The Menstruality Podcast - The Connection Between Menopause, Nature and Sacred Sex (Jewels Wingfield)

Episode Date: September 8, 2022

When teacher and activist Jewels Wingfield felt menopause calling, through intense physical symptoms, she knew she needed to take a deep retreat. In this conversation, we explore her 13 moon ‘conscious menopause sabbatical’ and how it transformed her health, her relationship to herself, her work in the world, and even her sex life.Jewels is the founder of the EarthHeart project and on the other side of her sabbatical she is focusing on guiding women to explore their ‘nature-based feminine leadership’, with a particular focus on an ancient, Celtic approach to menstruality, and how the natural world can support our menopause ‘death-and-rebirth’ process.In the conversation we explore:How to carve out space and time for retreat and menopause, even when we have big responsibilities and financial pressure, and the potentially beneficial impact.How to access the wisdom of the natural world as a powerful guide and ally during the initiation of menopause.Some good news about how sex can change in menopause, and practical (often surprising!) guidance to access new levels of sexual connection and desire in this phase of life.You can now pre-order your copy of our new menopause book! Wise Power: Discover the liberating power of menopause to awaken authority, purpose and belonging here: https://www.wisepowerbook.com---The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [e-mail]---Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.schoolJewels Wingfield: @jewelsatearthheart - https://www.instagram.com/jewelsatearthheart/

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. It's so good to have you here listening today. This is the next in our series of menopause conversations and today I'm talking to a good friend of mine,ules Wingfield who when she felt her menopause

calling it was actually through very intense physical symptoms. She knew that she needed to take a deep retreat and in our conversation today we explore her 13 month conscious menopause sabbatical and how it transformed everything for her, her health, her relationship to herself and her authority, her work in the world and even her sex life. So Jules is a teacher, she's the founder of the Earth Heart Retreat Centre and on the other side of her sabbatical she's focusing on guiding women to explore their nature-based feminine leadership with a particular focus on an ancient celtic approach to menstruality and how the natural world can support the death and rebirth process that can happen in menopause so in the conversation

we look at how she managed to pull off such a big retreat even when she had lots of responsibilities and financial pressures, how to access the wisdom of the natural world as an ally during menopause and she speaks about how sex changes in menopause and shares some practical and often quite radical and surprising guidance about how to access new levels of sexual connection and desire in this phase of life. As you'll hear in the interview, Jules has spent the whole of the summer outside on the land at Earthheart and that's actually where we recorded the interview so you'll hear some wind, some bird song, some planes going overhead so I hope you can let that all wash over you as we get into the connection between menopause, the natural world

and sacred sex with Jules Wingfield. It's really good to be here with you Jules when I first thought about doing the menstruality podcast you were one of the first people I thought I want to have Jules on so so good to be here with you how is it going today it is absolutely gorgeous as you know we're in this amazing um hot summer and the garden is just exploding and uh yeah i was uh i've been out here like i came out i think on the 15th of april and i've just been on the land in in our van and i think i've spent two nights in the house since then and i just love it it's just that sleeping out on the land sleeping out under the trees then you know interspersed with the women coming and doing the trainings and stuff. And it just feels so nourishing for me.

It's like it's how I'm sustaining myself. It just feels like such an important piece. Yeah, I can see the background behind you, that gorgeous fuchsia bush and all of the green. And it's making me so hungry to come and be at Earth Heart at this amazing place that you've created. Yes. So you and I go way back we've done a lot of I've done a lot of work with you starting off in 2015 with initiation your women's year long and then the couples year long with aid when we were going through infertility. But today our topic is, is menopause and you're obviously in your post menopause life now. So to

walk us into this, we'll do a cycle check-in, but a post menopause cycle check-in. How is your cyclicity in this phase of your life? So I, it's interesting because the thing I noticed the most when I stopped bleeding was there was just this complete panic because I was like how do I anchor myself how do I orientate my month what am I going to do now how am I going to you know because you know if I've just got lots of energy why not keep going why not just do this and that and when will I create a drop for myself when will I go go in? And it's been quite a journey, actually, because, you know, I do feel very influenced by the moon. There's no question about that. But it doesn't necessarily take me into, oh, I really want to go in deep now. I

really want to go inside, you know, not if I'm at the middle of a festival or you know it's a beautiful summer's day so um I'm lucky because I've got the earth lodge here so I tend to do that I tend to just go into the earth lodge because even if it's super bright and sunny outside and and hot the earth lodge is is always dark she's sort of carved into the side of the hill it's got this womb like holding so as soon as I go in there I'm like oh yeah okay here we are and then I find myself you know and I just maybe light a fire and spend the night in there or just spend spend a few hours in there and it does it really really helps to just reorientate me and remind me of how important that that drop is that's amazing so whenever you feel that you need like quote unquote a menstrual drop yes you can you go and you go into the earth lodge can you tell us a bit

about the earth lodge can you sort of paint the picture of it for people yes so the earth lodge came into being because I was having this womb divination with a friend of mine and I sort of what I call downloaded you know it's or something came through I downloaded that I was supposed to be creating these womb pods on the land for women to go and bleed into and um and there was like seven of these pods and they were like little you know one one woman pods where you could go in and it would be dark and we'd bring you food and you know you could just really really crawl into the earth and i came amazing i know and i came out like seven pods like how am i gonna do that you know it just felt like overwhelming so i went back and did

