Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to Star Being. I'm Tarra, your guide. Blending the wisdom of the stars, philosophy and soul centered conversation. Here we question, remember and reconnect with the stars, with self, with true being. I hope these conversations ignite within you resonance, awakening and a deeper knowing. Together we open to more truth, more magic, more you.
Welcome to Starbeing. I am very excited to share this conversation with you.
I have themes that keep coming up in my life and one of those is leaning into the season and the.
[00:00:41] Speaker B: Cycle of our life.
[00:00:43] Speaker A: And also this quest that I have for Grandmother Wisdom, my mom has been passed for nearly 10 years now. And even though we had a very close bond, we would have philosophical discussions for hours over certain books, ways of thinking. And she has introduced me to a lot of work that was beyond my years, which I'm very grateful for.
But when I was in my 30s, there was things that I didn't have the consciousness or the awareness to even ask these questions. And this wisdom that I am seeking at this stage in my life.
And so I have been sort of searching for, yeah, the, the answers, the.
[00:01:42] Speaker B: Wisdom, the grandmother wisdom.
[00:01:43] Speaker A: And so this conversation is the first in a Wise Woman series that I want to bring in.
I hope you love it. For me personally, this conversation was so deeply healing. And I hope that it is for you too. And so this theme that I have been exploring is that a woman's life is not linear. And each season is an initiation, each archetype a teacher.
But in our culture, so many women are left without maps, without circles, and without this grandmother to guide the way.
And so in this episode, I am joined by the incredible Jane Hardwick Collins, who is a midwife, a teacher, the Grandmother Wisdom Keeper, founder of School of Shamanic Women Craft. And in this episode we discuss the spiritual, psychological and cultural dimensions of the feminine seasons of life, menstruation, motherhood, menopause, aging and beyond.
We explore how patriarchal systems have stripped these transitions of their sacredness and how reclaiming them is the work of our healing for ourselves and for generations to come.
This conversation about the body as the temple, and about what it means to embrace every season of womanhood not as decline, but as expansion into presence, into wisdom, into power.
So this episode is an invitation to honor your body as sacred, to meet yourself in each season and to reclaim the ancient knowing that lives inside of you.
And we discuss so much in this episode and one of those themes of womanhood and sisterhood and how important it is to really lean into sharing with each other and coming together and how healing that is collectively.
So I hope that you really enjoy this episode.
My assistant said it is one of her favorite conversations and it is for me as well.
And she also mentioned that even though this is, you know, about the feminine, that this is an incredible insight for a man to listen to and gain insight. It is a conversation that I wish I had been exposed to in my 20s, even my 30s.
And so it is with my greatest joy to bring you this conversation in its rawness and in its depths. And I hope that it. Yeah, just initiates remembrance for you. And if you have any comments, if it has brought up any aha's or like I said, remembrance for you, please let me know. I always love to know how this lands and how it impacts you.
So enjoy. I'm sending you lots of love.
[00:05:27] Speaker B: Welcome to Star Being Jane. I'm very happy to have you here. You've been very busy, so it's great to have you.
I would love to start off asking you about the four seasons of a woman's life and why do you think so many women remain sort of bound in this maiden archetype?
And I'd also love to know all what each of those seasons has personally taught you and why I have been wanting to bring you on starving for such a long time is because I feel in society, especially in my life, my mother passed away just under 10 years ago now, and I've really missed that wisdom. And so I've been trying to seek that from the women around me, but I found that that is sort of missing. And I'm wondering if that's something that you notice in society, where we're at, maybe why that is.
And even the women in my life that still have their mothers, they don't seem to be offering that wisdom of this age. And I've just turned 40 and I feel like that is a very critical point in a woman's life. That sort of. I didn't know to ask my mum, even though we were really close, those questions of this space in life. So I'd love to know your thoughts on all of that. I just hit you with a lot.
[00:07:06] Speaker C: Great. Okay. Well, thank you, firstly for inviting me. It's an honor to be with you and to share this information. And I hope that it helps a lot of women make some sense, because that's really all we need to do. You know, humans really have a predilection to make meaning. So I want to offer a map in answer to your question about the four seasons of a woman's life that we can use to navigate our life by understanding the changes that happen ongoingly through our lifetime via the seasons, because it helps it make more sense.
So just like the Earth has seasons, so too do we.
