Six years ago the doctor asked me if I wanted anti-depressants and suggested I saw a psychotherapist for eating disorders. I’d had some big life changes and reacted with a huge amount of emotional turmoil and stress. I lost about 12kg and went down to 42kg within a few months. My periods stopped and I had no energy or enthusiasm for anything in life.
I thought I didn’t have an eating disorder because I wasn’t obsessed with my weight or my body – I just didn’t care, about myself or anything else. I shut myself down as a woman, to myself and the world, and gave up.
In the last 6 years my life has changed massively. While a few things have changed on the outside, they are nothing compared to the inner re-vamp that has been – and is still – taking place on the inside. I have energy for life and I actually want to be here and I’m finally starting to love being a woman.
Not that I wanted to be a man, more that I just didn’t want to be here at all in the first place and secondly, I didn’t want to feel and connect to the delicacy and power of how it feels to be myself, as a woman.
Slowly, and with the support of esoteric practitioners, I began to see and feel that I wasn’t broken, and – amazingly – there was nothing to fix. I was just hurt, and I got the support I needed and the tools to start to deal with those hurts and to start taking care of myself.
I got to see that I had been addicted to getting it right, and, underneath a perfectly calm-looking facade, addicted to stress: the drama, the rush, the working things out, the needing to ask 20 people the same thing… just to be sure it was the ‘right’ decision, and that nothing could possibly go wrong.
Having designated myself as Head Girl of Nailing Life at an early age and made it a sort of secret life ambition, I had this fixation with getting somewhere, being better, and thinking I had to work hard to get there. I even tried to make the Ageless Wisdom teachings into rules and found that it didn’t work. To my disappointment, and exasperation, there was no dogma to follow, no rule book to abide by, no one telling me what to do… and no perfection to be recognised for. Instead, I started to find that the more I let go, the easier life became and the easier I am on myself. I can be in life as an active and responsible participant but without having to think about it, because there is no right and wrong. Just infinite moments of choices to be continuously made that are either loving and truthful, or not, and then naturally results and consequences of those choices.
I made some changes to my life and started looking after myself; going to bed early, eating nourishing foods and not being controlling about food, generally letting go of that which did not belong in and around me and opening up to people more so I could let people in.
But my body wasn’t just going to give me a period in exchange for a couple of early nights. It is asking me to make some fundamental and consistent changes to my life: like pay attention to the quality I move in not just once a day while making my bed, but 24/7… and to enjoy and bathe in how deliciously light and expansive it feels to move in and with that connection.
I joined an online programme to look more closely at my period cycle, and discovered that even though I don’t have my periods, my body is still going through a cycle. Makes so much sense – just because we don’t see the Moon every night it doesn’t mean it’s not there and like its gravitational dance with Earth is not causing tide to ebb and flow. I had known that we’re always connected to cycles, but had chosen not to pay attention to it, or to practically apply it, and so it remained as knowledge in my head and nothing more.
Following advice from my medical practitioner, I’m now applying bio identical hormonal creams to give my body the support that it needs and I can feel that there is a rhythm with that. My body is trying to ovulate. There are changes to my breasts, how connected I am to my body to be able to actually have a sense of my ovaries, differences in cervical mucus… Once I started to pay attention to it, I saw that my body is always communicating something to me and it’s up to me to listen or not.
I learned that there are times of the cycle where we are naturally inclined to go more inwards, and other times where the focus is on outward expression of that depth. And I noticed a pattern: that often, when I felt the pull to go inwards, I would counteract it by making life and work complicated and stressful, when in fact, it needn’t be at all.
Through charting how my body is feeling at the end of every day, I felt more aware of how I’m feeling at different times of the day, not just at the end when I was charting. To me this has been a revelation: it wasn’t something I had to put on my to do list or set an alarm to do, it just started happening without me even thinking about it. I experienced that it wasn’t that hard to connect to my body, just a choice to be made from moment to moment to remember to stay in the flow of that connection and not get distracted or lost in whatever I am doing. I’ve begun to see much more than ever before how much I have wanted to not feel things and not deal with situations, conveniently checking out into the perceived safety of my head whenever things got a little bit too intense.
Paying more attention to the quality of how I am moving meant that I started to notice the quality of everything else: my thoughts, the space around me, energies coming through me and other people. In a really simple way… not good or bad, just… what does it feel like?
