to destroy lineage through the mother line and patriarchal religious authorities changed the ancient systems of matrilineal inheritance of property to put the

property in the hands of men so like that's the beginning part of it and then the church really took over and then then you know several thousand you know a thousand years several thousand years later we have the witch burnings and that or what preceded that was was pretty bad too like the middle ages the dark ages and the middle ages and and women were less than like women were the property of their fathers and husbands that's how we were seen and um the the the the best relationship like the the um ideal relationship in those days back in classical greek time was the relationship between two men an older man and a younger man and women's only function was to bear legitimate children who could inherit the paternal property rights. So, you know, women didn't have citizenship, so they were less than. And I think just on that note, citizenship, like I think we all grew up

doing our history lessons to with the big answer of, I'm sorry, the big question of when did women get the vote? You know, like the real question is why didn't they have it in the first place? So this is the story of why we didn't have the vote in the first place. We didn't count. And then, as I mentioned, the witch burning times, the inquisition that happened in the 1100s to the 1600s,

500 years of witch burnings. So, you know, like women, that was partly started by burning, killing, the herbalists, the midwives and the medicine women and then all the men that supported them or tried to stick up for them. And so that's a dreadful part of our history that went on for 500 years, as I said. So we then, you know, that's till the 1700s that many women I know have got family trees back to the 1700s. Right. So not that like that's the 1700s for me. So I'm 63. So the 1700s for me is my great, great, great grandparents. So three greats.

So back then and the generations before them, it was dangerous to be a woman. It was a life-threatening situation because so many of them were being killed. So you had to really suck it up and stay out of the way and go along with whatever the people in power said to be able to survive actually and then after all of that the um the the story goes that the uh communities were without their their healers their their wise women and healers and and around the same time medicine began like medicine that we know now began then. And it was run by the church. And the doctors had to seek approval of things they did with the church. And it was a training program that was only for men. So women were not allowed to learn how to be a doctor. And, you know, back then, the way that the church

and medicine thought that conception happened was that the man at intercourse, the man deposited into the female a homunculus or a little person complete with the soul which was simply housed in the womb for nine months without acquiring any attributes of the mother so this is the this is our history these sorts of beliefs and then female sexuality was feared because women had already been killed for seducing men and like women were blamed for men's sexual impulses and like treated as whores and sluts i mean the same thing still happens today to be fair but women's anatomy was not known and kept in the dark you know they even had this this special sort of um gown thing that pious couples would wear to have intercourse so that there was only a hole where the vagina could be accessed

and the penis could go through because it was deemed, like, inappropriate for the man to see the woman naked and the woman to show herself naked. And even, there's a quote, even physicians came to believe that no clitoris would be found on a virtuous woman. So they had some really warped ideas. And that's our origins. And it's not that far ago.

So, like, do you realise, I mean, I don't know if everybody knows, but it's only a recent phenomena or situation that a woman anatomist has actually mapped out the real size of the clitoris and it's huge. You know, the anatomy of the clitoris is not just that little button at the top it has these gigantic legs that go down the size of your sides of your labia and all these other bits like the g-spot for example is part of the clitoris and the g-spot's named after a man for something ridiculous the man who discovered it as are many other parts of our female genital anatomy and reproductive system, which drives me nuts.

You know, it's a bit like a country with a flag in it. I discovered this, all these parts of our body. Then the other part to this is what it says in the religious texts about menstrual shame. So I've just got a couple of things I just want to just reach here to say. Like, here we go. Anti-menstrual sentiment can be found in the key texts of all major faiths. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Hinduism all have preached that menstrual blood and women who menstruate are unclean, impure, and are responsible for everything from failing crops to contaminating meat. So if we want to know where it started there's there's the clues. Oh I have it feels like fire flowing through my veins to listen to you and I'm so grateful because I think so many of us feel that's the

same kind of rage but we don't necessarily have it spelled out to us like why we're feeling it and so I'm so grateful to you for doing this work to uncover and explain the history. Let me tell you something else that's worse well I, I don't know, it's worse. Same sort of badness. So earlier than the religious texts, but from Aristotle, right? Like Aristotle, who is a big part of our history in terms of why we are where we are and what we think and don't think and whatnot so he said that he he expounded a theory of women as incomplete males as if it were a deformity and regarded menstrual blood as a lesser form of semen oh yeah the deep growl is starting to emerge it's um it's so important for us to understand the roots of this because there's a lot um alexander and shani the co-founders of red school they coined the term menstrual trauma

