In conclusion, the patriarchy lied to you about how you “should” be able to work, and capitalism lied to you about what “productive activities” look like. The good news? You get to take your power back and you get to use the gifts of the earth to work smarter.

The patriarchy is afraid of your power, or more specifically – patriarchal institutions are threatened by you USING your power. When we wake up to our wild, sexy, beautiful magnetism, we throw so many of the roles placed on us out the window. These are the days I walk with an extra sway in my hips, where I speak up in a conversation where someone says something that makes me uncomfortable, where I can say heck no or oh yes please with more ease. None of these things fit into the “good girl” narratives. None of these involve me making myself smaller, or diminishing myself to make someone else more comfortable. None of these involve me sacrificing myself on the alter of other people’s needs, and that can be threatening to systems that depend on me putting myself last.

I think sometimes we – or at the very least, I personally have fallen into this trap – can get caught up in thinking “well I just did nothing for a while so I’d better be EXTRA productive now and do EVERYTHING! GO GO GO!” And while this stage can often have lots of ideas and plans floating around, it also comes with the need to prune.

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.