another journey and then we got to this one huge womb pod which is basically what the earth lodge is and then it was like how am i going to create this how am i going to create this and then this amazing sequence of events happened where a friend of mine was was meant to be running a project to build a roundhouse with 24 people who'd kind of signed up to do that to learn how to do it so he called me literally and said can we come to your land our land has fallen through and I was like the timing because I literally just had this whole kind of download so we sort of we just went for it and and it was built in ceremony with this amazing guy called Tony Wrench who lives in a roundhouse and so it took like about a couple of weeks and every morning we'd do this song and this dance and then we you know built it in this ceremonial way and we laid the ground first of all and and it was just so powerful to see what

would happen when you brought a group of people together and as soon as it was built I was just like this was before my menopause I was just coming into it I I thought, I know where I'm going to spend my menopause. Because as soon as I went in and I lit the fire, I was like, oh, thank God, I know I can be in here. And I could feel the ancestors there. And I could feel, you know, like that veil. You know, the way we talk about the veil being really thin. It was like, as soon as I walked in the door, it's like, oh, I'm on the other side. Here I am. And, yeah yeah it's just been so powerful and I did spend a lot of my menopause in there and

without it I think I might have gone slightly bonkers actually and it is such an amazing space because it has these two bits of wood in coming up to the entranceway and then it has the skull is it a uh it's a wild yeah it's a wild boar skull and then the two stag antlers on the outside yeah and then you come in and it is like entering like going through a birth canal into a womb and then you're in the earth and there's the spiraling wooden beams rising up and then the smoke goes up through them and I remember Ada and I coming to see you at a time when we were really low the infertility was just breaking us down breaking us up and you you probably didn't know what to do with us really a couple of weepy grumpy people but you took us into the womb lot into the earth lodge I call it

a womb lodge and you just lit a fire and you just started singing and I started singing with you and he's a bit more shy so he didn't really sing but he just sat and enjoyed it and it was it just feels timeless it feels like being part remembering that we're part of something on this land you know the people have been doing this forever I mean yeah exactly we would have had those lodges where the women could have gathered and and like you say you know without this spiritual dimension to what we're doing in terms of our wombs and how we're living it's we are going to feel lost and disconnected let's talk about your menopause experience as a way into this conversation because there's loads

we want to talk about we're going to talk about like your menopause sabbatical we're going to talk about sex we're going to talk about how nature can support us through menopause there's lots we're going to explore but I would love to start at the moment that I think of as the beginning of your menopause process but tell me if I'm wrong when you were sitting in the temple at Earth Heart and you looked out at a tree outside the window and the tree said something quite shocking to you. Yes, that was a really key moment. But it feels like important just to go back a little bit and get the context because I was your classics textbook superwoman. You know, while I was a bleeding woman I was like you know the workshops

were back to back and I was just out there and I had this absurd amount of energy and I was just like I've got to change the world and I gotta like help all the women and bring them all bring them all bring them all I can hold it all I can hold it all I can you know and on this huge mission like this huge mission which I'm still on but um you know and and on this huge mission, like this huge mission, which I'm still on. But, you know, and I just felt like my body was invincible. You know, I really felt like my body was invincible. And I started to feel tired. And I was a bit like, no, I don't do tired.

I'm Jules. I don't do tired. No, no, no, no, no. You know, my body's always delivered the energy I need and the energy I want and I started and and the workshops were running and the trainings were running and I noticed more and more I was sitting in circle just feeling you know having thoughts like I don't care what's going on I I just haven't got, I've got compassion fatigue, it's like I just don't feel like I can sit here and support you, I just don't feel like I've got the resources, and it got worse

and worse, and I was just like, oh my god, I'm actually sitting here going, oh god, you know what, I just don't even want to be in the room, I just don't want to sit here in this circle, I can't give you what you want, you know, and I was like, oh, maybe my career, my purpose, my calling, maybe it's all over, maybe I'm done, you know, that's it, I've lost my touch, I'm just not passionate about it anymore, you know, I was having all the, this went on for about a year, and I was a bit freaked out, because I was like, but I've just created Earth Heart, you know, I've done all this stuff. It's like I've finally come into my prime.

I've spent 20 years building myself. Really? My body, the symptoms in my body were just getting worse and worse. My kidneys were getting really bad. And I was just tired all the time. I was like literally resting between every circle like lunch break I'd go and lie down for an hour afternoon tea break I go and normally I'd be chatting to everyone and going for a walk and it's like what is going on and then we were sitting in

the temple space end of one workshop and we were sitting there and we were doing this closing circle everyone was sort of you know just bringing things to a close and I and I was looking out at the forest because you can got the whole forest view and um there's this one beech tree which I which I like I'm very close to and I've always talked to trees and trees have always talked to me ever since I was little so having a tree talk to me wasn't particularly unusual but I was looking at the beech tree and we were just sort of having this moment and it was all it was just coming into autumn so the leaves were starting to fall and I was just sort of you know yeah okay the tree's turning it's it's that autumn time and then I was sitting there looking at the tree and literally the tree spoke to me and just said