I don’t have my periods back, but the whole experience is so enriching and supporting me to build a loving relationship with myself where I trust myself and what I can feel, and have my own back. I am loving learning to let go more and more and learning to live from how I feel in my body: do I feel a quality of space and lightness in my body and a steadiness and a consistency that I can trust, or am I in some kind of drama, delay or dilemma? When I stay with the steady consistency, I feel in the flow of life. Standing in the full flow of the stream of life and trying to build a wall, or even trying to send it back the other way is no longer quite the appealing game it used to be.
There is much more of an ease and a gentleness with how I move and am with myself now. I no longer resent my body for reflecting back to me something that I don’t want to see and patterns that I don’t want to let go of and change. I am discovering that being a woman is absolutely delicious and that this ease, grace and beauty in how I move is not something I have to try to make or be. It is already there, within me, and is now beginning to unfold, unfurl and truly blossom.
By B, UK
For further inspiration..
What do stress and stillness have to do with my menstrual cycle?
Being truly ourselves and allowing the joy to flow again..
Women in Livingness Blog 
Every time we can receive the little messages our body is offering us. Messages that can be a blessing when we surrender and let go. We can trust our senses and honour the beauty of living each moment with no thinking if it’s right or wrong, just be in the simplicity of our stillness is more than enough.
Such a beautiful experience is here presented.
The fact of not having your periods was a wake up call from your body. By you don’t judge it and open up you could estabblish a very different relationship with yourself that today feels more joyful, tender, consistent and respectful. A gift for all to receive, thank you B
It’s really amazing to see how much our body responds when we respond to it
Checking in with the body consciously is exposing as you come to realise that most of the time we are ‘not there’, but off reminiscing, ruminating, regurgitating conversations, fantasising about the future etc – no wonder we are so exhausted and our body is the result of that. Thank you for sharing what has been happening with your body and how the power that not living ‘connected’ can play out. There is a richness and nurturing that is present for each of us when we choose to be present and love the body that moves, reflects consciously and makes choices with us.
Checking in with our body during the day makes so much sense – for when we don’t situations that are harming us are let to continue on until our body is forced to present a big illness for us to face. Better to be willing to be honest earlier rather than letting things go to a point of no return.
I am feeling the depth of sensitivity that you are now applying to life, B and the exquisiteness and inner beauty that is unfolding from within. Truly inspiring.
A beautiful appreciation of deepening your awareness of the rhythm and flow of your body. An inspiration for all.
Periods (or the absence of) can be an amazing communication to any woman about what is happening in and with the body. Each month is a cycle to reflect back upon and the more we can do this the more we can take on board the messages that come from the body and learn to heed things. As an example, when we consider that we can be eating certain foods and know that they make us feel unwell (tired, or bloated or grumpy etc) then we have the choice to not eat them and experience life without these symptoms. This is perhaps easier to see as an effect. But with the period and any symptoms associated around it or the cycle, it means looking further back – not just what you ate in the last 24 hours but considering how you have been with yourself in the last 4 weeks leading up to your period (or the absence of it). This I find fascinating and amazing, and offers us an immense opportunity to explore with no judgements. There is a small part of me that also finds this annoying to have to do – and this is the little voice or little part of me that does not want to take this divine opportunity and responsibility being offered and instead wants to stay stuck in the experience of the symptoms. But I also know that at some point the voice will also say enough us enough and then there is no holding back on deepening this relationship with the body and the woman that I am. Thank you once again B for your sharing.
Awesome sharing B – your appreciation of the changes you have embraced, your acceptance of yourself in life and as a woman and the letting go of perfections and impositions on your body are deeply inspiring for any woman to read about.
Thanks B. for sharing your experience, lots to learn for me as well from your blog. As women we have so much bombarded upon us as to how we are supposed to be, to look, what roles we are to perform, etc, and a lot of those images and beliefs are very off-putting. No wonder so many women don’t want to be women! I felt like that as well from the role models around me and images in the media, I didn’t realise I could just be me, instead of aiming for some perfected ideal of womanhood. Your final line is so gorgeous and a beautiful message to all women (and men) “It is already there, within me, and is now beginning to unfold, unfurl and truly blossom.”
Well said Melinda – the bombardment on us as women is relentless, and so it takes a willingness to see through this and stay steady with who we are. Something every one of us as women has the capacity to live, with no perfection here being asked 😉