The Menstruality Podcast - 67. How to End the Year (and Everything Else) with Cycle Awareness (Alexandra & Sjanie)

Episode Date: December 15, 2022

Today we explore how menstrual cycle awareness schools us in endings. Each month we have an opportunity to practice ending the cycle well, aligning with the deep intelligences at work within us. ..In this episode we break down the different processes at work as we descend towards menstruation and what they can teach us about how to navigate all of life’s endings; the smaller, more surface level ones like the end of the year we have coming up, and the bigger more profound ones, like ending relationships, moving house, all the way to the deep grief of losing loved ones or miscarriage. We explore:How conscious endings are actually what makes life sacred.The surprising gifts of the premenstruum when it comes to endings - how this phase of the cycle prepares and tenderises us to feel deeply and acknowledge what we love and treasure. The end of the menstrual cycling years, menopause, and the deep wisdom alive in this death-and-rebirth ending.---Registration is now open for our 2023 Menstruality Leadership Programme - you can apply here: www.menstrualityleadership.com---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.school

Welcome to the Menstruality Podcast, where we share inspiring conversations about the power of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. This podcast is brought to you by Red School, where we're training the menstruality leaders of the future. I'm your host, Sophie Jane Hardy, and I'll be joined often by Red School's founders, Alexandra and Sharni, as well as an inspiring group of pioneers, activists, changemakers and creatives to explore how you can unashamedly claim the power of the menstrual cycle to activate your unique form of leadership for yourself, your community and the world. Hey there, welcome back to the Menstruality Podcast. Thank you for being here. We're headed towards the end of the year and this will be the final podcast episode this year.

We're taking a pause and we'll be back in the first week of January actually with an exciting invitation for a way to kick off the new year with us but for now we're looking at how menstrual cycle awareness actually schools us in endings and how each month we have an opportunity to practice ending the cycle well and aligning with the deep intelligences that are at work within us and we break down the different processes here that happen as we descend towards menstruation at the end of the cycle and what they can teach us about how to navigate all of life's endings from the small more surface level ones like this end of the year that we're facing now to the bigger and more profound ones like ending relationships, moving home, all the way to the deep grief of losing loved ones or miscarriage. Alexander and Sharni share their totally different ways of approaching endings,

which is very funny. And I just wanted to say a small note that I'm sorry about my audio with this one. There's this ongoing saga of my house renovation gone very wrong, and I unexpectedly had to record this at my parents' house. So apologies for that. But I hope you enjoy this episode about how the menstrual cycle can teach us how to navigate life's endings. Well good morning you two. It feels very beautiful to be having this conversation with you about endings right now because I'm looking out at my window and there's a field that's absolutely covered in glistening ice and it puts me right there in feeling the end of this year in feeling the solstice the winter solstice that's coming here in the northern hemisphere and

yeah there's just so much to say about how cycle awareness can help us with endings of all kinds but before we get into that let's do our cycle check-in so where are you at sharni i've lost track i know you asked me if i was bleeding and i thought well sophie's like this your house renovations it's like you can't track your own cycle let alone mine because you bled a week ago didn't you just I was with you just a few days ago when I was bleeding so that's where I'm at yeah it's funny I so I've actually moved on from when I was bleeding a few days ago. I'm day nine.

I'm day nine. And I've been at home with sick children all week, and I seem to have caught something of what they've got, and I'm coming down with it. So I always find my cycle experience is so colored. When I'm unwell in any way, shape or form, all I feel is that unwellness. And yeah, that's what I'm feeling. I'm feeling kind of heavy headed and very slowed down. And there's a feeling of deep apathy in my system, which to be fair, all the hallmarks of endings so there's something as you say very perfect about having this conversation right now I'm feeling that let go yeah yeah and as we just

named I'm on some other planets who knows where I am I know where I am I'm on day 18 which is really an interesting place to be because I know that the reality of my situation is about to probably hit me quite hard. But I'm still in a blissful, very outward focused, just going moment by moment, summertime mode. But yeah, I had to just leave our house and luckily my parents welcomed us in so I don't have child care this week but I'm still working but our house basically isn't isn't livable in and it wasn't supposed to be that way but it is and so I really am just having to go minute by minute dealing with the challenges that come and I'm I'm really dizzy with it and it's good to pause with you in this moment before my inner autumn kicks in and shit could get really