you're going to die this winter and my hot this rush of adrenaline that just went through my body this absolute fear because where I went was oh my goodness the trees just told me I've got cancer I've got some sort of terminal illness I'm going to have a car accident you know something's happened I thought literally I'm going to die so I sort of turn back to the group I was like oh my god like I've got to be present here we're just winding up this workshop but I've just been told I'm gonna die so we kind of you know pulled the workshop together and you know said everyone goodbye and and then I thought right okay there's something here so I went you know went and sat by the tree and spent some time and just sort of went okay you know what's going on and um it became really clear that what what

was being shown to me was a spiritual death a death of the way I had been operating in my life um a movement from being an ovulating cycling bleeding woman you know basically yeah that menopause transition and that there was this spiritual death coming this death of the old way of being that I clearly couldn't keep operating the way I had you know in this superwoman paradigm in this I can be everything to everyone I can fix and sort everyone I can help everyone you know never don't say no to any woman however broken she is just bring her into the nest and I'll hold it all and it was yeah and so then I sort of I sat there and I had this conversation with this tree and I did a bit of a yeah but yeah yeah but no but yeah but no but you don't understand you know I've just

invested my life my my lifelong earnings you know I've come from nothing and I've just created this incredible place for people to come and you're saying now it's like it's all over you've got to stop this you can't carry on I was like you don't you know and so it was sort of the message that was coming back is you've got to take 13 moons out and literally do nothing You've got to flatline. Wow. I can't, you can't, no. Like, I have a project that costs £50,000 to £60,000 a year just to maintain at a baseline level. I've got all these people who rely on me for support and help. I've got these trainings.

I've got a daughter who depends on me. I've got, you know, I can't just take 13 moons out who's gonna pay the bills who's gonna do you know all of this I remember I remember when it happened because I think you and I were we were doing some planning work together or something yeah you're like right everything that we've been planning uh I'm gonna take 13 months off. Gulp. Okay. How is this going to happen? You made it happen. Well, yeah. So then I, you know, obviously I took that to my sister circle and was kind of, you know, I don't want to do it.

You know, but they really helped me. You know, and without them, I don't think I'd have been able to really, you know, that was the power of having this support of my women's women's sister circle who you know where I could talk through it all thrash it all out and go well I wonder what does that actually really look like and what do I need to do and they were really really supportive and and that felt really really key and so basically I got a caravan and I put it down on the land right in the very very far bottom so basically I was in the forest kind of away from everything and I made this kind of den space in the forest I made a bit of a temporary shelter and you know and I had sort of like a little kind of bivouac top all in and I

made a nest you know in the caravan and in the forest and I just said okay for the next 13 moons I'm just going to let go of everything I thought I was everything I think I'm about everything I thought I wanted to do every you know really look at how am I running my life how do I use my energy you know what if I just carry on like I am what does that mean for my body it's like my body was literally just packing up, my kidneys were flat lining, and I thought I can't carry on like this, and but I, but if I don't do this purpose that I've spent my entire life from like age five, age 16, kind of being guided for, and being guided to do, like who am I, i like i can't just i can't just sit around and eat food and how will i survive you know all of these questions were coming and i just kept taking them to the night taking them to the fire you know and and and asking those really really

difficult questions and and you know pounding my fists on the ground and being really angry and spending all night pacing up and down in the forest and sitting by the fire and crying and grieving and you know the whole lot and having to really really really just let go and I honestly thought when I went into that that I was never ever going to run another workshop in my life that I was never ever going to sit and support anyone to do anything it was like I was done I was done you know I had no idea what I was going to do next but I was done and I also had to go and if earth heart goes into receivership and if I go bankrupt and I come back and the roof's falling in and there's brambles all over everything and I'm living as a crazy old woman with 50 cats, so be it.

You know, it was like I had to really let go of everything and take this huge risk that I would go into massive debt, that all the people would hate me for not for dropping them and not supporting them anymore. And, you know, all of that stuff, I was faced with everything and it was really challenging massively challenging um you've just shared so much and I just would love to go back and focus in on a couple of pieces and then talk about what happened next which is very exciting and has a lot to do with sex as well. The fruits of your conscious menopause. I just want to go back to the beginning when you said you were having all these symptoms, physical symptoms. So you were exhausted. You needed to rest all the time. Your own, like we all have our own sort of health weaknesses, don't we?

And yours are your kidneys. Yeah, for me, it's my digestive system. Your kidneys were really hurting a lot what else was going on brain fog yeah it was mostly the kidneys and everything that kind of spiraled off that so what was happening was I had this whole calcification thing going on yeah and that was you know my hearing loss was getting worse because my ears were calcifying I was getting kidney stones I had zero energy um I got gout at one point and I'm like I never drunk anything in my life I eat really healthy I was like I've got gout what's going on and how about were you getting hot flushes and insomnia was that part of it for you insane you know I'd rigged up a fan on my bedstead,

and I'd be naked lying there with no duvet on, with the fan on, with a wet towel on me, and still lying there. And yeah, you know, couldn't sleep, and all that kind of restless... I mean, honestly, it's interesting. It's hard to sort of remember it now, but I remember just a lot of restlessness.