And actually, we are all as if the earth, you know, we do the same thing as the earth, somewhat metaphorically and also a bit literally as well, in all the functions of our body and the aging process and all of that kind of stuff. So we live the cycle that the earth shows us through the seasons. And we have cycles within cycles, we have cycles in our body and all of that, the menstrual cycle and. And the connection of that to the lunar cycle. But just to answer the question of what are the four seasons in a woman's life? Well, they mirror, as so much of our beingness does, the Earth season. So we have a spring, summer, autumn and winter season of our lives. And so the spring season is our maidenhood. And that's from our birth. So 0 to 25 years old.
Now, within that spring, and the key word for spring is growth.
Within that, within the spring of our lives, we have our childhood, which is zero to whenever we have our first period, our menarch, which is our initiation into womanhood, our fertility, our beginning of being completely dominated by our hormones. And that's not a bad thing. It's just the next thing.
And then. So the average age for menarche is 13, but it can be as young as 8 and as old as 17.
And often there's women, girls having their periods, starting their periods earlier and earlier these days. And a lot of that is environmental and, you know, like the effects of the fertilizers on food and the growth hormones in meat and things like that, and lots of other environmental toxicity like the, the pseudo estrogens in the environment through plastics. So all of these things are affecting our cycles like they're affecting the earth. So our spring season, zero to menarch, whatever age that is, and then from then till 25 years old.
So at 25 years old, everybody, regardless of whether they have babies, ever or never, or already have, will move into the summer season of their lives, which is the season of mother and creatrix.
So in the very summer, busy, hot, intense season of our lives, we are conceiving, gestating, birthing, and needing to look after babies, humans, and, and many other things, because in those years we conceive, gestate birth, and need to look after many other things other than humans. So it can be careers, businesses, projects, new versions of ourselves. So many things we have the fertile Creative energy, running our lives. And that goes that season of summer goes from 25 to whenever you have menopause. So the average age of menopause is 50. But it can happen, you know, average, meaning that's in the middle of a range which is 45 to 55. But there will be women who have menopause earlier than 45. In fact, 7% have it under 40 years old. And there will be women who have their last period older than 55. Mine was 56 and, you know, doesn't really get much later than 60. So that's the range.
And so menopause finishes the summer season of our lives and takes us into the autumn or fall season of our lives. And so the rite of passage from summer to autumn is what's now, you know, perimenopause. So peri means around.
So menopause is the last period. So the perimenopause is before the last period and after the last period. So that's the transformation that happens and that takes us from our fertile summer into our harvest season of autumn.
So autumn, the season of autumn, is the season when our fertility has gone. We are now in a new, under the influence of a new and different hormone profile to how we were in summer and from menarch. But interestingly, the hormone profile, and just to say hormone profile runs your life.
It affects how you behave, who you think you are, what your desires are, what you want to do and not do. And so the hormone profile from the summer shifting into the autumn is very different.
And we in the autumn season of our lives, which is the mage m a g e which is the sorceress, which is the autumn woman, Harvest queen is the season of our harvest. And it's the time when we get a lot of biological feedback in terms of the physical symptoms we experience through menopause. But when we pass through that rite of passage and when we're on the other side, our hormone profile has us behaving very differently and more oriented to ourself.
And possibly for the first time in our adult lives, because in the mother and late spring of our lives, we are under the influence of estrogen. And estrogen is known as the hormone of accommodation and self sacrifice. It's the nurturing hormone. And that is what happens to women that keeps everything going. We are compelled to nurture our babies, our businesses, our careers. And then with the waning of that hormone of accommodation, we move into autumn and we experience that, as I said, an orientation to ourselves and our role in the world. Passions reveal Themselves, missions, different new meanings post menopause. And then so that autumn season of our lives lasts until 70.
So however old you were at menopause till 70, and at 70, we move into the winter of our lives, which is the crone, the wise, wise woman, the elder. And so we move into our eldership there, the wisdom keepers, the storytellers, and we remain there. And it is a privilege to live that old and be in the community at that age.
And not a very common one, that visible life stage. And we'll talk more about that later, because that was, you know, part of your question. Where are the women?
Where are the elder women?
So that winter of our lives is when we are slowing down, moving inward, holding the stories and the essence of our lives, and we can be great help and great teachers and the elders that so many of us are missing. So those are the seasons of our lives.
And the.
That this is a bit of a move from the maiden mother, crone archetype, because that. That powerful triple goddess archetype and story comes from a long time ago. It comes from a time when we were pregnant by the time we were 14, grandmothers by the time we were 35, and dead by the time we were 45, 50. So if average age of menopause, 50. So if menopause came before we died, then we must be close to death. Now, sadly, that particular perspective has held on in our culture. You know, if you get to menopause, you're close to death, which is not actually true. It's at the halfway point, if we get to live into our elder years.
