FRIENDS. Hello! How are we?

It’s time for our seasonal audio check-in. This one is for the August point of Lammas in the Northern Hemisphere and Imbolc in the Southern Hemisphere.

This seasonal moment has me thinking about this one time I stood at my sink in London and wished for a book deal and a marriage proposal.

Why, you ask? Well, you’ll find out in today’s 17-minute audio from me to you.

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Honestly, it’s hard to believe it but it is the fine month of August which means that it is time for us to move into our next and final book for our seasonal read-a-long.

I’ve not read Jane Eyre and don’t know much about the plot (or any twists 👀) at all. I know for some of you it will be one of your favourite pieces of literature, and hopefully you’ll be pleased to read again!

Or for others, like me, it will be your first time. Either way, I hope you’re as excited as I am in to dive in to this classic novel.

Well, I’ve just finished chapter 9 and I’m definitely behind schedule. I’m finding that the pace is a little slow, but I hear that’s a common critique of the book — that the first 100 pages are a bit tough to get into — so I’m pushing on. How are you finding the beginning so far?

I do feel like a classic like this ought to be read with some context, so I’ve watched a couple of YouTube videos this week, to get an idea of

a) how to read the book, and

b) what do I need to know about Charlotte Brontë and the context in which she wrote Jane Eyre, to really get the most out of it?

I’ll link both! Neither contain spoilers, btw.

I suggest watching both, but here’s the TL;DR:

• The first 100 pages can feel a little slow and will very different to the rest of the book. Keep going!

• The book was originally published in three parts. Volume 1: Chapters 1–15, Volume 2: Chapters 16–26, and Volume 3: Chapters 27–38.

• Charlotte Brontë published it under a pseudonym, Currer Bell. The book was published in 1847 when female authors experienced a great deal of prejudice, so a male-sounding name was advantageous.

• It was originally published as Jane Eyre: An Autobiography which was a very curious choice, given the pseudonym. It left people wondering, is this an autobiography or not?

• The Brontë’s were quite the literary family. Charlotte, Emily and Anne all had works published under pseudonyms. Emily originally published Wuthering Heights under her pen-name, Ellis Bell. I love the thought of these sisters sitting around coming up with male-sounding psuedonyms. Obviously it would be preferable if they didn’t have to do that, but I like imagining that they had fun doing it.

• Life in Yorkshire was isolated and tough. My partner Adam is a Yorkshire man and I adore the North York Moors up that part of England; the heather, the moody sea, the rambling villages. But in the mid-1800’s those landscapes and the cold weather must’ve been so harsh! Plus poor sanitation, disease and high childhood mortality — in fact, all Brontë siblings died young.

• Don’t expect a Jane Austen novel. Jane Eyre is a Gothic novel, much darker, less romantic, and more psychologically intimate. It was one of the first novels that deeply explored the emotions, inner life and psychology of the protagonist, which is something we are obviously very used to as modern readers, but this was a big deal back then.

• The best seasons to read the book are autumn and winter. I think that’s a great insight! Cosy, candle-lit, rain-on-the-window kind of reading.

I hope some of this context helps… it’s certainly helped me.

I’ll put my thoughts in the comments. I’d love to hear yours! x

As a reminder here’s how the read-a-long works:

• We’ll read one book per month together and use them as jumping off points for conversations around womanhood, identity, creativity, cycles, health, visibility, longing, ambition, beauty, relationships and more.

• I’ll share playlists, prompts and my reflections on this post that you’re reading now, which will be updated weekly-ish. This should make it easier for you to find, and avoids spoilers for folks reading at different paces.

• You’re invited to dissect what you’re reading with me, and the group, in the comments on this post each week. Come share anytime.

• And if you’re not joining in, no stress. Regular paid content will continue as usual regardless.

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If you’re a free subscriber and considering upgrading your membership to paid, hello and welcome! Do consider joining us. We do these Q&A’s quarterly, as well as regular writing on the female life journey, live journaling calls, and more.

Subscribe now

I would love to know more about how you started working with coaching clients at the very beginning, what that process was for you and what you think helped build such loyal following <3

— MC

MC, I love this question. I’m so very happy to answer this question. And though I might be wrong, I think there’s a second question underneath it: Claire, can someone starting from scratch actually do this too?

The short answer to that one, is yes, they can. But I’ll not be elusive and stop there. I love a good behind the scenes myself, so let’s have a bit of story time and pull that curtain right back.

It must be said that I never set out to be a full-time coach or even business owner. My plan was always to become an art teacher, a magazine editor, an interior designer, or going even further back, a pastor. The ‘author’ and ‘teacher’ lines in my professional bio make the most amount of sense to 15-year old me; I’ve always loved to write and share.

And I’ve always loved “helping” people and making meaning from life, which is why coaching has always made so much sense to me.

But until I learned that coaching could even be a career choice, I was so so so lost on what I wanted to do with my life.

And so there I was, on the cusp of twenty-five, after four years of university and six months of backpacking across Asia and Europe, when I found myself on a family farm in the south of France “wwoofing”, which is essentially doing farm work in exchange for accommodation and food. It turned out there actually wasn’t a lot for me to do and so I spent a lot of my time sunbaking in the late-summer sun, reading books, and journaling on what kind of life I wanted to have when I got home to Australia.

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It’s Thursday afternoon and there’s a very fluffy puppy at my feet. Tashi the Golden Retriever, all eleven-and-a-half weeks of him, is the newest member of our family! He’s not my first dog, but he is my first puppy. And wow. Anyone who has brought home a puppy (a.k.a. an extremely cute and feral wild animal lol), knows how challenging and rewarding it is all at once.

Day by day, we’re adjusting to our new routine that goes something like 6am wake-up, toilet, training, breakfast, play, nap, cleaning pee pads, preparing snacks and LickiMats (not an #ad, though honestly I’m open to it at this point because they are a genius invention), me attempting to get a little bit of work done before he wakes and so on and so on until we all tumble into bed at night. Well, us in bed, him in his crate!

In the hard moments, I tell myself that this is all good training for a baby, it’s all preparing me to become a Mum one day. And yet of course I am already in my archetypal Mother years. With a 40th birthday just on the horizon, I’m actually in the second half of my Life Summer.

Let me explain.

One of the ideas I share is that the menstrual cycle teaches us something about the arc of our lives. The same patterns seem to repeat at different scales: days, months, seasons, years and lifetimes. If life has its own Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, each spanning roughly twenty-five years, then turning 40 places me in the early autumn stretch of my Life Summer (25-50 years).