in their book wild power i've got a quote here that I'd like to read from it. Like little electric shocks, over time it leads to an inner numbing, a gradual wearing down of our vital signs on all levels. We've coined the phrase menstrual trauma to describe this form of gaslighting. We believe menstrual trauma is at the root of our menstrual suffering. And I think that's what's going on is this subtle or not so subtle form of gaslighting, which means many women and people who menstruate feel like they're insane. They feel like they're crazy. And I think your her story is helping to bring balance there. What you know, you talked about low self-esteem, body image challenges. Could you speak about, we're going to move on to the healing soon, but this is really important to cover, like the impact of this trauma,

this menstrual shame on our relationship to our body, to our cycles, to our births and also to our menopause. Could you speak more about the impacts for us today yeah sure and just to add also like um what you just quoted from alexander and johnny i think menstrual shame is at the root of misogyny and um actually we know, and this is an awesome quote from a woman, Sharon Maloney, an Australian women's health practitioner. She did a PhD on menstrual shame. And she said that menstrual shame is one of the in terms of how menstrual shame affects us, like clearly it does, and how it affects our bodies with this concept of body shame.

So I'll just say that little sequence again to really make sure we all get it, that menstrual shame leads to body shame and body shame leads to low self-esteem and low self-esteem leads to all kinds of things, including body dysmorphia and all manner of wounded behaviors like eating self-harm and risky and dangerous sexual sexual decision making and um these situation this situation these behaviors impact a girl's life and set up this way she lives it's a way of life and the idea is that sorry that the fact is our culture is so down on menstrual cycle, on the menstrual cycle, that there's, you know, menstrual suppression is even encouraged. So we are really encouraged to reject our menstrual cycle because it's gross, like that guy throwing the tampon. And if we reject our menstrual cycle, we therefore reject our body because same, same. And if we reject our menstrual cycle we therefore reject our body because same same and if we reject

our body we reject ourselves and if we reject ourselves we are lost to ourselves on every level you know everything gets dulled down and and many things get switched off, you know, including the opportunity of the menstrual cycle to teach us about intuition and our inner knowing and our physical capacity and capabilities, et cetera, et cetera. So menstrual shame just disconnects us from all of that. And I bet you it even turns off our organs of perception like every every other animal has, that keep us safe. Because if we don't value our body, then, you know, what does it matter what we do with it, you know? So I think it affects our body in all of those ways that I've mentioned. And therefore, it affects our relationships, because, you know, that terrible thing about menstrual shame leading to dangerous and risky sexual decision-making.

Like if your body isn't of any value to you or seen as valuable, then what does it matter what you do with it, you know? And if you can use it to get certain things, then, you know, then you can rationalise with yourself that it doesn't actually matter if it doesn't feel right, because how do I know if it feels right or feels wrong? I've forgotten how I feel. That kind of thing you can imagine going on. And it also impacts our births. So the idea is that she who was initiated into womanhood at the altar of menarche, first period, is the woman that shows up to the birth altar, so to speak, fully brainwashed into how she's supposed to behave to be accepted by the culture as a woman. And the way, see, this piece is, this is where we see how menstrual shame impacts the whole of our lives is because at Menarche, our first period, we're not just initiated into womanhood, we're initiated into menstrual shame.

And so then this impacts everything. And what happens at a rite of passage is that whatever happens whatever is said or not said whatever is done or not done whatever's going on in the environment in the world that family at that time teaches the girl going through the rite of passage of menarche and this happens for every rite of passage, so you could put in birth, here, or menopause, but Menarche say whatever happens or doesn't happen teaches her on a subliminal level, which means she doesn't even realize she's being taught. She's being enculturated, which is just a nice way of saying brainwashed, into how her culture values woman that is portrayed by the experience, and therefore how she's supposed to behave to be accepted by the culture now you know you're in the world of menstruality and like

