Reclaiming the possibility of thriving as a woman...

While I bleed... exploring the audacious possibility of living my life 'all the way alive' as a modern woman and Mother

Hello lovely ones,

How are you feeling today? Maybe a truer question to ask is… are you actually feeling?

I’m writing this on day one of my bleed. Part of me wonders if I will even have the courage to press publish on it at all. I guess if you are reading it then you will know my inner wild woman has won over the palatable expression of myself.

I have this little inkling of an idea to create a series of ‘while I bleed’ posts that are written during menstruation… because it is the time I feel most powerful. Let’s see what unfolds…

Unleashing HER during my maternity shoot when I was pregnant with Vesper in 2022

My bleed time has become a sacred window for me. A place of pause and reflection, a chance to drop into my body and ask her what she needs.

She is unfiltered. She is insightful. If I make a decision during my bleeding days then I know 100% that it will align with me. She is tender but fierce, unashamedly creative yet conscious with the way she uses that expression.

She won’t hold her tongue — yet she will listen intently. She will speak knowingly and lovingly, to the point — there is no room for small talk.

When I am in this phase my energy is slow and low, but in a way that I have learned to enjoy rather than feel frustrated by.

She is my favourite inner archetype - the bleeding woman. I know this isn’t the case for everyone for various different reasons. I am blessed with heavy but virtually pain-free periods - in fact I actually find more discomfort at ovulation time.

The moment that first drop of blood begins to flow I feel a peace wash over me, a relief, a sense of returning home. Perhaps this is why I actually enjoy the beginning of the winter months externally - there is a sense of homecoming in the spiraling inward.

But it hasn’t always been this way…

My life changed because of my menstrual cycle.

At the end of my twenties my blood stopped flowing and didn’t return for four years. It was just a year before Sophia (my first daughter — who is now 4.5) was conceived that it came back. I had in fact almost made peace with never bleeding again - and what that might mean for me in my life.

I can see a catalogue of reasons to why this happened, not that there was ever any confirmed ‘diagnosis’, but I believe it was my body’s way of calling me home.

An invitation to connect to the deep feminine wisdom that was lying dormant tangled within a very linear shaped lifestyle.

Intense gym workouts, restrictive eating, anxiety that was consuming me, work that was no longer making my soul sing. Day by day I was losing my aliveness… my life force was slowly dripping… like a leaky tap. It happened over time and so gradually that I didn’t really notice.

Until the well ran dry.

Living in alignment with my inner seasons, and also the outer seasons, are hugely important to me and I am not sure it would have been the case had I not had the wake up call of losing my bleed.

Honouring our rhythms as rebellion

By forging forwards in a way that moves in spirals, as opposed to a straight line, I feel like I am taking a stand against the expectation that I am a stagnant static being.

I am (re)claiming myself as cyclical. Ebbing and flowing with the rhythms of my body and nature.

This is (just) one of the ways I believe we can start to reclaim our ability to thrive as women.

When we numb to ourselves, to our fluctuations and feelings, a certain amount of disassociation has to occur.

And when we disassociate from our true nature, we start to diminish our power. Our life force starts to drain.

Our brightness, our sparkle, our ability to thrive… it starts to fade away. And with that our power starts to dwindle, our vibrancy lessens…

I can’t help but feel like this is how ‘they’ want us to be.

(Who are they? I am referring to the patriarchy, the controlling powers in our lives, the expectations from toxic overculture - I am not sure how else to refer to ‘them’ but I think you will know what I mean!)

Dim. Small. Meek. Weak. Exhausted. Depleted.

Diminished. Fragile.

Disempowered. Disconnected. Disenchanted with life.

Because from this place we don’t have the energy to step into the roles of leadership that Mama Earth is calling us towards, that our children, and our children’s children, need us to.

Imagine if more women were thriving, instead of merely surviving, and in their fullest potential? What could be possible?

I refuse to be quiet and stop ‘banging my drum’ about this topic.

How do we reclaim our aliveness as women?

The words… reclaiming our aliveness… have been coursing through my heart and ringing in my ears this past week.. it started as phrase in my journal and has since imprinted itself in me as a big part of my work here in this world.

I shared in an online circle I held (for my online group gathering The MotherMind) recently that my purpose on this planet was to live my life all the way alive.

I want to be juicy and vibrant and in a state of thriving…

I want my energy to be vital, my heart to be soft, my body to be strong.

I want the ripples of my energy, and therefore my ability to support and serve and soothe, to expand way beyond the waters edge.