real and just prepare myself for that yeah for the feeling of the fullness of the chaos that's happening in my world at the moment yeah before alexandra you say share your cycle check-in i just want to say so what's so interesting because we're talking about endings, is it is actually the summer into inner autumn threshold that is the beginning of the end. And it's so beautiful that you are mindful and pausing, because once you cross that ridge, yeah, there's something that you're really confronted with, which takes you into the ending good and proper. So it's a powerful moment to be paying attention. Good one. Alexandra, how about you? Well, the full moon just peaked, and I'm now in the,

is it the kind of shadow side of it? It's about day 17, I think. And it's so interesting because this was my sweet spot in the cycle. I used to feel like I hit my groove as I came into the inner autumn and there was grunt in my system and I knew what I was about and there was, you know, all my stuff until until the bleed a few days before the bleed so and i feel that interestingly with the moon cycle only a little percentage compared with my menstrual cycle experience but if there's an echo so that combined with the fact that I slept well last night,

oh my God, I could conquer the world when I sleep well. So I woke up this morning feeling, actually my first thought was, I am so grateful for cycle awareness was my first thought actually because I was feeling this release because we are coming to the end of the year and we've held so much and this week was so intense at Red School it was just one event after another and then we had to get polished up for and you know prepped for and there was just so much going on and I can't tell you the discipline I was holding in myself. And then this morning that all ended and I could feel this incredible high coming me.

So I was in the sweet spot of the moon, good night's sleep. In the release, because I get a release at an ending, and kind of there's a spaciousness that comes in. And the sun was shining. I mean, what could possibly go wrong today? I went for a walk in the glistening fields, as you just described, Sophie. I felt so happy and so grateful. So I'm in a very nice, sweet space. It's really interesting to hear you name the ending that we've been inside of this

week at red school so we've had to do so much to be able to put together the launch of next year's menstrual leadership program that's what you're talking about which is now open and actually when this the day this podcast comes out will be the last day to apply in this window. So there we go. I'll say more about that later. So that there's that ending as in we've had to do so much work. And I just want to say thank you to Lauren, who might be listening to this right now, for all of the amazing work that you do behind the scenes at Red School to make everything we do possible. Thank you, Lauren. We love you. Absolutely. Yeah. And I'm also aware of, and you mentioned

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

Oh, my God, you know, to get that out. But there was still this other piece that was missing. And the writing of the menopause book, Wise Power, was enormous. It was the biggest thing I personally have had to do. It asked more of me than anything else has asked of me. It was far more radical. And I had to dive so deeply. But it was so profoundly satisfying to feel it coming together finally i could articulate in a way that was

understandable to people i hope it's understandable i think it's understandable so it was just getting that putting that final full stop metaphorical and literal full stop in place it's just extraordinary and then to finally see the book launched in the world I mean I'm almost speechless with the enormity of for me and it has put me into a massive unknown because this has been my life yeah I mean anyway we can say more about that yeah we'll get into how you both approach and deal with endings and your strength there and your vulnerabilities there but first so I want to name the end of the year is coming and what we want to get into today is how menstrual cycle awareness can help us with all of these kinds of endings and all kinds of endings, like the end of relationships, the end of creative projects, like you named with the book, the end of loved ones miscarriage and then ultimately our own death we can go there you know cycle awareness is preparing us for the big full stop that is coming

for all of us so just to kick us off can you describe you started this in my check-in shani by talking about this summer to autumn moment. Can you describe what happens in the menstrual cycle at the end? Yes. So the bit I brought in in your check-in, which is really, it's subtle, but it's really important, is that move from the inner summer into the inner autumn because that's where we come out of this creating generating doing mode and we start to shift into this place of being undone and it's like we reach the zenith and now it's the return, the downfall. So it's the beginning of the end. And I love that we get the whole of our inner autumn to sort of

wriggle our way into this kind of new dawning reality. I really love that because our psyches need time to negotiate endings. We really need time. That's one thing I've learned is I totally underestimated actually how much time I need with endings. Yeah. the inner autumn takes us through this process of being undone and you start to weed out and discern and the letting go starts to happen in the inner autumn that's where already you start to like cast off what's you know what's not quite it and you begin this process of being made more permeable and more sensitive so the whole of the in autumn in a way is destabilizing because of its dynamism because of its momentum so the destabilization starts you start to feel the wobble uncertainty comes in and all of that is opening up the way, opening up the portal, preparing your psyche for the threshold of the ending, which of course happens at the end of the inner autumn.

