𝐖𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧’𝐬 𝐂𝐢𝐫𝐜𝐥𝐞

I sometimes wonder if the way a woman experiences menopause is influenced by how she was welcomed into womanhood in the first place.

How was she supported?

How was she held?

How was she celebrated during that first great hormonal transition from childhood into womanhood?

I know I’m not the only woman who remembers those years and felt alone in them.

In my household, perhaps because of language barriers and cultural differences, menstruation was rarely talked about. Most of what I learned about being a woman came from school sex education, friends, television, and magazines.

I learned that women were moody when they bled.

I learned that periods were inconvenient.

I learned to push past sensation so I wouldn’t be seen as weak.

Put in a tampon. Keep going.

There was no celebration.

No rite of passage.

No moment where I was welcomed into womanhood.

And beneath all of that, I think there was shame.

Shame around bleeding.

Shame around needing rest.

Shame around changing moods, changing bodies, and changing seasons.

Shame around taking up space.

Shame around having needs.

Somewhere along the way many of us learned that being a “good woman” meant being easy.

Predictable.

Pleasant.

Convenient.

We learned to override sensation and disconnect from the wisdom of the body in order to fit into expectations that were never designed with our cyclical nature in mind.

Yet the body continues to speak.

The moon waxes and wanes.

The tides rise and fall.

The seasons change.

The Earth herself moves in cycles.

Why would we be any different?

Over the years, I’ve worked to unravel many of these stories.

I’ve learned more about my cyclical nature and how to support my body with greater awareness and compassion. It’s not perfect, but my relationship with being a woman feels very different than it once did.

As I find myself approaching the next great transition, I notice the stories that surround menopause.

The warnings.

The horror stories.

The subtle messages that a woman’s value declines as her fertility fades.

That she is drying up.

Becoming invisible.

Becoming less.

And yet I am equally aware that other cultures hold a very different view.

A sacred view.

A woman crossing the threshold into cronehood—not as someone who is losing value, but as someone stepping into wisdom.

One teaching I’ve encountered in Chinese Medicine is the idea that the energy once devoted to the womb begins to move upward toward the heart.

I love this image.

Not a diminishing.

A transformation.

A returning.

A gathering of wisdom.

I find myself less interested in symptom lists and more interested in the deeper questions.

How are women being held through life’s transitions?

How were we taught to relate to our bodies?

How were we met during these transitions?

By our families.

By our communities.

By our culture.

By ourselves.

And what happens when women gather together to explore these questions?

Recently I’ve had the privilege of sitting in a women’s circle exploring many of these themes.

Together we spoke about what it means to move through the world in a female body and how the stories we’ve inherited have shaped us.

There is something profoundly healing about being witnessed by other women.

Something powerful about discovering what belongs to us and what no longer does.

Something liberating about remembering that our bodies are not problems to solve.

That our cyclical nature is not a flaw.

That our wildness was never wrong.

Perhaps that is what these circles offer.

A place to remember.

A place to grieve.

A place to celebrate.

A place to reclaim the parts of ourselves that learned to become small in order to belong.

Maiden.

Mother.

Crone.

Sister.

Earth.

Body.

Perhaps the medicine is not found in avoiding change.

Perhaps the medicine is found in being witnessed as we move through it together.