The Menstruality Podcast - Period Poetry, Cyclical Creativity and Artistic Activism (Nikki Tajiri)

Episode Date: December 2, 2021

This week we meet The Period Poet herself, Nikki Tajiri who is the author of “She Dreams When She Bleeds” which weaves original menstrual art with cycle-inspired, rebellious poetry and has reached women and menstruators all over the world, as well as Murmur, rumble, roar, an emotional exploration of the space where climate change meets inner transformation.Nikki gracefully translates her intimate cycle awareness into artistic expression, and this episode is a soothing, gentle, lyrical exploration of how we can each express the magic of our cycles and activate our creativity, in our own unique way. Through the lens of her poems and her creative process, we explore:How to follow the creative impulses that arise from the menstrual cycle, even when our inner critic tells us they’re crazy. Why our world needs artists and creatives who dare to channel the fierce, truth-telling energy of inner autumn.Why embracing the life-affirming rhythm and flow of our cyclical nature is so critical to solving the environmental crises we face.---Registration is open for our 2022 Menstruality Leadership Programme. You can check it out here: https://www.redschool.net/menstruality-leadership-programme-2022---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 (https://www.instagram.com/red.school)Nikki Tajiri: @nikki.tajiri

Welcome to the Menstruality Podcast, where we share inspiring conversations about the power of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. This podcast is brought to you by Red School, where we're training the menstruality leaders of the future. I'm your host, Sophie Jane Hardy, and I'll be joined often by Red School's founders, Alexandra and Sharni, as well as an inspiring group of pioneers, activists, changemakers and creatives to explore how you can unashamedly claim the power of the menstrual cycle to activate your unique form of leadership for yourself, your community and the world. Hey, welcome back. Thanks for listening to the Menstruality Podcast. This episode is for you if you're interested in expressing your creativity and in expressing the wisdom of your cycle, because I'm talking with the period poet herself Nikki Tajiri who's the author of

She Dreams When She Bleeds which weaves original menstrual art with cycle inspired rebellious poetry and has reached women and menstruators all over the world as well as Murmur Rumble Raw which is an emotional exploration of the space where climate change meets inner transformation. Nikki really gracefully translates her intimate cycle awareness into artistic expression and this episode is soothing and gentle and lyrical. It's a slow exploration of how we can each express the magic of our cycles and activate our creativity in our own unique way. Through the lens of her poems and her own creative process, we look at how to follow the creative impulses that arise from the menstrual cycle, even when our inner critic tells us they're crazy, that happens to me a lot, why our world needs

artists and creatives who dare to channel the fierce truth-telling no bull beep energy of inner autumn and why embracing the life-affirming rhythm and flow of our cyclical nature is so critical to solving the environmental crises that we face. I really hope this one inspires you to express your own cycle, your cycle wisdom, whether it's through words or drawing or paint or dance or whatever creative expression moves you, whether it's just for you or to share with others. It's real medicine for the world so I hope you leave this one feeling as inspired as I do. So welcome to the menstruality podcast, Nikki. I'm so grateful that I have the period poet here in person. Well, virtually. Thank you so much for being with us today. How are you doing? Good. Thank you so much for having with us today. How are you doing?

Good. Thank you so much for having me. I love Red School and I've felt so supported by Red School and the whole team. So it's such an honor to be here. Beautiful. We always start with a cycle check in on this podcast, although I know that you're not cycling at the moment because you're pregnant. So congratulations. Thank you. I'd love to hear how you're experiencing your cyclical nature through this pregnancy. Well, I think it's been more of a change like week by week, like maybe pregnancy.