It's the place we call the void. And that is the sacred portal of endings. And the whole way through the inner autumn autumn you're kind of getting prepped for that you're getting lowered down into that it's so beautiful what you're saying there shiny because our psyches need time to deal with endings and what i'm aware of when i look out in the world is that that's not present we don't know how to grieve we don't know how to end consciously when people have miscarriages for example all kinds of things get said like well at least you can move on and try again or instead of really acknowledging the huge thing that's happened

yeah so we're not good we're not good at this we're not it's been one of the fallouts of the lack of cyclical consciousness and the way I would say it is that we've lost touch with the sacred because we are so dismissive of endings and we don't take time to cherish and relish we don't ever allow ourselves those moments of looking back and really seeing and feeling and letting ourselves be touched by what we've created or what life has given us it's that it's such a sweet moment to do that it's such a precious thing for me it's what yeah for me it's what makes life sacred is the honoring of endings and because of we've we've lost this cyclical way we've lost the knowing the instinctive knowing of how to end things beautifully together the rituals the

the sitting and pausing and breathing with someone for a minute before jumping in to try and fix their situation. And then what I heard your name was, boom, the wisdom of the cycle destabilizes us in inner autumn so that we can't help if we're with the process. Our psyches can't help but be prepared for the ending that's coming. So the wisdom of the cycle propels us into that psychological preparation. Yeah. And then, so we come to this sacred portal where the ending the thing stops so with our cycle uh what happens with our cycle is there is this we're in something and we're in something and then suddenly we're not there's just suddenly a gap we fall into where we our blood hasn't come yet we the bleeding hasn't started

but there's a sort of space a sort of nothing space is how you know one way of describing it because you're in is something until then it's you being angry or blah blah blah what's coming to mind is a client of mine from years ago who, she's still really rage in her premen's stroke. And, you know, especially with her partner. I mean, it was, and then I would say, what happens just before bleeding? She's, oh, it goes quiet. Just stops.

It just stops. I thought, oh, there she is she's just stepped off the the merry-go-round yeah there's a cut there's a cut and that's really the signal of an ending because endings are so final that's what i find so painful about them. There's a non-negotiable finality to it that is so confronting. It's so confronting. And it's so, you know, the way you're describing it, Alexandra, it can also be incredibly liberating depending on your nature and the thing that's ending.

Well, what's happening is that you're, yes, it does depend on your nature because this is the sweet spot in the cycle for me. I discovered when I was cycling. This is cut. And then what happens is just before bleeding, we can fall into quite a darkness there because there is no longer a something happening. And that's where if there if there is for instance anyone with uh who suffers from

depression or anxiety or has experienced a lot of trauma in their lives often this can be the darkest hour the darkest hour um because there is no holding and And I say to people, oh gosh, this is big. Shani talked about this being a sacred moment, okay? This threshold. The void, I know I can say it this way. The void, this emptiness, is another way of talking about expanded consciousness.

We've just stepped into sacred time and space. We've just stepped into cosmic consciousness, if you like. You're no longer held in human, in your sort of humanness. You're out of that, out of the sort of material kind of consciousness. And there's nothing to hold on to in this moment. And in a way, you know, that's what spiritual life is about, is being able to step into this expanded place. Guess what?

Our cycle plunges us there every month. And through menstrual cycle awareness, you bring more and more consciousness to this nothing space. And it becomes a something after a while. Not a something as in from before, but it starts to have, something isn't the right word. Instead of it being a complete nothingness, it is, I use the word the plenum, the fullness. There's a wonderfulness there, which I found. And then the moment you start bleeding again, it's like you land in something.

But gosh, it's big what I'm trying to articulate here. But actually at menstruation, you're still in that expanded consciousness. But once you start bleeding, you have a little bit of an anchor to hold on to. There's a little something at work. What's coming to mind for me is the solstice and that turning point on solstice where the axis of the earth shifts and the light starts to return, except that at the solstice, there's like three days or so isn't there of no movement even though we've crossed that line there's no movement stays the same and gradually gradually so it's unknown it's all it's you're in this expanded territory and our consciousness is through cycle awareness

and practicing you know really being aware of what happens at menstruation really prepares us for big life for any kind of ending but particularly big life transitions of any kind you've named some of them sophie it's really big what you're saying i know it is i'm a bit speechless now i think oops because i want to go right into that with you and i want this to be really useful i want it to be really useful and this is a cycle is so freaking useful i I mean, I told you this morning, I woke up going, oh, I'm so grateful for cyclical consciousness to hold me.