This maps right onto where the Northern Hemisphere is seasonally right now, the second half of summer. In menstrual cycle language, that's something like cycle day 15 or 16, just after ovulation. I love that bit of the cycle. I feel on top of the world, at the peak of the inhale, high on gratitude, coasting on an invisible cloud, knowing the descent is on her way. There's a sliver of grief in that too.

That’s exactly how I feel at this point in my life: grateful, high, full.

But there is an energy shift, for sure.

At this point in life, we can look around and see the outcomes and the harvest from the choices we made in our 20’s and 30’s, the seeds we planted.

It’s something like going from creation to cultivation.

And in this life of mine, oh have I created! I have made all kinds of things, including many mistakes. I’ve taken big risks and really gone after the stuff that is important to me. But life feels less about trying to figure out who I am now. The Life Spring season (0-25 years) of “finding myself” sunsetted awhile ago and in its place is a sense of stewarding. Life is not happening to me at this age, it is happening through me. I really feel that.

In the next year, as I turn forty, Tashi will grow and become less of a biting machine (we can only hope) and I’ll still be trying to conceive. I’ll be planning a wedding and getting married. I’ll be continuing to train practitioners, helping them learn to see these same cyclic patterns in the lives of the women they serve. I’ll be writing to you here and working in my garden and thinking about cycles within cycles within cycles.

I'll be inhabiting the life I’ve spent the last four decades creating.

A few more fun things:

• 🌹 Learn with me: The next live Cycle Coach School facilitator training cohort kicks off late September. If you've been feeling the pull toward this work, pop yourself on the interest list to be the first to know when applications open.

• 🗞️ As seen in: I was quoted in this ABC piece on keeping boundaries when your work lives online, a topic I’m always happy to chat about given my love for a good social media sabbatical. Read it here.

• 📚 Reading: Ripening: Why Women Need Fairy Tales Now by Dr. Sharon Blackie. We’re reading it in this month’s read-a-long, care to join?

• 🧑‍🍳 Cooking: I made this beef stroganoff recipe recently and chef’s kiss it’s good! I’ll hold back from sharing my favourite LickiMat recipes with you.

• 📺 Watching: I watched The Drama on the weekend and absolutely loved it. Hilarious, dark, surprising, spot on.

• 🎹 Listening: This song has made me cry at twice this week. The Celtic ancestry is strong in this one.

To the late summer loving!

Big love,

Ps. After nearly fourteen years of writing these free newsletters, I’m feeling the pull to write much more regularly again. I’d love to know — what keeps you opening my emails? Hit reply or leave a comment. I love hearing from you.

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In case you missed it:

And I’m honoured to say I make a small appearance in it. Milli interviewed me a few years ago and we’ve kept in touch since. Seeing a snippet of our conversation on the page is really lovely, especially considering it’s in a book that’s asking the questions I spend my career circling.

What follows here is an edited excerpt, pulled from a few different sections of the book, including the bit where our chat features. The start of each new part is bold plus I’ve highlighted a few lines that really spoke to me.

A quick note for transparency: I talked to Milli about using ‘manifestation’ as part of my relationship with my cycle. That was true of me at the time of the interview but it isn’t quite how I’d frame my practice now. It’s an honest record of where I was, though! And hey, change is the whole point of this book.

The images running through this piece aren’t from The Body Myth itself — they’re paintings by 20th century female artists of the female body, which felt like the right visual pairing for this excerpt.

The Body Myth is available now, wherever you get your books. U.K. readers ordering through HarperCollins can get a 40% discount here.

As always, I love continuing the conversation in the comments so if a part resonates with you, do take a moment to comment and share.

Enjoy!

Men and women are different. Different does not mean that one is better than the other; it simply means different. It’s not possible to write or read a book about life in the female body, or indeed claim that this particular version of human biology is in any way ‘special’, without acknowledging this difference. In the past, women have felt that in order to compete and win in a man’s world, much of what sets us apart must be kept under the radar.

This makes a lot of sense when you realise that, historically, our biology has been weaponised against us and used as evidence of our inferiority. All of our powerful biological abilities to create, grow and nurture life have been used to justify our confinement to the domestic sphere, holding us back from all the opportunities in the public sphere that men enjoyed. Any admission of difference, therefore, even in the modern world, brings with it the fear of being discriminated against. However, an awakening is currently taking place in which women are coming to wonder: Is it me that’s inadequate, or is it the world? We are cyclical beings whose hormones and bodies and brains change and evolve through each monthly cycle and throughout our lifetimes, trying to fit – like square pegs in a round hole – into a world that is built by and for people who don’t experience anything like as much variation: men. We have to proudly own our differences, and demand a world that incorporates, accommodates and celebrates them, rather than asking us to pretend they don’t exist.

I have called this female cyclical nature the ‘matriflux’: matri comes from the Latin and means not just ‘relating to mothers’, but also ‘relating to women’; flux from the Latin ‘to flow’. I felt a word was missing to describe this unique experience, the monthly cycle that most of us experience between menarche (our first period) and menopause, but also the wider, ever-shifting nature of being female: the blossoming of puberty; the epic physical changes of pregnancy; the seismic adaptations of motherhood; the mystery of breast milk; the upheaval of perimenopause; the upgrade of menopause, and the final crowning as we become elders. Not all women will experience all of these, but most of us will understand them as part of our physical potential, powers that belong to us as women and to women alone. Some of us will use our energy in other ways, creating projects as well as or instead of babies, and mothering them into life. All of us understand that to be female is a shapeshifting journey that men do not share.

Another word that influenced me to coin the new word ‘matriflux’, and gave me great pleasure to discover, was ‘matrix’ – not the 1990s movie cult classic, but a word that today means the epicentre of creation, and which in Middle English meant ‘womb’.

As well as the stories we tell about the female body, some of the words we use to tell them also need to change. The area of the vulva is known as the ‘pudenda’, which comes from the Latin pudere, meaning ‘to be ashamed’. In Germany, the labia are called the schamlippen – the shame lips. Vagina comes from the Latin meaning ‘sheath’ or ‘scabbard’, implying that its function is simply a place to put your ‘sword’. As someone who has been writing about childbirth for some time, I’m very aware that there is specific terminology here that women have repeatedly asked to be revised but which seems to stubbornly persist. A woman whose labour needs augmenting may have ‘failure to progress’ written on her notes. If she suffers from a miscarriage, she may be described as having an ‘incompetent’ or ‘insufficient’ cervix; if she cannot conceive in the first place, it may be said that she has a ‘hostile uterus’. If she wants to have a vaginal birth after a caesarean, this can be called a ‘trial of scar’. Many women object to their babies being described as being ‘delivered’, firstly because it usually implies that someone other than them played a lead role in their newborn’s arrival, and secondly because it is also used for pizzas. Women in labour may be infantilised by being called a ‘good girl’, dehumanised by being described as ‘the induction in Room 6’ or patronisingly referred to as ‘Mum’. Women object to all of this and more, but things nevertheless seem slow to change.