I don't know if other people feel this but it's almost like one big cycle that you're going through like a slow build or something like that that's kind of the feeling that I'm getting but I haven't felt so many season inner seasons as much yeah I know for me I really felt that I was in inner winter for pretty much the whole of my pregnancy I it felt quiet and slow and just a little bit disconnected from the rest of the world and it had a dreamy quality like I would look at the trees uh outside and I would feel more connected to the trees than the than the humans around me which is often how I feel in my inner winter yeah I'm feeling things really deeply like I find that during pregnancy I'm like on the

brink of tears quite often whereas and regularly I'm not emotional, but I feel very moved by things. And I feel like when I look at my daughter, I can feel, oh, my gosh, I that love alive in your poetry and also a kind of wildness. And you seem to have this capacity to name experiences around body and our cycles that so many of us feel but can't quite express. And in that, I've noticed that you seem to be able to bypass or kind of transmute the shame that can exist around the menstrual cycle to get through to the magic of it. And, you know, what I would love to do today in this conversation is really capture some of that freedom that you experience

and dive into some of these poems and open them up and and hopefully expand the sense of freedom and possibility that each of us feel around our cycles how does that sound that sounds amazing we have a possibility here to you know through your amazing creative expression around the cycle to invite each person listening and myself included to find our own unique expression around the cycle, which will contribute to this great conversation that's growing and growing in the world. So to start us off with that, I'd love to hear how you became the period poet and what was calling to you there? I don't have a background in writing poetry. I just kind of recently started writing it a couple of years ago. And I don't have a background

in periods either. I just started learning about them kind of around the same time. So it's kind of funny that I'm the period poet because I really, a few years ago, didn't know anything about periods or poetry. But after my daughter was born, kind of in that postpartum period, I just kind of started writing because postpartum is a very emotional time. And it's really, you just have a lot going on. Well, I'm sure you know, you're kind of still just coming out of that postpartum period. So I just started kind of writing to express myself. And then I had been going through a bit of a shift or an awakening the few years before. And just kind of realizing, oh, my goodness, so many of the things we've been taught about just everything I was learning about food systems or things about birth.

I had learned so many of the things that we had been taught and we had the common knowledge where it wasn't really true or it wasn't really the whole story. So I had just been looking at so many things in my life and questioning them and kind of exploring, okay, what is the story behind the story? Or how can I understand this in a different perspective? And so one day I was thinking about, wow, I have a daughter. So when she's and girls get that have been getting their periods younger and younger. So I'm like, she's two now. And when she's by the time she's nine, she'll she'll have to know about periods. And what am I going to say to her? And I was wondering, well, there might there must be a lot of wonderful books and resources and things out there now so I just started looking into it and

then I I ordered this book um I don't know if you know of Her Blood is Gold by Laura Owen you know I heard you say that that was the first book you read and it was also the first book I read yeah and so when you read that, it's like you can just dive down the rabbit hole because she explores so many, such a broad scope of the menstrual cycle from the history to menstruality to some of the menarche traditions and things like that. So that was kind of like my first entry to this whole world. I wondered if there was kind of a book for children. And when I looked, there wasn't really, really much. And I thought, oh, maybe, maybe I can write something. But when I just

started, I thought I would write like a National Geographic kind of like magazine or something with pictures of traditions and stuff like that. But when I just started working on it, it just turned into its own thing. And you know, She Dreams When She Bleeds isn't for children at all. It's very much for adults. Because it's really not about my daughter. It was about my journey and my whole exploration around the whole topic. There's some real rebellion at work in She Dreams When She Bleeds. You know, it's a book that's really swimming upstream. There's a poem that I'd like to share, which is a great example of this. No one else sees it.

No one else wants to. Only she can see the beauty in her blood so throughout this book you see the beauty in our blood and our bleeding where pretty much everyone else is blind to it you know like you said there weren't many books out there there weren't books out there for children I'm interested to hear what what is it in you that allowed you to be so free and so bold in your expression you know that you you thought maybe I can write something and then you did which is quite rare in our world you know to actually follow through what is it that allowed you to be so free and bold there I don't know I think when it was first like a newly sprouted idea I worked on it for a few months just in private because I was still alchemizing my ideas and I didn't really know what I wanted to say and I was still very much learning about, I think the second book I read was Wild Power. I think I had kind of just started to have a regular cycle kind of at that

time. So I think that I wasn't confident about my creative expression at the start, for sure. And then when it's a little baby idea, and you just have this little piece of work I think I maybe wrote just like 10 or 10 or 12 poems to start with and then I think I reached out to a couple people who I knew would be supportive and nurture the idea and encourage me to go forward so I think I reached out to a couple people and shared it with them and said, Oh, what do you think is this? What do you think of this? And they're like, wow, this is amazing. This is so interesting and emotional. And like, and at that point, I had really started to trust my impulses and intuition, which had I had I started working on it when I was younger,

I wouldn't have been able to do that because I've had a lot of impulses where I've brushed them off and I'm just like oh that's like such a weird idea why would I do that but I had really started listening to myself in a more clear way and so that was really important for this whole process because even like some of the ways that I was exploring menstruality, like one day I drove to the ocean and I had like a free bleed in the ocean and it was a really beautiful experience. But on the way there, I almost like stopped and turned around and I'm like, what am I doing?

