Ep.7/ Healing the sister wound through Cycle Positivity
Release comparison and celebrate yourself with this simple embodiment practice.
5 minute read
8/2/24, Day 17, Late Summer
You see her. Across the room. On the street. In your mother's group or gym class. She just radiates! Oooozing life and a magnetic je ne sais quoi that leaves you feeling flat and wondering 'how did I f#ck it up today, when earlier I felt so good?''.
Or maybe you just feel blah. Full stop. And she just seems so..... urghhhh...
Your cycle is a roadmap for meeting feelings of comparison and competitiveness, in an empowered and embodied way.
It is natural to compare ourselves to others.
Yet this doesn’t need to cause destructive emotional eruptions within ourselves or towards another being.
The answer lies in understanding how to shift between your Inner Summer and your Inner Autumn ‘cross-over’.
Inner Summer is your time of self-expression and aliveness. It is the peak of your fertility when the juiciness and creativity of life flows right through you. This is the follicular ovulatory menstrual phase AND the life stage between your 30s & 40s.
It’s a time when you can feel invincible, high on life, and at the peak of your capability. (see here for an article on the shadow side of summer)
Towards the end of Inner Summer is the cross-over into Inner Autumn.
In your menstrual cycle, this crossover can be approximately 1-3 days, and is the time the body realises it is no longer fertile. It is also the mid-late 40s life stage – the time before perimenopause.
The Autumn cross-over can be a wobbly season.
You are not yet in the power of your Inner Autumn (premenstrual luteal phase or Harvest Queen life stage) nor are you at the peak of summer. You can wake up in the morning feeling invincible and get side-swiped by anxiety and futility the next.
Your Autumn cross-over doesn’t have to be a door for destructive comparison.
Comparison is one way the Sister Wound can show up in our life.
The sister wound lives in all of us.
It is the silent force that tells us we won't fit in with a new group of women. It manifests in many ways and can be heightened during your Autumn cross-over and Inner Autumn phase of your cycle and life.
Sister Wound comparison can manifest as:
Self-loathing, depression, apathy, competitiveness, aggression/anger (towards yourself and other women), passive aggression (being nice, but secretly undermining), overt or covert sabotage of others, jealousy, envy, fear, lone-wolf syndrome, shyness, fear of being seen/heard and an inability to feel safe to connect.
Left unhealed it can be destructive.
What would it mean
If you could celebrate others AND yourself?
You have the power to gently heal and integrate these parts of yourself so that you can celebrate the fertility of others, AND your cross-over into a new season of self.
CYCLE PRACTICE #7
Use this simple guide to catch comparison and shift to an empowered positive perspective.
When you start to experience a comparison trigger emerging:
Catch it and give witness to what you're feeling without judging it or trying to change it. This is about building an awareness of your internal response to something outside of you.
Be with the emotion that bubbles up without trying to change it. This can be crunchy at first. We have been taught to hide/medicate/eradicate uncomfortable emotions.
See if you can name what you're feeling. Still don’t judge it or try to change it. Can you say it out loud? Write it down? Whilst looking at the feeling, see if you can sense whether there is another story behind that feeling. If it serves, write down that story. Visually witnessing something written down can help it land in a deeper level of our psyche.
Hold grace for that emotion and story. Still don’t try and change it. Holding grace means allowing the emotion to be what it is without judgement or criticism of yourself for feeling it.
If uncomfortable feelings arise, try and gently breathe deeply and slowly through your nose into the middle of chest, just below your heart on your breastbone.
Now dip into your own cycle awareness. Where are you at in your cycle? Summer? Autumn? Winter? Spring?
Now feel into the power of the season you are in. (Read here about the different powers of the cycle seasons).
Can you find one or two things to celebrate about you? Even something tiny.
Now go back to your trigger emotion. Can you celebrate what you see in the other person whilst still gently being OK that whilst you’re not in their season – you have special powers of your own?
Gently breathe in a couple of big deep belly breaths. And release any dense energy by breathing it out of the mouth. Blowing out the mouth or sounding an audible noise or sigh can help the dense feeling to move up and out of the body.
Wrap your arms around both sides of your body and give yourself a gentle squeezy hug. You’re a rockstar. This takes a truck-tonne of wisdom and power to practice embodied awareness.
Remember, It’s OK if this feels difficult at first. It takes practice to retrain our inner voice to celebrate others without comparing ourselves to them.
You are amazing! Even on the days where life just feels a little shit!
Q&A — What if Big Emotions Rise Up
During the practice, allow yourself to feel what you’re feeling. Allow the tears or grief or rage to arise so that you can release it — if it serves.
There can be a hidden power in allowing uncomfortable emotions to arise if we allow ourselves to learn and release the dense energy without falling into an abyss. If you do feel yourself falling, go back to the gentle deep slow breaths.
Deep breathing can help to regulate your nervous system. Be gentle on yourself, and seek professional advice if you need support .
Want to learn more about Menstrual Cycle Awareness, and embodied Cycle Positivity?
Written from a place where I am
D17 — Feeling gratitude at how I am utilising the last burst of my creative Summer energy before the kiss of the Autumn cross-over arrives.
Acknowledgements
Menstrual Cycle Awareness is a practice created by Alexander Pope and Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer at Red School.