One day, sitting by the beach and watching the waves come and go, beckoning me to join my water to theirs, I thought to myself, “I am a sun worshiper,” as I enjoyed the sun’s warmth on my skin. And a voice somewhere in my memory, a voice from the night I arrived on this earth, whispered, “Remember, remember.” In an instant, I remembered that I am connected to the sea and the tides. The rhythm of the lapping waves awakened in me the memory of the divinity of my own rhythms: the sea and I were one. I realized that I am connected to and part of Nature, and there can be nothing more holy than the divine cycles which connect us to who we are.
We are 70-98% water. The same salt water that fills the sea fills my blood. The rivers within me are connected to the rivers of Earth. Sitting in the sun, I realized that the energy of the sun not only shines directly on us, but is also reflected from the moon, causing a tidal pull of the water on our planet. As the sea and I are one, my own waters also follow a rhythm of natural cycles. These natural rhythms must be followed to bring our relationships back into balance. This book explores the cycles that define our lives, offers ways to heal our relationships, and beckons us to return to Nature.
There is no coincidence that this book has thirteen chapters. Thirteen is a sacred number to women. The Moon makes thirteen cycles around the Earth per year. Most women have thirteen menstrual cycles per year. My intent is to present the stories and information in these thirteen chapters in a melodious, winding, weaving, encircling, all encompassing way, the way a woman thinks, the way a woman feels, the way a woman IS. Some of the chapters in this book are short and some are long, but then, this is a book that advocates change, not constancy.
“Wo-man” and “fe-male” are words used by western cultures to define the feminine gender in relation to men. We have no word in English to communicate a different vision for being female, and this lack of language reflects the existing lack of understanding of feminine principles.
Observing the similarities of our dual nature to the waxing and waning of the moon provides the most obvious description of how and who we are as females. It is the continually changing nature of the moon’s reflection of the sun’s light that governs the gravitational pull of the tides on earth. The continually changing nature of women governs the pull between Life and Death. Every woman’s cycle contains both in perfect balance. Women are Lifegivers who intrinsically understand through the feminine principle the power and timing of Life and Death. There is no more poignant place to seek understanding of our place and our purpose on Earth. Women understand duality so well because we are dual. Cycles of Life and Death, guided by our own inner timing, run in our blood.
The scope of this book is to help better understand the gifts of having a dual nature and how to use those gifts to heal our relationships through dreaming, spirituality and intuition, and our innate creativity. We will look at the moist, rich, darkness of the time of bleeding, and I will re-introduce the ancient idea that menstruation is a time of purification, listening to our intuition and our dreams, birthing new ideas, and moving deeper into understanding of our own spirituality, all of which greatly enhance our relationships.
This book explores the similarities of our feminine nature to all cycles of life. Like everything in life and like the sunlight’s reflection through the moon that pulls our inner waters, women are continually changing. Each change brings a gift and a different view of the world. All things in Nature move in cycles, and these cycles define Life and Death on Earth. Simple observation of Nature shows cycles in the rotation of the earth, bringing day and night, or tree rings that indicate yearly growth patterns. Scientific knowledge of cycles in all life expanded in 1729 when it was discovered that the Mimosa Pudica plant had daily cycles, closing its leaves at night and opening them in the day. Yet even as science explored cycles of life, one of the most obvious and important life cycles, that of women’s bleeding, was pushed underground by the politics of our time.
We will explore in this book reasons that women’s cycles have been ignored, dismissed, or pathologized, and how those actions have affected our place in society, preventing us from truly being who we are. Our Western Patriarchal society has promoted progress and constancy at the price of slower, gentler harmony with Nature. Learning to respect the wisdom of our natural cycles is a step towards healing and growth. As part of the natural universe, women have cycles that have always been with us and are the essence of life itself. It is time to awaken to the value and power inherent in another way of seeing the world, through the eyes of feminine vision.