This seems like a little bit crazy. But right at the point that I stopped this beautiful, huge, biggest rainbow I've seen in my life, this huge rainbow appeared. And I was like, wow, this is could be really amazing. So yeah, it was it was more like I was listening to those whispers of the universe, I guess, at that time that allowed me to go forward. Wow. I'm sure so many people can relate to that sense of feeling an instinct and a drive and an impulse. And then a voice comes up pretty quickly that goes, what are you doing? This is crazy. Especially when it comes to expressing the cycle, because there still is so much stigma and taboo around the cycle do you think that there was you know it was your connection to your cycle and all everything that you were learning about

your cycle was helping you to listen to that inner voice and tap into your intuition. Yeah, for sure. When I learned about the inner seasons, I was so excited for my next period and so excited to see, wow, is that really what happens? Like, I just felt like this is spot on when I really, because I hadn't really tracked my cycle. It was really something that when I tested it out, and when I observed it carefully, I was like, wow, this is so true. And this is like a game changer. You know, when you when you find out something that just shifts your whole perspective of everything of every single thing in your life. I'm like, wow, this is a huge game changer. So, yeah, for sure, the inner cycles had a big impact on my ability to create this and be accepting of the whole process because it's not like a linear like okay I'm gonna I'm gonna do

five poems a day and then after a month I will be done kind of thing yeah that's really not how it works so true I would love to I'm going to go deeper into how your creativity and your creative expression shifted like through your cycle and through this creative process um but before we do I just wanted to share a story that happened with me around blood and the ocean because it was it was around a similar I feel like it was I was in a similar process to you I was it was my 33rd birthday and I'd been tracking my cycle for a year and it was telling me that I needed to make massive changes in my life and so I decided to take my blood and go to the ocean and do a ritual of throwing my blood in the ocean and by the time I got down to the sea you know the weather was

really picking up and there was sort of a storm coming so the waves were really high and just as I went to throw my blood in this ritual way out into the ocean there was this huge gust of wind which splashed the blood back on me and I got covered head to toe in my own menstrual blood in a in a white coat oh that's so funny and I actually see it as a kind of baptism, really, because after that, my cycle basically prompted me to move countries, leave the relationship I was in, change careers. You know, it was a big deal. And it all happened after that moment. And there's just so much creative power in our blood and in our cycles, isn't there?

Yeah, it really is amazing like not just I I have so many hopes that that women and menstruators everywhere cannot just overcome the taboo but actually understand and appreciate the incredible power yeah I think one of the gateways into that is to look at how creativity lives in the different phases of our cycle and that's what I'd love to speak to you about as a powerful creative in this field I wonder if you could read a poem to us um this is to sort of begin us off with inner winter the menstrual phase could you read the poem um to rush through a bleed yeah of course trying to rush through a bleed is like trying to rush autumn or like trying to tell rain to fall faster it cannot be rushed one day I tried to tell myself I didn't have time to bleed if I have time to breathe then I have time to bleed how do you work with the restful energy of inner winter? What happens to

your creativity in this phase? And if you can remember, you know, what was happening as you were writing? Yeah, so I can tell you for certain that I didn't write a single poem during winter, which was, I thought that I might be able to write something, you know, but I didn't write anything during winter. And it was, it was not even like a lot of ideas or anything like that flowing. It was just a lot of stillness and a lot of just being just coalescing myself into being and not doing so it was very very still and very a very sweet winter's journey when I was writing just because I was so aware of the need to slow down and I was so committed to experimenting with okay what would happen if I really took as much time and nurturing as I possibly could during winter