Like, for example, tcm, traditional Chinese medicine refers to menopause as the second spring. So not the end, the beginning of the next phase.
So the fact that we live beyond Those ages of 50 or whatever now, and the information that I was taught from one of my teachers, Cita Barstow in Boulder, Colorado, is that we have this autumn season of our lives between mother and crone, which is the harvest. So we don't go from summer to winter. We have an autumn, a fall season, and that's the season of Mage or the Autumn Woman Harvest Queen. And and the other thing I just want to add to this piece before I talk about why so many women stay in the maiden season or feel bound or whatever, is that this extra season has really given us a whole lot more scope and promise for our lives. And it's a wonderful thing. Probably one of the best things that I have learned and taught other women because it gives the menopausal woman so much more life ahead of her than just thinking that she's now a crone in the winter. And that's not to disrespect Crohn's, it's just to put them in the rightful season of winter.
So yeah, that's the seasons. Now why so many of us remain bound.
Great, great verb to the maiden season is because that's the female, the version of the female that the patriarchy idolizes. So it's that 25 year old, you know, she's the one that our culture is fixated on. And sadly that's the result of the ageist culture that we live in. So anti aging. Like my God, there's so much industry around anti aging now. So obviously youth is going to be idolized and is to even have that attitude. And, and with the sexualization of childhood which is tragically happening over, over and over through the years and also the pornographication of our culture, you know, porn is, well, you know, porn is everywhere. And sadly that's where teenagers get their sex education from.
So with the pornographication of our culture, it's used in advertising, it's you know, like all over the Internet. Like, you know, and the age of children accessing it is getting younger every year.
So with all of that happening, the 25 year old female is the, you know, the Barbie doll, the, the princess, the grown up princess, you know, like all those archetypes that little girls are being primed with, you know, and the sexualization of childhood. I mean look at the clothing that's available for tweens. It's very, very sexualized bras and even G strings and stuff. Like, you know, and then the, so all the like tweens are trying to look like the 25 year old and, and then all the older women, the mothers, you know, there's all that yummy mummy gets her pre baby body back in, you know, like, so there's this orientation back to the pre baby body. So there, there is then in the even older years so much self judgment around how we look because we don't look like we're 25 anymore. And so that makes us think that we're not everybody, obviously. But the dominant narrative is that that's beautiful, that's sexual, that's, that's availability, that's energy. And if you don't look like that then you know, you're an older woman. That's not as, as pedestalized, shall we say as that 25 year old. And so much cosmetic surgery to look young and all the things so that's why I think that women remain bound to the, to the maiden useful archetype, because that's the only one in our culture that gets the most attention and is valued. Like, I mean, obviously mother is valued, obviously elders are valued, but not to the extent that that beautiful young woman is.
So, you know, you want to stay there. So you're, you're, you're, you're looking like the one that everybody wants to look like, which is actually for most women, impossible.
So it's just tragedy upon tragedy. And then in terms of what my life seasons have taught me. So I'm sitting at the end of my autumn season, so I'm 67 and a half. And I love how as I've aged, I add the half, you know, like I'm, I'm proud of it, you know, like those little people who say six and a half or six and three quarters or, you know, like, I'm 67 and a half, I turn 68 next year in June.
And so just to also add another piece, to understand the seasons of our lives, there are seasons within seasons.
So if you divide the length of the life season up, so whether that's spring, summer, autumn, or winter into four, so the years divided into four gives you the spring, summer, autumn, winter of each season.
And so I'm in the winter, the end, the crystallizing, the, the distillation phase. I'm in the winter of my autumn, so I'm like two and a half years off becoming a crone, which is amazing.
And so in the winter of my autumn, I have a completely different perspective to what I had in the spring of my autumn, for example. So from this winter, which is the distillation of my autumn, I have a perspective that enables me to answer the question of what have my life seasons taught me that I wouldn't have had any younger, if that makes sense. So my maidenhood actually taught me that because I was a woman, I was less than you know, I was raised in a patriarchy, and that was the main message. I'm less than a man or just less than you know. And then my ment. And I also was taught in my maidenhood that my menstrual cycle is irrelevant.
And I was actually on the oral contraceptive pill for eight years.
So that was really the teachings of my maidenhood, which such a sad, like looking back, what a sad loss of potential, because that's what maidenhood's about, hope, potential and growth. So, you know, that. And then my motherhood season, the summer of my Life taught me my values and my strengths and my ideals and what I was capable of.