every other menstrual educator or woman who talks to women about their menarche the majority of women don't have an empowering experience like that's changing now as women like you are having children and wanting to have something better happen for their children their girls than what happened for them so they're shifting it but the idea is that this rite of passage is like it creates a an imprint you know so you know just like a newborn baby is hardwired to expect its mother is going to look after it, fair enough, right? So too is a girl going through her menarche, hardwired to expect that her mother or mother equivalent is going to teach her all about it, what it is, what it means, how to look after

herself, how to do this, that and the other. And mostly that doesn't happen. Like we did some research, a bunch of us here in Australia, menstrual educators, a few of us got together with the Victorian Women's Trust and we mounted this amazing research project called the Waratah Project that went over a few years and we gathered information from around 3,500 women and girls and got some like a readout of where everybody was at with the menstrual cycle and their menarche

and menopause experience for all the women. And the stats were horrifying but what we expected so um one of them was that in the girls in the age range of 12 to 18 so you know that's like just started and just getting into it like 69 percent of them either disliked everything or saw it as mostly bad like now that's tragic because we know where that's hated you know menstrual shame leads to body shame blah blah blah and and 34 percent of the women either thought they knew but weren't sure or had no idea what was happening when their blood came like that's over a third of women didn't know what it was so like that's terrible and something we can do something about too but this research has been amazing and there's a wonderful book about it it's called

about bloody time the menstrual revolution we have to have and i recommend that everybody who's in working in this field get that because it's it's the current amazing research. But how menstrual shame affects birth is really sad because the menstrual cycle is how we really get to know our female body, our mature female body and our cyclicality and why we feel the way we do, blah, blah, blah. And the actual bleeding phase, the menses, the blood, the moon time, the blood time, I believe is actually training for childbirth in that it is the time in our cycle that beckons us inward. And, you know, in our culture, we're discouraged from that by being encouraged to carry on regardless, business as usual, and whatever you do, don't show any weakness and show

that you're bleeding and make sure you never leak or you'll shame us all. But when women ignore the beckoning of their body, their womb actually, inward, then they don't get that when labor starts. So it's no surprise that women who ignored their menstrual cycle, well, and ignored the bleeding phase and drugged themselves so that they stopped getting messages from their body to slow down, that they end up having epidurals and other pain relief in labor because they're just not used to how the body beckons one inward and so that in that interferes with the birth process because women just don't understand what's going on but also the other really sad bit is that menstrual shame has you

has you doubt your body you know it's it's an inconvenience. It's unpredictable, blah, blah, blah. So if you go into birth thinking your body is like that, then you don't trust your body. And you need to trust your body to trust birth, and that's not happening. So that's a tragedy. And menstrual pathology is also another way we see the effects of menstrual shame on the cycle. And menstrual pathology is also another way we see the effects of menstrual shame on the cycle. And menstrual pathology is getting more and more every day. And then menopause, well, you know, as we know, as Dr. Christian Northrup is so famous for saying,

everything that you've swept under the carpet comes out of menopause. So like we can't dodge it, but we can medicate it away there as well too. So I'm not trying to disrespect medication or medical control of various body processes. I mean, if you need it, it's wonderful and we give great thanks for it. But mostly what we know, especially in birth and menopause, that a lot of drugs and control happen unnecessarily and then end up causing worse problems. So I think the impact of menstrual shame on the rest of our lives is really just the classic situation that whatever happens at the beginning of something, so therefore menarche, impacts everything that comes. And that's not to say that it's a curse. It's also an opportunity. It's an opportunity

because the other thing that I've seen in my role as midwife and menstrual educator and menopause guide and women's empowerment facilitator and teacher of mothers and daughters and mothers of sons and a partner that there is a huge potential for what we call a shadow awakening around all of this, especially menstrual pathology and birth and menopause and recovery from hormonal contraception. So a shadow awakening is when somebody says, whoa, what's happening here? Or what just happened? And why did it happen? And then it doesn't take too much scratching below the surface for everything to unravel to see what started what and what led to what.

So the impact of menstrual shame and menstrual trauma is huge and it's not just personal, it's collective. And that's a sad thing too. Like, you know, if the menstrual cycle was an entity, and I believe she is, she is crying out so much attention right now. And she's getting it, you know. Things are changing and shifting. They've even started to use red liquid in menstrual product ads.