what would happen what will be the effect on the rest of my cycle so definitely interwinter into winter inner winter was it was it was really slow during that time for me when I was writing and um as my daughter got older uh I've maybe not taken as much time in my winters and not had as low winters but I'm I'm still very much aware of it but yeah during the writing journey for in terms of creativity I really I work in bursts and I think a lot of women do a lot of menstruators do work in bursts but it's especially prominent for me because I have these kind of big bigger projects or bigger dreams sometimes that I manifest but yeah inner winter is not a time of doing for me that's for sure and not even a huge time for for ideas I read that some women get a lot of ideas and a lot of insights on the first and second day but for me those days are very still and then the ideas slowly start to come in a little toward the end of my

bleed it's like that for me too I really need to drop and get into that rhythm of surrender and stillness and that and then things start to bubble up from there what helps you to rest in in a winter what do you need to do in order to for that rest to happen well I think for me um definitely time in nature like um like slow walks outside um hot water bottles I have like this like rice sock that my husband knows whenever the rice sock comes out. He's like, Oh, okay, I see what's going on. And lots of tea and more boundaries than usual, as well. Like with my daughter, she she knows, like, if I tell her I have my period I'm not gonna play with you or you know I'm gonna move slower today because I um I'm not gonna do as much as I normally do for you

um and getting having those boundaries because it's really easy to you know when you're a caregiver and when you have when you have kids it's really easy to not have those boundaries for sure because there's just your kids are an unlimited well of receiving receiving your nurturing so yeah and there's a real momentum of caring that can be quite I find quite hard to slow down great let's move on to inner spring so I wanted to share something first that I just re-read again from our the Red School Menstruality Leadership Program manual because we have a module about the menstrual cycle and creativity and I was reading back through it in preparation for this conversation and Sharni and Alexandra actually

call the creative phase that happens in our inner spring initiation and they say there's a sort of natural focus that can arise and it's a time to explore and play and experiment and bring your innocence to your creative process and it's really important to make it a time for care and not criticism and they had this lovely quote that made me think of you because it really weaves in a lot of natural metaphors and they say it's important not to expose your ideas too early wait until it's taken root more surely within you. Think of it like a fetus that needs nine months in the womb before it can emerge or a tender young shoot growing in the darkness of the soil. If it's exposed too quickly, it might not thrive. Does that speak to you? Do you experience that tenderness in your creative process in in a spring yeah so I have quite a

long um inner spring that's the longest part of my cycle because for the last couple years I was kind of ovulating a bit um later like day 18 and 19 so inner spring I really feel comfortable there it's a it's a long part of my life and um definitely I feel well I shared with you that I I didn't I worked on my on she dreams when she bleeds in private for a couple months before it was ready to be revealed and um in terms of my creative process it's definitely a lot of experimentation I mean for she dreams When She Bleeds I had created a whole different set of art with a different medium on different paper and uh I had you know I had a dozen art pieces or whatnot but I was kind of going down that path when I found um the medium

that I did use alcohol ink and then I was like okay this is this is so beautiful and so brilliant and it's really what I want to express and I just had to kind of drop all my other art pieces um and so um yeah springtime for me is a lot of experimentation goes into my artwork and um I know it's hard to see the process when you when you see the finished work but um inner spring is is wonderful for me for experimentation and the thing about because my inner spring is so long I found that I definitely do have to pace myself and not try and be like okay summer's coming so I can do I can just explode I definitely have to hold back a little bit in terms of production like and if I'm in the middle of a project I can't go too crazy because I always remind myself okay early spring pace yourself lots of time to dive deeper into this tomorrow or the next day

what does pacing yourself look like in that context? What does it sort of look like on a practical level? It just means that I would not push, I would not push in summer. There's, there's often this point that I have where I'm like, I could push it farther or I could pull back a little and in summer. And before I knew like, I could push it farther, or I could pull back a little. And in summer, and before I knew about, you know, seasons, I would just always say, push yourself, push yourself, do more, you know, try and do something else. But now it depends on which season I'm in. So if I'm in summer, I'm like, okay, yeah, now this is the time to push, we're gonna we're feeling so good about this and then but in spring I'm like okay pull back a little I know in wild power they talked about the first