And so I was you know getting all the help I could like the acupuncture and the herbs and the supplements but what became clear to me is you know the symptoms were an arrow they were pointing to something and at first of course I wanted to get rid of them I just wanted to get rid of them you know and I was like I want to eat your tea you know it's just not really me I'm such a feral creature so it was like looking at the symptoms on a physical level felt really important but I thought I know this is not enough I know that I could probably manage these symptoms physically and kind of reduce them but the symptoms doing that I'm not going to get to the source of what's going on

so then I started doing the you know like the the spiritual work the ancestral work the kind of core wound what I call the core wound work like working with my holy wound and soon enough got to the father line you know because the kidneys existential fear and I could feel there was this whole thing going on in my system around the father line and then I tapped in and got into the mother line about how all the women in my generation you know all the lineage behind me none of them had done anything around menstruality of course you know they were all quite like patriarchal women actually in this sort of superwoman paradigm and I was like oh god right I've got to break the chain here because I had done exactly the same thing so I'd say the bigger piece of work that I did that really made the shift was doing that ancestral work was really looking at what is

going on in my kidneys is an absolute expression of what's going on in this line that has not been addressed of which I am just doing you know the next incarnation of and that was really really key in it all and once I did that piece my energy changed I could feel the energy start to shift and I could feel like energy starting to come back into my body and that was happening in your 13 moons year. That was a big part of your 13 moons year, that coming up to you. No, that sort of came later down the line. I feel like that first year, the 13 moons, I did quite near the beginning actually of my menopause. So it was almost like that was laying, that was putting the roots in the ground.

That was kind of planting the seed. And then I came out of that. Let's pull back. there's a few more questions I want to ask first before we talk about coming out of it but that's really really interesting to hear and I feel like we could have a whole conversation about ancestral line healing and menopause you know and maybe we will it's well let's see what we get to in the conversation but I just wanted to come back to talking to trees yes so for those I talk to trees and maybe many of the people listening also talk to trees but I just wanted to lead into this a bit because you know you say it so like you know haphazardly like

yeah you know chatting with the trees but what does that what happens inside you when you're talking to a tree like is it yeah what how does that process look like because for for people I'm just thinking of people who are in menopause who are looking for help and for science from the natural world how to how to be in that kind of dialogue yeah and thank you and I think that you know that connection I've had has been there since day one you know because my childhood was so awful and horrific that I very quickly figured out that nature didn't have all this human stuff going on. And, you know, I'd go down, you know, to the little park or down to the bottom of the garden or whatever. And I'd talk to nature down there. And as a little child, like five, six, seven years old, I thought everyone did. I mean, I just thought, you know, this is what we do. And obviously soon realized, you know, a bit later on that that wasn't the case. But there was an experience that I would have where I felt unconditionally held in love in nature so it became a place where somewhere in my

life I could feel loved safe and held because it wasn't happening in the human realm but it was happening in this realm and so I suppose that naturally made me want to deepen spending time in nature and because I was just these beings were showing themselves to me and because the plants and I remember like when I was about five finding this rose and I smelled the rose and I can remember that as I was inhaling the aura, the kind of the essence, the scent of the rose, all the pain went away away all the emotional pain went away all the suffering just for that moment that i was inhaling it was like i felt like i was infusing the mystery in that moment i was infusing love like this rose was just emitting a pure kind of frequency of love and i was just able to breathe it into my body.

And then, of course, I'd have to breathe out again. And then I'd be back in the house, I'd say, oh, God, smell it again, smell it again. You know, and I'd just be sitting there, just breathing in and breathing in. And there was something about that communication, and that would bring me to, like, gratitude. As I got older, I was like, wow. And then I'd be, say, walking through a woodland or a forest

and and I'd be in some kind of pain like oh you know my partner's being really horrible or I've just had an argument or something you know I'm just in the pain I'm in the wound and I'm in the pain and I can't find solace and I can't find comfort in the humans around me and I'd be walking through the forest and I just let myself and I'd be seeing the trees and I remember one day and I was about 16 I was like what would it be like to just receive this tree and just see what is this tree like what is a tree as a being what is a tree like what's its essence what's its and so I just opened myself like I kind of just opened the front of my body or I opened my body and said I'm just going to receive you

and I just had this profound experience of being really truly seen like really seen at a core level and that just kind of like I started moved me I started crying I was like oh my god I think I feel loved by this tree I feel really loved I feel and then there was all these other trees I was like oh well shall I shall I see what it's like if I say to all the trees I'm open I'm open and available to receiving your love and I would just get filled I was like oh my goodness this is amazing and it was like just a safe way that I could experience it and when I once I've made that connection it didn't seem like a very big jump to actually ask questions you know and of course it's you know when I say the tree talks to me it's not like it comes back in words it's very difficult to articulate it's like i remember when i had my first bleed and i had this moment i was i was in a plant medicine ceremony on psilocybin mushrooms

and i was having this bleed and it was raining and i was sitting there and this blood was just sort of flowing onto the ground and i was sitting there in the rain having this sort of cosmic, you know, experience. And suddenly I was like, oh, my God, this blood, this womb, my womb is connected. And it's got, you know, and I had to like just the whole download of the womb consciousness thing, the womb cycle thing. And the rain was talking to me and the blood was talking to me. And then I felt like the whole, what I call the wombiverse,iverse the cosmic womb started kind of giving me this download in my room and I was like oh my god but of course I was with these other people doing this ceremony and I was only like 17 18 and they didn't get it at all so I just thought I'm a total nutter here but you know that did that was where it all began and it did take me on that journey wow wow which takes us quite seamlessly to this nest that you made so the caravan you painted

