After years of cycling regularly, my period failed to come.
I was traveling abroad, while my husband was at home, so I knew I wasn’t pregnant. It dawned on me that this was the Gateway to Menopause, the first sign of my bodily clock winding down.
Finally, after 40 days, my womb flowed again.
Relief and sadness intermingled within me.
The relief stemmed from the freedom I remember feeling during my pregnancy and breastfeeding years… The grief grew out of realizing that my flow is preparing to halt.
Are you still cycling?
Are you in the midst of menopause?
And if not, are you aware that one day your flow will stop…?
What is your relationship with any of the flowing stages you’re in, or with the lack there of?
Following my adolescence and early womanhood of cursing my menstruation, and seeing it as a bother and a nuisance, I have spent years familiarizing myself with my flow. I learned to embrace it and draw strength from it. I started appreciating its gifts of intuition, and its invitation to take time for resting, dreaming, creating, delving into my core, and simply Being.
Part of this journey for me was reclaiming different names for the menstrual cycle. MoonTime, Moon Flow, or simply my Flow, are words I use in honor of the connection between our cycles as women, and the cycles of the moon (both 28.5 days long).
These words acknowledge the similarities our bodies share with the moon: the cyclical nature, the ebb and flow, the emotional tides we experience… these are all natural rhythms, which we can ride as waves if we embrace them (or suffer from if we choose to fight them…)
If my cycle is a Moon Flow, than its ceasing is best described as Moon Pause!
Now that I’m faced with my Moon’s inevitable Pause, I am committed to be as conscious as I can during this journey of waning, partly in order to compensate, as best I can, for the unconsciousness that surrounded my first period…
Since most of us were not welcomed into womanhood when we came of age, we each have an opportunity to meet the ending of our cycling years with as much consciousness as we can muster.
How would you honor your transition, when it comes?
Or if your Moon has already paused, how can you honor the years you spent cycling?
When my Moon pauses, I will create a necklace, on which I want to dangle charms that represent my gratitude to the power of our blood to give life, and to open the veil into the depth of the Great Mystery.
I’m collecting these charms, individually, along my trails, in preparation for my Moon Pause.
The onset of my first period was an unconscious act, barely witnessed, and certainly not honored. The journey of saying goodbye to my cycling years is emerging as the exact opposite: a conscious journey of acknowledgment and reverence to the sacredness of my MoonTime.
I invite you to open the doorways of honoring your journey toward your Moon Pause…
As I write this, I still cycle regularly. I realize, once again, that I am not in control… Birthing took place in my body’s own good time, not mine. And so is the winding down of my cyclical clock, being carried out by its own good rhythm. Teaching me patience and humbling me, yet again, to its miracle.
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© 2011 DeAnna L’am, All Rights Reserved