parts of spring where you're like just a little a little tiny shoot or a little plant that is a part where I can easily go overboard so it's about pulling back a little bit. I really relate because I noticed when I push it in spring, that's when I get really exhausted. So a lot of people talk about burnout in summer, but for me, it's when there's that natural energy rising, but there's still a real tenderness and vulnerability and that's when I can actually if I push it too much my critic gets involved okay and then I know I'm in trouble because my critic belongs in my inner autumn and I say you know go back to inner autumn I'll talk to you then but if I've been pushing it too much then it's hard to rein that in I can really sense that you're very connected in your inner spring like you mentioned it's a long

phase for you and I heard a couple of the things you said earlier feel like real springtime superpowers like you said that you spent a long time alchemizing the ideas before they were coming out I'd love to hear more about what that means to you like how do you how do we alchemize our ideas well for instance the poem about um pregnancy and menstruating that poem it's so short but I had the idea for it for a long time I I thought I want to really write something because we don't often connect that menstrual menstruating is part of the menstrual cycle and that's part of the fertility cycle and we need to menstruate in order to get pregnant they're one hand in hand so how do we celebrate pregnancy to the degree that we celebrate it and shun menstruation to the degree that we shun it

it makes no sense at all because they're almost one and the same part of the fertility cycle and i had that idea and i'm i was just thinking and thinking about how can i put that simply and how can I express that in in not so many words and express that very simply and succinctly and yeah that was something that really wanted to come out but I just and whenever I would see you know celebrations of pregnancy and there was a have you seen the period documentary there was that documentary that won an Oscar I think period and they were asking the girls and women why do we get a period and no one really knew or no one really mentioned, oh, it's so that we can get pregnant if we if that's what we choose. Like there wasn't that strong connection. And even even I think in our culture where it's becoming more open, it's it's very disconnected as well. So yeah, that that was something that I had the idea for it.

And I wanted to say something, but I didn't know exactly how to put it. So you you rested with it, you stayed with the ideas, you let them move around within you until they found their way to expression. I think I'm going to read that one. Yeah, of course. How am I beautiful when I'm pregnant, but not when I'm menstruating? Don't you know, you can't have one without the other. Let's talk in a summer. I was listening to an interview with you and you shared this gorgeous moment where you found yourself furiously painting with blood-colored ink for an entire month. You said your partner said so is this what you're gonna be doing from now on?

And I wondered if that was like sparked by an inner summer moment of creativity. For sure. Yeah. I created almost every single piece of artwork in one month in the whole book. And that was, it took me much longer to write. And that was just a flow of ideas. Like I was just so inspired. I would have to wait for my husband to come home from work to start painting. down as I thought of ideas. So yeah, I remember like just being in my kitchen with all my paints on the floor. And it was like, wow, like this is this is a lot like, is this gonna be like every day for for the next little while? Or I was like, I don't know. I'm just so inspired but yeah it definitely felt like inner summer like just a torrent of ideas and inspiration just flowing through me if you're feeling inspired to explore the connection between your cycle and your creativity

we invite you to visit menstrualityleadership.com to explore Red School's menstruality leadership program. In module two, Sharni and Alexandra reveal the creativity map that can nurture and enhance your creative expression throughout the inner seasons of your cycle, whatever you're birthing in the world. You can find out more at menstrualityleadership.com. It can be quite challenging to hold the tension when the ideas aren't coming. And then quite tempting to just push and push and push and push when the ideas do come. And there is really, it's really important to catch the inner summertime

wave when it's there like just like I'm thinking of my garden and when things start to really kick off in the summer and there's loads of work to do you know there's loads of weeding to do there's loads of harvesting to do it's important to catch that catch that wave but also to make sure that we don't um burn out you know so I'm wondering how how do you manage that sort of holding the tension between the quiet times and the really furiously creative times well I think it's easier for me than for my family like for them they're more they you know as children or as men who have like a daily hormonal cycle they're less about the bursts and less about the different waves of inspiration kind of thing so for me um I think it's like I'm like it's obvious I need to, you know, I need to be working right now. Don't bother me. But for them, it's like a surprise, like, oh, when I'm, you know, in the middle of a project, not overscheduling, so that I can have that flexibility where I my schedule that like okay today is is really