it brown and you called it the caver van which I think is brilliant you made the caver van but you also kind of made yourself this nest in nature and why was it so important for you to be really with the land in that way I mean it's kind of obvious having shared what you just shared about your bleeding mushroom moments and about who you are but yeah can you just speak to the importance of the yeah just being absolutely encased in the earth yeah and I think this is an interesting one because i know that for many people it's like oh nature's nice i like going for a walk but i don't really want to scrabble around on the earth as creepy crawlies you know so i know it's not

comfortable and natural for a lot of people but i mean if if you ever if anyone ever asked me where's your happy place you know i'll immediately go to snuggled up by a fire somewhere wild with my dog you know in a sleeping bag cozy safe and warm you know maybe with a packet of marshmallows you know it's like that's my happy place looking out under the stars just and it's interesting because you know we work on the land and all all of the trainings and all of the workshops and everything are on the land and we the fire is like the central half that's the soul of it all and sometimes it's raining and so we've got a sort of semi-covered beautiful sort of you know barn space and then we've got the earth lodge which is a more covered and then we've got the temple which is like a proper indoor building so they they all are increments of sort of

indoorsness if you like each one of them takes us one step further from i'm just sitting on the earth now and the sky is above me and there's nothing in between and one of the things that came out of the menopause that I started to to realize and I knew it before but it was just non-negotiable now is that the the more I am just literally sitting on the earth with nothing between the sky and the earth and me I feel the most resourced like if we're sitting in circle say sharing circle if we're sitting around the fire and I've got the fire in front of me and i've got the earth below me and i'm literally on the floor and the sky above me i can hold space for say four hours and feel completely resourced and and and feel fine if we move to the semi-covered space which has still got a natural

stone floor but it has got like an artificial roof like it's you know a sort of metal tin roof I I'm like oh okay I could probably do three hours and then I start to feel like okay I think I need to resource myself now you know if we go into the temple I'm like I can do two max because there's you know concrete underneath wooden floor I mean it is a turf roof but you know it's got walls it's it's you know it's like the doors are closed maybe and I just can see this direct correlation with the more deeply I'm embedded onto the earth with nothing in between the more resourced I am and that's simple your your menopause called you what your symptoms were pointing you to something and your menopause called you to the

thing which was the thing that would be able to heal you which is being in absolute direct contact with the elements wow exactly and the thing is this has always been true all my life but what what happened before menopause is I felt like I can't force people into doing it this way even though I feel passionately that it would help I felt the pleaser in me or the kind of oh well I'm not you know that I wasn't in my power in the level but I got to menopause and I'm like well I don't care this is non-negotiable for me if I'm going to hold space effectively this is what I need and I passionately believe that this is going to be a huge help especially to women so and and it's like where it brought me in my journey with power is one of the big things that happened during that 13 moons was I was being asked to step up. And, you know, I was being shown all of this stuff that I was supposed to be bringing through, like teachings, you know, new ways of working, new practices, new models, deeper models of the cycle wheel and stuff like

that. And some of it I was like, whoa, you got the wrong person here. No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not ready to say that kind of edgy stuff. I'm not ready to speak. You know, that's going to be really challenging for people to hear. That's going to be really poking you know it's sort of yeah and you know but I was being asked to and and it was like I had to face my relationship to my power and how much was I willing to step into the next level of power in me and go do I dare to speak this stuff knowing that it's going to get challenged knowing that people are going to find it difficult and I think that what the menopause gave me was that kick up the arse with the power wand you know to go if you don't do this what is your life going to look like you're going to feel deeply unsatisfied because you're out of alignment with what's

being asked by the mystery by nature coming through you you're being asked to voice this stuff to bring this stuff to embody this stuff and it was all stuff that I had been sort of cooking in the background over my life but of course I had that voice who are you to say this stuff who are you to bring this stuff who are you to say you know anything about this you're nobody get back in the gutter you know you're just a woman you know all my childhood wounds I don't you know I'm not worthy you know blah blah blah so what that meant what that 13 moons did was it kind of forced me to come back into myself look at my power and go if you don't do this what does your life look like going forwards

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it feels like your menopause was saying well that that voice in you that's saying no who has to die and if it doesn't die you're going to be living a bit of a semi-death anyway if you want to be reborn yes yeah yeah because. Because it was like, you know, when I was negotiating about, you know, letting everything of this go, you know, what came back really strongly is Jules, if you carry on as you were, you're dead anyway. Right. So what have you got to lose? You know, and I was there like fingernails scraping down the cliff. I don't want to let go. I don't want to let go of everything that I thought I was. It's like, I've spent my life building this sense of self

and my gift in the world. And it's like, you're saying let go of it all? Yes, we're saying let go of it all. You know, it's like, no! So let's, I just want to name it. It sounds like there's someone doing some good work on earth out behind you digging with a spade so if our listeners can hear the clanging that's that's possibly what that is i'm not sure they are all part of making earth out the beautiful