Woohoo! At last! If this conversation is inspiring you and you'd like to explore playing a more active role in this movement to heal menstrual shame and co-create a positive menstrual culture, we invite you to visit menstrualityleadership.com where you can find out more about the world's first leadership training designed for pioneers, change makers, nurturers and creatives to realize your full authority and leadership through the power of

the menstrual cycle. I feel the freedom in me hearing you speak. You know, alongside the de-shaming that you're doing, there's a dignifying of our reality. And I think that that dignifying and that honouring is something that we are hungry for, like, you know, parched ground is hungry for water. And it's a beautiful thing to feel. I think one of the, what you just said then, the dignifying, what was the other word you said? Honouring.

Honouring and dignifying. I think there's an awesome piece to help honour and dignify menopause, if I could just share that. Would that be okay? Please. There are five creatures on the planet that go through menopause, only five, all mammals, and humans are one, and the other four live in the ocean.

And they are the pilot whales, the belugia whales, the killer whales or orcas, and the narwhals, the unicorns of the sea. And biological, sorry, evolutionary biologists found this out when they posed the question of humans, why would women live beyond their fertility? What's the use of them? What a terrible question. Pause for a breath but what they found was that these four other creatures that went through menopause they're actually what happens when they get to

that is they become the leaders of the pod so the other creatures who go through menopause on the planet after menopause are the leaders of their communities so i think that's really honoring and dignifying and a call to action actually of all post-menopausal women that if we look to nature as our teacher, which we ought because nature is our greatest teacher, that our role is not to invisibilize ourselves or pretend we're not going through menopause or haven't gone through menopause and try to look young and pretend to carry on business as usual. That's not the job. The job is to be the leaders of the community because what they found with these whales was that their very presence ensured that their daughters and sons lived longer

and that their grandchildren thrived. That's the job of the postmenopausal woman, not to pretend she's young or carry on business as usual but to be the leaders in our community. Imagine what would be different right now if that was going on i've got to pull myself together here because i'm crying listening to you it's imagine imagine what could happen let's do that you know because if we imagine it into being then maybe it'll happen you know i'm i'm completely steeped in menopause ideas at the moment because alexandra and shani are writing their book on menopause and uh that that is what is coming up and it's what we're

seeing in the world actually there is a such a beautiful awakening um uprising surge of wisdom coming through about menopause uh it's really exciting because it's where we're all going you know some people might say well you know why is talking about menopause relevant to me as a menstruating woman it's because it's our as you shared our initiation into the leadership that we can claim and the leadership that our world really needs. And not exclusively necessarily, but in balance, you know. And all the state-of-the-art business corporate world are examining feminine leadership as the way forward as opposed to the dominant masculine leadership so like it's it's it's the

perfect time for women to to claim our beingness like you know our power our right to be our realness as opposed to our pushed into a different shape to conform to the masculine perspective of how we should be and i'm not saying this to be women against men and the patriarchy is not men against women like this is the situation that we are in collectively and these sorts of things that we're all talking about and discovering and remembering, actually remembering, part of what will bring us through to the next place that we need to be. I want to talk about how we can live and bleed and go through menopause more shamelessly. And I was enjoying. Yes, please. more shamelessly and I was enjoying yes please I was enjoying your Instagram feed recently and you had a post about the void so you talk about the void the the space just before the bleed or

when the bleed is is beginning or coming that it's the place where the healing happens and where the insights come. And obviously when we are inside a world of menstrual shame, we are missing that. We're missing so much, but we're especially missing the magic, the healing, the insights, the wisdom that come from the bleed. And one of the things that you teach about is the spiritual practice of menstruation as an antidote or medicine or a way of healing this menstrual shame. Could you speak to that, the spiritual practice of menstruation? Yeah. So the first thing to get here is this concept of a spiritual practice. So a spiritual practice is something that you do over and over again that reinforces your spiritual beliefs. You know, it's a spiritual practice. And actually, like every practice is inevitably a spiritual practice because it's reinforcing