going to be a work day like a focused a focused work day so I don't know I think it's it is one of those things that is really hard to manage because we live in a world where it's like committed in advance and we have to schedule everything and it's it's not hugely spacious sometimes with families and schedules and stuff so it is definitely tricky one thing that we do in the red school team is we just radically elongate our timelines knowing that we're going to have cyclical creativity you know we're not always going to be inspired and also knowing that life throws curveballs and you know we all have busy lives and things that we're tending to and taking care of so we just make them three times longer than we think we're going to need so if we've got something coming up in February and October we go okay so do we need to be thinking about this now and I haven't really

experienced that in any other work environments and it feels really sane and also one of the ways that we can really honor our cyclicity and our cyclical creative process by making really long timelines yeah that's so beautiful because timelines are so arbitrary. And you could, you know, you could put so much pressure on yourself just almost for no reason. So I love that. Sometimes it's like, you can forget, hey, hang on, I made that deadline, I can change it. Yeah. So let's talk about inner autumn and I notice in your work there's a real clarity a real potency um like it came out in the poem about pregnancy and the cycle I feel like there's another one about um vaginas and that we come from the same place as the as the blood

but I don't have that one to hand you don't know off the top of your head do you and that we come from the same place as the blood. But I don't have that one to hand. You don't know off the top of your head, do you? Is it the one where it's to the men who call periods throes? Yes. Yeah. That was definitely an autumn poem. Should I read it?

Yes, can you? Sure, yeah. So to the men who call periods gross, is it also gross that you started your life in your mother's womb, nourished by her blood? Is it gross that at the moment of your birth, you came out screaming and covered in her blood, freshly unwrapped from the organ your mother grew from nothing is it gross that one day your daughter will bleed what is gross is that

your attitude will make your daughter wish she was born a boy yeah I feel the autumn fire in that one I feel it yeah because a lot of I was just feeling like wow every single person on this earth has has been created through this cycle how can you know how can men or the masculine energy say that it's it's gross or it's something to be hidden I mean they were created through this cycle and they can't say that they're not, that that attitude doesn't mean anything because it does, it does mean something. And most meaningful of all, if they have a daughter, then their attitude will be kind of formative

to her worldview and her view of her body. Absolutely. to to her world view and her view of her body absolutely I think that's why menstruators who have their inner autumn creative expression unleashed are so important because those that truth telling can come through that capacity to bust through stigma and get to the truth and the heart of of what's going on in the world and in our lives and that energy is so deeply needed because we're in a mess in our world and we need that truth-telling energy so I'd love to hear how does that show up for you in your inner autumn do you notice it in your creative process do you do you have ways that you can sort of harness that

fire yeah for sure so if I'm feeling really when I'm when I'm looking in inter in the inner autumn and I'm looking around at the world and I'm really unhappy with how things are then I can express it through writing and I can express it through some of these more um aggressive or these more you know stronger poems and um not only that but in inner autumn I'm I'm really wonderful at starting things like I have you know five collections started and I can I can start things I could start things every day I think except for in inner winter but um autumn is really helps me complete things I think so yeah especially early autumn it's like okay let's use this energy, this fiery energy to, you know, you can redirect it. It doesn't have to always come out as anger.

It doesn't always have to come out as dissatisfaction or criticism. I find that you can like kind of redirect it towards something towards something else sometimes but it is just allowing the inner critic to be there as well because you know criticism has an important place in in improving or or making things different and better because I know know, I've had many iterations of this book before it was published. And I don't always take feedback from the internet seriously. But once in a while, there is something that strikes a nerve that someone will say, and I'm like, yeah, I think that is a valid point. And it sometimes feels bad at first, too um because we put I put so much of myself into my work sometimes it does feel really bad to um get something that strikes a nerve like where someone

will make a comment like oh I don't like that cover or I don't like I don't think it's right that you um this poem's not inclusive or something. Like something that you maybe had in the back of your mind that someone else will reflect back to you. So definitely the inner critic has a place in creative work and in making it and and forcing you to iterate because if you just created everything and it was perfect the first time in your inner summer I mean it wouldn't be as good as if you never if as if you never went through that autumn if you never went through a criticism process absolutely I think one of the most life-changing teachings for me from Alexander and Sharni in Wild Power was that the critic is here to bring us home to ourselves and to our calling. And it often doesn't express itself in the most kind and polite and palatable way, but it's got a holy imperative, which is to make us more of ourselves and to hone our expression so it has

