The unique cycles of Woman!

“The psyches and Souls of women have their own cycles and seasons of doing and solitude, running and staying, being involved and being removed, questing and resting, creating and incubating, being of the world and returning to the soul-place…”

“In order to converse with the Wild feminine, a woman must temporarily leave the world and inhabit a state of aloneness in the oldest sense of the word. Long ago the word alone was treated as two words, all one. To be all one, meant to be wholly one, to be in oneness, either essentially or temporarily. That is precisely the goal of solitude, to be all one. It is the cure for the frazzled state so common to modern women…”

“Women from Ancient times as well as modern aboriginal women set a Sacred place aside for this communion and inquiry. Traditionally, it is said to have been set aside during women’s menses, for during that time woman lives much closer to self-knowing than usual; the membrane between the unconscious and the conscious minds thins considerably. Feelings memories, sensations that are normally blocked from consciousness pass over into cognizance without resistance. when a woman takes solitude during this time, she has more material to sift through.”

“However in my exchanges with tribal women from North, Central and South America, as well as female progeny of some of the Slavic tribes, I find that ‘women places’ were used anytime, not just during menses, and more so, that each woman often had her own ‘woman place’, consisting of a certain tree, place at the water’s edge, or some natural forest or desert room or ocean cave.”

“Much of modern woman’s premenstrual crankiness is not just a physical syndrome but it equally attributable to her being thwarted in her need to take enough time away to revivify and renew herself.”

“I always laugh when I hear someone quoting early anthropologists who claimed that menstruating women of various tribes were considered ‘unclean’ and forced to leave the village until they were ‘over it.’ All women know that even if there were such a forced exile ritual, every single woman, to a woman, would, when her time came, leave the village hanging her head mournfully, at least till she was out of sight, and then suddenly break into a jig down the path, cackling all the way.” ॐ heart emoticon

~Clarissa Pinkola Estes.