place it is so let's look at what did happen because you obviously are here very vital very much alive very much still doing really powerful work in the world. So what did it look like? Yeah, when you came out of these, this 13 moons time? So what the, I mean, there's lots that came out of it, but the kernel of it, I would say, is that it wasn't in the end that I was no longer going to be you know an advocate for change on earth or you know run women's leadership programs or be a part of the great change and work with people and run which it wasn't that I was going to change any of that but what had to change was how I was doing it and where in me I was doing it from and that's what changed

so I had to change my relationship to my power you know to go deeper into it was almost like a deeper surrender so less of the I like well I this and I'm you know like less of that sense of sort of my ego self if you, my magnificent me sort of thing, to more surrendering and trusting that whatever was coming through me was not really me, actually, and that my body is just this channel for something. And sometimes stuff comes out of my mouth. I'm like, where did that come from because I definitely don't have the wisdom around that stuff but something is just being spoken and it

comes in what I call feminist because it doesn't it's not necessarily even in words it's like there's a there's a feeling or an energy or a physical something that wants to move and it comes through sound or it comes through song or it comes through words that don't necessarily logically make sense but they're felt and not apologizing that was the big thing it's like before if I would say something that I felt was like whoa that's that's a bit um it's a bit challenging to the collective narrative you know I'd sort of try to sort of wrap some cotton wool around it and sort of it was like, whoa, that's a bit challenging to the collective narrative. You know, I'd sort of try to sort of wrap some cotton wool around it and sort of, you know, fluff it up a bit, make it a sandwich, you know, and I'm just like, yeah, I don't feel the need to apologize.

It's like, this is, here it is, this is it, and I get it's difficult, but here we are. You know, to not do this is kind of, of like you say I'm out of alignment with myself and it hurts it actually hurts my heart hurts to not say it and one of the the truths or the ways of changing the mainstream narrative has really been about sex in menopause and in post-menopause life and you're bringing a really radical and liberating approach to this you know and I had the honor of being with you like sneaking in there as a cycling woman just being there and being present to the course that you did around sex and the menopause and watching the impact for people

of your teachings around what's actually happening around what's happening inside our bodies when it comes to sex in this time of our lives so could you walk us into sort of the essence of that work and and how it landed in you on the other side of your menopause well look there's there's so much I could say on this, but what I feel is like the kernel here in context of this is for me, and this has been the case all my life, it's like sexuality for me is spiritual energy. You know, yes, we might be lovers with someone

and we might explore beautiful pleasure and all of that, but that's such a small part of sexuality it's like our sexuality is our creative life force it's our spiritual kind of emergence you know and and and in the in the wheel of of the teachings sexuality sits in the autumn of the cycle when you say the wheel of the teachings sorry yeah like the monthly cycle and you know like the cyclical teachings the the the the wombdala cyclical teachings so you know you've got the monthly fourth inner seasons and then you've got the life seasons of woman i mean you say this as if you know, you know, we'll do a whole episode on Jules Wigfield's Wombdala. But OK, for now, you're talking about a map of teachings that you've created around the menstrual cycle and around the cyclicity of life and nature.

Yeah. And and sexuality sits in the autumn of the wheel of the cycle. So it sits in the premenstrual phase, the inner season of autumn, and it sits in the autumn of the cycle so it sits in the premenstrual phase the inner season of autumn and it sits in the autumn of the life arc of woman and women often go what sexuality in the autumn like it sort of menopause but isn't it all over then isn't that when all that changes and we lose our desire for sex and shouldn't it live in the maiden shouldn't it live in the sort of mother creatress like you know and they're really confused by this so but the thing is if sexual energy if our erotic that deep erotic feminine current that i talk about if that is source energy if that's creative life force energy if that is ultimately a vibration of love, which is what it is.

When we're in the maiden years or the creatress years or the cycling years, we're so driven by that oestrogen cycle and the drive to reproduce and the drive to tend to earth and to tend to life, to nurture and care for for life which is what oestrogen does you know that's the driver it's like the spirituality only really comes into play once we're in the bleed and once we're in that premenstrual time when we start to move into that holy space and move to the other side move through the veil so it's going to be the same with the sexuality so when when we're in sexuality in the spring or the summer of our life it's going to be the same with the sexuality so when when we're in sexuality in the spring or the summer of our life it's much more about being in life and the tending to life and the expression of life and the creativity of life but when sexuality is embedded in in the autumn of our

life or in the pre-menstrual menstrual time it's more connected to spirituality because we're preparing for holy space we're preparing for the bleed we're preparing spirituality because we're preparing for holy space. We're preparing for the bleed. We're preparing for death. We're preparing to be the wise crone. We're preparing, you know, we've got depth. We've got wisdom. We've lived these cycling years. So why would sexuality be the exception?