Claire Baker, who has grown to love her own period so much she now works as a ‘menstrual coach’, told me that she has tried a variety of methods to break down her own stigmatic relationship with her blood. ‘I definitely had some beliefs about my blood that it was dirty or gross or smelly or [there was] something wrong with it. So firstly I experimented with rubbing my blood on my skin – for example, in the shower. I really liked seeing it on my skin and being intimately connected with it. When I started using a cup, I liked smelling it, touching it, playing with it, making art with it. [Doing this] in a curious, playful way has helped me to realise, it doesn’t smell – at all. It’s really cool, the texture is interesting, it’s a part of me, it’s beautiful. It didn’t feel weird for me at all, it felt natural to explore it.’

Other women like to put their blood to use – watered-down period blood makes great fertiliser for house plants, while others use it as a monthly face mask, claiming the rich content of stem cells leaves their skin glowing.45 There is also the option of what some call ‘Blood Magic’, incorporating menstrual blood into ritual, either with the intention of directly healing shame around the female body, or simply just to harness its power in other areas of life. Claire Baker, for example, uses the contents of her cup for ‘manifestation’ – setting intentions alongside a ritual of pouring her period blood onto the earth. She does this as one aspect of working closely with her whole cycle, using a journal to set intentions, make plans and hopefully see them come to fruition as she journeys through each month.

You may wish to do none of these things. For some, the idea of ‘period positivity’ is extremely challenging; a lifetime of thinking and feeling a certain way cannot always be changed overnight. Undoubtedly, though, changing our relationships to our periods is an act of resistance. It is a refusal to accept the age-old story that our monthly blood makes us toxic, unclean, weak, insane. It’s a reclaiming of the truth that periods are emblematic of women’s creative power. To accept them or even love them is to accept and love the messy reality of life in the female body, and through doing so, to accept and love the messy reality of the human condition itself. The fact that so many of us hate our periods, and so many of us also hate our physical bodies, is not a coincidence.

Becoming a mother both broke me and made me again in a different shape. Childbirth took me across a threshold and there was no way back to the life I had had, or even to the person I had been. And I miss that person, just like I sometimes miss myself age 9 and wish I could spend a morning with my dad fixing up a rope and basket to hike essential items up to my treehouse, such as my latest library book or my guinea pig. But I am 51, and my dad is dead, and I can’t be a child again, just as I can’t be childless again. And if I could, I wouldn’t want to be, because every day with my kids feels like the best bit of life, and my biggest fear is the inevitable future when the wheel cranks forward again into the next phase and they are no longer under my roof. Motherhood is wave after agonising wave of realisation about time, mortality and the fragility of existence, with added sandwich-making.

If you are a mother, perhaps you relate. Maybe you’ve also wished time away with your kids and then been devastated to find your wish came true: the time was gone. Maybe you also feel like you’ve spent every day since the birth of your first child trying frantically to adapt to each new phase of parenting and then, just as you begin to feel mildly confident – bam! – you are blindsided by a new, completely alien phase you have no knowledge or experience of. And this constant cycle of ‘resentment – adaptation – mourning’ is familiar, isn’t it, because it’s part of the wider fabric of our lives as women, too. It is the matriflux. Puberty, menstruation, pregnancy, breastfeeding, menopause; it seems like being a woman is a lifetime of consistently having to get to grips with change, and at the same time grieve the loss of a previous phase which, while it was actually happening, we often couldn’t wait to be over. Motherhood is the microcosm of this macrocosm; our relationship with it a reflection of our relationship with womanhood itself. But could we potentially transform this relationship if we removed one element from the cycle – the resentment? Because, in my experience, this resentment often has its roots in feeling sidelined, unnoticed, invisible, undervalued. Perhaps, as well as reassessing our relationship with and respect for the female body, we also need to make peace with ‘the mother’: with our own mothers, with the mothers in our culture (so often invisible or unheard), with our role as mother (if we are one or wish to be one), with our internalised ‘mother’ archetype (whether or not we ever physically birth children, we still hold within us the capacity to ‘mother’, whether this is other people’s children, or passion projects such as books, organisations, charities or businesses) and with the planet, Mother Earth herself. Doing so does not have to involve idolising the role of mother and insisting it’s something all women should do and enjoy every minute of. It’s more about a cultural shift, a transformation of how we see and treat those who do choose to be mothers, so that women on this path feel honoured and respected, rather than, as they so often report, cast aside and isolated.

We are still being told myths about the female body, and it’s time they were debunked. Women’s bodies are not cursed, inadequate, faulty, shameful, hostile, dirty, weak or incompetent. Being female is not a problem to be fixed, or a disease to be cured. Quite the opposite, it is something to take pride in and celebrate. Women are the ultimate source, the creators; from them comes all future life. It’s time to reclaim our power.

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In case you missed it:

My Ripening read-a-long reflections:

I’ll be honest from the top, y’all. We got a puppy. And that puppy is the most adorable and fluffy little feral animal. But this not about the puppy — his name is Tashi! — it is about the fact that said puppy has turned my life upside down in exactly the way they’re meant to. Normally, I read in bed for 20-30 minutes each night, to send me to sleep. This past week I have opened my kindle and managed about three lines of text before falling asleep.

And so! My reflections on Ripening will be slow and scattered this month I’m afraid. But don’t take my reading speed as a sign of my disinterest, in fact this book is probably my favourite non-fiction book yet of 2026.

Allow my tired brain the luxury of bullet points for this entry?

• Firstly, Sharon Blackie is such a skilled writer in that she is so easy to read, with such warmth and an almost conversational tone about topics that could be quite dense and inaccessible with a different kind of narrator.

• I’m loving the weaving of her personal story throughout.

• I’m not especially knowledgeable about fairy tales in general, but I am a sucker for the symbolic and the mythical, so it’s making a lot of sense to me so far.

• The Heroine’s Journey as an initiatory process is something I see as very cyclical and very embedded in the menstrual cycle and female life cycle experience, so I love where Sharon’s going with this so far.

• Obsessed with the realisation that she is following what is essentially the Maiden → Mother → Enchantress/Maga → Crone arhetypal journey which is at the heart of a lot of what I teach. Excited to have another lens (fairy tales!) so communicate this through.

• I’m already imagining how this could all lay over the Cycle Wisdom Map process we teach at Cycle Coach School, which is an evolution of a process shared with me by Jane Hardwicke Collings.

• I’m listening to the audiobook about 20% of the time — the author is reading, and oooft can she narrate.