whatever beliefs you have that underpin why you're doing what you're doing right so everybody is engaging in the spiritual practice of menstruation in whatever way they're managing themselves through menstruation because if they're say for example if you're ignoring your menstrual cycle and you're carrying on regardless that becomes your spiritual practice which reinforces the beliefs and it's a doom loop so now saying that the spiritual practice of menstruation from a perspective of honoring the menstrual cycle i think that this is the way forward and to see it like that you know and we could just take out spiritual if that freaked people out and made it sound a bit too woo-woo or whatever, but it's the practice of menstruation, how we live our menstrual cycle, because however we live our menstrual cycle is reinforcing the beliefs that underpin that and therefore the effects of that. So why that I suggest to do this, and there are many, but to firstly learn about the menstrual

cycle so that you understand that the menstrual cycle is not just the bleeding bit. That's like a short bit of it. The rest of the cycle is equally as important and part of the whole. Like we can't actually just see the blood as the only thing although it is the thing that we see the most of in terms of actual visualizing it so the spiritual practice of menstruation as I like to speak about it are different things to do around the cycle that honor the cycle and honor you the person who's menstruating so you know there's some different things like the whole red tent concept or moon lodge concept of of being on retreat in whatever way you can you know like ideally it would be as much time as you can have as possible on your own in a supported space where you can just dream into whatever you

whatever is arising and being in that void space and letting the healing happen and the magic come and the the seeds that you're gestating begin to sprout and your intuition like on fire and like visioning the cycle to come and feeling the knowing that one has at that time and using that lovely little saying of if you've got a problem, then bleed on it. So that's how you can use the blood time to help with life actually. And so there's some other little things too where to put blood on your third eye and go and sleep and see what comes. There's the blood prayers where you collect your blood

and pour it back onto the earth or into a potted plant. And with pouring the blood onto the earth or the plant you you speak everything you wish to let go of with your blood and everything you wish to call forth and let the blood fertilize and nourish so to speak so blood prayers and and then i i love the concept of a day three vision because apparently back in the day, women never did vision quests because the menstrual cycle is a vision quest. And in a classic vision quest on the night of day three, when you've been on your own in nature for a long time, then you're open and ripe for a vision. So use that within the menstrual cycle. So day three,

I recommend that women call for a vision. So that can just be as simple as a self-guided meditation where you call for a vision to whatever. I used to say inform me or educate me or inspire me or whatever. So that, that's all around the blood and all kinds of things really, you know, using your blood, painting with it, tasting it, painting your body with it, painting your lover's body with it, get permission first and doing honouring things that make life easy like use red towels instead of white towels use special jewelry or special clothes to to you know honor that time and to let the people you know with all mom's got those red earrings on again so i you know she's bleeding let's help her or whatever and then you know using the cycle the energy of the cycle to to live by because the menstrual cycle is

running our lives whether we realize it or not and everybody who lives under the same roof and if you don't believe that just ask them and so around the cycle there's various things to tap into especially ovulation you know like the powers we have around our ovulation the peak of our cycle are those to use and utilize in the same way that one might a full moon, et cetera. So the spiritual practice of menstruation is like being a priestess of the blood and practicing at these altars to honor our body and honor our cycle. And therefore that reinforces the respect and love of it and that affects our lives hugely, especially how we feel about being a woman.

One of the ideas that we talk about at Red School is the big bleed, which can be a really powerful way in, especially for people who have a really busy life or a lot going on, a lot of things that they're taking care of in their world, and they don't necessarily have much space or time. It's challenging for them to carve out space and time for menstruation. One thing, one way in is to pick one bleed and go into it as deeply as possible so and you could plan this you know months in advance if necessary that you have a whole day or you know ideally a

day and a night or perhaps even longer where you are away from the world that you're taking care of completely and you can drop as deeply as possible into into the bleed space yeah one of the another term I came across when I was exploring your work was maiden crafting which I love this um this idea of giving our menarche self our our maiden self new empowering messages as a way to heal the menstrual shame could you speak about that work yeah so you know what happens at our menarche, our first period, remembering this happens whether we want it to or not, because it's a rite of passage, and a rite of passage does what I said before by imprinting on you by what happens, the information about how your culture values woman and therefore how to behave to be accepted by the culture. So the message that most of us received as maidens at Menarche were some sort of range of don't make a fuss, hide it, just keep going business as usual, and don't show any weakness. And then, you know, variations of that so the message that that gives a message to the maiden