Yeah. So for me, what I see happening when women get to menopause in terms of sexuality is up until now, their sexuality has been estrogen driven. So it's like and because they don't have the kind of the wisdom and the power that a menopausal woman has, the strapline is OK, sex is better than no sex now of course I'd love to have amazing sex we always want to have like amazing sex but if that doesn't seem like it's on offer or we don't know how to create it at least we're kind of having something yeah you know it's like yeah it's still nice it's still lovely it's still sweet and it's still maybe there are moments where it's amazing but it's definitely better than nothing yeah it's kind of still nice yeah and and you know it's not great and i really wish that

they would do this bit more and that a bit more and i wish that you know what happens when we get to the menopause is estrogen just disappears right estrogen is like that's the big one so and and commonly known in slang terms as the accommodating hormone so accommodating drops away and it's like we take a truth pill and suddenly we see what's been going on and the strap line flips from i'd rather have okay sex than no sex it flips to i'd rather have no sex than okay sex i'd rather have no sex than okay sex because i am it's too painful in my body in my psyche in my spiritual alignment to have to not be met in the fullness of my power in the depth of who i am in this spiritual realm because i'm now not busy with procreation with that wild driving force to to to nurture life i'm now focused towards

nurturing and tending to the mystery and being a vessel for the mystery for spirit or whatever word we want to use for the holy and sexuality becomes that too so now to enter into sexual intimacy we're entering into the temple we're entering into holy space and you can't compromise on that you can't compromise on that it's like you know entering the temple with with you know muddy boots and swearing and blaspheming and you know we're going to enter holy space you know it would be like going into the forest and just leaving our litter everywhere we're not going to do it now the body

points women to this because women often say they get to menopause and they go i've gone off sex i couldn't be less interested my vagina's dried up everything's shut down you know not not going there what i hear regularly from women in our community is that just my libido has gone I just don't have a libido exactly and you know for example women who've been in 40-year marriages have done the the sort of very traditional I was told I should just get married you know it sex was kind of good at the beginning but now it's a bit of a kind of just you know just do it you know or we don't anymore you know whatever but it all feels a bit duty-based or obligation-based and so on and she hits the menopause the oestrogen falls away and she gets this truth pill like oh my

goodness me i've been overriding myself putting everyone needs video why am i doing this stuff and then she leaves the marriage you know because it's like because the man isn't meeting her in where she's stepping into this this wake-up call because he's totally terrified because the poor men the poor men have not been given any kind of teachings around this you know so they're just like whoa what's happening I it was okay before what's going on you know or I think the alternative sometimes the relationships end, but sometimes there's just a quiet feeling of sort of fading away. Exactly.

It can happen too. Exactly, yeah. So sometimes she'll end up and the body starts to point to, you know, the vagina, the walls of the vagina become thin. And that's important because, of course, it can be very painful to have sex at that time. But that thinness of the walls is, in my experience, and what I feel is to be the case, is representing the thinness of the veil. So now sexuality is not friction-based.

It's not physical, kind of, oh, touch me like this and let's you know go in and out and have all those nice sensations it's energetic because we're in this firement we're in holy space we're in the temple we're in the the subtlety of life we're in the mystery so sex also becomes energetic so her body is directly pointing to that. I can no longer have this sort of lie back and be sort of banged into the ground, you know, kind of basic physical. You talk about like the friction sex, you know, the sex that's about or like the very physical in out in out kind of sex that many people have been used to. Yes. So friction sex isn't is often no longer an option because of what's happening physiologically but what's happening physiologically is it's like the symptoms are the teacher the the body is trying to show us you've got to shift to

something different and the woman might actually really want that but she doesn't know she wants that yeah because what in our world is pointing us to that you know there's no no one on the telly is going to say now partners it's time to change the way you're having sex with your menopausal partner you know it's not it's not part of our education not part of our culture and and what i've seen is when working with menopausal women over, you know, many women now, they come with and they present like this. And when we do the work and she gets to a place where she can identify, like, you know, it starts with if you could have a lover and it could be any way you want. What do you actually want? You know, and I start practicing.

I don't know. I don't know. But, you know you know we spend weeks months whatever really getting to that and she clarifies she gets to a place of well actually yes if I felt I was being really really met in the ways that I'm longing to which I don't even dare to let myself long for because I don't think in a million years it'll ever happen etc etc but you know once she plugs in and really goes oh yeah actually it's not that I don't want it it's just that what I want now is really different and there's very few people out there who know how to meet a menopausal woman in her full sexual power in her full power yeah and that includes her sexuality but when she is met there lo and behold suddenly her libido is is rising again her her vagina is feeling juicy she's able to enjoy and and sex i i want to say for me, personally, on the other side of it, is a whole different ballgame.

And it is, I can't even begin to compare it to the kind of sex I had before menopause. That's good news. That's what I want to kind of, the message I want to bring is that there's good news here. Because the narrative, as you say, culturally, is that once we hit menopause, basically we're invisible as women. It's over. And then the tragedy is, you know, we hit menopause and, of course, everything starts to sort of travel south, you know, and you get all the dines. And then we try to stay like maidens. Yeah, we go and we say, oh, should I get a, maybe I'd start to.

And it's really tragic and and the other thing I want to point to which I think is really taboo but it's important is the relationship between the menopausal woman and the maiden because they were the ones that originally initiated the maidens into their sexuality and the menopausal women were the ones originally who initiated the young men into their sexuality. And there's a huge piece here, a relationship between the young men and the menopausal women. And there are apps out there. There are groups. There are all kinds of things going on where young men are seeking out older women to be initiated sexually. And it's all underground at the moment.

