The Menstruality Podcast - Queer Menstruality - Creating a Culture of Belonging (Abi Denyer-Bewick)

Episode Date: June 16, 2022

One of the beautifully challenging things about cultivating an intimacy with our menstrual cycles, or menopause process, is that it opens us up to the world. To the beauty of life, and to the pain. This quality of tender, unarmoured presence is real medicine for a world that can feel full of conflict, pretense, injustice and a lack of capacity to be with difference. A devoted practice of cycle awareness helps us to see that we all belong; to ourselves, to the rhythm and flow of the natural world, and to each other.Today we’re marking Pride Month, with a podcast episode about how menstrual cycle awareness can help us to be with difference, and create true cultures of belonging. Our guest is Abi Denyer-Bewick, a queer menstuality educator and member of the Red School faculty. We chat about the menstruality learning session she recently offered our Menstruality Leadership Programme graduates on 'Inclusive menstruality', including:- How to create a culture of belonging for women and everyone who menstruates.- What life might look like for a trans, non-binary or gender expansive menstruator.- How to work with the fear, trauma or other big emotions that may arise as we explore how to be with difference, together. We also share some guidance for how to take this belonging and inclusion work deeper, from a range of brilliant LGBTQ+ educators. ---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.schoolAbi Denyer Bewick - @abi.denyer.bewick - https://www.instagram.com/abi.denyer.bewick

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. Welcome back to the Menstruality Podcast. Thank you for being here and welcome to today's conversation where we're exploring belonging. One of the beautifully difficult things about

cultivating an intimacy with ourselves and our inner world through our menstrual cycle process, through our menopause process, is that it opens us up to the world, to life's amazing beauty and also to the pain and the suffering that is inherent in life. And it awakens this quality of unarmored presence, tenderness, which is real medicine for a world that can feel overwhelmingly full of conflict, injustice, and just a lack of capacity to be with difference and with paradox. And the beauty of cycle awareness is it helps us to see that we all belong. We belong to ourselves. We belong to the rhythm and flow of the cycles of the natural world.

We belong to each other as a human community and a more than human community. And so all of this is to say that we're marking Pride Month this month with a podcast episode about belonging, about how menstrual cycle awareness can help us to be with difference and create true cultures of belonging. Our guest is the amazing Abby Zennier-Burek. She's a queer menstruality educator. She's a member of the Red School faculty.

And we're chatting today about the learning session that she recently offered in our menstruality leadership program graduates group on inclusive menstruality. So we're talking about how to create a culture of belonging for women and for everyone who menstruates, what life might look like for a trans, non-binary or gender expansive menstruator and also how to work with the fear or trauma or other big emotions that can arise as we explore this difficult work of how to be with difference together. We're also going to share lots of resources and guidance for how to take this inclusion work deeper

from a wide range of brilliant LGBTQ plus educators. So let's get started with our conversation with Abby. Welcome, Abby. Thanks so much for joining us on the podcast today. Let's start with your cycle check-in. Where are you at in your cycle where are you at I don't know I am day 15 and I was yeah I was thinking about it a bit earlier because I was recognizing I have a lot of stories around day 15 summer is my least favorite season you know there's a lot of kind of stories I've run with for a long time and and you know while its tone is generally not that pleasant, I did notice today a very, like for day 15, a kind of quite an amplified sense of innerness.

Like there's a part of me that feels almost like I'm in menstruation. It might be because I have a bit of a cold. It might be that. So I don't feel completely unraveled there's kind of a quiet a quiet stillness and I was suddenly like oh yeah I've always wanted to feel like that I'll do 15 that's a good that's a good place to just yeah feel like there's quite a lot of quiet awakeness to connections and you know quite heightened in intuitive space so yeah I I know that I'm ovulating right now ah luckily unluckily I get a little pain in my back which

shows me and uh so it's kind of helpful because then now I know when I'm going to bleed like oh cool I'm day 13 so it's going to be day 27 it's really nice for me yeah yeah yeah oh and what's your the tone of your population today I'm feeling really grateful for the massive surge of energy I've got and the sense of I can handle this enhanced capacity because there are so many things happening like today, but also this week and also this month and also in this phase of my life. And so when I'm in winter, it can just be a bit like, can everyone just go away? But they can't all just go away. So now I'm like, great, everyone come in because we can I can keep I can just keep rolling which is nice lovely capacity and generosity nice yeah yeah I'm enjoying it I'm really enjoying it yeah so this I'm really looking forward to this conversation it's a long time coming because this this conversation this

