Getting to know my menstrual cycle is the closest I’ve ever been to the moon and her rhythms, something I feel like I’ve been trying to achieve ever since I was a little girl.

With the powerful, entrancing wave of this most recent Blood Moon, I was reminded of the falling out we had endured. Without getting my period for several months at a time, on several occasions in the past six years, I became so disconnected from my body that I would barely dream, nonetheless notice the moon.

I had forgotten her.

After avoiding her gaze for all too long, I eventually found my way back. I broke the cycle of disordered eating and regained my health and lust for life. Now, every time my cycle comes, I find the moon in the sky, drop down to my knees and thank her for the monthly blessing.

It’s one of the most beautiful things in the world, and I love thinking that I earned her trust again. I love being able to meet her in that powerful moment every 28 days—from now until my time is done and I pass it onto the daughters and granddaughters that will follow me.

Here are 4 ways your cycle connects you to the Divine Feminine:

1. Your highest self speaks to you through your cycle:

Have you ever noticed that in the days just before your menstrual cycle you have re-occurring patterns of powerful emotions? Maybe you become extremely irritable, angry, sad or fearful. Maybe you tend to binge eat. We’ve been taught for decades that this is just PMS.

The truth is that whatever is coming up for us just before our menstrual cycles is our highest truth desperately trying to communicate to us. When I learned this from Dr. Christiane Northrup, author of Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom, I decided to check-in and journal about my feelings just before my cycle. Each month I noticed that I would become livid about something that had happened between my partner and I years before. Something we had never talked about, that I have never gotten off my chest and that I was still holding onto.

We finally talked about it.

I spoke my truth. I honored it. I shed it completely from my tissues during my next cycle. It never returned.

2. Knowing your cycle is the oldest and most natural form of birth control

Most women ovulate with the full moon, when the tides swell and our bodies activate with her bright light and ripeness. Nature intended us to be at our most desirable, most fertile and most alluring at this magical time.

The more we connect to the moon and her natural rhythms, the more we are in tune with our abilities to conceive, knowing when to fully express ourselves and when to take caution.

3. The few days before your cycle are when you are at your most intuitive

In many traditions, the visions that came from women while on their moon cycle were revered as powerful and respected pieces of wisdom.

Women spent their time together in moon lodges where they could rest and be relieved of communal responsibilities. Here they would meditate and dream, asking for guidance from the ancestors and The Great Spirit.

Women today are no different. We have been inherently blessed with an intuition that speaks loud and clear—if we are willing to listen. The natives believe that when our wombs open up to the earth, allowing the blood to shed from our bodies, the teachings of the great mother and the light of the moon can enter into our most sacred body parts, when the teachings are ready to be nurtured within us and expressed through us once again over the next cycle.

What wisdom is already living within you?

4. Your cycle connects you to every woman alive, every woman that ever lived, and all the women yet to be born

As our society engenders discrimination and differences between women, nothing can take away what we all have in common. Over the years and through my understanding of many different traditions, I have learned that the most normal and welcomed practice between women is to talk about our cycles and share in the mysteries of the process.

Women are built for community—built for sharing and shedding and knowing ourselves on a deeper level. When we speak openly about our experiences with our bodies, we empower others to do the same. There is no shame here.

What exists in this space is the support and encouragement of the awakening of the Divine Feminine in all of us.

Do you remember that feeling? Of staring up into the sky, just wishing you could reach out and get closer to her? I was always told to look for the man on the moon. I never found him. Now I know it’s because the moon has always been, and always will be, a woman… A big, beautiful woman complete with textured curves and deep, cavernous craters.

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Editor: Emma Ruffin

Photo: Author’s Own