Tell me, are you any further along than me? How are you finding it? What’s resonating? Much or not at all?

Okay, off to lie down and stare at the roof while my puppy sleeps, lol.

Cx

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It’s July which means that it is time for us to move into our next book for the seasonal read-a-long.

I’m so excited for this one.

Dr. Sharon Blackie’s beloved If Women Rose Rooted (2016) occupies a very special and specific place in my psyche. Personally, I feel very drawn to Ripening as I approach my forties and begin to transition archetypally in my own life.

Much of Sharon’s recent work has focussed on mid-life and I believe this book will shed more light on the archetypal transitions in the female life journey.

I’m wondering if it is going to be like a Clarissa Pinkola Estes' Women Who Run With The Wolves but a bit more practical? I am already imagining all of the ways I’ll be bringing more fairy tales into my professional work with the feminine archetypes and applying it in my own life. But let’s see.

Eeeeek, fun!!!!

As a reminder here’s how the read-a-long works:

• We’ll read one book per month together and use them as jumping off points for conversations around womanhood, identity, creativity, cycles, health, visibility, longing, ambition, beauty, relationships and more.

• I’ll share playlists, prompts and my reflections on this post that you’re reading now, which will be updated weekly-ish. This should make it easier for you to find, and avoids spoilers for folks reading at different paces.

• You’re invited to dissect what you’re reading with me, and the group, in the comments on this post each week. Come share anytime.

• And if you’re not joining in, no stress. Regular paid content will continue as usual regardless.

• July’s book is Ripening: Why Women Need Fairy Tales Now by Sharon Blackie. Then Jane Eyre in August.

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Thank you also to , , Georgie, Erin, and many others for tuning in. Here’s the replay for those who are watching later.

You’ll need your journal, a pen, some music, and probably some tea and snacks. Try to be in a sp…

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Many things have slipped to the sidelines this week, including any sort …

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You might remember how, back in February, I shared my desire and decision to prioritise the home more, and cut down to three days of work a week.

Spoiler alert: it hasn’t happened 😆

That’s the short version, but I want to get into the long version with you, because it’s been a valuable lesson for me in owning my desires, especially the ones I feel some shame about.

At the beginning of the year, I was processing a particularly intense season of life. Long-term readers will know that over the last few years I’ve navigated one relationship ending, another beginning, a move across continents, an endometriosis diagnosis and infertility… these are the years I know I’ll look back on when I’m a wise old Crone and say, Well done darling! Thank God that all happened.

I will look kindly and proudly upon myself. I already am.

But as I shared on Instagram yesterday, there is a certain kind of human ache that sinks in when we don’t feel like ourselves for awhile.

And when I feel that ache, I go quiet. I go simple. I go inwards. I want and need more time at home, and of course I do; a wintering season calls for a cocoon.

But that desire felt surprisingly vulnerable for me to admit. I still carried the story that turning towards the home was turning away from ambition. But it was so strong in me, this desire to centre homemaking and to value the beauty of it, the mundanity of it, the un-seen-ness of it, just as much as I had valued my career.

And so I did.

I spent this last season planting blue cineraria flowers in terracotta pots and mastering a mac & cheese recipe with butternut squash, sprinkled with extra nutmeg. Adam and I got engaged on a riverbank on a Thursday afternoon (😊), I replanted my rosemary and batch cooked a month’s worth of chilli con carne. I sorted out my linen cupboard (finally) and spent sunny mornings with my Yorkshire in-laws, riding open-top buses and marvelling at the Blue Mountains.

In other words, I tended.

And then, something unexpected happened.

I’d kind of expected that if I gave myself permission to really value homemaking with my time, I’d just want to retreat further and further into it. Like, would I become a trad wife? Maybe!

But actually, the opposite has happened. I feel more excited about my body of work right now than I have in years. I’ve been holding more live calls for our Cycle Coach School trainees, crying happy tears when marking their assessments, and dare I say it, but I’m actually having fun on social media again.

Life is so funny, isn’t it? The way it surprises us. The way seasons really are temporary, how they come and go, working us in the process, reminding us that honouring one part of ourselves actually makes it easier to engage with the others.

And also, the power of permission. Oh, the power of permission!

I don’t think I really wanted a 3-day work week, per se. It was the permission I craved: permission to host a dinner party without turning it into content, to enjoy vacuuming my own floors, because, I do! Permission to value forms of labour that are entirely un-measurable.

We are more multi-faceted than we know. The callings on our heart cannot be flattened into an identity, try as we might. And the seasons are always changing, my friends.

Back in February I asked:

“Who am I to turn towards the home, without the reproductive labour to excuse it?”

Well, I know that I am a woman who likes tending things. Gardens, poetry, relationships, ideas, curriculums, cakes, students, a wedding, a client, a newsletter, a future child, if that is what life has in store for me.

I have been reminded that these impulses are not in competition with each other at all. I’m no trad wife. And I’m no girl boss, either.

I’m Claire. And, like you, I hold multitudes.

A few more fun things:

• 🌹 One of the unexpected joys of this season has been remembering how much I love teaching. In that spirit, Cycle Coach School enrolments are open! If you've been feeling called towards this work, I'd love to welcome you into the training. June 30th is our enrolment deadline for anyone who would like to be certified by the end of the year.

• 🗓️ Save the date: I’m holding a special Solstice journaling call on Thursday 2nd July at 9am BST, 6pm AEST. Join us here.

• ✨ Hear me talk: This Sunday I’m speaking at Sydney Unitarian Church on Menstruality as a Spiritual Practice. It’s free for all! Learn more here.

• Reading: Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke as part of our June read-a-long and I am feeling conflicted about it.

• 👩🏼‍🍳 Cooking: I won’t leave you hanging on the mac & cheese! I’ve been using this recipe. It’s a Thermomix recipe but the baking all happens in the oven and I reckon it’s pretty adaptable to stove top.

• 📺 Watching: I’m on a Girls rewatch after reading Lena Dunham’s Famesick and somehow loving it even more, all these years later.

I always love it when you leave a comment, share with a friend or hit reply.

Big love!

In case you missed it:

My Yesteryear read-a-long reflections:

Well, I’ve finished reading Yesteryear and I’m delighted to be done. What follows are some spoilers, so look away if you haven’t read finished it yet. You can read my earlier reflections below.

Overall, this book was not my favourite. But I do have respect for it.

I’ll start with what I did like.

The commentary on the duplicitous life of The Influencer, the consequences of being chronically online, and the questioning of the role of children being shared online (especially on public accounts with big audiences and big revenue goals), was all great. The author, a creator herself with a large online following, obviously understands these tensions well.