whole area of focus has been really important for us at red school for a good couple of years now probably longer and our intention for this conversation today is to inquire into queer menstruality how we can create a culture of belonging to explore and to be in support of each other in this exploration and I'd love to bring in some of the language actually that you used at our recent um I can't remember the title of it but it was an inclusion and belonging education session in our graduates community and you spoke really beautifully at the beginning about the importance of honoring all of the feelings and emotions that might be present as we enter into a conversation like this and how important it is that all voices and all feelings are valid

you have this lovely description and we're both tree sisters we both love the trees and you said you know just like all the trees in a forest need each other we all need each other yeah could you share a few words about how we can approach this conversation so it can be really generative and fruitful? Yeah, I do. I love that you've used the words generative and fruitful, this sense of everything around this conversation being an opening out and an expansion and whilst recognising that as soon as you bring up the the topic of inclusivity or

sometimes particularly around agenda in in a field such as menstruality there can be quite a the energy kind of goes the other way there can be quite a contraction there's a lot of fear there can be you know fear around getting it wrong fear around being erased so um I love that we hold this intention that this having this conversation is opening a space that is yeah generative and fruitful as like you said so how yeah how do we do that my approach is really to really really slow things down, to call on the very best qualities of our deep selves, really. So kindness, curiosity, a space of forgiveness within ourselves and with each other, so we're not jumping to conclusions

or making assumptions so just yeah in terms of people listening to this I really invite people to move slowly um to you know to maybe pause whilst they're listening to and to stay in consent with yourself um to to really notice when things are getting you know activated uh within you and and uh and bring a kind of responsiveness and curiosity to that rather than a like a reactivity um or or assuming like if either of us say something that people don't agree with just you know it can be really easy I don't agree with that right close the close the door actually oh yeah I that's a different opinion to mine so we get to kind of practice the skills that are important and needed in diversity and inclusivity work through just how we meet one conversation about some aspects of of this

and just yeah and starting from the point of really checking in with yourself like you know how how do you feel about about this topic is it is it exciting is it super activating is it really triggering and tiresome you know what what are you what's your personal starting point um and no starting point is wrong like like you said we need everybody's everybody's voice we need people with marginalized experiences and we need the people who are uh this is like opening an entire new realm that they didn't even weren't even aware existed there's no hierarchy this is all just on a plate to be explored together something else you brought into the inclusion session was you asked everyone to check in with how they're feeling and then also to reflect

on okay how is your cycle day flavoring your experience or perhaps if you're menopausal how's your menopausal menopausal experience flavoring how you're approaching this conversation too absolutely because i think one of the things one of the first things we get to know from a practice of cycle awareness is how our tolerance changes um you know tolerance is a really is a really good one to track around um around any cycle you know when do you when do you feel naturally curious when do you a bit like you you checked in right right at the moment you feel open and and and generous and able to juggle all of all of the things so entering an arena of new information and people's life experiences you might feel really available to you now but you might hit the the

kind of overwhelmed bar a lot a lot sooner in your like late autumn winter so always good to anchor ourselves obviously it's always good to anchor ourselves to um to to somewhere in in a cycle yeah I mean I just had an experience well yesterday the day before I've been really tender in my whole spring time lately and and in the transitions from winter to spring and spring to summer and yesterday I got on a call with Lauren our um she's our everything at Red School basically I call her our customer service genius but she's doing about a million things and I just burst into tears I just burst into tears and I sobbed for like five or ten minutes and I and I didn't I'd had a little altercation with age like I'd had a little argument with him but it was more than that. It's like the, there is so much heart that could break our hearts and make us angry in the

world today. And, you know, what I was really with was the last, the most recent shootings that have happened in the States. And in that springtime tenderness, I was feeling open to all of that as well as all of the hate, you know, you can see online. And I think, why am I bringing this into the conversation? I think I'm bringing it in because so many of us are feeling this right now, you know, there's so much to fight for. There's so much justice to be worked towards and so much to undo and rewrite, and it can feel feel overwhelming and that's why I love how you spoke to going slowly which is what we'll do today we'll move slowly we'll pace ourselves