The understanding I have in this moment that I'm in right now. Yeah. Let's talk about how you two experienced this personally as a way into it. So we were chatting earlier. so I know that you deal with endings very differently both of you which is why it's so good that you're in a creative partnership and possibly one of the reasons why your creative partnership is so fruitful

and I watch it in you so Sharni you go slowly at the end Alexandra Alexandra moves quickly. I don't move quickly so much as I get very ecstatic and I have to slow right down. I've learned disciplines. And you do end things abruptly. It's like I'm still there in it. And for you, it's like door closed, over, gone, next. We saw it this weekend. That was a perfect moment.

This weekend just gone we went to a wedding together the red school team we were together in person it was so bloody good and at the end it was the morning and then alexandra within a couple of minutes seemed to have her bag packed her bags packed her coat on her gloves on and was about to walk out the door shani had been sort of amazing luxuriously in this window seat and was like what's happening but you see what's behind that is my huge need for spaciousness to navigate the transition back into work on monday i couldn't spend all that time with you because I needed to have a big chunk of time on my own.

And this is where our lives are different because spaciousness comes by staying there. Because when I get home, I've got my family. Yes, exactly. For me, I'm also courting spaciousness. It's just much more spacious to linger as long as I can. In fact, I'll reveal a little secret. On my drive home, which was when I was in a bubble in a car all by myself and I was bleeding,

I drove so slowly. I took as long as I could possibly take to get home. I stopped at every petrol station along the way just so that I could have more time and space. We've actually, it's reminding me, we've sat outside after workshops and we've driven home from something. We've sat outside Sharni's house for like, you know, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, you know, just having this precious moment before Sharni had to go back into the maelstrom of her heart. What I can share, because I've learned so much about endings and beginnings through my cycle.

In fact, that's been, I think, you know, two of the core things that I keep learning from my cycle is how to negotiate beginnings and endings. Because I'm confronted with them over and over. And every beginning, every ending is like a new opportunity to have a different experience. And my cycle just keeps revealing things to me but the one thing I've noticed about myself with endings is I get really invested in what I'm creating or doing I'm an all-in kind of person I really throw myself into it to the exclusion of everything else. I have an amazing capacity for focus and to really go into something and I lose myself and I become absorbed in it. I get really taken by it. And then when it comes to the ending, there is such a, I feel this, and it's sort of below my rational mind. I'm sometimes shocked at how

strongly I feel this, but this existential loneliness, as I start to feel myself pulled away from the thing that I love, like I've been creating something I love, or I've been on an adventure with people, I've spent the weekend with you, and we're all more connected, and I love you all so much, and then I feel this incredibly painful existential loneliness is the best way I can describe it, and it cuts so deeply in me, and mostly when I'm not paying attention I don't notice that pain like I can't quite touch that pain in myself and so I sort of do all the usual things to override myself and you know I'm trying to think what some of my kind of unconscious habits are, but yeah, getting spaced out or kind of distracting myself in some way or other.

But what I've noticed, what I've come to learn and appreciate, and this is exactly what I experienced this weekend when we were together, when Alexandra abruptly left and you both abruptly left and I was like and then I sat in my car on my own and I started to feel the incredible pain of that pull that loneliness and I and I wept and I wept and I wept and I wept and then when finally my eyes were dry enough to be able to see I got in my car and I started driving and I wept and I wept and I wept. And then when finally my eyes were dry enough to be able to see, I got in my car and I started driving and I felt amazing that the feeling the feelings and being with the grief and sadness just opened me up into the most expanded blissful state I was in such a place of peace and tranquility and I felt so in love

with life it was so beautiful I mean I was bleeding which really does help for me the combination of bleeding and driving a long journey on my own are pretty blissful I have to say but let's let's just look at that so the crying was what opened up the space for the ending to complete itself and for you to like what did the crying do yeah I I sort of feel it like a river. And this is similar in the autumn. Like, I feel like I'm in this river and there's a dam wall up ahead, which is the finality of the ending. And the water's building up against the dam. And there's a sort of growing pressure in me, which is actually a pressure of feeling. It's a deep stirring.