I know some of these wrestles myself, after having a “personal brand” and “online presence” for the better part of a decade-and-a-half, it is sometimes seriously weird to straddle online and offline life.

Something I myself have been unravelling from for many years now is the temptation to use “lifestyle marketing” in my remit.

I don’t want you to work with me because you like how my house looks.

Or because of the places I go on holidays.

Or because I’ve shared personal, intimate moments with my partner, online.

So, I love this questioning.

I also didn’t mind the twist. Somehow I had managed to avoid any spoilers so it was a surprise to me, and I think it worked. I found myself finally having compassion for Natalie after realising the mental state she had been in throughout the time spent with her, at least in the “olden” time.

After not feeling an ounce of connection to her for nearly the entire book, this was a relief. Readers need to connect with the humanity of a protaganist, even if they’re not a very nice person. It’s fine to be unlikeable, but please be human.

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I’m writing this week’s reflections on Famesick from an airplane. My OBGYN’s practice is six hours away, and tomorrow I’m having my second hysteroscopy with him, a procedure carried out under general anesthetic to examine the inside of my uterus with a small telescope, take some tissue for a biopsy and excise any polyps, if present.

A quick glance at the date tells me that I had one of these procedures exactly one year ago today, as well as my first (and likely not my last) endometriosis surgery.

For the past few days there has been a familiar dull ache, a pulsing in my left ovary. Before I was diagnosed with endo I’d say, “I can feel when I’m ovulating, but only on the left side.” Now I know that is because there is a medium-sized endometrioma, a blood-filled cyst, living on my left ovary.

That is what was causing the pain I thought was sciatica a few years ago. Endometriosis is likely the root cause of much of my health stuff across my entire life, including IBS-like digestive issues from my late teens onwards, occasional pelvic discomfort, and on-off period pain. And of course, infertility.

Receiving any kind of health diagnosis later in life can dramatically shift our persepctive and comprehension of what is happening in our mind and body, which can be both validating and unsettling. A number of my loved ones have recently received diagnoses for ADHD. I hear them questioning, but is this my personality or the ADHD? Is this a quirk of my character or the diagnosis?

For women with endometriosis, the average time from first symptoms to diagnosis averages seven to ten years, meaning this retrospective rewriting of our stories can span decades.

This has all been on my heart while reading Lena Dunham’s Famesick. Act 2 of the book is where she explicitly details her body’s struggle with chronic illness, her multiple endometriosis surgeries, hospital stays, her elected hysterectomy, and through it all, her pain. There were so many aspects to her story I resonated with, this paragraph especially:

“Pain, by its very nature is personal—it’s one of the few human experiences that is no way collective. We have no ability to feel another person’s pain. We can imagine it. We can empathize with it. We can look at their wounds and listen to their words. But we can’t know how it feels to be inside their body.”

And in reference to her decision to have a hysterectomy at age 31:

“Furthermore, how much bleeding should a woman have to do? Is it only a problem once it becomes life-threatening? How much should we cry when she’s getting fucked, and how much should we dread the act? How many things should she have tried, and how many of them have to fail? Who gets to decide, in the end?”

It is this subjective nature of pain that contributed to my late diagnosis of endometriosis, because, is it really pain if it’s more of a pulling feeling? Or a tugging? Or just an upset stomach? Or a tender, bloated belly? Or if the pain is also accompanied by euphoric feelings, even pleasurable sensations? Menstruation for me oscilates between uncomfortable and blissful; it is often a complex experience inhabiating a female body, it’s so rarely just one thing.

When Lena shared her decision to have a hysterectomy in Vogue in February 2018 (much of which was repurposed for this part of her memoir), I remember wondering at the time if she had ever come across menstrual cycle awareness. I remember thinking, I would love to get this work to her.

I cringe a little at my naivety, still blood-drunk on a practice and philosophy that can indeed be life-changing — for sure, living in greater congruence with our body’s rhythms can provide some peace, an ability to plan, a lifeline, a sense of belonging in our own skin — but it cannot, as I would learn in time myself, work miracles on severe disease.

But I wasn’t alone in these idyllic thoughts and remember many holistic health practitioners in my field expressing their sadness and disappointment in her decision, too young, too soon, should have tried X. I can honestly say that despite my ponderings, I respected Lena’s decision to have her uterus removed. I had worked with enough women in chronic pain to know that a decision like this is often about survival.

And of course, there is debate over whether a hysterectomy is the best medical move for endometriosis, since the disease colonises beyond the uterus onto other pelvic organs and beyond, meaning that removing the uterus alone may not resolve symptoms if lesions elsewhere aren’t also excised. If ovaries remain, then hormones are still gonna hormone. Lena has shared elsewhere that her surgeons also found evidence of adenomyosis, where the endometrium grows into the muscle walls of the uterus. For women suffering with adenomysosis, a hysterectomy may provide real relief.

Rarely do I find myself getting fired up in other people’s comment sections, but a couple of months ago I found myself in the Facebook comments of a peer who I respect, but entirely disagreed with in this instance. Her post expressed shock and sadness at women post-hysterectomy sharing videos “celebrating having their wombs cut out”, her sadness rooted in her belief that “the suppression and shaming of the feminine is the very instigator of women having issues with their reproductive cycles in the first place.”

Her post implied that the rise of reproductive health issues was rooted in women “forgetting their true nature and mimicking lives meant to be led by men,” claiming that if women would clear their womb and reproductive organs during the month with “deep shamanic clearings of the pelvis”, and lived cyclically, that their bleeds would “liberate and exhalt you, not weigh you down.”

I have a really hard time with this kind of thinking, probably because there was a time in my career when I might’ve wondered myself if such things could be true. Could The Patriarchy be held accountable for female reproductive issues? Could the culture, and our adherence to it, be to blame for women’s pain?

With a bit of maturity under my belt, I can acknowledge the complexity of living in a culture that has a hard time recognising and validating female pain, without blaming it for it, or trying to magically think our way out of it.

It’s this kind of flattened, idylistic messaging on social media that I believe can be so harmful for women. I replied:

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It was a typically cool summer’s evening in Yorkshire and we were celebrating Adam’s parents’ 40th wedding anniversary. We had baked a bright red velvet cake for their ruby anniversary and a meringue layered with thinly sliced watermelon. Adam and I had only known each other for a year or so, so there were still aunts and uncles for me to meet, family friends going back decades, all fizzing with that warmth and kindness so common in the North of England.

Upon meeting one of Adam’s uncles — his dad’s brother — I was delighted by how obviously they were related. It was the smile! They had the same smile. And this smile isn’t just about the shape their mouths take, but the way it spreads all the way to their eyes. His uncle smiles like Adam does, with his entire face. The crinkles at the corners of his eyes!

These crinkles are one of my favourite things about my fiancé’s face, something that drew me to him when we first met, these lines that would appear as we dissolved into spells of silliness and giggles.

Someone said to me recently that Adam looks as if the sun shines out of him, and it’s true. He is pure golden retriever energy, lit from within, and it’s these eye crinkles that I recognised, suddenly, in the face of a man I’d just met. It brought me so much joy to see.

And so I ask you, dear reader. How can we love these lines so much in another person’s face and yet work so hard to erase our own?

I have my mother’s eleven lines. Those “worry lines” that sit between your eyebrows, though we could call them “focus lines” or “thinking lines” but alas, I don’t think those names will stick. My entire life I have been told I look like my mum. Considering she is objectively one of the most beautiful women I have ever met — like, startlingly so —I have always taken that as a compliment. I still do.

And yet, when I started to get those lines between my brows, I was mortified. On my mum’s face, they were always just a part of her, deepening as her brow furrowed while concentrating on something. But on me, I feared they made me look angry or stressed, when I wasn’t.

So at 27, I started wearing ‘Frownies’ to bed, these stick-on patches that hold your skin taut and prevent you from moving your face overnight. I’d wear them during the day while writing, too. Sleeping and writing seem to be when I frown the most.

But ‘Frownies’ can only take you so far, and in my early thirties I tried botox. Just between the brows at first. The nurse injecting me in an East London beauty salon warned, almost playfully, “careful love, this stuff is addictive!” And so every four or five months, back I’d go — cradling a mix of feminist shame and vain relief — to smooth my frown lines and reveal a face that looked more open, untroubled, relaxed.

I had my forehead done a few times too, and just once, my eye crinkles. But no. It wasn’t really about those parts of my face for me. I like my forehead moving — wild, I know! And I like my own smile that spreads to my eyes.

I also don’t think botox makes most people look younger. But it can make faces look less stressed, which is nearly the same thing, isn’t it? I was never worried about looking old — it was the distressed look I wanted gone.

I wish I could say that I stopped getting botox because I examined the shame I felt when I’d get it, or because I realised I was erasing an ancestral marking on my own face, or because WHO CARES If we have lines between our eyebrows, but alas, no. It was the pandemic. You remember the at-home haircuts and YouTubing how to dye your own eyelashes, well, I was right there with you, embracing my grown-out roots and painting my own nails. And, not getting botox.

In my life I’ve found that one of the most effective ways to redefine my relationship with something is to have a solid break from it. Ten years ago I stopped drinking alcohol for six months and I still feel the positive impact of that on how and when I drink today. A few years ago I stopped wearing makeup for six months. If I’m tangled up in something, a solid break often rewrites the story for me.

Which isn’t to say I never went back once the world was back on track, because I did. But only a couple of times. And since we started trying to conceive, it’s been completely off the table. There’ve been luteal-fuelled moments of vanity, and insecurity born from too many days scrolling a sea of frozen faces on Instagram, where I’ve wished I could walk into an injectable clinic and ask them to relax it all, smooth it over, calm my face down.

But I haven’t and I won’t.

I don’t want to erase lines that connect me to my mother, and her mother before her, and my sisters, and my thinking self and my focused self and the worrier in me, too. Yes, I worry! And I can’t be bothered to pretend otherwise.

I want my children to look at my face and see their grandmother. I want them to look at their own lines in years to come and see where they came from. I want to continue to look in the mirror or catch a photo of myself and enjoy the movement in my face, the expression, the emotion, the story.

Because a line on a face, a smile that spreads all the way to the eyes, these are our inheritance, handed to us. Writing this, I’ve just realised our children will have those eye crinkles too, and I’m crying.

Eye crinkles and a worry line. How delicious.

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Sarah and Nikki said:

How it works:

• We’ll read one book per month together and use them as jumping off points for conversations around womanhood, identity, creativity, cycles, health, visibility, longing, ambition, beauty, relationships and more.

• I’ll share playlists, prompts and my reflections at the bottom of my regular weekly paid essays on Substack. There’s a Famesick-inspired playlist waiting for you at the bottom of this email.

• You’re invited to dissect what you’re reading with me, and the group, in the comments each week.

• And if you’re not joining in, no stress. Regular paid content will continue as usual regardless.

• Our first book is Lena Dunham’s Famesick, which we’ll read across the next few weeks before moving into Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke in June. Then Sharon Blackie’s Ripening in July and Jane Eyre in August.

Here’s a reading guide for Famesick in May:

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After floating the idea of a seasonal-read-along last week, it got a super response which I’m delighted about. I know I’m not alone in the craving for less scrolling and more depth and connection, so let’s hit the library together.

Books have always been one of the ways I make sense of my life, and the titles I’ve picked all seem to circle around themes I know so many of us are navigating or thinking about right now: womanhood, ambition, ageing, visibility, longing, beauty, identity, creativity, romance, relationships, gender, intimacy, spirituality. Yum.

We’ll read one book a month from May through to September, beginning next week with Lena Dunham’s new memoir Famesick, before moving into Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke.

Then for our non-fiction, Ripening: Why Women Need Fairy Tales Now by Sharon Blackie and finally, the classic, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.

(From zeitgeist to literary, gossip to mythology. Gals who can do it all, eh?)

I’ll provide a week-by-week reading plan next week but there’s no pressure to keep up or start/finish every book. You can join in or drop out at anytime. I’ll share weekly-ish reflections, playlists and prompts inside my regular essays and podcasts on Substack, so we can discuss them together in the comments.

If you’d like to join us, I’m offering a special seasonal subscription: just $20 USD for your first year as a paid subscriber, which includes access to all paid essays, reflections, prompts, playlists, discussions and podcasts. Woo!

$20 are you kidding me? Yessss I'm in 📚

That’s a limited time offer and current paid subscribers are already included, of course.

A few more fun things:

• Reading: Silence and Honeycakes by Rowan Williams. Such a beautiful meditation on looking to the ancients in our modern spiritual searching.

• Cooking: Chilli con carne. I co-hosted a cookalong inside my friend Lucia’s Batch Queen membership recently. Recipe and replay coming soon!

• Watching: Outlander, naturally. I cannot believe the penultimate episode is tomorrow. You know, one of the best decisions I’ve made in 2026 was starting Outlander recap podcast with my cousin. We must remember to make things with people we love. It keeps us sane and alive to life.

• Listening: I did not have becoming a Belieber on my 2026 bingo card, but that Coachella performance got me. Loving this one.

Alright, I’m really looking forward to starting Famesick tomorrow with a cup of hot chocolate on my sofa, so if you plan on joining us, grab a copy this weekend, tell your friends, and let’s begin!

