On lies the patriarchy told me…

I wrote a post where I scratched the surface of this earlier this year, but since then I’ve dived much deeper into the world of #cyclicalliving. Over the next few weeks I’m going to chronicle out what living in alignment with my hormones/the moon has looked like for me. We’ll start this week with an overview and also cover mensuration, which has the same energy as new moon/winter. *You don’t need to have a cycle to apply this to your life, more below.

If you’ve never heard of cyclical living before, I’m going to start with a little basic intro. If you’re familiar, just keep scrolling down – I’ll dive deep a little further down.

Have you ever had one of those days where you just sit and stare at your screen, or get totally caught in the scroll hole, or feel like you start a million things but can’t bring yourself to finish them? And then another day you feel like you fly through your list and you’re creating and having so much fun? (Ok, maybe just take out the last year if you can’t say yes to that and look again – it’s been a tough year!) Well, it’s possible that it’s just “a bad day” or “a good day” but odds are also good that it’s about your hormones, the season, or the moon!

So, let’s talk about some basic biology – and this is where my tag line “lies the patriarchy told me” comes in. Also, when I say “basic” I mean that I had literally never heard or been taught this before but it’s fairly simple. Both males and females have hormone cycles. Men’s, conveniently enough, happen to be 24 hours long. What a weird coincidence that our entire capitalist system is based around this exact amount of time – it slices and dices perfectly into work and rest. Women’s hormone cycle, however, is 28 days (ok so that part I did know). It doesn’t perfectly slide into the “expected” way for us to work or structure our time. It does reflect a menstrual cycle, and it does breakdown into 4 phases. It’s not a coincidence that there are also four phases of the moon, and four seasons in a year! In fact, all three of these things are energetically aligned. I’ll dive a little deeper into that in a minute.

But first, I want to clarify something – this work is not exclusive. By that, I mean that anyone who wants to live a life more in sync with nature can use these same principles. If you don’t have a female hormone cycle (maybe you’re on hormonal birth control, post-menopausal, maybe you don’t have female hormones, there are lots of reasons), the beauty of this approach to managing your energy is that you can always – always – align back with the moon. The moon goes through the same 28 day cycle that female hormones do, so please know that all genders and gender expressions are welcomed with open arms in this discussion.

So, let’s talk about the four phases of cyclical living. I’ll cover the hormonal phase, the moon phase, and the season for each.

I’ll first review what they are, and then I’ll dive a little deeper into each, including how this shows up for me in my work and the kinds of activities I plan my month around. I’ll also add a few caveats before we begin. In my incredibly informal and not at all scientific research of talking to my friends about this, I have loosely found that there are often two pitfalls right out of the gate. You might have one or the other, or if you’re an enneagram 3 you might have both! First, please do your best to rope in your inner perfectionist – you aren’t going to get this right or perfect right away, it’s likely going to take some time and patience to move some of your life in this direction (and some of your life simply may never fit into this). THAT IS OK. Second, if this feels wayyyyyy outside of how you usually live your life or plan your time, this might feel so far away that it seems impossible to try. (I hear you.  BUT MY KIDS!! BUT MY JOB DEADLINES!!) I would encourage you to check that overwhelm and start by just moving a few small things into this framework. If you have a long term goal of even aligning 20% of your activities into the phases, it’s likely to yield huge results.

Ok, let’s dive in.

The first phase is the dark – new moon, menstruation, and winter.

The second phase is emergence – the waxing quarter moon, follicular phase, and spring.

The third phase is visibility – the full moon, ovulation, and summer.

The fourth and final phase is culmination – the waning moon, luteal phase, and fall.

Now that you have the shape of where we’re going over the next month, let’s circle back to that first phase.

This is the dark – the new moon which sheds almost no light in the sky, winter (which naturally is a time of more being inside), and menstruation (which, no matter how amazing your periods are or were, is generally a time where we intuitively want to turn inward, aka see no one and do nothing outside of eat ice cream while binge watching episodes of Dawson’s Creek. No? Just me?). If we look at how to align with the energy of this season, this time, it’s one of rest, contemplation, and evaluation. This also can be is a time of inward reflection and often involves alone time. Turns out binge watching your favourite ‘90s teen drama isn’t a terrible plan after all!

But Annika! The world doesn’t stop needing things because I’m tired! A field left unplanted doesn’t turn a profit!

AND

In winter, it looks like everything is dead. (It feels like it too sometimes!) BUT! There is so much work going on under ground. Trees are pulling in energy from their branches to store up in their roots. If plants don't get the opportunity to rest and chill (literally), they don't store up enough energy to produce new growth. What happens if we farm a field constantly, if it never get time to sit fallow? The soil depletes and eventually it won’t grow things – but that doesn’t happen overnight. It happens slowly, season by season producing a little less, or lower quality crops. As humans that might show up like feeling exhausted, burnt out, overwhelmed all the time. My mental health crisis in the fall was a result of a year of lower and lower crop yields. I am living proof that this is true (and you might be too <3).

In short, we actually can’t afford not to take the rest time in the long run.

I’m not going to sugar coat it y’all. This was absolutely the hardest phase for me because my internalized capitalism was so SO resistant to rest. We are not machines. (And even machines need maintenance!), If you still struggle with this just remember: nothing in nature can bloom year-round without rest time.

So, with all that, let’s talk about what this might look like in your life. The first thing this will look like is saying no to things. I told you this one was hard! As much as humanly possible when I am in “the fertile void” I try not to schedule things I can control that are too “outward” – meetings, team projects, etc. If those things need to happen, I ask someone on my team to do it, where possible. I ask to move a coaching call to phone from zoom or to voxer messages from phone. Side note: I recognize my immense privilege in being able choose a line of work that allows me to schedule my life however I want, and I recognize that this is not possible for so many people. This is where looking at all the other things that we can control in this phase are important too – take out for dinner, leave the dang laundry, don’t volunteer for your kids school event, wear stretchy pants, etc. There are many places you can work with this energy even if your work is not one of them.

So, does it work perfectly? Nope! But I notice when I “push through” because I “have to” it almost never results in my best work anyway. This is the power of taking rest when we need it. It allows the space for new ideas and inspiration and more, the energy to explode when we’re ready!

More on that in the next phase in next week’s post…