as we take on this this conversation yeah I appreciate you naming that I was thinking about this in in preparation for this conversation and just you know like what how does this how does this work fit into the world and what what is what on earth is the world right right now and what's what's what on earth is the world right now that's probably another podcast um like just you know what's what's needed and it's like listening to you made me think of that you know that that sort of expansion contraction like there's so much it's so complex it things have gone so far in directions of pain and harm and um inequality and that can you know that can make us contract in so much fear and can we find places of that where we can feel resourced enough that we can actually embrace and honour the complexity? Yeah, to meet difference, I guess, which is, yeah, more, more we'll get into in this conversation. And how does, how can menstrual cycle awareness be a part of that resourcing nourishment?

I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And preparing us to be able to hold paradox and manage nuance and hold attention. You know, as in autumn, our pre-menstrual teacher said, yeah, wow. So our cycles training us in how to definitely conversations yeah yeah yeah for sure for sure oh let's start I'd love to start with you and your passion for this and I was looking through one of your bios somewhere on our website but it said that you're a kinky sea creature and a queer menstruality educator and I I found myself fascinated by both and I'd love to hear firstly what life is like as a as a kinky sea creature yeah I was trying to encapsulate in the some sort of limited word count I think yeah I mean I am naturally at home in the sea, near the sea. I feel in contact with myself under water, near water, under big skies.

It's the place I contact my freedom. I think I struggle a lot with not feeling free and an eternal need for space. And it's where I start my day every day at dawn. It's my devotional practice to be in the sea. I mean, it's an erotic relationship that I have with the sea. I don't know that I would always describe it as kinky. That was probably more like squeezing the words together. But it's how I come into relationship with the elements. That's how I like to start my day is in relationship with the elements.

And I guess kinky, I used to run conscious kink and sexuality and intimacy spaces. And I'm interested in how we know ourselves through how we interact intimately and what are the, what are the curious ways that we want to be that are perhaps not the ways that we've been conditioned to be or socialized to be what's, what's the, what's your, what's your thing, you know, what makes you feel alive? What makes, you know, what makes you passionate? What, how do you want to be in connection to one other person, five other people? What's, you know, so that's, yeah, I guess that's,

that's part of it. And you literally are in the sea every morning at what like five in the morning well at the moment it's like uh four I get to the water at four at the moment I live a kind of slightly nocturnal life I'm just yeah roll on summer solstice when things start to go the other way because yeah it's pretty much bedtime for you because it's 12 30 so yeah i've been up for a while it's absolutely beautiful um it's always worth it yeah and you've done a lot already today because you've also held the home group for your one of your mlp groups haven't you yes this has been a big day already oh yeah i've worked us all day you also describe yourself as a queer menstruality educator I'd love to hear more about that yeah so my my queer identity like when I I claim that you know say the word queer there's such a

like I have such an embodied sense of like my heart just goes just like sinks into my belly um which is really I've just I've just noticed that in this conversation just I think that's the first time I've really had such an embodied sense of it I think queer means I I question everything if someone someone tells me, this is how this works, I go, is it? Does it have to be? Is that really what it is? Which I understand more now is, you know, partly comes from my own neurodiversity. So, you know, I have ADHD, possibly autism, that makes me, question and rebel quietly rebel I'm an introverted rebel

um so I think of that I think of my neurodiversity as part of my part of my queerness I guess I think of my sexuality which I would maybe define as bisexual or maybe pansexual because bi sometimes feels like it's we're still in the kind of binary with that uh and also there's I have my own inquiries around gender I do identify as a woman but not super strongly I was thinking about this this morning and feeling like yeah I actually I experience myself more as a menstruator than I than I do like I identify more strongly with as like yes I'm a menstruator in the way that someone might say yeah I'm I'm a woman I'm a man I'm non-binary I'm so passionate about this work so I kind of I feel like I probably fit more on a sort of agender space maybe at some point I will move towards

using Abby as a as a pronoun that that feels true to me but that I have a lot of barriers to get over to really claim that in the world I guess. Thank you we're going to talk more about pronouns later and different identities genders sexualities too before we get to that I'd love to come to your identity as menstruator which is fascinating to hear you say that so why as a menstruator you probably hear the kiddos in the background outside as you know it's lovely they're making lovely noises they're like making really nice noises as they climb up the stairs that's why it's getting closer yeah it's sweet um yeah why is this exploration so important to you as a menstruator why do you want to educate people who are in the menstruality field yeah I I do feel um that yeah because I feel like this work