Big love,

Ps. Let me know which book you’re most looking forward to reading in the comments, I’m curious to know… 👀

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In case you missed it:

Hi loves,

Happy Friday and waxing moon! Here are my answers to this quarter’s Q&A, plus a personal update. Fair warning — the audio is nearly an hour long and we go wide and deep.

We've got my recent engagement (woop! 💍), wedding advice I seriously need from you, a bit on learning from our feminine rites of passage, a question on endometriosis treatment, and then a biiiig one on faith and how it sits alongside the cycle awareness world for me.

I love and appreciate that you can cover all of this with me!

Grab a lovely cuppa or take a long walk and I’ll see you in there.

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Happy new moon! 🌑

I’m getting straight into it today. There’s a debate playing out on social media right now about cycle syncing1. Is it legit? Is it pseudoscience? Is it just another set of rigid rules for women to follow, as per usual?

I really understand the concern and have myself spoken out against the prescriptive TikTokky advice on what you can and can’t do in the luteal phase.

Rigid frameworks become their own kind of prison for sure, and I’ve sat across from too many women who feel they’re “doing menstrual cycle awareness wrong” because they’ve just swapped out one set of rules for another. Surprise surprise, that’s not much fun.

So believe me, I am the first person to tell my clients that they don’t need to overhaul their diets or workouts from week-to-week.

But I kinda want to pushback against the pushback for a moment.

I think it’s important to note that disregarding the premise of cycle syncing entirely risks landing us back in familiar territory: the idea the most liberated version of a woman is one who functions like a man.

Pretending women are just small men is what allows institutions to refuse to accommodate our messy, bleeding, cyclical female bodies — because officially, if we’re all the same, then there’s nothing to accommodate.

I’ve spent most of my career brushing up against the fear that by teaching menstrual cycle awareness I am somehow confirming what the world has suspected for eons — that female bodies are liabilities. That by saying “Hey, we’re actually quite a bit different to y’all” is somehow saying we are less.

But frankly, the closer I get to my 40’s, the more confident I am in just saying it plainly: we are different, and that is not the same thing as inferior. Not even close.

For example.

Right now, we are going through IVF. And by golly is it a lesson in female embodiment. My body is the site of almost everything happening: the hormones, the scans, the retrievals, the transfers, the tests, the waiting.

Adam is present and loving, he is totally in this with me. But his physical body is largely uninvolved. He is not sore or tired or processing in the same way mine is. He hasn’t had to drop back on working hours, revenue or social events in the same way I have.

And, of course, his body won’t get to go through the miraculous process of creating life in the same way mine will, God willing. I’m not complaining; it is what it is. But it is tough when our culture still expects me to operate as per usual, as in, as per a man might.

(Note, this difference and discrepancy obvs applies to women regardless of maternity: office temperatures accomodate men, Viagra gets better funding than female-specific conditions like endometriosis. More than 1 in 3 boys think periods should be kept a secret. I don’t think I need to go on. You get it.)

So when I see a woman cycle syncing — which I define as working with your cycle, rather than against it — to create a micro environment where she FINALLY feels at home in herself, I am all for that. I stay up to date on the science of it all2, but honestly, I’m more invested in what the woman in my coaching practice sat across from me is telling me about her recent charts.

I think that a woman deciding that her body’s rhythms are worth paying attention to is a rare and beautiful thing. I think that a woman finally realising that she, and her menstruating body, as it actually is, belongs here on this planet, is a truly splendid thing.

So, I’m okay with cycle syncing. We often need to learn the rules to break the rules and if following a phase-by-phase plan helps someone get started on listening to their body and making adjustments, great! We all know how it feels when something that once served us well is now asking for a little personalisation. Maybe that’s what this cycle syncing pushback is really pointing to — a generation of women actually listening to their bodies? Maybe?

Whatever it’s about, I know this: women are connected to rhythms that our linear culture has barely any language for. We’re the moon to the sun, and that impacts our energy, our capacity, how we relate, how we work. So honey, if you wanna cycle sync, be my guest. Just remember to tune in to your own body’s data, rather than that cute influencer on IG. You’ve got this.

Friends, what do you think?

What needs to happen for our culture to recognise the differences between the male and female body, without making us the inferior sex?

And what does cycle syncing mean to you?

Big love,

Ps. All my free and beloved cycle charting resources available here! Buy my eBook & audiobook bundle, Adore Your Cycle or find my real-life book ‘50 Things You Need to Know About Periods’ here.

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In case you missed it:

I decided to split the Q&A across two posts. First up is a written response to one particular question that deserved more space than audio could give it. The rest of my answers will follow next week in an audio edition for paid subscribers.

If you’re a free subscriber and considering upgrading your membership to paid, hello and welcome! Do consider joining us. We do these Q&A’s quarterly, as well as regular writing on the female life journey, live journaling calls, and more.

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Dear Claire,

I’m recently single and it’s the first time I’ve been single in my 30s. I’m not ready to call in a relationship yet as I’m taking time to work on myself.

I recently found myself around a male friend (not a close one, more outer-circle) who I feel very attracted to, and I’m pretty sure it’s mutual.

I absolutely do not want him to be my boyfriend, but I couldn’t ignore the sexual tension. It got me thinking about exchanging sexual energy with someone in a conscious, respectful, playful way — getting the medicine from the experience without commitment.

I love the idea of having a lover and I don’t want to shrink away from a potentially magical experience because I’m scared. I don’t want to deny myself pleasure… but the truth is, I am scared. I’m scared of the messiness or losing myself in the headiness of it all. But I also think it could be really beautiful 😅.

I feel like there’s so much conversation on either long-term relationship intimacy or fiery, one-night-stand, Samantha Jones sex. But I don’t want either of those things.

I’m not asking you to tell me what to do. I just really love your insights and am curious to hear any thoughts you had on this.

Love,

M x

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My friend inspired me with her monthly bingo cards and so I made one over the summer. It was without a doubt one of the funnest and coolest ideas I’d tried out in awhile.

In typical summer fashion, my card was full-to-the-brim with activities: swimming spots! cinema on the harbour! walking tours! hosting dinner for friends!

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Friends,

Saturday was World Poetry Day and the March Equinox. A day to celebrate two things that (I think) matter: the gift of poetry and the Spring/Autumn Equinox.

Here, we find ourselves at the edge of a new season! I love this moment in the year — give me the balance of light and dark over the extremes any day.

(Yes, you can read that literally and metaphorically 😉)

To mark this moment, I want to share five of my favourite poems with you.

These poems have seen me through the greatest losses, gains and transformations in my life, so I’m also sharing the context of why I treasure them and how they might best serve you — whether you’re grieving, growing or feeling super loved up. Or maybe, all of the above.

To respect copyright I’ve included a stanza, then linked to the full poem, with opportunities for you to listen to each one where I can. Better to hear the poet recite their own work if poss, I say!

As this is a piece for paid subscribers only — hi! thank you! — I’ve also included details for our upcoming journaling call. We’re making a seasonal “bingo card” which I’m pretty excited about. I’ve included a reminder about the “Ask Me Anything” Q&A opportunity, plus a text message I sent my cousin last week that just sums up life for me right now. Because, why not.

To the poetry, then.

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Paid subscribers, you can read or listen to this one! Thank you for your support.

Friends, I think we’ve been sold a poor definition of the word discipline and I’m coming to its defence. That’s what I’m doing here in the first half of this piece, then I’ll share the six disciplines holding me together right now.

In my coaching practice this year, a familiar theme has already emerged: the wrestle with routine, structure, commitment and doing the things we say we are going to do.

My clients come to coaching because there is something in themselves they want to grow, explore, understand or embody. These admirable goals require consistent effort to achieve, and more often than not, doing things differently to how they’ve been done up until that point.

And so, quite early on in the process, we find ourselves sat with the word discipline — and it’s usually uncomfortable. I work in realms where a woman’s cyclic nature and intuition are honoured, where her menstrual cycle is front-and-centre, where rigid and prescriptive ways of being are unlearned.

For those who’ve spent real time untangling their harsh inner critics and punishing self-talk, the word discipline feels like a step backward, and understandably too. It’s an evocative word; I see the cringing and wincing in real time.

Some then choose to use words like devotion instead. Which I find beautiful and is often effective. I love the reclaiming of language, but the word discipline holds more gold for us than I think we realise.

And so, to the etymology

If we go right back, Merriam-Webster tells us that discipline shares its root with disciple, from the Latin disciplīna — meaning teaching, instruction and branches of study.

Disciplīna comes from discipulus, meaning “pupil.”1

At its deepest origins, discipline is actually a word of curiosity and growth. How about that?! It is language seeded in mentorship, guidance, experience and the transformative power of education.

In fact, it wasn’t until the 13th century that the Middle English usage expanded to include chastisement, self-flagellation and punishment.2

There are also a few ways we tend to use the word, and I think this adds to the confusion:

• As a punishment: “They need to be disciplined.”

• As a character trait: “I just don’t have enough discipline for that.”

• As a practice: “Meditation is a spiritual discipline.”

That third one is what I’m interested in. Discipline as something we do, not something we’re born with or without. A habit, practice, a mode of study, a cosmology that we are disciples of. And in doing so, steadily and over time, we build that second definition, discipline as a character trait.

Yet it’s so easy to compare ourselves to others who seem naturally more disciplined and conclude we simply aren’t built that way, isn’t it?

“But I’m more feminine by nature!”

“But I live by my intuition!”

“But I have a menstrual cycle!” (I hear this one a lot)

And yes, these are all real experiences. I’m with you. Me too.

We could keep going with more examples, but you know what I’m saying: you likely also live in a body that experiences fluctuating energy, processes, rhythms and capacity on any given day — yet I don’t believe that these human expressions and discipline are mutually exclusive at all.

In fact, if you tick those boxes too, discipline has much to offer you.

Remember, the frame holds the painting.

Which is all easier said than done, of course

It’s the snooze button — when you’re booked in to a 6am tennis class.

Just one more glass of wine — but this was your hangover-free year.

A cute but emotionally distant man on an app (“hey here for some fun”) — when really, you are ready for a real relationship.

…and so the wrestle begins.

“I deserve this!”

“Life is meant for living!”

“I don’t want to deny myself!”

“That’s just not who I am!”

I find it comforting to remember that none of this is new, ‘tis an ancient conflict: hedonism versus stoicism, two ends of a spectrum.

Swung too far one way, we risk denying ourselves the magic of spontaneity and joy by implementing controlling routines and denying all pleasure.

Too far the other way and we risk living a life where we never really know how it feels to commit to something difficult but meaningful; to grow, learn, experiment and come to know just how strong we really are, and dare I say it, but who we really are.

In many ways, I am who I am (and you are who you are) because of what I have been a disciple of, a student of, a follower, a pupil of, and the disciplines I have practiced.

As a disciple of menstrual cycle awareness, I practice disciplines such as resting when I’m bleeding and charting my cycle daily — which have grown me into a woman who lives attuned to her womb today.

As a pupil of writing, I practice the disciplines of noticing and documenting, of consistently sitting down to write — which have grown me into somebody who has published books people read (my childhood dream) and can confidently, even on the wobbliest days, call themselves a writer.

As a student of self-employment, I practice the discipline of prioritising my business with my time and attention — which is how I have become the grateful steward of my global company and body of work, today.

These have all taken a very imperfect but sustained effort over many years, with some seasons requiring more of the stoic end of the spectrum, others more relaxed. Most of the time — and I suspect this is true for most of us, most of the time — I find my sweet spot in the middle.

For me right now, in an unpredictable, taxing, but also meaningful season of life, I am leaning more disciplined, and drawing right to the root of the word as I do so.

Sometime last year, I read that the psychological symptoms associated with infertility are comparable to those of cancer patients, and so, as Adam and I continue with IVF after a long journey to conceive, I made the decision at the beginning of this year to bring real awareness to what I am a disciple of, what I would be committed to (and not at all committed to), and how strong my frame would need to be.

But before we get to those, let me say this, on record:

I’m not suggesting that we never have a slow morning in bed again! Or enjoy a Malbec by a fire with friends or chat to the cute but avoidant guy (although when it comes to unavailable men, it’s probably never a good idea), but I invite you to consider:

What in your life or heart might be bolstered by the inclusion of discipline as a practice?

C.S. Lewis said,

“only a man who resists temptation knows how strong it really is.”3

And I would add, in an increasingly distractible world, knows how strong they really are.

My six disciplines

Here are the disciplines I’ve committed to in this season of life.

To be sure, there are plenty of others (like phone off in the early morning and evenings, strength training, avoiding processed foods, etc.) but these six hit different right now.

For one, none of them are about work or productivity.

That’s not really my focus right now.

Instead, they are more about a connection to the sacred, to my home, my relationship and who I’m becoming in the next season of my life. They are my deliberate efforts to uphold my values, to trust myself and strengthen my backbone. They are in support of my words for this year: sweet and stable.

Every single one is demanding a solid effort to sustain on my part, and none have been especially easy to implement. But — and I really want you to hear this bit — that is not the same thing as punishment.

Rather, they are all supporting me so well and contributing to such a deep sense of growth and peace in my life, even as the waves continue to come.

That’s the difference, the root of discipline alive and well.

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