more truth and has more fullness and I'm and that's why I love to put my critic back in autumn because she can creep out into all the other seasons when I'm feeling tender or when I just need to charge forward like in in a summer and if I say look I'll talk to you in autumn then I know and I've even made a date with my critic before I think that's one of the guidelines in wild power you know okay I'll talk to you on day 23 because that's my classic critic day and I sit down and I let my critics say everything it needs to say and I'll journal it down and I get loads of great feedback and then it as you said it hones my capacity to receive feedback from the

outside world which is such an important but difficult and challenging part of the creative process too it's so beautiful yeah it's it's such a beautiful idea and I don't know if you've read Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert she talks about this in her book about creative living, about how fear or criticism, they can come along for a ride, but they're in the backseat. They don't get to be the driver. But they are allowed space to be there for sure.

They're allowed to come along for the ride. I love it. I want to slightly change topic now because one of the next pieces of work that you've done was a book of poetry about climate, which speaks to climate change and our connection with nature murmur rumble roar and I'd love to explore with you if and how you see the connection between

befriending our own cyclical nature and working with the wisdom in the natural world and actually working with it to resolve climate change and there's a poem that to me speaks to this really beautifully and it starts here we are would you be able to read that one yeah here we are hot getting hotter cold getting colder lands getting bare, oceans getting emptier. We are all wondering how we could do this and keep doing this to ourselves. Yeah, so I feel like our cyclical, embracing our cyclical selves is so critical to this shift in perspective in accepting that we are part of nature we're not separate from nature nature cycles we cycle and to have the feminine energy come into balance where we can feel, you know, that reciprocity with nature, surrender to nature and accept that we're only here by the grace of, you know, the earth and all she gives to us. So I feel like it's so intertwined to do this work about discovering your cycle and all the different energies.

You know, it's, I feel like the inner seasons do in a way talk about, about the masculine energy and the feminine energy that we all have inside of us in different words. And yeah, I really think that's an important part of because i don't think we're gonna solve every solve the climate crisis with just masculine energy okay we're gonna measure all the carbon and then we're gonna start a war against carbon and you know make sure that it comes down and we're gonna measure every single thing and i don't really think that's the it comes down and we're going to measure every single thing and

I don't really think that's the whole story of how we're going to I mean it'll be part of it but I don't think that's the whole story of how we're going to resolve resolve the issue there's a really beautiful story from Lynn Twist who was the founder, is the founder of Pachamama Alliance, and she's raised millions, if not billions of pounds for to alleviate world hunger. Well, dollars, really, but to alleviate world hunger and to work with indigenous peoples to share their wisdom when it comes to resolving climate change. Have you come across her, Lynn Twist? It's so funny that you mentioned her because that was literally the last book I finished like wow which one the soul of money oh it's such a good one the soul of money so beautiful um sorry my dog's just barking yeah Lynn Twist this was in a talk I think or it might

have been in the soul of money where she said the bird of humanity has two wings the feminine and the masculine and at the moment the feminine wing is down and the masculine wing is being overused so the bird of humanity is just flying around in circles and what we need to do is strengthen the feminine wing so that we can fly straight using both and that's not connected to gender that's because we have that feminine and masculine in us you know and some people use different words for it but we've got that in us and I totally agree it's um and particularly embracing our cyclical nature and embracing our cycles feels so key to strengthening that feminine wing of the bird of humanity. Yeah, that's so beautiful.