about how she's supposed to behave to be accepted as a woman and i've been doing this work for a long time and this is like so so common that women have these really like unfortunate, really squashing kind of messages about what it means to be a woman. And it's imprinted in us, like it can't not be, right? It's the same as like our birth is imprinted in us. And so we live according to this message and we don't even realize it until we think okay until we do this work actually and and recall so this is the work that i suggest for women to do is to recall the story of their menarche and figure out what happened and and what that taught them about

being a woman and then come up with a new message for their maiden. And the maiden crafting comes from this term of crafting something that holds this new message. And this could be anything, really. It could be a wall hanging. It could be a bookmark. It could be a flower crown. Something that you make while you're repeating the new message to your maiden, your inner maiden. And that becomes like a talisman that will hold it

and anchor the new message because the inner maiden never goes away. She's actually in us forever. And usually she is in the driver's seat most of the time in her most wounded version of herself. So this new message can change everything. So it's really a really good idea. And also that same thing can be done about birth and menopause. You also talk about how your role as a midwife or how the traditional role of a midwife was from womb to tomb. So, yes, a midwife is there to support the birth of new humans in the world but also part of the role of midwifery is to support women coming into their cycle and all the way to doularing them through through their death transition and it you know it feels really important for though for those of us who are mothers to daughters for us to work with them but also you know I have a son and I'm I'm excited and intrigued to see how I will share how I will de-shame the menstrual cycle with him that's going to be that's going to be fun

well I have a suggestion yeah for the boys so so there's a period of time with boys and it's when they're little and and girls too like when when that when our children are little we have the opportunity to normalize the menstrual cycle and teach them everything about how to honor it by being real around it. So, like, you don't go to the toilet on your own anyway, so you'd have to be pretty clever to hide what you're doing. So it's a perfect opportunity to say, oh, something like, oh, mummy's bleeding again.

Oh, well, now we know we're going to have a quiet day because we know that bleeding is the time to rest so we can gather our energy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know. And so this is especially important for boys because there's this window of time because they do stop following you going to the toilet. They do stop coming to the toilet with you. And boys even stop wanting to

listen to you at a certain age. So this window of time when they're little is the chance to really prepare them for how to be with their sisters if they have them, their girlfriends and girlfriends at school, and how to be in relationship with a woman when they're older to honor the cycle. So that I think is really something important for moms to do, to well, bleed shamelessly in front of their children. And I don't mean to make it be scary or gross in any way at all. I mean to normalize it because that's the thing that it hasn't been and that's what we're doing now but yeah so that was the thing with the boys I got excited about saying that I missed the other part of your question well for for those of us who have

young girls in our lives like whether that's nieces or daughters of friends or our own daughters, what are the key things that we can be doing to support them to enter into their menstrual cycle shamelessly? Well, if we look to traditional cultures and how they used to do it, there's some wonderful clues. So it's not a secret. it's something that the whole tribe or community would gather together to celebrate and honor when a girl or at a time during the year when a bunch of girls had got their menstrual cycle started etc so it's like a it's a time to honor so so how we can do it in this in this new age is newer at time i mean not new age that's such a funny word to say but um is to make sure they're educated and they know what it's about

because remember that thing i said before like over a third of the women in the research we did didn't know what it was so So we must educate the girls. And there's so many lovely books around now that you can be reading to even children, you know. And then as the girls get older, like around eight, nine or whatever, you can start to be introducing the lovely books that women have written for this purpose and and then like the most important thing is to have a conversation going a communication

channel open so that they can ask questions because they'll have heaps of questions and and so to answer them in ways where their questions aren't seen as a nuisance or silly or anything like that. And I love the practice that many mums do, which is to prepare a special like box or something with all kinds of things that they will give to their daughter or their niece or whoever they're preparing this for when their blood comes and this can include all kinds of things like you know cloth pads menstrual charting journals journals like maybe some lovely altar things like crystals or whatever or or often women uh knit or crochet a menstrual blanket for their daughters so the daughters see the preparation for it as well like this is what i'm going to