I find thresholds, because they destabilize us so much, they bring up strong feelings for everyone, I would say. It's just how, well, when something really matters to us that we've been doing, the feelings will be stronger. Yeah, something really matters, the feelings will be stronger. stronger so yes I feel like I'm approaching this damn wall and the the depth of feelings start to kind of uh cool and there's this pressure and if I'm resisting which is what I'm often doing I have my foot on the brakes I'm like no no no I don't want this to end don't want this to end then I'm not doing. I have my foot on the brakes. I'm like, no, no, no, I don't want this to end. Don't want this to end. Then I'm not actually letting myself feel the feelings that are there. But when I let go of the resistance and actually notice how I'm doing,

the feelings are the thing that open that sacred portal. They burst the damn walls. They let the river of life flow. And then I'm once again carried that's how I experience it a surrender it's the surrender that comes from the feeling such a powerful image and the fact that you were bleeding is really is part of what helped that damn wall to break yes because I was so uh sensitized and soft and feeling very fragile and your inner autumn had pounded you into a pulp I can't actually remember yeah and so so this is I mean this is something else I've noticed about myself so I have this big thing with endings but once something is over, I have moved on, but I move on big time. You know, I can't even remember people ask me what

happened or if I have an argument with someone a few weeks ago, I have moved on, you know, I don't hold things. So that's the, that's one of the major strengths while there is this big buildup. Once I've moved on,'m on that's it yeah no looking back for me I love having these kinds of conversations with Alexandra and Shani about the richness and the full depth and breadth of the applications of menstrual cycle awareness in the world. And if this conversation is inspiring you to explore how menstrual cycle awareness can enhance your life, we want to invite you to come and explore our menstruality leadership program. Through over 10,000 hours of soulful research and deep exploration with

thousands of people, Alexandra and Sharni have really come to know the immense power that our menstrual cycles hold. That's why they created the Menstruality Leadership Programme, which is the world's first leadership training rooted in the wisdom of the menstrual cycle we start in march next year and you can apply at menstrualityleadership.com and if you happen to be listening to this on thursday the 15th of december when we're publishing this episode you're in luck as today is the last day for our super early bird discount where you can save up to 500 pounds if you apply for the menstruality leadership program before 5 p.m uk time so the place to go is menstrualityleadership.com okay let's get back into this beautiful conversation about how the wisdom of the menstrual cycle can guide us in life's endings.

I have to be careful around endings because I do get high. So when I'm in something, there's a lot of, you know, like a creative project or I'm thinking of, you know, when we run a training, particularly the in-person training, that was always huge for me because that demands more energetically because it's more concentrated. So I'm sort of keeping myself for that. It's all good. You know, I'm in something, I'm in a bubble of the creative project, but it's demanding something of me. So when something ends, there's a huge release of tension in me. And I step into this empty space. And I tell you, man, empty spaces, they just work for me in terms of things.

I just immediately, ideas are popping. I'm just ideas. I don't want ideas are popping. I'm just ideas. I don't want to action anything. I am just, it's like being a channel, I suppose. And just things are coming to me. And I am a total, I just get quite high. You know, the ideas are creative.

It's my creativity. So it's like a geyser of things that kick off. There's space for them to come through. And I can get overstimulated because my nervous system is, you know, sensitive. So I have to be very deliberate and conscious about moving slowly and having spaciousness around things. And I just have to have spaciousness around any transition. You know, Sharni knows me. I get to everything early.

I'm just, you know, hopeless. When Sharni's travelling with me, it's hell. Because I can't do things quickly. And so at the ending, I just have to give myself lots of space to come to land with the charge. And then what can happen? So, for instance, at the end of our in-person training, I get it so well now.

So I have to really pace, you know, I take time to say goodbye to the venue now that, you know, I go through this ritual of going through all the rooms we've been in and just have a real sense of taking it all in. And then the drive home is, I have to drive slowly because like Shani in a car, but I don't bleed anymore, but you know, I am high. So I'm high. And then, and there'll be ideas coming and so on. And then I get home and then, yes, then there's a kind of loneliness that will come in, an emptiness. And this is where I'm so grateful for cycle awareness, because with the end of, for instance, the end of the book, well, one, I know it passes.

I know it's just a feature of this phase and I just need to just be, you know, I just am very gentle and sweet with myself, but I'm thinking about the book. It was, I went through the same pattern with the book, that moment when it was launched. I mean, what a sweet moment. And then, you know, the kind of acknowledgements we were getting and, you know, we were like little, we were stars for a few, you know, for a little while.