However…

The way the modern world is set up right now doesn’t encourage this way of being for women.

In fact it actively seems to be set up to drain and deplete.

It’s physical depletion yes… but deeper than this it is life force depletion. Our sparkle, our soul - sapped of energy and aliveness.

Particularly in motherhood.

Particularly in the older years of womanhood.

It is my belief that these phases of life can be the most powerful portals of inner and outer transformation, they have the potential to put us in touch with deeper, more potent versions of ourselves.

From the minute that a woman experiences her first bleed she is encouraged to hide parts of herself. Hide the blood. Hide the fluctuations of emotions. Hide the truth of her. The mess and chaos of birth is hidden. The older generation displaced to keep them out of sight.

It’s as if ‘they’ don’t really want us to know about, or harness this deep power…

I mean… of course they don’t. That would shake the roots of so many of the world’s most toxic and controlling structures.

Imagine if the flesh and bones, and blood and milk of womanhood were truly, truly honoured. Just imagine…

Breaking the narratives

We are taught to be consistent.

To be a palatable flavour… flavourless even.

To people please and say yes when our body needs us to say no.

To be productive when we need to rest.

To strive for unachievable perfection and to shame ourselves when we don’t reach it.

To undervalue the efforts of creativity and nurturance.

We are left alone as mothers to raise our children in isolation.

The wisdom of ageing women is dismissed.

On one hand it feels impossible to thrive in this world and yet… I feel like I cannot surrender to diminishing my self.

Not a moment longer.

I want my daughters to grow up feeling vibrant and alive, and to do that I need to model how that is possible. Which means pushing against the narratives that have woven their way into my being.

We have to tend the soil. We have to nurture ourselves and our vitality.

I am well aware that to write this as even a possibility is a privilege. To be a woman who lives in a place of safety, who is able bodied, who is white.

And in some ways I feel that is even more of a reason to choose my own aliveness. Because I have the chance to. I don’t want to waste a moment more of this one ‘wild and precious life’.

When I feel ‘all the way alive’ I am able to nurture my girls, to do my life’s work, to support others, to take a stand for what I believe in.

When I am devoid of inner sparkle I cannot serve anyone. I cannot hold others, I cannot nurture or soothe or share.

Whenever I need to remind myself of my power I return to this series of images from my pregnancy.

And so I rest here as I bleed. Allowing myself to slow, to sit with a rose tea while my girls are with their Dad in the garden.

I allow myself to rest in micro and macro moments — as

Asia Suler

so beautifully expresses in this piece A Glass Of Water — about focusing on all the choices we CAN make even when in a season that doesn’t support expansive amounts of time and spaciousness.

I allow myself to tend to the soil in my garden (literally and metaphorically) instead of working through my work to do list.

I allow myself to eat foods that nourish me, to drink my beloved ceremonial cacao at sunrise by the lake with a friend when given the opportunity, to listen to what my soul is longing for and to take the tiniest steps towards them, even if the pathway is slower than I used to think it should be.

I refuse to give up on the possibility of thriving in this life.

I refuse to give up on living my life all the way alive.

As a Mother. As a woman.

Are you with me? I hope so.

Please do share with me in the comments, or reply via email, what this brings up for you, I think this topic of conversation will have many layers to it and I welcome them all.

Until next time…

With so much love,

Lauren

xxx

PS… if you are in the UK and would like to gather with other Substack writers in a sacred space,Lyndsay Kaldorand I are hosting our first Holding Stories event on 20th April in London. You can read more and book your tickets here.

I was so honoured to be invited to contribute to a beautiful new series on Motherhood and Creativity by

Jenna Folarin

. You can read my interview here…

Motherhood and Creativity Interview #1 - Lauren Barber

Recent offerings you might have missed…

• Remembering to Choose Ourself in the midst of Mothering

• The rebirth of my podcast Unravelling with a beautiful conversation between myself andLyndsay Kaldor on Seasons of Motherhood & Creativity and more..

• Writing As My Medicine - how I felt returning to writing after a creative pause at the start of the year.

  

Hello to anyone who is new here… I am Lauren, a Mother of two daughters, a Writer, Coach, Soulful Business Mentor, Website & Branding Creator, Human Design Guide, Sacred Space Holder and multi dimensional human being. You can find out more about my work here. Please do subscribe to join the journey, and if you enjoy this, and you do have the means, I would be so grateful if you chose to support my creations for £5 a month…