get when the time comes and the other thing that i um that happened in the community that i'm involved in i'm less involved in now because I'm doing everything else, but we would gather together at Beltane every year and do a ceremony for the girls who had started bleeding that year and for the boys who turned 13 that year, so their puberty rites. And what that happened for the girls was that the mothers and daughters and younger children who didn't go off with the boys' rite of passage. So the younger children and the girls were with the mothers and the daughters who were being honoured at their menarche. So these girls grew up watching these big girls be the center of attention honored and celebrated being

given gifts and all of that so so in a generation we changed the dread of the menstrual cycle to the i can't wait until it's my turn within that community so you know like so to to see it to know it's coming to know it's big and important and also I think the other thing is that yes you change after that but you're still a kid so don't worry you can still go and play so the becoming a woman is a is is is marked by the blood but then it's it's still like a time before you're a grown-up a long time before you're a grown-up i think that can be something that freaks out girls that they're you know because often girls are met at their menarche with oh you can have a baby now and like that is the last thing a um you know 10 11 12 13 year old wants to hear i'm gonna have a baby you know like 10, 11, 12, 13 year old wants to hear, I'm going to have a baby, you know, like,

so there's got to be more to it than that. And there is more to it if they have been more aware of how the women in their lives function around the menstrual cycle. And so yeah, so education and preparation in a really good and positive way can be something that's really helpful final question um as as an elder in this world and in this work i want to invite you to to maybe challenge us and call us forward what what would you like to say to the next wave of leaders in this menstruality world what is what's our work to do well banish menstrual shame but that's also an individual's job but to do what's happening now which is to just bring it more and more and more the menstrual cycle more and more into the open so it's it's not something that's muttered behind doors or hands over your mouth have you got a tampon or whatever it's it's just part of, normalizing the menstrual cycle through education and lobbying governments in all the ways that we are and healing the grown women and preparing women for menopause. into the here and now.

Like I was going to say into the public domain, but that's not what I mean, public domain. I mean into what's honoured, into what's celebrated. So in the same way that beauty and weddings and babies are celebrated, we need to do the same thing for the menstrual cycle. So I know that's what's happening, but I think that maybe a way, and we're doing this as well, so that menstrual education, menstrual coaching, all of that becomes a career,

not just one thing the weird lady down the road does, the period woman, like to have menstrual educator as a career, not just one thing the weird lady down the road does, the period woman, like to have menstrual educator as a career and promoting this as a, you know, a way of being, a modality, a necessary part of life that everybody appreciates and values. So I think we need to have menstrual cycle, menstruality conferences, and we need to have groups of menstrual cycle, menstruation educators, and all of these things are happening. So I think we just have to keep going at what we're doing and not let any whatever the next thing that's going to happen to try and knock it over, which I guess could be, you know,

more pathology or issues around gender that mean that it's dangerous to talk about women and girls and, you know, like we have to, we must not be thwarted in the process of healing menstrual shame in whatever way we all know. And there'll be different ways for each of us because we each have our own unique medicine. So we need to really claim this space we need to teach each other and encourage each other to live and bleed shamelessly how can our listeners connect with you and your work is there anything that you'd like to share especially at the moment sure thank you uh i've got a website janehardwickcollings.com and i've got books in there and e-courses so in terms of the menstrual cycle i've got an e-course called snake medicine shedding menstrual shame and i've

got a book for girls approaching menstruation called becoming a woman and i'm just about ready to birth my book on the menstrual cycle called Blood Rights, the Spiritual Practice of Menstruation. So that's coming soon. And I'm about to put online soon a Becoming a Woman facilitator training program, so teaching women how to teach and prepare mothers and daughters for menstruation. And I'm on social media, Jane Hardwick Collings, and I offer lots of stuff on there.

Thank you. Thank you for being so bold and free and wild and liberated in yourself and your expression and for everything that that does to create the world that we're all wanting to build here which is one that dignifies menstruality the menstrual cycle thank you for sharing so generously today and it's been an absolute honor and a joy to be with you thank you jane thank you sophie thank you so much. Thank you, Red School. Lots of love. Thank you so much for being with us today and listening to the Menstruality podcast from Red School. Please subscribe and follow wherever you listen to podcasts, and it'll really help us to

reach more people if you could leave us a review. And if you'd like to explore how to activate your unique form of leadership through menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause, you can visit menstrualityleadership.com. All right, see you next week and until then, keep living life by your own brilliant rhythm.