Stars with Hay House, you know, you have your moment in the sun with the publisher and, you know, it's like that. And then it goes quiet because of course people have to read the book that now we get feedback when people are writing to us and saying i got a wonderful message yesterday from someone about the book so there's this gap of silence and that that's the emptiness place so for me coming as i said earlier coming off writing the book has been, you know, it was the end of a massive cycle.

So there's a huge, big silence for me. And I felt it was big. It was very big. I went into this real space of, oh, wow, I've just completed a mission. You know, what the bejesus is my life about now? Never mind that I have a whole business, you know, Red School and all our creative projects and things, but there was something deep that had gone,

an organisation that had been holding me. And I'm in that space right now. But I'm not feeling because of course, there's lots of activity on the surface, but I'm actually pacing that I am really allowing myself to, to let my psyche come to land. It's almost like I'm coming to land with that ending. And really just staying close to myself at a deep level. And this is where cycle awareness has given me so much. I trust the empty space. I know, even in that really sort of death moment,

I felt trust, the new kind of guiding light for me, the new impulse of what these next years of my life are going to be. So I'm in that now. I'm curious about what I'm really about now. I'm navigating that. So I'm in that void and it needs a patience. So I'm patient. It needs a lot of silence. I have a lot of silence in my life and it's not like i'm not like looking thinking what is it what is it no no no no i just go around

very simple living and rest i actually have to physically let my body recover that's the other thing after a project I've got to let it complete not just in my psyche but in my physicality and that ecstatic side of my nature is a bit dangerous it's great because it's great but it's dangerous because it could seize me and just take me and have me gallop off or something yeah i'd love to name and summarize and unpack some of the threads that we've pulled out here about how cycle awareness is helping us with these endings the small endings and the big endings and how it can help us with this ending of the ending of the year as well so we've named how inner autumn tenderizes us prepares our psyches and makes us feel the things that we might not know we need to feel but are always there in endings culminating in this void which gives us this pause moment like the winter

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

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

She actually did our first menstruality leadership program back in, was that 2011? It was. oh was that 2011 it was she was pregnant and I was actually with her the day when she started miscarrying and the following day I got in touch with her and I asked her what she needed and if there was anything I could offer to support her and what she said to me was that what she really needed was ways help she needed help to cry she needed help to let go she needed help to grieve and she asked if I'd make her a playlist of songs to cry to, which was such a joy for me to create. I love music and I love pulling together music. And so I created her this playlist and I've actually

since gone on to really build that playlist. And in my own understandings of endings, I found all kinds of tracks, music that speak to the different aspects of endings and that really can support you to let go and to, to cry and to honor and to respect and to move tenderly and all those things that are really important I think um I'd love to pull a few of those together for everyone listening because I think as we are coming to an ending you may enjoy having some songs to let go to so we'll share that in our Spotify playlist on Red School yeah good movies to cry to are another way yes what are your favorites I don't have favorites I'm not somebody who watches a movie more than

once really no never do anything twice I'm trying to think of mine, my favourite crying movies. Oh, I know. It's so sweet. Aid never cries. But I know when he has a build-up of emotion, he needs to release it because he watches the animated film Up. It's so beautiful. It's essentially about this couple who can't have children. It is very uplifting and joyful but there's just this thread of sadness and he's must have watched it 10 or 15 times and I'll look over at him

and he'll be quietly sobbing while we're watching this film and I know I should just make it a sort of every every three or four months just suggest that we do it so that he can have his every cry menstrual cycle poor buggers oh that's beautiful and i get we'd be remiss to not talk about menopause oh yes we're talking about endings and there are going to be many people listening who are negotiating the ending of that is menopause yeah menopause is what can I say I mean it's death and rebirth I've only written a whole book about it what can I say um well it's the end of your menstruating years let's just say that that's a big deal especially if you've loved your cycle you know what I was saying about how the more you care and love something the harder the harder it can be to let it go

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

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

And you step into an empty place of low energy. And wow, that's where in that empty space, you are subject. At an ending, all your buffering falls away. Yeah, you're defenseless yeah you lose all your defenses you know that's why there's so there's so much feeling that comes up you know it's the ending of identities you've had that have held you that have framed you that have given context to your life and all those fall away and you don't have that anymore and you're just you're going whoa you know who am i what am i you know and because no one talks about this until now uh yeah um it's profoundly shocking but of course just like the pre-menstruum prepares you for that void just before you bleed

the autumn is preparing you for endings actually the lead-up to menopause is preparing you for that cut and um it's a preparation ground which is why I'm not really comfortable often. You know, we're quite specific in how we describe the stages of menopause because that lead up time is a sort of country of its own. But I don't like getting mushed in with menopause because menopause is so singular. It is so distinct and extreme, strong. And that cut and that emptiness you go into. And you sort of flirt with it, a bit like you're flirting in autumn with it. But, but, but, but, cycle awareness profoundly prepares you for that death moment, that ending at menopause.