Alexandra Deshani did a piece of writing a couple of years ago about how cycle awareness can heal our connection to the natural world and how that can actually heal the natural world. And one of the things they spoke to in that was how cycle awareness keeps us sensing and feeling so i think i'll read this quote from them we passionately believe that menstruality can transform our relationship to the earth yes it's a bold statement but we're living in tumultuous times and fortune favors the bold The first way our cycle awareness can recreate our relationship to nature and earth is its capacity to bring us into contact with the full spectrum of who we are. It keeps us sensing and feeling. It awakens our animal nature and invites us to be in the ground of our body, alive to the fullness of this

life force moving through us. This prevents us from becoming hard and armored and allows us to stay awake to the world and be sensitive to all of life, which in turn inspires care, love and action for all life. Secondly, as you work with this cyclical consciousness within yourself you're restoring cyclical consciousness for those around you and for the world at large you're reigniting a responsiveness to life and a pacing that allows a sense of spaciousness This is powerful medicine in a world that lives in a 24-7 top gear mode. The mainstream do-do-do mentality creates an armoring that shuts out the world, deadening ourselves, our souls, our connection to the mystery, our connection to the feminine. On the other hand, loyalty to the cycle awakens us to the ineffable, to that which is mysterious, and to a

sense of life-affirming rhythm and flow from which truly fresh and creative responses to our current crises can emerge. Thirdly, cycle awareness restores a sense of belonging to life and belonging to earth. That's what's needed in the world to both thrive and indeed survive at this crucial time how affirming to know that each time you connect to your cycle you're committing to a powerful reawakening of feminine consciousness that's calling us home to balance with the natural world they just write so beautifully and just so, I can always hear the truth in their words. Would you be able to share the poem that starts, Our Period is the Ocean Tide? Yeah, for sure.

That is a favorite of many, many people. Yeah, a lot of people resonate with this one our period is the ocean tide that smooths the sand and rises with the moon it is the heavy rain that swells the rivers and washes away debris it is a glacial waterfall that flows in the summer and freezes in the winter our period is a microcosm of the earth herself you have a whole world inside of you can you share more of what was going on for you and in you when that poem came through i think i was just feeling that everything that happens inside of you, like all the cycles in nature the moon and the tides and um you know every single um that's yeah I just wanted to express that because nature is such a was such a sweet part of um writing I spent a lot of time walking along um at the time

I lived really close to they call it the Buffalo Bayou in Texas. And it's this beautiful swampy kind of river that, um, it's like this brown swampy river that flows. And it's just so beautiful. Like I grew up in Canada near the mountains and it's a very different kind of beauty, but it's still, it's, it just really stirred me. So I wanted to write something that was reflective of all the nature, all the beautiful things I was seeing out in nature that I felt were reflected inside ourselves you really did I can it's almost like I can feel the the rain running down my face when I read that poem and I think what it points to to me is that the cyclicity in us connects us to the cyclical consciousness in everything and that cyclical consciousness is

sort of the antidote to the do do do bigger faster better now mentality that our consumer culture really creates and cultivates in us and the the alexandra and shani speak about this in the blog too that when we connect to the cycle it wakes us up to the to the mystery of life to the ineffable which is another antidote to that do-do-do mentality that can feel so mundane and deadening and draining that our cyclical nature wakes us up to a kind of rhythm and flow which is really fresh and then from that place actual creative responses to the challenges that we face whether it's social justice issues or the climate crisis from that place real real creative responses can emerge which is really exciting

yeah it's so foundational so it's almost like you before you knew about it you're like what did I do before um before before I knew I mean it's like having a having another finger or something having another arm it's just it's just just so different once you know once you know I want to thank you for everything it took to allow this creative beauty to flow through you and for how you've walked us inside it a little bit today and invited us into your creative process and I hope that it's really inspired the people that listen to explore their own cyclical creativity and express their their cycle in whatever way feels meaningful to them whether that's through words or through poetry or through art or through making nature mandalas or like however it shows up I hope that

everyone that's listening has some inspiration I know that I feel inspired so thank you Nikki oh thank you so much it's been some fun how could how could our listeners connect with you and connect with your work yeah so any um new projects or new work I usually uh post a bit about it on Instagram so it's just at Nikki Tajiri T-A-J-I-R-I and I yeah I I do updates on new projects there although I'm not um working on any projects at, although I'm not working on any projects at the moment. I'm just trying to make a lot of space in my life for the new one. So thank you. And I'll put links to your books in the show notes as well, if people want to find them. Yeah. So just, I wish you so much love as you go through complete this pregnancy and bring this beautiful

new life into the world and yeah good luck with it all thank you so much for being with us today Nikki oh thank you so much for having me 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.