It's all taboo because it's so taboo culturally. Because these young men, they've realized these women have got something because they're less busy with, oh, you know, do I look something enough? And, you know, all those insecurities that we have. And they can feel that these women are like you know I'm not going to fucking mess about with this it's like you either meet me or you don't this is where we're going there's like there's a depth in her if she's done that work and she's connected there's a depth in her and an intimacy and a calling to that holy space that they're hungry for

you know they they love that challenge whereas the men from my generation they're in the old school they've not been showed anything and then and they're just they're just completely like they're just a loss to know how to meet them so what happens for menopausal women who do this work and find their way to get connected to their sexuality they start seeking out the young men because they're also feeling like these men are meeting me they're meeting me and they can sustain that gaze they're they've got enough warrior energy that they're like whoa i can see you're going to cut my head off here and cut through all the bullshit but I'm up for it because I can feel the call to awakening through it.

You know, and also the other thing to say, menopausal women in their sexuality at this time often go and explore all sorts of stuff that they've never explored. Same, same gender relationships, same sex relationships, exploring their own gender. It's like, you know, in Chinese, menopause is called second spring. It's that time of the maiden again. It's like, you know, who am I now? Who am I now? You know, and of course, as we know,

whatever happens at the beginning of a cycle influences how a cycle plays out. So this time of menopause, it's so fundamental what we do at this time because we are literally laying the ground we are putting in the roots for the second half of our life so if we don't tend to our health what's going to happen you know if i hadn't tended to my health i think i would still be sick the way i was you know if i didn't tend to my sexuality in the way that i did i don't know how I would have got it back you know

it's like it's so key and so important because we're we're we're literally in a death and a rebirth we're redefining who we are as women and this second half I mean so far I gotta say I mean hard to know when I came out of menopause you know it's like oh when did you come out of menopause it's like well I'm not sure exactly you know sometimes i guess still get hot flush whatever but i gotta say that what's on the other side of this i am loving life in a way that i have never loved life i feel so alive so vital so comfortable in myself in a way that i didn't before it called me to do such deep trauma work that i hadn't been able to get a hold of before like I'd done a billion workshops and loads of therapy and I'd done a lot of work but there was

some something that opened in the menopause journey that made available to get to a depth of my wound that I couldn't get to before that That meant that I can now more easily, it's still a challenge, sit in this power that I spoke about earlier without feeling like I have to apologise quite so much. It's fascinating to hear you speak Jules and so exciting and liberating and I can definitely feel that the filters and the guardians on your voice have been removed because what you're sharing is really is radical and really important for people listening who are interested in working with you could you briefly share what you're offering at the moment especially for menopausal women yes so there's two strands that the main strand is after, you know, 30 years of working with women, I'm now sort of pretty much solely focused on on leadership. And, and just to clarify

what I mean about leadership, it's nature based feminine leadership. And that, that isn't just for women who are maybe, you know, like you doing amazing big things in the world but how leadership is is how we literally lead our own lives as women how we step up in that deep feminine current in the world right now whether we're parenting whether we're doing something in our community how we do relationship whether we're running a project so it's really looking at what is feminine leadership and that's including the whole arc of all women, whether you're a menopausal woman or a maiden, we're all coming together in that circle

and finding those ways. And that's a 13-moon journey. So it's over a year. It's here on the land. You know, women come and we spend time around the fire and we bring these cyclical teachings that I was referring earlier on the womb dollar um and I only work with a limited amount of women per year because I've recognized my capacity like I know what I can hold now and I know what I can't and I give

everything to those women like I'll really just give everything that I've got to that circle of women and the other strand is once a year at the end of um at the end of the autumn just to directly mirror the the menopause i run a weekend called autumn queen here at earth heart so that we can really work with the energies of that autumn time and we go deeply into a lot of what i've just been sharing about like menopause in the context of a spiritual death and rebirth of who we are everything about who we are as women and and how we lay the ground for the second half of our life I think that's at the end of November last weekend in November something like that and the 13 moon year-long journey begins in the spring so I think it begins the next one begins in April

great wow well thank you I'm that was an amazing conversation. And there were, you know, we could talk for hours more, and we will have another conversation about the cycle. Is there a final thought that you'd like to leave us with for perhaps for someone who is in the thick of the menopause initiation right now, and is looking for you know something to support them with their next step oh yeah yeah yeah yeah so I my heart goes out to you because I know how the symptoms can just feel overwhelming and they kind of dominate you know it's like I almost can't think about anything else because the symptoms are just so strong and my most powerful thing was shifting my focus to, rather than feeling like I had to get rid of the symptoms or get over the symptoms or tough out the symptoms, was seeing the symptoms

as a spiritual teacher that was trying to point me to something deeper in terms of the inner work on my psyche, emotional, energetic, kind of karmarmic self and that's not to ignore the symptoms or tough them out we need to really take care but to ask those difficult questions what actually is there a way these symptoms are pointing to something deeper than just what's happening on a physical level and how can I meet those and what support could I get thank you so much Jules I'm really looking forward to part two thank you Sophie thank you for listening today I hope that this was supportive for you inspiring beneficial and I really look forward to being with you on the next episode of the menstruality podcast in the meantime it would be really helpful if you could rate and review the podcast on apple podcasts or on spotify if that's where you are

okay I'll see you next time and until then keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm