Most people don’t know it, but the menstrual cycle is shamanic journey that doesn’t require hallucinogens or deprivation. It’s a voyage so common and mundane that it happens naturally in many humans cyclically, repeatedly. It’s not so much overlooked, but systematically associated with oppression. Because the transformation associated with the menstrual cycle is so powerful that it’s been feared and demonized cross-culturally for centuries. It’s unknown that menstruation is a shamanic journey because the journey and its power is feared.

We don’t consciously think of the menstrual cycle as a shamanic journey, but we refer to it as a series of altered states of consciousness:

“Post-ovulation clarity”

“I didn’t know why I was so depressed until my period started.”

“I don’t feel like I’m in my body during my luteal phase.”

Regardless of culture or belief system, a shamanic journey is a practice of entering an altered state of consciousness to receive spiritual guidance.

The menstrual cycle is a series of altered states that can become a shamanic journey when approached intentionally. Having a menstrual cycle can’t intentionally be a shamanic journey until:

1. You can discern each cycle phase shift.

2. You set an intention (or multiple) for the type of guidance you’d like to receive this cycle.

3. You treat each cycle phase like a new section of the journey that requires different modes of self-devotion and ritual.

Historical & Cultural Context: The Role of Community in Menstrual Journeying

Many cultures around the world [1] [2] [3] [4] have traditions of menstrual isolation: keeping people with wombs separate from the rest of the community during their periods.

The time spent in contemplation during this psychically sensitive time, was respected as communication from ancestors & the divine. These insights were once the compass of the community. The wisdom gained during this time was often used for crops, community planning, settling interpersonal disputes— virtually all aspects of life. This was also considered a time for rejuvenation and “self-care.” People with wombs’ daily responsibilities— like childcare, cooking, farming— were temporarily distributed to other people in the community during menstruation. This gave menstruating people the time and space to rest deeply.

From a Kongo-Bantu perspective, menstruation is a time of communing with the ancestors via the Kalûnga River. It’s meant to be a time to get direct guidance from them about worldly affairs and personal goals, to utilize their awareness in the spirit world, mpémba, especially through dreams and meditation.

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I used to dream of other places to call home, turning my face away from the place I was born.

Sometimes, the place with the most painful memories is home. Running away from home represents purging it from our identities. It’s a place we no longer wish to carry around with us. We long to be separate from it, to transplant ourselves somewhere else as if we always belonged there.

When we think of home, we often think of the city or house we grew up in. We think of the people, the relationships we have, the spaces we congregate and the meaning they have. Our community, regardless of its quality, is a kind of home.

But our first true home on earth is our physical body. Our bodies are the first place that contain our consciousness, our emotions, our memories. It’s the lens through which we see the whole world.

Western capitalist society enacts its systemic violence by conditioning people to hate their first homes— their bodies. This is the locus of all their destructive ideology: A person who does not want to be in their body is easier to manipulate and distract. You can easily market to them products, lifestyles, and procedures they don’t need to create a feeling of confidence that isn’t quite real.

This dynamic is most crystalized and most hidden within reproductive health: The lack of menstrual health education, the healthcare system that dismisses and misdiagnoses people with menstrual issues, the labor force that does not care that you’re menstruating and need to slow down, the religions that frame menstruation as divine punishment— these are not coincidences. These are not the result of a pileup of bureaucratic neglect. This is intentional reproductive violence, a centuries-old spiritual attack against people with wombs.

Hatred Starts at Home

“Home is where the needle marks

Tried to heal my broken heart”

Your body is your first home, even before your mother’s womb. The belief systems we internalize about our bodies play a huge role in how we take care of ourselves and view the world.

Most women and people with wombs, regardless of where they live in the world, are directly and indirectly taught that menstruation is disruptive, painful, socially stigmatized, and that its only purpose is to alert you to pregnancy. This is the baseline understanding we’re given about menstruation, which is clearly already not neutral.

Some people with wombs live in societies where they’re taught that periods are unclean, feared, grounds for missing your education, and even material proof of women’s evil nature.

This teaches people with wombs that they are classed as disposable. In response, people with wombs abandon themselves as well— through chronic dissociation, internalized misogyny, and masking.

The negative conditioning from society trickles down to the family unit, where it’s always running in the background. Many children are shamed, sexualized, threatened, and even punished for having their first period or being leered at by a grown man. They are not met with safety, kindness, or information on what’s happening to their bodies.

Many people with wombs internalize is that the less visible they can make their bodies, the safer they are. Puberty and/or their first period is when they stopped feeling safe in their body. Some time later, after repeated reinforcement, they may drop the expectation to ever feel safe in their body.

Society Silences Righteous Rage & Creates Feminine Monstrosity

We live in a cisheteropatriarchal, therefore phallic, world: All that exists is what we can see, touch, name. If it’s not visible, if it evades classification, it’s not real or worthy of acknowledgement.

Gil Scott-Heron’s song “Home is Where the Hatred Is” captures how it feels to be alienated from home for being perceived as too broken, when the brokenness you feel inside is actually your environment being mirrored back to you— much like the experience of people with wombs victimized by reproductive violence. At the heart of the song is social commentary on how the same environment that made you sick will cast you out for not being able to perform wellness, negatively impacting both people who can and can’t mask their struggles:

Stand as far away from me as you can and ask me why
Hang on to your rosary beads
Close your eyes to watch me die…

God, but did you ever try
To turn your sick soul inside out
So that the world, so that the world
Can watch you die?

The destigmatization of mental health support over the last decade hasn’t healed the unconscious belief that people who hide their pain are safer than people who don’t or can’t. This is only true because we’ve made it true— through demonizing disability and associating misery with an unclean spirit.

Every witness to the outcomes of hidden suffering knows the truth:

People who hide their pain on the inside may be safer from institutional harm to some degree, but they’re not any more protected from being consumed by it than people who wear their pain on the outside.

No one wants to admit this because when we see someone wearing their pain on the outside, it’s ugly. It’s horrifying. It’s so repulsive that you must keep away, but so inexplicably magnetic that you can’t help but be drawn. You see the part of yourself you hide, existing out in the open, and it’s harrowing.

No one wants to be reminded that even privilege cannot save you from pain. No one wants to be reminded of our vulnerability, of our fragility, of how every “it’ll be alright” takes a quiet toll. No one wants to be reminded of the fact that sometimes, we can no longer hold onto all of the emotional weight. Sometimes, like flowers, we bloom with pain, exposing all our fragile petals.

The menstrual cycle is demonized because it refuses concealment. A period refuses to be ignored.

The mood swings, the bleeding through your clothes, the physical discomfort— these things are framed as bad because it makes us aware of the menstruator’s pain. A pain we’d rather not be bothered with.

Think about what it means to internalize that belief— that your pain, your feelings, your physical and emotional needs are inconvenient. That pain should be concealed. Not seen or heard.

This pain isn’t a punishment, it’s a cue.

When you see menstruators worldwide suffering greatly during their luteal phases and periods, that’s a signifier that they are living in a world of patriarchal violence. Systems of institutional violence converge to make sure we are not taught how to manage our cycles to make us easier to control.

It doesn’t mean that the physical changes of having a womb are monstrous or evil. It means that we aren’t given the space to transform fully. During these times, we aren’t given space to rest, to introspect, to daydream. The reproductive violence is both physical and psychological, which is what makes it so effective.

Our reproductive transitions— puberty, menarche, childbirth, menopause— they are all shamanic journeys. They’re altered states marking a shift to a new reality. Reproductive violence ruptures these rites of passage and can even block us from successfully transitioning to our new reality.

There are so many examples of this:

When a mother shames a child for their first period, which causes her to feel uncomfortable with her period or even experience gender dysphoria.

When a new mother feels so disoriented and traumatized from childbirth that she can’t stop dissociating.

When traces of menstrual blood during sex causes a partner to become disgusted.

When someone experiences sexual violence during the onset of puberty.

When society or our loved ones abandon us during these vulnerable moments, it reinforces the belief that our bodies are monstrous and even disposable— eradication would be the moral thing to do, even. It teaches us that we should not take up space, that our needs are unimportant, and that perhaps it’s easier to not occupy your body at all.

Reproductive violence against people with wombs:

1. Normalizes chronic dissociation/stepping out of the body as a coping mechanism.

2. Demonizes reproductive transitions by portraying the trauma associated with it as inherent instead of a feature of patriarchal violence .

Colonization never ended at land theft. The physical body was colonized, too. Reproductive violence is an extension of that. Colonization forced people not just out of their homes, but out of their bodies.

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Reclaim Your Homeland— Your Body

Whenever I get too homesick for a home that doesn’t exist, I remind myself that home is a frequency, a feeling. If I can’t find home or if it doesn’t exist, I can create it. I’m always home, because “home” is something I carry with me: my body.

For me, part of resistance looks like reclaiming my body. I refuse to allow patriarchal programming control how I feel about myself, about my home. That would be like listening to the western education system about African history— it’s full of baked in propaganda and racist, anti-indigenous views. The patriarchy can’t tell me anything about my body or myself.

For me, getting to the root of reclaiming home started with healing my relationship with my period— with my body.

A luta continua; vitória é certa,

Most people don’t know that period tracking can be used to manage chronic illness because we’re conditioned to not know.

We’re conditioned to hate our periods and see them as totally useless unless we’re ready to get pregnant. By default, the topic of periods and period tracking revolve around pregnancy— it’s about avoiding it or securing it.

But our menstrual systems have so much beautiful data for us to dig into and better know ourselves. Beyond pregnancy, the menstrual cycle is also like a monthly report of your overall health— mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.

So many aspects of having a chronic illness— like potential disability or poor access to quality healthcare (both from a financial and medical ableism standpoint)— make having regular menstrual data outlining your overall health invaluable.

You’ll still need to get lab work and treatment, but with period tracking, you can have a much stronger idea of what may be going on in the meantime, as well as how to mitigate symptoms from worsening.

Period tracking can help manage:

• PCOS/PMOS

• Chronic inflammatory & autoimmune diseases (including but not limited to Hashimoto’s, long COVID, Grave’s, fibromyalgia, etc.)

• Gastrointestinal disorders (including but not limited to IBS, Celiac, food intolerances, etc.)

• Thyroid disorders (hyperthyroidism, hypothyroidism)

• Diabetes (Types 1 and 2)

• Seizure disorders

• Weight-related chronic health issues (especially eating disorders)

• Endometriosis

• Chronic Kidney Disease

• Liver disease

• Some mental illnesses (including but not limited to depression, anxiety, Bipolar Disorder, schizophrenia, Borderline Personality Disorder, etc.)

If you have a chronic illness, this is a handy reference guide to decode what your menstrual cycle is telling you about your health.

Keep in mind that new medications can have an effect on your menstrual cycle. Check your medications to see if any of these symptoms may be side effects.

Also, this guide is focused on cycle-related symptoms from the lens of chronic illness. It isn’t a comprehensive list of all the root causes of these symptoms.

Note: I haven’t listed PMDD (Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder) here because I have contention with it as a label. It describes such a large umbrella of symptoms with a wide range of root causes, that I question how helpful the label truly is. This appears to be potentially confirmed by how poorly treated and understood PMDD is.

My intention is to breakdown some of the common PMDD symptoms associated with chronic illnesses as well as their potential source more granularly.

Beginner: Blood Flow Issues

You don’t have to know anything about cycle tracking to be able to observe and discern these symptoms. You just need to observe your period.

Heavy Periods (Menorrhagia)

Heavy periods are normalized by negligent doctors, but it’s often the sign of an underlying issue. Always take heavy menstrual bleeding seriously.

Some people naturally have heavy periods, and that can be normal. But it’s never normal to need to change your pad, tampon, or menstrual cup every hour to prevent leakage every single cycle.

Heavy periods are a complex issue with many potential root causes, and in the most extreme cases, can be life-altering or fatal if untreated.

Heavy periods can be caused by the following flareups:

• Endometriosis

• PCOS/PMOS

• Thyroid issues

• Adenomyosis

• Fibroids

• Pelvic Inflammatory Disease

• Kidney disease

• Liver disease

• Cancer

Heavy periods are also associated with heavy, suppressed emotion, especially generational rage and despair.

Light Periods (Hypomenorrhea) and Absent Periods (Amenorrhea)

From an energy healing perspective, light or absent periods are a sign of low vitality and/or energetic blockages (i.e. malnutrition, blood deficiencies, frequent dissociation). The body does not have the resources for a full release, or does not feel safe to release.

Missing or light periods can be caused by the following flareups:

• PCOS

• Eating disorders

• Thyroid issues

• Diabetes

• Autoimmune & inflammatory diseases

• Kidney disease

Long Periods (Hypermenorrhea)

Chronically long periods (longer than 7 days, for 3+ consecutive cycles) can be caused by:

• Fibroids

• Adenomyosis

• PCOS/PMOS

• Thyroid issues

• Diabetes

• Liver disease

• Kidney disease

• Blood disorders (Sickle Cell Anemia, Hemophilia, etc.)

From a psychosomatic perspective, long periods are often a sign of deep grief.

Brown Blood

Brown blood is normal to experience toward the end of your period, but brown blood that occurs much earlier than that is a sign that blood is oxidizing faster than it can exit the body— slow blood flow.

This is often a sign of progesterone deficiency, further confirmed by brown spotting for several days before your period and a short luteal phase (see: Short Luteal Phase).

Intermediate: Other Disruptive Symptoms

To discern these symptoms, you’ll have to know the phases of your menstrual cycle and be able to confirm ovulation.

Bloating

From a psychosomatic perspective, bloating can be a reflection of high cortisol (stress) and being in fight-or-flight mode (which alters digestion processes) for extended periods of time.

Bloating can be a sign of the following flareups:

• IBS, Celiac, food intolerances, etc.

• Endometriosis

• Thyroid issues

• PCOS/PMOS

• Diabetes

Seizures

Studies show that menstruation can trigger seizures in some individuals (Catamenial Epilepsy). Estrogen surges during both ovulation (Periovulatory Catamenial Epilepsy) and menstruation are associated with seizure risk.

Pain During Sex

Pelvic Pain During Sex

Pelvic pain during sex, especially when accompanied with bleeding, can be caused by endometriosis, PID, and general inflammation.

Extreme Cramping/Contractions During Sex

Defined as vaginismus. Often comorbid with mental illness, fibromyalgia, endometriosis, and IBS. Vaginismus can be a psychosomatic reaction to reproductive, medical, and/or sexual trauma.

Mental Illness Flareups

Mental illness flareups, including (but not limited to) suicidal ideation, severe mood swings, severe depression, psychosis episodes, and increased anxiety can sometimes occur as a result of hormonal cycles.

Studies show that mental illness flareups are more likely to occur during the luteal/premenstrual phase.

You may not be able to stop a flareup during your luteal phase, but understanding that it’s more likely to happen during that time can help you prepare, or at least be aware of the possibility.

Vomiting

Vomiting is usually associated with the luteal phase, period, and in some cases, ovulation. Mildly inflammatory prostaglandins are triggered during ovulation and before menstruation, which for individuals with inflammatory issues, can cause an overly inflammatory reaction, which manifests as vomiting.

Anti-histamines may help with nausea and vomiting during these times of the cycle, but more research is needed.

Vomiting and nausea can be a psychosomatic reaction to suppressing negative feelings and the voice throughout the cycle, especially if the negative emotions are longstanding. During the energetic peaks of the cycle (menstruation and ovulation), the negative emotional energy tries to “force” itself out.

Body Aches

During ovulation and menstruations, mildly inflammatory prostaglandins are triggered to move things along. For people with chronic inflammatory and/or autoimmune disease, mild to severe body aches can occur during ovulation or during menstruation if the body becomes too inflamed.

Similarly to vomiting and nausea, body aches can be a psychosomatic reaction to suppressing negative feelings throughout the cycle.

Severe Cramping (Dysmenorrhea)

Severe cramping is complex and be caused by many things. Psychosomatically, it can be a manifestation of not feeling heard, deep grief, suppressed emotion, and generational despair.

Extreme cramping can be a sign of the following flareups:

• IBS

• Endometriosis

• Fibromyalgia

• Gastrointestinal disorders (IBS, Celiac, food intolerances, etc.)

• Fibroids

• Adenomyosis

• Mental illness

Irregular Periods

Irregular periods can be a sign of the following flareups:

• ME/CFS (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome)

• Fibromyalgia

• Thyroid issues

• PCOS

May be at an increased risk for liver disease.

Chronic Infections (Non-STI)

If all external factors can be ruled out (sexual partners, product & fabric sensitivities, hygiene, etc.), chronic infections like bacterial vaginosis (BV) and yeast infections may be a result of chronic inflammation.

It may be helpful to get tested for Pelvic Inflammatory Disease (PID), which can also sometimes be comorbid with repeat, antibiotic-resistant infections.

Extreme Fatigue

Psychosomatically, excessive fatigue is often an expression of emotional exhaustion. Extreme fatigue around ovulation and right before menstruation is often sign of the following flareups:

• Anemia

• Autoimmune disease

• Liver disease

• Kidney disease

• ME/CFS

Advanced: Complex Cycle Structure Issues

To discern these symptoms, you have to be very familiar with tracking your cycle using symptothermal fertility awareness (FAM).

All of these menstrual issues are usually the result of an issue with the neuroendocrine system: an imbalance or error within the HPA (Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal) and/or OAT (Ovarian-Adrenal-Thyroid) axes.

Long Cycles (Oligomenorrhea)

Some people tend to have naturally long cycles. But once a cycle regularly extends past 35 days, that’s a sign of a problem.

It’s also important to note that long cycles can be relative. For example, 31 days falls within a healthy range, but for someone who is naturally prone to 26 day cycles, it may be symptomatic of an issue.

To figure out the meaning of a long cycle, the easiest place to look is when ovulation occurred. (See: No Clear Temperature Shift, Delayed/More Than 1 Temperature Shift)

Short Cycles

Short cycles are 25 days or shorter.

Like with long cycles, it’s vital to remember short cycles can be relative. If you notice a big change in your cycle length, it’s not necessarily a sign that something is wrong, but a sign to pay attention.

Short cycles can sometimes be the result of a failed ovulation phase. If the body doesn’t have enough resources to try again, it may hard reset the cycle and start the period (see: Short Luteal Phase).

Short Luteal Phase

A luteal phase is considered short if it’s 10 days or less.

This is often caused by low progesterone, which triggers the uterine lining to shed prematurely. Thyroid issues, eating disorders, PCOS/PMOS, and endometriosis are all linked to short luteal phases.

When a person experiences repeat miscarriages, short luteal phases are sometimes the culprit. A fertilized egg needs enough time to implant itself— 10 days or less is problematic.

It’s also worth mentioning that sometimes, short luteal phases are the natural result of aging. It can sometimes be the result of Premature Ovarian Failure in younger people, but that’s relatively uncommon.

No Clear Temperature Shift (Anovulation)

When you observe no notable temperature shift throughout a cycle, this indicates that you didn’t ovulate. This is very often the result of the following flareups:

• PCOS/PMOS

• Thyroid issues

• Endometriosis

• Eating disorders

More Than 1 Temperature Shift

More than one temp shift indicates that your body attempted (and possibly failed) to ovulate more than once.

This is very often the result of the following flareups due to hormonal imbalance and/or problematic brain-gut signaling:

• PCOS/PMOS

• Thyroid issues

• IBS

• Fibromyalgia

• Endometriosis

If this is accompanied with a longer-than-usual cycle, also see: Long Cycles.

Chronically Low Basal Body Temperature

Even if you’ve observed a temp shift, you may notice that your BBT trends a bit low overall. In general, 97.5°F or less for several consecutive days is considered low for pre-ovulation.

This is usually the sign of thyroid malfunction— specifically the body struggling to regulate body heat. You can further confirm this if you struggle to regulate your body temperature in general, especially if you tend to feel cold all the time and/or struggle to cool off.

No Cervical Fluid Change

Cervical fluid pH fluctuates throughout the cycle. It becomes more alkaline during the fertile phase, and more acidic during the infertile phase. If cervical fluid is not changing throughout the entire cycle, it points to:

• Hormonal imbalance (delayed or failed brain signaling)

• Gut and/or vaginal flora imbalance (see: Chronic Infections.)

• Chronic inflammation

Menstrual Data Is For Our Health

It benefits the patriarchy to condition people with wombs to not look for the answers within ourselves— including through our menstrual cycles. Religion and medical academia tells us this repeatedly.

Your chronic illness isn’t stopping you from reclaiming autonomy and sovereignty over your body— the patriarchy is.

Thank you for reading! This guide will be continuously updated with more information. If I miss a menstrual cycle-related symptom also related to chronic illness, feel free to comment so I can add it.

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A luta continua; vitória é certa,

dying is painful

but coming back to life is excruciating.

it always feels like being forced to bloom

I like my petals closed like a fist in the dark.

I’m not ready to feel the sun. I just want another lazy day in the shade.

I was born in the spring.

I admit I get a little possessive when people say they love the moon. Many only love her mythology. They love the dancing images, dreams, and wishes projected onto her face. Though I’m no different.

Behind my possessiveness is protective gratitude for how the moon has healed lifetimes within me, many times over. Those dancing images, those dreams and wishes, if you look a little deeper, are portals. Emotions and the subconscious mind are gateways deeper into the soul. The menstrual cycle, a somatic tool heavily influenced by emotions and the subconscious, also creates portals— twice each cycle. “As within, as without; as the universe, so the soul.”

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When it comes to menstruation in spiritual spaces, the zeitgeist is oriented toward understanding it through the lens of red/white moon bleeding theory.

The categories are more specifically defined as:

• Red Moon Bleeding: Menstruating on the full moon, ovulating on the new moon. Associated with the Crone or Wise Woman archetypes.

• White Moon Bleeding: Menstruating on the new moon, ovulating on the full moon. Associated with the Mother archetype.

• Purple Moon Bleeding: Menstruating with the waning moon, ovulating with the waxing moon. Associated with the Enchantress or Wild Woman archetypes.

• Pink Moon Bleeding: Menstruating with the waxing moon, ovulating with the waning moon. Associated with the Maiden archetype.
  

This information is often framed as traditional wise woman esotericism, “feminine wisdom” reclaimed, but it’s actually a product of the patriarchy in both its spiritual and biological theory.

The red/white moon bleeding theory is problematic in both spiritual and public health contexts because:

1. The thesis depends on the medicalized 28-day menstrual cycle, which isn’t the reality of every menstruator

2. As a consequence of (1), it inflames poor menstrual/public health education by encouraging a problematic understanding of what ovulation is and when it occurs.

3. The associated archetypes have patriarchal, colonial undertones that don’t encourage deeper curiosity toward somatic intuition, body literacy, or even engaging with the womb beyond “Divine Feminine” and “Feminine Rage” aesthetics.

Red, White, Purple, & Pink Moon Bleeding is a New Age Framework

When it comes to cycle syncing with the moon, the red/white moon bleeding format we see circulating most often was first defined by Miranda Gray in her 1994 book, “Red Moon.” Her book only outlined red and white moon bleeding, but it was foundational to conceptualizing pink and purple moon bleeding later on.

Gray’s book also began the more widespread association of these four archetypes with the lunar syncing of menstrual phases: The Maiden, The Mother, The Enchantress/Wild Woman, and The Crone.

These are modern, homogenized concepts about our relationship with the menstrual and lunar cycles. These are not divine laws nor ancient wisdom as it’s often framed — it’s a lens to categorize and understand the data (your menstrual cycle vs. the lunar cycle).

The Archetypes are Not Universal

One of the biggest issues with new age spiritualism is that it becomes homogenizing to synthesize similar practices from different cultures to extract a unified meaning. It removes all the nuance and unique wisdoms of each cultural practice. Regardless of if they come to a similar conclusion, the journey there matters. It’s no different with this archetypal system of understanding ourselves through cycles.

Most cultures do have some form of Maiden / Mother / Wild Woman / Crone archetypes, generally speaking. But even this rigid framing of these archetypes can be problematic and even erase a culture’s entire worldview.

For example, anyone with a Western education might see the word “maiden” and think of concepts like “chastity” and “purity.” But not only are those words problematically loaded— they’re also not regarded the same way cross-culturally.

In West Africa, their pre-colonial “maiden” equivalent is not so much defined by their virginity (which is what’s actually meant by “purity” and “chastity”), but in terms of her fecundity. By fecundity, I don’t just mean fertility— I mean the way in which a young woman represents infinite possibilities for both herself and her environment. Even if she does not birth the future by becoming a mother, she still births the future through her actions. Women’s roles, including women without children, in their communities were understood as world-creating.

The west celebrates the maiden’s lack of experience, pre-colonial West Africa celebrated the maiden’s potential future experiences. Further, the western maiden is primed to be preserved like property while the African maiden was primed to make a material impact on the world. These spiritual archetypes are loaded with sociopolitical ideas of what the ideal of womanhood must look like at different stages. And unfortunately, the versions of the maiden, mother, enchantress, and crone whose identities are centered on patriarchal property and legacy are the dominating archetypes associating with red/white moon bleeding theory.

The example of this I see the most are people who had their period with a new moon not resonating with being a New/White Moon bleeder because it’s almost always associated with preparing for motherhood. But plenty of White Moon bleeders have no interest in becoming mothers! When you reframe fertility as creation energy, not just childbearing energy (another consequence of patriarchal colonialism), you understand that bleeding on the new moon isn’t necessarily about getting ready to be a mother— it’s about getting ready to create.

The problem is that even in its attempt to divert from patriarchal worldviews on menstruators’ bodies, the patriarchy still trickled into this framework a little bit. Again, this is because it’s a new age synthesis of many different ideas from all different places and time periods in the world.

The Dangers of Archetype & Aesthetic as Shorthand for a Spiritual Journey

The double-edged sword of archetypes is, as they help us to better understand ourselves and the world around us, they also function as intellectual shortcuts to bypass nuanced understanding.

In other words, we all know what a Crone is, even if we’ve never heard that exact term. We know she is an old, wise woman. But what makes her an old, wise woman? What did she experience during her journey to choose to become a Crone? What is her place?

Bypassing meaning by focusing on the symbol itself is a danger with this framework because of the dissociative nature of menstrual/public health. If we are not in tune with out bodies, how can we be in tune with the meaning of our periods associating us with an archetype? How can we sit in its meaning if we don’t understand the creation energy the meaning is applied to?

These archetypes’ meanings are whitewashed and reduced to aesthetic if we don’t understand the journey they’re describing— our menstrual cycles, emotional experiences, community role, and creation energy levels.

Menstrual Cycles Are Diverse

This framework requires more menstrual health education than most menstruators are equipped with, possibly including the author (absolutely no shade to her— all towards the systems that fail our public health).

Because it’s not that it’s strictly wrong— it’s just not most menstruators realities.

Plenty of people’s menstrual cycles don’t work like this because not everyone has 28 day cycles, which can shift all the ranges significantly.

If you’re trying to use this framework for magic or for your mundane routine, this matters a lot!

Ovulation is highlighted in the red/white moon bleeding theory because it’s the energetic peak of your cycle. It’s a potent time for magical workings as well as for high-energy mundane tasks and social interactions.

But the logic of the framework easily falls apart when you’re teaching it to people who don’t know how to confirm if and when they’ve ovulated. Plenty of people experience anovulation (a cycle without a successful ovulation) without knowing— chronically, even.

It’s also important to note that many people experience delayed ovulation, especially people with PCOS, autoimmune conditions, or undiagnosed fertility issues. It’s common, especially when they have cycles that are 30+ days, to ovulate after Day 21.

Maybe you did ovulate between Days 15-21, but if you did, would you be able to tell?

Also, the way ovulation is presented by the red/white moon theory as a range, while appropriate in context, confuses people who don’t know that ovulation day is not actually a range — it’s a single day. A day and a half at most. The window of fertility extends beyond that of course, which is called the fertile window.

While the fertile window is also a high-energy phase of the cycle, for precise workings, the difference between ovulation and the fertile window matter.

Other Systems May Not Be Grounded in Menstrual Knowledge Either

Not understanding the way the menstrual cycle works becomes a liability when presented with any system that links the lunar and menstrual cycles.

For example, I stumbled upon a method developed by Dr. Eugen Jonas (someone who does not menstruate) called the Lunar Fertility Theory several years ago. He developed this system in the 1950’s, stating: “[T]here's potential for fertility during the lunar peak: when the moon is in the same phase it was in when you were born."

Of course, this doesn’t make much sense. Sure it’s possible, but it’s not happening if that moon phase doesn’t coincide with your fertile window— and it very often won’t!

There are absolutely ways to measure our menstrual cycles with the heavens, but if we don’t understand our own bodies, it’s all guesswork— just with a spiritual aesthetic.

How To Use Gray’s Method to Track Menstrual & Lunar Cycles (Or Make Your Own)

I’ve spent this essay so far breaking down the flaws in Gray’s method to offer a broader perspective on the topic of menstrual & lunar cycles— but that doesn’t mean that it’s bad or unusable. If it’s a framework you like, use it!

BUT, be mindful of when your ovulation day is. Don’t assume that just because you bled with the new moon means you’ll necessarily ovulate with the full moon.

Verify each cycle phase, don’t just use the moon framework to assume which phase you’re in.

Once you’re able to do this, you’re free to use any framework you want— even make up your own! It’s all about understanding that at the root of it, we’re measuring energy levels: ours (based on our menstrual cycle) and the moon’s, and applying the data.

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It’s Not About Frameworks, It’s About Belief Systems

Examining the beliefs we have about our bodies, spiritual or otherwise, is vital to reclaiming body autonomy and self sovereignty.

All of which I’ve outlined above isn’t to say that Gray’s framework is wrong, bad, or should not be used - that’s up to personal preference, your preferred medium in which you want to tell the story of your body.

Gray wrote “Red Moon” and created this system presumably to give language to an experience the world turns away from. So much of this information has been lost: through oppression, through the destroying of cultures, through the subjugation of people who have the ability to give birth. Her book was written over 30 years ago— reproductive health and even spirituality have evolved so much since then. New information brings new insight. This is not a takedown of any person or their ideas.

The purpose of this essay is to deconstruct the colonial biases and lack of menstrual health knowledge that turn these granularly spiritual sciences into guesswork and vibes.

The association of the moon, the menstrual cycle, and lunacy has misogynous, ableist tones. Dismissing the emotions and shifts that come up as undecodable, random “madness” is a cop-out to paying attention to nature’s cycles, including emotional cycles. We can dismantle this patriarchal belief while still honoring the wild nature of the lunar and menstrual cycles. Even the erraticism of these cycles has a discernable pattern and meaning. We can utilize this to gain wisdom for ourselves and our environment.

If Gray’s method did not resonate with you, it’s because it’s not the only way of understanding menstrual and lunar cycles.

What I’m trying to present is just the factual information and foundation in which this framework (and other spiritual menstrual frameworks) must be built on to be used meaningfully.

At the end of the day, spiritual menstrual frameworks cannot be built on a foundation of poor public health education.

We can’t follow this journey without understanding not only the external (lunar) cycle— we have to understand the internal (menstrual) cycle, too. We have to grasp both the inner and outer alchemies occurring.

Using Lunar & Menstrual Cycles for Dreamwork & Inner Alchemy

As a 12th houser (I’m also an astrologer!), dreamwork is my preferred medium to apply the wisdom I’ve gained from tracking lunar and menstrual cycles.

I wrote a book on how to do this: Dream Alchemy With Menstrual and Lunar Cycles!

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A luta continua; vitória é certa,

What comes to mind when you hear the word “fertility?”

For most of us, we immediately think of pregnancy, babies, motherhood, childbearing. But what if I told you that this association is not universal? What if this narrow definition is actually a product of colonial and patriarchal conditioning?

In this essay, we’re going to unpack how the concept of fertility has been weaponized, misinterpreted, and stripped of its true spiritual power. And more importantly, we’re going to reclaim it.

What Is Fertility, Really?

The foundational issue with the way people with wombs view their fertility is that they frame as other people’s property: Your fertility is all about your man or your potential children. This is a patriarchal lie that causes people with wombs to turn away from the importance of their fertility— particularly if they are queer and/or don’t want children.

Your fertility is about your health and your creative limits, your vitality.

How Fertility Is Exploited

The way we understand fertility is distorted through the lens of the capitalist, colonized systems that make up our society.

Because of capitalism, the way we view fertility is rooted in slavery, private property ownership, and human trafficking. We believe that fertility is synonymous with necessarily having children because capitalism conditions us to believe that all resources only exist to be profited from. To a capitalist, what else is fertility for but for having children?

Another way of conceptualizing how capitalism distorts the concept of fertility is to consider how arable land is treated under this system: If there’s a patch of land with fertile soil, it will be planted in. There’s no such thing as what they would violently call “virgin” land under capitalism. Consent from the land itself or the people who live on it is not even an afterthought unless a legal battle is involved. In fact, consent becomes framed as an issue of being denied entitlements— “If I dominate you, what’s yours is mine. Of course it is. Why would I ask instead?”

Not only does this mirror how fertility is reframed and abused, but it reveals how the exploitation of fertility is directly connected to rape culture.

Fertility is Health

The most important reason any person with a womb should care about their fertility, regardless of their desire to be a parent:

Your fertility is an indicator of health.

Under most circumstances— if you haven’t been sterilized nor are you menopausal— diminished fertility is a sign of diminished overall health. Infertility is very often a symptom of an underlying health issue.

Ableism comes together with the patriarchy to frame this as something to feel shame about because the idea is, you should value the possibility of being a mother over your own well-being.

But the truth behind that those violent ideologies is that your infertility is a tool to monitor your health. Infertility is more like a check engine light to pay attention to your health. Infertility can be a sign of all types of unknown health issues, from air pollution exposure to PCOS to even cancer. Even if you’re actively struggling to conceive, your infertility may be trying to tell you that you may require more nurturing and attention before you go on to become a parent.

Decolonizing Fertility Symbols

Even within occult and spiritual traditions, we need to decolonize our understanding of symbols associated with femininity.

Many symbols that we’ve been taught are “feminine” or represent “womanhood” have been interpreted through a Western lens. The West has a very specific way of categorizing things, and that categorization often flattens nuance and erases views that challenge the western hegemony.

For example, fertility symbols are often used interchangeably with symbols of womanhood, but that’s not always the case. Even fertility idols can represent the liminality of gestation or the potential of creation without necessarily representing womanhood or the perceived necessity of fertility to womanhood. Think about why so many African deities associated with fertility are also associated with mirrors.

This reveals something deeper: The West fixates on fertility as the most important indicator of womanhood. This returns to capitalism’s need to use and exploit— woman who is no longer fertile is no longer truly a woman. But that’s ideological nonsense— they are still women, and not all women are fertile. In many Indigenous traditions, infertility is seen as sacred and necessary to community ecosystems. It has a role. It has purpose. Fertility is not reduced to the question of, “What can you give?”

When we collapse fertility into womanhood, we erase the sacred complexity and nuance of both concepts. The patriarchy binds these two concepts together to control women and people with wombs.

Infertility as Sacred Redirection

Infertility is often treated like a personal failing, even in holistic spaces.

What if infertility is the body forcing you to pour your fertility, your creation energy, back into yourself? What if it’s a sign that you’ve been chronically overworking, overextending, violating your own boundaries, dissociating from your truth?

This is important to understand regardless of whether you ever want to get pregnant. Because fertility isn’t just about making babies— it’s about your capacity to create the reality you want for yourself and others in this world. It’s about all the possibilities ahead of you and your reach.

Infertility doesn’t mean you’re weak. It means it’s time to redirect your power. It’s your body saying, “Stop pouring out. Start pouring in.”

Menopause & The Metaphysical Internalization of Fertility

During menopause, fertility doesn’t disappear— it’s internalized. It’s kept within through self-awareness.

Matriarchs often reflect this shift by becoming “the mothers’ mother,” an elder, holding space for people around them at all phases of life— not just to exist in, but to self-actualize in. A different expression is when we see older women appearing to constantly be having the time of their lives, especially after previously being a wife and mother— it’s because their nurturing energy is now directed inwardly to themselves.

This is what fertility looks like when it’s internalized— not “dried up,” not “used up,” but turned inward, deepened, refined. Instead of seeing menopause as loss, we see it as a redirecting of creative power inward.

Fertility as Intentional Power

Fertility means that your life force is within the frequency to create another. Choosing not to is never a personal failing— it means you’re intentional with your power. The same goes for when you improve your health and finances before conceiving. Being intentional with your power is what true body autonomy is.

And infertility does not mean that you’re weak. It means it’s time to redirect your power.

Stop viewing your fertility from the white patriarchal, capitalist lens of “How can I be in service of others” regardless of your body telling you to stop and listen.

Start viewing your fertility as a way to connect with your inner knowing and your heart. Use the waxing and waning and cessation of fertility to understand more deeply where you ARE right now.

Fertility: Beyond Procreation

So where does this leave us? It leaves us with a choice:

We can continue to see fertility through the lens we’ve been given— narrow, patriarchal, extractive.

Or we can choose to see it for what it truly is:

Sacred creative power that ebbs and flows, that can be directed inward or outward, that is not defined by our ability or choice to have children.

Decolonizing fertility means decolonizing our relationship with our own bodies, our own power, our own purpose.

It means listening to the womb—not as a vessel for others, but as a source of wisdom for ourselves.

Rewiring your brain to stop hearing “having a baby” when you hear the word “fertility” is decolonial & reproductive justice work— and so is viewing your fertility as an aspect of body autonomy rather than something to offer other people.

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A luta continua; vitória é certa,

my life has been a road of endless night and asphalt

miles of boundless darkness

with no white light at the end,

no star guiding the way:

fools say the truth only exists where it can be seen;

that’s just a trick of the light.

it was never the darkness that sought to devour me

*Trigger Warning for Black Femicide, Filicide

I’ve always felt a disconnect with the way people talk about past lives. Their recollections always seemed to be so big and dramatic and overimportant to me. They’d recall being lord or a queen, someone with a Wikipedia page or too silenced by history to have one. Even their past life suffering was evidently meaningful and perfectly placed, crafted as suspiciously as a plot device of a story.

The thing is this: Humans love stories. It’s one of our defining traits— but only when the story has meaning. People are only genuinely interested in their past lives if they feel like they validate some type of belief they already have about themselves.

But anti-blackness is a belief no one wants to fully claim. People either won’t accept their anti-blackness because it looks or feels bad, or they’ll accept it partially— as something natural and good, scientifically justified even. But they won’t claim the cruelty nor its weight— not for black victims and not for their own souls as they contribute to anti-black rhetoric and violence. They forfeit part of their humanity by killing their empathy, and in that way, are unable to fully have empathy for themselves or others.

In other words, anti-blackness prevents us from accessing parts of our own consciousness, because it prevents us from seeing things clearly— past, present, & future.

Past Life Trauma Triggers

In the next city over from mine, Nancy Metayer, vice-mayor of Coral Springs, was killed earlier this month by her husband. There was a quiet stillness, a kind of existential hopelessness, that hung in the air for days when it first happened. The hopelessness felt deeper than this incident, deeper than the incidents that followed, deeper even than the systems that allow this violence to proliferate. “Feminine rage” can be quiet— and this rage was ancient and deadly silent.

Nancy Metayer’s murder was among the first in a string of black femicides and filicides dominating American news cycles in the past month. I privately battled with feeling deeply triggered, as a lot of black women were. Black women know intimately how vulnerable we are to being abused and even killed by our partners.

But I was experiencing something else simultaneously: I was triggered by past life trauma in which I was murdered by a partner while I was pregnant. I never received justice. None of my loved ones even found out what truly happened to me and my baby. I was visibly depressed (because my husband was abusing me), so he was able to make up a story that I’d ended my own life without him facing any resistance or questioning. His military status gave him the power and resources to cover up the physical details easily. The retrieval of this past life memory is still fresh for me, so when the news cycle became inundated with violence against black wives, black mothers, black children— I felt it in my heart so deeply that I couldn’t help but viscerally remember again.

It brought up an idea I’d been circling when the Epstein files were first released, detailed with abhorrent abuse: Victims in the files as well as victims of similar but unrelated situations are being triggered by the news. Aren’t past life victims of extreme abuse traumatized too? I felt like I was.

Why are past lives rarely talked about from this framing? If people can remember being Marie Antoinette or Julius Caesar, why aren’t people ever remembering being their victims? Or victims in general?

Past lives are often spoken about with agency because we like to think we have control over our lives. But the truth is, being put in situations where our agency is limited or eliminated is much more common to the human experience. We like to think of ourselves as survivors instead of victims, but some people don’t survive. And that’s the truth of many of our past lives— we didn’t survive the suffering.

The Cosmology & Reproductive Importance of Past Lives

(I’m not trying to impose any past life framework; this is just the framework I’m working with. I feel that the rest of this essay is still generally compatible with other past life frameworks.)

In Kongo, Akan, & Bantu cosmologies, past lives and reincarnation are inseparable from ancestral elevation. The phrase “You are your ancestors” is literal, and generational trauma takes on a new dimension: You can only incarnate from within your own bloodline. Many say that you are most likely to incarnate into and from your direct bloodline, but may instead incarnate into a relative’s branch if your direct bloodline ends. We reincarnate this way because breaking generational curses is vital to our soul development. Staying within our bloodline allows us to focus on those generational curses specific to our families and work them out with the same general pool of souls while playing out different roles with each other throughout lifetimes. “Ascension” is possible individually because your bloodline is working together to elevate each generation’s consciousness. When we talk about our past lives, we’re also talking about our ancestors’ lives. Your ancestors’ trauma is often quite literally your own past life trauma.

This has many implications for the African diaspora. The colonial, anti-black, white patriarchal trauma that our ancestors suffered, we also suffered. Their experiences are ours. This also means that the anti-black violence written in history books, including the things too harrowing for history books— we experienced them. Those experiences are part of our past life memories.

This also means that there’s a dimension of viscerality regarding black people with wombs. Through the act of giving birth, we act as a conduit for that trauma across time. If energy cannot be destroyed and emotions (trauma) are energy, generational trauma remains in a bloodline until is transmuted. So when trauma hasn’t been fully transmuted, it’s transmitted by the mother during fetal gestation and birth. Black mothers are an unconscious container for those memories— people with wombs tend to have more DNA than people who don’t. So when black people with wombs witness (even secondhand) abuse against black mothers and children, it somatically triggers past life trauma even if it’s not accompanied with a conscious memory.

Anti-Black Violence: The Collective Shadow Side

Black people represent the shadow side of humanity. This isn’t inherent; this is based on people’s reaction to us. It’s a reflection of them, not us. All the negative aspects of humanity, everything part of the seedy underbelly of the world is attributed to black people: crime, poverty, violence, ignorance, despair. People work overtime to make sure reality reflects this, even to non-black people’s shared detriment, but it doesn’t make it the truth. All races of people are vulnerable to these things. It’s just easier to attribute them all to black people, just like how people project things they don’t accept about themselves onto others.

So when it comes to collective memory and past lives, these black experiences are muted. Having the ability to make your ego & self-concept like water and understand that your current identity isn’t who you’ve always been is vital to past life remembrance. Anti-blackness, whether covert or latent, is a huge barrier to past life remembrance because of the necessity of cognitive dissonance.

The type of extreme violence people have witnessed or inflicted against black people in their past lives is corrupting, especially when it’s normalized. Their hatred or indifference toward black people is necessarily a projection. Because they won’t reckon with their anti-blackness, they lost that part of their humanity, their heart, and their memory. It can be retrieved, but only through a genuine change of heart and actions.

How Afropessimism and “Love & Light” are Connected

It always stood out to me how few people with past life memories recall anti-black trauma, neither from the receiving nor inflicting ends. But it makes sense when you consider that people are much less likely to recall past life trauma in which they haven’t found some level of acceptance.

When you think about the ways in which much of the world still denies that anti-blackness is as impactful as it is, it makes sense that those past life memories would be inaccessible. If a nonblack (or even black) person can’t accept their anti-blackness in their current life, of course they wouldn’t be able to access past life memories in which they were anti-black. Their ego tells them, “I am a person who is not anti-black,” blocking them from questioning their identity. That includes in past lives. On top of that, much of the world largely denying the impact of global anti-blackness, currently and historically, means that people who are of that mindset wouldn’t be able to fully grasp any of their past life motives that were anti-black. They aren’t even able to understand how the anti-black system they lived in coerced and rewarded them for being anti-black. To them, “it was just a different time,” which offers no criticism, analysis, or even genuine acceptance of what was really happening.

The way blackness is perceived by the world as hidden and nefarious fully carries over to the esoteric. Anti-black racism is also weaponized in metaphysical circles through language: “white magic” and “love & light” are good while “black magic” and shadow work are decidedly bad or at least dangerous in a way white magic can never be. None of these things have any actual metaphysical truth to it. This ideology is just another way to demonize and project onto the unknown. And of course, black magic is associated with black people and African Spiritual Traditions (ATRs).

Metaphysically, this use of language reinforces anti-blackness in a more abstract way: through the idea that truth can only exist in the light where’s it’s visible, while falsehood can only proliferate in darkness where concealment is a confession of deception.

And this reflects in the way the western mind conceptualizes consciousness and struggle in general, which is relevant to past lives: Bad experiences should be forgotten. Move on, move quickly. Don’t self reflect, just keep moving. This necessarily has to be the mindset of a colonizer or a colonial subject: “There is too much abuse on the horizon to tend to the abuse happening now. If we stop moving, we’ll feel the weight of what we’ve done or what we’ve endured, so we must keep moving.” It’s an extremely violent way to treat consciousness.

Love is a Time-Traveling Medicine

I’m not encouraging anyone to seek out traumatic past life experiences, not even to remedy internalized anti-blackness. Past life work is deep shadow work across multiple dimensions. So if a past life memory hasn’t made itself known to you, it’s because your mind can’t withstand or understand it. That can change, especially if you do the work to uncross your mind from belief systems that are hostile toward empathy, especially all forms of anti-blackness. Any mindset that encourages you to be cruel or dismissive toward yourself or others will keep your mind closed.

What I am saying is that it’s important to acknowledge the trauma and abuse occurring around you. Don’t bombard yourself with it— you’ll become frozen with grief. But be aware. You don’t have to close off your heart or make excuses for the injustice going on around you because it would be too much for you to emotionally take in otherwise. Pace surrendering to your compassionate heart instead of drowning and losing yourself in it.

When you open your heart, you open your eyes— all three.

A luta continua; vitória é certa,

Sankofa: A West Afrikan Akan word, meaning “to go back and fetch it,” requires us to look back in order to see forward. The concept is symbolized by a heart shaped Adinkra symbol or a bird with its head turned backwards balancing an egg on its back.

Sankofa is a commitment to the value of memory because the loss of memory reduces our ability to radically examine ourselves, our ancestors, and the opportunities we create for future generations.

Sankofa recognizes the significance of weighing the utility of our past upon how we carefully, cautiously position our future (symbolized by the egg) in balance with our present realities. In other words, we cannot use our past to imagine our future without engaging our present context.

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The first time I heard about susto was in a conversation about trauma with a friend over a decade ago. I’d been sexually assaulted by a friend that year and struggled with chronic dissociation ever since.

It wasn’t only the obvious things that triggered me, like being cornered on public transit by a man I wouldn’t give my number to. Anytime I sensed danger anywhere around me — whether real or imagined, directed at me or not — I shut down. My body didn’t feel like it wasn’t mine anymore. It wasn’t just the physical violation of my body that made me feel like I no longer belonged in it. Something else happened that I didn’t know how to describe: I’d “leave.”

I didn’t know where I’d “go” in those moments, I just knew that I wasn’t really there. There was no fantasy I escaped to, no pain I ruminated on — I just was gone. I didn’t know where to even begin to locate myself again.

As I explained this to my friend, thinking I probably wasn’t making much sense, they said very simply, “Oh yes. That’s susto.” They explained it as a condition in which the spirit feels too unsafe to inhabit the physical body, which compels it to periodically “leave.” A psychiatrist might call it trauma-induced dissociation, a psychological defense mechanism.

Understanding susto became a bridge to the medicine to heal myself. I discovered a foil to susto in the Tibetan Buddhist practice, “dream yoga.”

Although I’m influenced by all spiritual belief systems, I’m not really a Buddhist. My foundational understanding of things comes from the African diasporic cosmologies of my ancestors and western Jungian influence from my psychotherapist mother. So I always viewed the dreamscape as an alternate mode of perception. Dreams were another dimension of reality, just not fully formed. Even when I was a small child, my dreams always symbolically reflected the truth of what was happening around me, or things that were coming into fruition.

I don’t remember how I was initially introduced to Tibetan Buddhism and dream yoga, but I remember being hooked by two questions:

“When you’re asleep, are you aware of it? And if you aren’t, how would you know if you were dead right now?”

Similar to dissociation and death, sleep is a state of unconsciousness (though each of these occur at varying levels). In Tibetan Buddhism, practicing lucidity in dreams is essential to having the awareness to navigate death and samsara. I was a natural lucid dreamer, but I immediately started thinking about what it would be like if my experience of death and the afterlife was the same as I experienced life: unaware and in a state of susto. That sounded like more suffering on top of the suffering I was already experiencing.

Dream yoga is essentially using lucid dreaming as a tool to train the mind to retain active awareness even when you’re in those technically unconscious states. To someone who experiences susto often, this can sound harrowing. When susto is caused by trauma, your body can feel acutely aware of your own suffering. That awareness feels too visceral, too jarring, too painful. Your spirit ejects from your body because the awareness is too much.

As a Buddhist practice, dream yoga is not meant to end suffering, but to change your relationship with suffering.

As strange as it may seem, Tibetan Buddhism acknowledging lucidity as inseparable from suffering felt like a wave of relief. It wasn’t dismissing my pain or telling me to suppress it. I started intentionally treating my lucid dreams as “practice runs.” Every time I dreamt about a current or pending experience, I had an opportunity for a practice run. A situation I was experiencing or would soon experience would simulate itself in my dreams, and I used my lucidity to create space for myself to emotionally process it. Even when the dream was disturbing, my lucidity gave me a degree of separation from it because I knew I was safe in that moment.

My susto and unconscious suffering had been saying, “This is happening to me, but I’m not here.” Once I started dream yoga, my lucid suffering would say, “This is happening and I’m here with it, but I’m not identical to what’s happening.” Lucidity allowed me to keep the intimacy of an experience while not identifying with it. I didn’t have to numb my emotions because my emotions stabilized themselves as I allowed them to flow.

In regular dreams and in life in general, we’re totally immersed in the experience and the emotions that result from it. But with lucid dreaming, there’s an added layer of awareness: You’re inside the experience AND you’re acting as an observer, watching it all play out. That added layer is what allows suffering to be felt without being overwhelming.

Instead of being subject to the whims of susto, dream yoga equipped me with witness consciousness. Over time, I became able to observe my emotions without drowning in them. The fear still registered, the meaning still mattered, and my body still responded — but my consciousness didn’t escape me anymore.

This wasn’t a fast or pleasant process. Lucidity means you can see the whole picture — all layers at once. There’s no room for dismissing things by telling myself “It’s not that deep,” when I could see how deep it really was in front of me. That’s not light work.

Even though it’s a Tibetan practice, learning how to navigate different realms while staying lucid and grounded was necessary for me to step into the Hoodoo role of being a two-headed rootworker. When I look back on it, it feels like it was initiatory.

Dream yoga helped me to restore my psychological and spiritual sovereignty. I don’t have to view my body as a site of trauma.

Once upon a time, something happened to me: I was sexually assaulted by someone I trusted. But once I looked at that trauma unflinchingly, without blinking, over and over, all that was left was a story, a memory. Yes, that happened to me, but it doesn’t define the entirety of my experience.

Now, I don’t leave my body because I feel unsafe. In fact, I love being in my body. I love experiencing life as me. And when I’m feeling adventurous, I can visit anywhere I choose, even if I don’t take my body with me — because now, I always know where I am.

A luta continua; vitória é certa,

For many people with wombs, normalized reproductive violence conditions us to associate our bodies with trauma and confusion.

Systemic violence has the effect of altering our experience of reality. This works on a material level (i.e., People believe period pain is normal because period pain isn’t prioritized or treated as an issue by the medical industry) and on a psychological level (i.e., “If everyone I know has a painful period, then perhaps that’s just what it means to be a woman.”)

As a result, some people will associate rejecting these traumatic, dissociative experiences as rejecting womanhood altogether. But systemically, the dissociation is by design and intentionally violent. It’s the psychological arm of targeted reproductive violence.

Virtually all people with wombs, regardless of gender identity, are conditioned to have dissociative experiences concerning their wombs because:

1. Medical professionals minimize menstrual pain and dysfunction (ex: the way the pain of IUD insertion and removal is minimized; doctors who tell you debilitatingly heavy or painful periods are normal despite potentially being symptoms of serious illness).

2. Period shame / the menstrual concealment imperative

3. Society’s and other people’s reactions to puberty and first periods are often traumatic experiences for people with wombs.

4. Lack of menstrual health education, which causes people with wombs to view their bodies as incomprehensible, hostile, and random.

5. Western society does not respect or acknowledge adolescence as a liminal, gestational state of being. Instead, children with wombs are adultified as soon as they get their first period even though they still have child psyches.

Part of the work of decolonizing our minds is pointing out and naming the ways our reality has been distorted by colonialism. Systemic reproductive violence creates the conditions in which having a period becomes a dissociating, painful experience.

Many people reject menstruation as a bodily function (and sometimes by extension, womanhood as an identity) because of how they associate it with necessary and pointless suffering.

Rejecting womanhood as an identity or menstruation as a bodily function should be rooted in affirming who you are, not rejecting traumatic experiences you’ve been taught to associate with womanhood. Knowing yourself should always come from a place of love and understanding, not fear and misunderstanding.

People with wombs absolutely do not need to identify as women. However, your understanding of your gender identity should not come from a colonized rhetoric that intentionally seeks to make trauma synonymous with womanhoods.

The colonizer does not own the concept of womanhood, nor does their binary understanding of it reflect the way humans actually see themselves.

Girlhood: Our First Safe Space

Growing breasts and starting your period are jarring events on their own. Puberty forces us to reckon with the fact that inner and outer transformation are not always symmetrical. And for people with wombs, the pain from the discrepancy comes from being adultified, sexualized, and assumed to have adult knowledge and intent despite still being a child.

For some of us, this is the first time we’re meaningfully confronted with this reality. For others, it rubbed salt in an awareness that pre-existed puberty (especially due to anti-blackness, xenophobia, gender dysphoria, etc).

Many girls and people with wombs respond to this mismatch by retreating to their inner worlds: a phase of life and period of being affectionately named “girlhood.”

The interiority of girlhood resonates with many children who were perceived as feminine, regardless of gender identity or if they actually saw themselves as “feminine,” because they become aware of occupying a liminal space despite perhaps not having the language to name it precisely.

But that’s essentially what girlhood is — an escape from the real world for survival, to engage with your true Self instead of the Self society tries to force you into becoming. Many people with wombs learned to dissociate to cope with the jarring physical transformations brought on by puberty specifically through girlhood.

Some children and teens (not all) also respond by performing womanhood while still maintaining that sense of interiority, keeping a part of their emotional selves cut off from the rest of the world. After all, all of the conditioning from the world is encouraging them to do this.

The interiority of girlhood becomes even more of an escape, a way in which children are able to protect and express their authentic selves in a safe space without unwanted intrusion from the outside world.

The experience of “girlhood” primes us to simultaneously carry contradictions and disconnect within our bodies.

For many of us, the liminality of girlhood never really leaves us until we do the intentional work to receive and integrate the fractured pieces of the psyche (i.e. inner child and inner teenager work, especially focused on experiences during puberty).

But if this liminality was handled from a more indigenous perspective, the result would be integration, a rite of passage into adulthood — not a collage of confusing, traumatic experiences that force your psyche to split.

Period Trauma: From the Doctor’s Office to the Home

No matter how much parents want to outsource (or ignore) their children’s reproductive health education, the way we understand our bodies always starts at home.

It’s not accidental that many people with wombs remember their first period as a traumatic experience. Not because it was scary and new, but because their caretakers and the adults around them (especially maternal figures) shamed them, adultified them, threatened them, or even abused them.

As a result, many adolescents who just started menstruating associate their periods with hostility in the home. Some remember their mothers beginning to view them as sexual competition, uncles and aunts accusing them of being “fast,” and the lack of compassion and resources for such a life-altering change.

In other words, many people start their period with the baseline feeling of, “My body changed in a way I don’t understand, and people are shaming me for it.”

This belief is only reinforced outside the home. Classmates start looking for reasons to humiliate you via your period. And when you start dating, the idea of desire quickly becomes complicated because your period can make you seem repulsive to the same person who desired you just a moment before.

The first gynecological appointment is when this shame is put into a medical environment and codified as biological and social reality, crystallizing the belief: “This is just how it is when you have a vagina.”

You can be experiencing menstrual pain so excruciating that you can’t move, bleeding so heavy that you need uninterrupted access to a bathroom, yeast infections or bacterial vaginosis so chronic that it occurs every single cycle—

But gynecologists often assure us, “This is normal. This isn’t a big deal. It happens to everyone. Don’t worry about it.”

Once we enter a gynecologist’s office, the gaslighting the world has enforced on us becomes complete and absolute. If a doctor said none of this is worth worrying about, it must be true. It must just be what it means to have a womb.

The Misogynist Roots of Modern Gynecology

It’s important to remember that the roots of gynecology are misogynist and anti-black. That isn’t to say the study of the womb itself is misogynist and anti-black — but the system modern gynecology is built on, is. Modern gynecology firmly belongs to the colonizer.

Womb-centered reproductive education existed far before modern gynecology, and in many cases, these traditional practices had a better understanding of the reproductive system than Eurocentric modern medicine does.

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is an example of a well-preserved practice with complex knowledge about womb health that significantly predates modern gynecology.

European concepts like “the wandering womb” never existed in places like Africa or South America until colonization.

The legacy of modern gynecology is one of violence and non-consent. J. Marion Sims, often called the Father of Modern Gynecology, was known to use enslaved black women to experiment on without anesthesia. Their names were Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey, though the names of at least nine others have been lost to history.

A century later, during the early-mid 20th century, black traditional midwives in the American south were virtually becoming outlawed. Black midwives, many of which practiced Hoodoo, were former slaves, or were illiterate — yet highly (and secretly) requested by even wealthy white women to help deliver their children — posed a formidable challenge to the white patriarch’s medicine, which was positioned as better. More scientific, less savage.

For the white patriarch, the black midwife challenged their gynecological authority. Legislation was passed in an attempt to prevent traditional black midwives from practicing, like mandatory testing in the white and segregated part of town.

The version of gynecology we’re left with in the 21st century is intentionally opaque, full of misogynistic misinformation, and does not respect consent. This is the version of gynecology that normalizes doctors gaslighting patients and treating them without informed consent with the patriarchal attitude, “I know what’s best for them.”

The corruption is so deep that having a black woman gynecologist, is not a guarantee that you won’t be medically victimized. Their education is fundamentally violent, which reflects in the way people with wombs feel about gynecology in general:

“I don’t feel heard or understood, no matter how much I try to communicate my condition.” This belief gets internalized — an indirect form of medical violence.

Indigenous Perspectives: Adolescence as a Liminal Space

Many indigenous traditions around the world treat adolescence as its own distinct phase of development, not just socially and physically, but spiritually and psychologically as well. Adolescence is acknowledged as initiatory— a time to figure out who you are.

My personal favorites are those that recognize puberty as a liminal space. Some Kongo and Bantu traditions dictate that children going through adolescence don’t even have a gender because adolescence is such a gestational space. There is no assigned gendered social function before you’re initiated into adulthood. You are understood as someone who is still becoming.

I mentioned earlier in this essay that some children choose to externally conform to womanhood while privately experiencing the world through girlhood. Sometimes when they grow older, they continue leaning into performing a perfect “femininity,” viewing the trauma they experienced from puberty as a rite of passage — what it means to be a woman.

But this westernized view of what adolescence is, is necessarily rooted in trauma and dissociation.

In many different indigenous traditions, puberty is seen as a rite of passage, but the thing that makes it so important is not trauma, nor is it the distancing from childhood (a phase in which children in the west are conditioned to want to speed through because children have little autonomy).

In many indigenous traditions, puberty is a rite of passage because it’s a time of gaining awareness of your own autonomy.

The west fetishizes children’s autonomy when they begin puberty without investing in giving children the tools to make good choices. In fact, the west specifically preys on the disorienting change in autonomy. Children wanting to act like adults without understanding what that really means is how children are adultified and then victimized.

This issue in the way autonomy is presented to adolescents is also related to how the west does not acknowledge puberty as a liminal space: transitioning from childhood, but still not yet an adult.

Children don’t often have the space and support to adjust psychologically to the physical changes of puberty. More and more, spaces and entertainment media specifically for “tweens” and teenagers are disappearing.

This societal denial of the liminal space from child to adult necessarily creates conditions where adolescents are in situations that are too adult for them. Because adolescents are vulnerable and encouraged to claim an autonomy they do not fully understand, their exploitation is justified (”They knew what they were doing”) and their inability to give informed consent in these situations is erased or questioned.

The way the medical industry approaches womb health further conditions people with wombs to not know how to ground themselves in their somatic intuition: “What feels physically wrong or ‘off’ in my body? Is my body telling me ‘no?’” Our experiences are routinely invalidated by medical professionals who we trust to treat us.

In espiritismo, there is a concept called susto, in which trauma can cause the spirit to periodically “leave” the body because it feels unsafe. Susto can be chronic, especially when the trauma is triggered again.

Whenever trauma causes someone with a womb to dissociate at the doctor’s office, or during a sexual experience, or when their period is about to start— the psychospiritual understanding of this is susto. Susto is intentionally baked into the conditioning of how people with wombs interact with their bodies because it makes us easier to control.

Modern Womb & Reproductive Health is Inherently Dissociative

Returning to the question, “Period-induced gender dysphoria, or systemic gendered abuse?” I hope you now have the understanding that the latter is systemic and the reality of virtually everyone with a womb in the western world. That is, an artificial reality constructed by colonizers specifically to oppress people with wombs.

You can’t disentangle whether your discomfort with your period is the former until you fully acknowledge the latter.

Acknowledging systemic reproductive abuse against people with wombs requires acknowledging how it has colored your experience. It requires separating identity crafted out of survival and circumstance from what you actually like and resonate with.

Interested in taking the first step in understanding how to repair your relationship with your period? I offer customized period care based on your astrology chart for just $20.

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