And I have to say, you know, because I had been rooted in cycle awareness, menopause was not a trauma for me. There were challenges. You know, I faced all sorts of I had to really question who I was in my life and so on but it was all it felt in I felt inside something rather than being slapped in the face by something or you know completely disabled yeah So cycle awareness. That's something I felt often at the end of my cycle is it's sort of like the delusion of my invincibility falls away and I suddenly go, wow, I'm mortal. I'm going to die. And it gets really real.

And I've had lots of death dreams at the end of my cycle. So it seems to me as if when we come to endings, big endings, it opens up this portal to all the other losses and all the other potential endings in our life. I think that's why endings can be so strong. That's a bit of how I've made sense of this profound existential loneliness that I feel sometimes with endings is that it almost feels like it's not just of the here and now and it's not just mine it feels like the human experience it feels so archetypal and so big and when I say all that out loud it kind of makes me appreciate for people in menopause but for anyone going through any kind of ending just how big the exposure is that we go through and actually how much our psyches are having to go through. I was feeling such compassion for people on my drive home at like the sixth petrol station

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

that existential fear and dread that we feel at the end of things we avoid it as much as we possibly can and then we get to the end yeah and we go shit I wish I'd been present to yeah all of it exactly so this is what I think our cycles teach us profoundly. Back to my comment about how endings make endings, good endings, endings well, make life sacred. Yes. Because every time we go through an ending and we pause and we look back and we honor what has been, it's like we suddenly become awake and alive to the awesomeness of life, which we, it's so easy not to notice, There's something about that reflection that makes everything so real and so precious.

I can't remember where I heard this, but this is so true for me, that an experience isn't an experience until you've reflected on it. Nice. And yeah, it's like that layer is so important and i would possibly even use the word more like acknowledged celebrated experience yeah yes yes well speaking of ending things sacredly we need we need to practice what we're preaching right now by somehow ending this conversation i think i think what i feel moved to ask is you know what is something we'll all have our own ways of doing this but i'm curious for me so i ask it. What's something that we can do,

whether it's in the dissolving, smushing moment of autumn or in the void or when the bleed comes, what's something that we can do to acknowledge the ending as the cycle ends, to bring that sacredness alive and to harvest the gold and the richness. It's what we said earlier, give space, just give space. And there isn't actually, for me, almost anything to do. It's actually not doing. It's just having space to be in the emptiness

and then perhaps to feel whatever is there you know whatever feelings are coming up but it's just to give it its due mine is similar in that for me it's all about being with the feelings that I'm having and what's so beautiful about that is the grief and the loneliness that I feel for me really reveals how much I love and care for something so those two things go hand in hand for me as I deeply, I'm tapped into my heart and I'm really connected to how much I value what has been and what I'm letting go of. It really opens me to love.

So for me, the feelings are the thing. Yeah, you need time and space for that. Thank you, you two. yeah you need time and space for that thank you you too this is the ending of our podcast for this year so we'll be back with a podcast about beginnings in january that's going to be a fun conversation wow you mean no podcast for a couple of weeks that's talk about throwing everyone into an empty space sophie jane i was i resisted it for a long time yeah well may we all feel the love may we all feel the love we have for the menstrual menstruality podcast in this gap and may we all share the love we have for it in the reviews on apple podcast

oh i like what you did there beautiful well see you all next year bye-bye thank you for joining us today so this is the last episode of this year. As I mentioned in the middle of the podcast, if you are curious about our menstruality leadership program, come on over to menstrualityleadership.com. And if you're listening on Thursday, the 15th of December, then especially come on over because this is the last day to receive the super early bird discount for the MLP which will save you up to 500 pounds if you apply by 5 p.m today London time so thank you for joining us thank you for being with us this year I'm so excited for what's to come with this podcast I'm so happy that you're here and part

of this community. We're going to have lots more conversation next year. We're going to have some epic interviews with some amazing people. I can't wait to share them with you. But until then, keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.