is so fundamental I think this you know this work is really about coming closer it's a way to come closer to the truth of your soul of who you are of the seed of your being and what you're here to become. So I feel, yeah, that has to be accessible to, I mean, that has to be accessible to everybody, whether they have a menstrual cycle or not. That is the journey, isn't it? The kind of soul becoming journey. And I really like the work of Stacey Haynes, who talks about the three inherent needs of humans being belonging, safety and dignity. And I think as soon as I heard that was like, oh, that's the work of the menstrual movement is really centered in tending all of those needs. needs and it just causes me to pause and say well we aren't really creating the belonging

if everyone who menstruates isn't isn't included and my sense is is so far this work has been very centered in cis women and it hasn't been accessible and other other voices and other experiences haven't haven't been heard so I don't think we can be in integrity and be out there saying we're doing this work around belonging if it's not accessible to all people who menstruate. As we've been exploring this as a team and also starting to receive feedback from our wider community and also do educational work with our graduates community we're seeing that people are coming to this conversation from many different places so I think it would be good to name some of those places as an act of belonging and welcoming absolutely yeah so I mean everybody might be be in different places and, you know, some people might be, might have explored this a lot in the sense of kind of allyship. Yeah, really feeling passionate about not excluding people.

People might be gender expansive themselves and be looking for a place that speaks to their experience. Or, you know, you might have other gender expansive people close to you uh or maybe you've never considered any of this and you know we exist in a social context that that talks in the gender binary talks about men and women uh women have periods men don't have periods and you know unless you've gone deeper into that inquiry or been exposed to it that might just be where you um where you're sat so yeah so it's possible that you know there might be feelings of you might feel challenged or you might feel triggered and in my sense of things is that it's really important that all of those different

strands are having a conversation together so yeah and there's always lots of feelings around feeling scared about getting things right often a lot of grief comes up for people people might feel angry that their experience of the cycle is a story that hasn't been told and some people feel that by including trans and non-binary experiences and using terms like menstruators is actually erasing women um and feel very strongly that women's bodies and women's right to claim themselves as a woman and as a woman's body uh has been a hard one fight and so that it can be very loaded around that as well so that's when all of those angles are are welcome and enrich this conversation i especially want to speak to the um part of people that might be afraid of getting it wrong

actually we're going to talk about this later but there's we are going to get this wrong likely and but anyway we'll get to that later because towards the end of the conversation we'll look at some next steps some actions that we can take so yeah I want to pause for a moment with that and invite you listening to reflect on where you find yourself. And yeah, Abby, if people are noticing that they are feeling activated already, could you offer some words around some guidance around that you know from what we've talked about so far maybe encouraging people just to just to pause here and and take a breath and just just notice how this conversation is is landing in your body is it feeling too much are you feeling like it's too slow and you want more like just just be in that process of um of noticing you know the thing that we need if we're having difficult conversations or trying

to connect across difference is we need to have the skills to to stay with our with ourselves so we can be we can have that kind of response uh responsive sort of flexibility rather than reactivity sometimes think of it as meeting others with an undefended heart but that doesn't mean going out of ourselves so to come into the practice of pausing and noticing for oneself is always really valuable I mean that's a cycle awareness tip too isn't it just notice just notice slow down notice so can you walk us into an exploration of gender identity can we explore some of the different identities and terms yeah so a really great starting point is biological sex does not equal gender and in fact it's even more kind of nuanced than that but the the basic being gender does not equal genitals even though that's when somebody

is assigned uh the gender that they then become socialized as based on looking at their genitals um but gender is is not defined by by biological sex they they are different things so so gender identity really refers to somebody's deeply felt individual experience of their gender so it's a highly personal experience um and it may or may not align with the gender that they were assigned at birth or the constructs within the culture that they grew up in so it's a very personal deeply felt individual experience which I think it really invites us to take a step back from making assumptions about somebody's gender identity and really invites in the space for curiosity um and and such a such a broader landscape of who we are as humans when we're not making assumptions about

ourselves or each other so it's also important to say that gender identity is um also intersectional that is to say that it's not separate from other identities that we hold which might include our body type our race our class our disabilities so all of those things will be impacting how somebody experiences moving moving through the world as whatever gender they they identify as and yeah so uh the trans is sometimes used as an umbrella term um so it can include gender fluid and non-binary agender or genderqueer or folks transitioning cisgender is the gender identity matches the gender that somebody was assigned at birth and socialized as so gender expansive or gender diverse means someone's experiencing something different to what was assigned at birth and different to what they've been brought up as or socialized as yeah gender fluid is maybe somebody who

exists between the binaries sometimes some days feels more a woman sometimes feels more like a man there's a kind of fluidity and sometimes might sit in the middle or somewhere specific all the time but there's a kind of fluidity to their to their gender non-binary is more just not identified just just kind of outside of of binary identity so in our graduate session you actually read a quote from someone called Alex a non-binary person it would be great to hear that now yes um yes so this is from a book called life isn't binary on being both beyond and in between which we can add as a resource I find this really helpful just to get a sense of how how personal the experience of gender is. So Alex writes, my sense of gender has definitely changed over time. At one point, I did identify as genderqueer. But when the term non-binary started to become

more visible, it just made so much more sense to me. I feel that my gender and sexuality are closely intertwined. I'm a femme, transmasculine, queer person and I use both he and they pronouns. I know that this can sound complicated but basically I imagine that if I had been born a cis boy I would have presented as a femme kind of man and I would have been mostly gay but probably still attracted to masculine people of all genders. Some of my gender expressions and many of my mannerisms are definitely more feminine than masculine but I also like to present as masculine in my day-to-day life as that feels more like me. When I used to identify and present as girl and later woman

it never felt like me. Non-binary makes sense because there are all these sides of me that just don't fit into a neat binary box so yes their experience is a better definition of of non-binary that's and you know that's one person's experience um of their gender identity and I think that's really important to remember as well that there's there's not one non-binary experience. There's not one trans experience. The beauty is that this is where we're moving into the complexity of what it means to be alive, is that there's just this beautiful rainbow of who we are that's so much bigger.

The map is so much bigger than what we got told it was. Thank you so much for being with us for this conversation. If you'd like to take this exploration deeper, then we've created a big list of resources around gender inclusion and menstruality from a wide range of LGBTQ plus educators. And you can find them all on the show notes page for this podcast at redschool.net forward slash podcast forward slash 41.

I'm really feeling as you're talking how menstruality is such a profound gateway here because the more I get to know my cycle the more I get to know the rainbow that I am on so many levels you know how I feel how my thoughts are moving how my emotions are flowing how as you mentioned at the beginning my tolerance is changing and I just I love I didn't even realize that we would talk about this today but I love how menstruality is training us in this capacity to be with um other like the ways that we've othered the parts of ourselves and the way that we other people outside us it's yeah yeah yeah that it's all this um this journey of intimacy of coming coming into yeah more of who we are claiming those parts of us that have that have been shut down and as one

of the people in the the the learning session shared that it was actually going through the MLP and getting deeper into the menstrual work that they began to question their gender identity and now identify as non-binary you know came to a deeper because that's what we're inviting through this work is coming into a deeper intimacy with who you really are what has your soul come here for what are you in service to you know these are all the sort of key key questions and we hone it through the the skills each each month in each different phase of the cycle um and we just get to be more and more honest with ourselves just get to be more and more honest and create more and more belonging for all the different parts of us and I mean what I'm noticing naturally is then there's this process going on and it has been for several years now

as I recognize the privileges that I've had in my life as a white woman as a middle-class woman as a cisgender woman as a neurotypical woman, like, and it goes on. And I, the deeper I go into my menstruality journey, the more dissolution I'm feeling within myself. And in many ways, the more confusion and it's scary, but it's necessary because there are people who haven't had the privilege that privileges that I've had that I'm, I'm understanding more of their experience.

I'm really grateful for the education I'm receiving and I've got so much more to learn, but yeah, there's a, there's a dismantling process that's happening in me of all the beliefs that were created by these privileges. And I can see that my menstrual, my menstrual cycle awareness is part of that. It's part of the mix that's allowing me to, to dissolve and be with this confusion and this discomfort. It was comfortable feeling like I knew who I was and like I knew what was happening in the world.

You know, I look back to when I first started working at Tree Sisters and we were a women's reforestation organization. And people said, well, you know, this is this is intersectional. You know, there were questions around gender there are questions around race and I wasn't able to hear because I was so focused on we need to reforest the tropics and I can see my ignorance there that anyway it's a long story but that there was stuff that there was so much that and still is so much that needs to be dismantled in me to understand the intersectionality of all of the issues that we're facing in our world yeah I think it's really um it's really good that you brought up the the like you know that's just a brilliant question isn't it what needs to be

dismantled what needs to be unlearned um and the fact that when when we do that we we do get to a place of like oh hang on I don't know I don't know who who I am which again is another big muscle that we're working through the years of cycling years in preparation for the sort of uh composting cocooning of menopause isn't it so you know when we become the mush again you know like I spoke to at the beginning that my exploration around my own gender identity maybe a gender maybe if I was really honest I would do the work to tell people that actually I don't use she her pronouns I use Abby as a pronoun and this means this and you know yeah I don't feel comfortable like and I can

walk in my privilege as you know you know it's not doing me in the privilege of it not doing me that much harm this at this point I can still be assumed heterosexual assumed monogamous assumed cisgendered and maintain all of the privileges that that that brings me so it yeah there's a there's a meeting point of of tension in that for me yeah let's talk about pronouns because this can be an area of challenge or an area where people where some people feel like they might get it wrong and feel fear so why why can you share why people use different pronouns and how we can support that it can be a really um in some in some ways a simple gesture of of respecting somebody's identity to to ask what pronouns they use and to respect those pronouns and to try your best to use them and to recognize that you know we're so deeply embedded with the assumptions we make

about somebody's identity based on how they present that if someone femme presenting using they them pronouns we're probably going to mess up and we're probably gonna refer to them as she or her that's at some point and it's just a really good practice to come into self self-correcting oh sorry they um you know when talking about somebody um when and when talking to somebody you know just be okay with getting it wrong and practicing and um and self-correcting because it it matters using people's pronouns correctly as a very relational act that says i see you and you have been received in your identity yeah and i think it's becoming more more more common to you know to open circles and introduce your name your pronoun where you're from you know that that's you know if we can just make that more of a um more of a normal thing and also recognizing that for

a person in that circle that might be the only person not using binary pronouns that they might they also may not feel comfortable uh coming out so it's not you know like all of these things it's not there's not a kind of fixed way um like oh if we all just ask everyone's pronouns everyone will be cool it's like yeah recognize that that's going to expose somebody as as different um as well so you know giving people options um around around those things is important thanks abby and there's one term that i think is important for us to come back to when we're talking about gender identity which is uh intersex yes yeah um so yeah thank you for i forgot to mention that so intersex people are 1.7% of the population, same as people with red hair. So it's more common than you would think. And there's a variety of

situations that define somebody as intersex. So it's a person born with the reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn't fit into the binary boxes of male and female. So they can have variations of sex characteristics. And this can include like chromosomes, sex hormones or or gentles. And they may identify as as intersex, they may, yeah, it's just to me, it's proof that, yeah, the gender binary is a construct, not a factual reality. Yeah, yeah. And for those listening, if you're listening, and you're interested in learning more about how gender is a construct, and the history of this and the impact that it's had and the history of non-binary and trans folks who have been around forever then we'll drop a couple of links in the

show notes definitely to alok who's done a lot of really powerful study and also creates very easy to understand and accessible resources on Instagram that I've learned so much from so we'll drop some of those in the show notes for this episode if people want to explore that further yeah definitely definitely so let's look at where this exploration of gender and inclusion and belonging meets menstruality so in our learning session you were speaking about how like yes menstruality is radical work you know as people working or having a passion for or just curious about the menstruality field we are breaking taboos you know every time I chat with one of my mum friends about my period and and we open up that conversation it's like breaking down stigmas and taboos it is it's it's shocking for people to just

talk about periods it's still it's changing but um but the radical groundbreaking work that we're doing isn't truly radical if some people are at the margins of what we're talking about yeah absolutely um it's yeah that it i think we can't we can't claim it as as radical um if it excludes if it remains you know at one point this this work was right at the margins and it's changing and like you say it is still shocking to have for some people to have conversations around periods but the taboos and stigma are are breaking down but it really needs to include all people who have different experiences of of cycles otherwise where if this is stayed centered in cis women's experience that just isn't very radical i guess it just kind of continues to replicate the dominance of the gender binary in the kind of over culture so it's really about taking responsibility for for educating ourselves it's not like suddenly

we have to drop everything we've ever known um but it's more just opening these other doorways at the back of the room where other experiences and and engaging as much yeah open-hearted curiosity about oh okay well how can this be more and how can this expand to include and it's a long journey isn't it this isn't something that can or should be happening overnight you know at red school what we've been recognizing for a while now is that the work that we're bringing through has come through alexandra and sharni and alexandra and sharni are white cis heterosexual women so that's the lens that the work has come through and if we know that if we continue to replicate that then we're not creating the culture of belonging that we want to replicate that then we're not creating creating the culture of belonging

that we want to and that people have been excluded yeah and um yeah we want to expand the reach of the teachings absolutely yeah and that's and and that feels you know it just feels like we have a responsibility to to do that if we're if we are working in a field that claims to be radical if we're working in a field field that claims to be radical if we're working in a field field that claims to be about healing um you know healing ourselves healing others then yeah there's a responsibility to do that well it's a responsibility to do that responsibly um it's true there's a responsibility to inquire into what that into what that that really means because you know I think we all want to have a a really solid experience and understand who we are and

a solid experience of of ourselves and like somebody else shared in the in the learning session that she has a non-binary eight-year-old child and her menstrual work has been was centered in language around women and daughters um and now she's kind of zooming out and asking herself the question like what needs to happen in my work rather than getting into the like oh my god I have to change my language I have to get it all right or people aren't included I'm a terrible person rather than going down that that route she's kind of zoomed out and and framed it as what needs to happen in my work and my spaces for people to feel seen heard and to belong um and people like my child yeah and she has a close to home example of like oh if I just a simple fact

if I call my workshop this and my child who is excited about coming into their menstruating years it's not for them they're like they can't come so and and that felt like a really lovely kind of framing actually too so we don't get into the like oh my god I've got to get it right oh my god I've got it wrong oh god I can never speak up ever again that actually like what's the what's the value system what's the what's the motivator what are my ethics around around this work which you know the the work itself is is around self-intimacy and um belonging but you know what's obviously people take it in different in different directions so what's your personal value system because it's not to say that there can't be spaces that are entirely for cis women called you know cis women spaces you know it's

not that that's not allowed it's just like getting really getting really clear on what your on what your value base is so I really love that that example that came up in the session yeah we're segwaying into this already but for the people listening who are thinking right I get that this is really important and I want to what can I do next you know how can I work to be to include and to create belonging um right and I want to recognize that this episode isn't a how to be inclusive episode it's not like a one a 10-step plan it's it's more complex as we've pointed to in nuance than that could you speak to that yeah I I think like you've just said that there isn't a how to how to do it this is

opening the inquiry like what's needed within myself to connect across difference how can I resource myself to have difficult potentially difficult conversations or how can I resource myself to have difficult potentially difficult conversations or how can I find in places that I might feel like I understand things and that they work in this one particular way how can I find an openness to go oh maybe they don't so I think the number one practice is recognising it's a commitment to learning, to unlearning. And like you say, we're going to give lots of great resources. You know, we live in an age where there's so much information, social media, podcasts. There's so many people doing incredible work and also feel we sort of want to say that we've talked a lot about about curiosity and listening to people's lived experience and trusting their experiences

their experience not questioning their experience um but also not going to people oh there's a queer person in my life or i'm going to ask them what's that like and why do you choose these pronouns and how's that been and um you know recognizing the enormous amount of emotional labor that that would cost so there's a level of openness and acceptance of people's lived experiences but just recognize where it tips into I don't know my my own experience of that is has been sometimes feeling like an object in a museum or something where people are like oh you're so it's so interesting that you that you you live life like that you can't concentrate or you write with your left hand or you know I won't tell you all the non-neurotypical

ways in which I function in my life but you know they raise curiosity and that can be I don't know to a certain level it can feel like somebody's interested but then after a certain point it's like it goes into anothering experience of like basically aren't you weird aren't you weird even if someone's trying to understand you so I think it's really important to to say that so yeah just practice believing people's people's experiences and and go to the resources like do the do the work yourself to take responsibility for where you're going to be learning from and be willing to get it to get it wrong to mess up and to correct whether that's you know pronouns whether that's holding a space where you thought you were being really creating a culture of belonging for people and then actually get some feedback afterwards

where someone says I really didn't like the way that you did this like you know be ready to receive that that feedback you know take risks receive feedback and and meet that use that experience to grow from and and develop so I'm gonna see if I can summarize the next steps that you just shared it starts with being prepared to mess up and correct ourselves and I love how you named this to be to be curious and educate yourself but don't not to expect trans or non-binary or gender expansive people to do the work for you and educate you and we we're going to share lots of resources to help with that education process and to ask people's pronouns to respect people's pronouns and to make the decision to respect people's pronouns and to make the decision to believe people and and I think holding it also in the the wider web of life this you know this is something that

also came up in in the session around the person who found their non-binary identity through through this work was holding you know that we talk about the menstrual cycle but like that we are existing in cycles within cycles within cycles and as cyclical cyclical beings there's you know there's a whole ecosystem of how we how we understand life beyond just human life like life it's it's diverse and it's complex it it doesn't make sense like we've tried to as humans we've tried to you know box off and understand work it out and make sense of and you know create this sort of false sense of safety um and actually like can we just go blimey life it's huge and it's and it's diverse and it's complex and can I can I through my rooted sense of of knowing myself as part of this web can I embrace

and honor this complexity in this like creature I can you know this ant that I can see walking on on the ground or in this person whose gender identity isn't clear from the clothes that they're wearing. And, you know, and can that not make me feel unsafe? But can that make me feel curious? And like, I live in this rich ecosystem of differentness, because that's just so enriching. I just so want to, you know, live in a world where we're just constantly navigating mystery. And, you know, to me, it feels really boring to understand everything.

That's not interesting. I want to not understand. I want to, you know, something I want to never understand. And I'm okay with that. Like, I don't need to get to the bottom of stuff so I just want to receive and relate so yeah I'm ranting a bit now so it wasn't a rant it was beautiful and I'm sort of coming back to the ocean and the big sky that you started us off with you know your 4am being in the sea and seeing the big skies above you and I'm looking at the sky right now and these huge fluffy clouds and this gorgeous deep blue and remembering that we are tiny specks of sand on a ball of rock that is

hurtling through space in a universe that we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of understanding that's that's the truth of of our human condition what it is yeah we think we know so much and when we really expand our view we see that yeah we are it's all it's actually all a big freaking mystery yeah yeah and like so how can how do we be with that how do we how do we meet that reality we you know and that's about you know personal resource um and and understanding our interconnectedness if we really want to move into a like beyond the kind of domination culture which I would argue is absolutely essential at this point in time we want to come into into a more relational culture then

we need to be able to settle into the not knowing together recognize our interconnectedness and embrace that mystery or courting the unknown I think we call it I've heard that phrase one or two times thanks Abby is there anything else that you'd like to share as we close this conversation for now recognizing this is part of you know this is the beginning of a longer conversation that we'll be having over the coming weeks and months and years. Yeah, I think really just to just to ask yourself a question of, you know, be willing to be disturbed by what is and just to imagine what a kind of world and what kind of healing is possible if we can come into a messy and clumsy relationship with human and more than human world what expansiveness and richness can be there if we go off the map

because maybe the maps are made up we just start to question a bit a bit more thank you so much for being with us for this conversation i would really love to hear how it landed for you and what you're left with after listening. I'd love to hear your questions, your insights, your thoughts and I can also pass things on to Abby too. You can get in touch with me anytime at sophie at redschool.net. I love hearing from you and you can also let us know if there are any topics that you'd love us to explore around menstruality, the menstrual cycle, menopause, the cycles of life, and anyone that you'd love us to interview, if there's someone who you find really inspiring and you think we should share them with the community, then please again reach out at sophie at redschool.net. If you're loving the podcast, please come over to Apple Podcasts and leave us a short review.

It really helps apple podcast to show the podcast to more people so we can get more people understanding the power and magic of the menstrual cycle and of the amazing menopause process and speaking of the menopause process if you haven't heard yet alexander and sharni's new book, Wise Power, is out for pre-order now. It's about the liberating power of menopause and you can pre-order your copy at wisepowerbook.com. Okay, that's it for this week. I look forward to being with you again next week and until then, keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.