So I had three babies. Lots of big stories for me around my births, as there are for everybody who has birth. Like, births are our teachers. So I learned a lot. And I was also a midwife through my summer season and a home birth midwife. So working within the community that are taking responsibility for their births rather than handing over their power to the experts. I mean, giving thanks for the experts if they need them, but focusing on natural, physiological birth. So I learned so much about body and birth and you know, I was. Birth was my teacher and, and the women who I had the honor and privilege to serve as a midwife were my teachers as well. So I learned a lot there.
And in my magehood, my autumn season, I'm still there, but at the tail end of it. But it's teaching me who I actually am and what really matters to me in a way I've never ever known before or thought before.
And then actually what I'm doing, because I'm in the winter of my autumn, is that I'm therefore apprenticing to my winter, the crone.
And she. In my apprenticeship, I'm learning who I. What I'm learning is how to prepare for old age and eldership and to think about my death.
You know, like, it's really important to contemplate our mortality because that's given.
There's just two things we don't know about it. When it will happen and how it will happen.
So in preparation for my elder years, my cronehood, my winter season, I'm thinking about the important things, you know, like old age and how I'm going to navigate it. So I'm preparing for that physically, doing lots of physio exercises to make sure my pelvis and my hips are not hurting me, you know, getting stronger and contemplating my eldership. What have I got to offer? You know, what wisdom can I share? What stories can I tell? All of that.
And yeah, depth. So that's, that's like a. When I, when I thought about those, I thought like, you know, that's, that's a good progression that actually really just replicates what's going on in the earth, you know, metaphorically. But yeah.
So there's those answers to those questions.
[00:25:52] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:25:53] Speaker B: Thank you, Jane. That was so rich and very comforting listening to you.
And I was, as you were speaking, I was thinking, wow, thank goodness for your work and what you're doing because it just, yeah, it gives that a deeper understanding and I love the harvest season, that really resonates with me.
And just also how you speak about the hormone profile, I've actually never heard anyone say before that it runs our life. And I feel that is so accurate.
And I am noticing that as you speak into that harvest season really are our mindset shifting. And I've noticed that change in myself moving away from like, this is the first time in my life that I've started to think about myself.
And it. I can't sometimes go back to thinking how I thought in my 20s. I just can't grasp it. And so it's so fascinating to hear and it's very validating as well.
And so when you talk about these transitions through these phases, can you touch more on the psychology of it and also the maybe like the spiritual aspects of these phases? And you've touched on women that don't physically birth children.
Do you see any differences that they're transitioning in your experience?
You know, being a mother doesn't necessarily mean having children you, you know, with creative. That you touched on. But I'm just wondering, do you notice anything different.
[00:28:03] Speaker C: For them? Totally, absolutely. So I'll get to that and I'll just talk about the transition periods. So before or between each of these seasons is a rite of passage.
Some of them are more marked than others. And so I want to just explain what a rite of passage is and how it works. So think about this in terms of your menarch, so your first period.
And then every pregnancy. Every pregnancy results in a birth. Whatever finishes the pregnancies at birth. So that includes terminations, abortions, and losses at whatever part of the pregnancy. So that's a really important thing to remember. And then for Creatrix those, you know, like for every woman who creates other than humans, it's a similar thing. And for those who don't have children, then their.
Their creativity is in other than human realm, you know, like projects, careers or whatever.
So what happens. So menarche every pregnancy and then menopause and then death, basically. So Those other ones, 25 years old and 70 years old are kind of like ages where things change, but there's not such a gigantic change as there is at menarch, pregnancy and birth and menopause. And so what happens at a rite of passage?
And this is also. So I'm just talking about the physical rites of passage, but there's cultural rites of passage, like, like marriage, like graduation, things like that. And the physical rites of passage are cultural as well.
And so what happens at a rite of passage or doesn't happen.
Because if you don't have a conscious, honored rite of passage, whatever happens is the rite of passage.
And so how rites of passage work is that whatever happens or doesn't happen, who's there, what they say, who's not there, who doesn't say something, and then what's going on in your world around you, the culture and, you know, in your family and whatever, all that adds up to teach the person going through the rite of passage. So think men are pregnancy and birth and menopause. Whatever happens teaches the person going through the rite of passage how their culture values the next role they're going into. So menopause, sorry, at menarch, that's woman, that's fertility and womanhood, it's the end of childhood.
So fertility and womanhood at pregnancies and births, that's motherhood. And at menopause, that's into our wise, wise woman years.
So whatever happens teaches us how our culture values the next role we're going into and therefore how to behave to be accepted by the culture in that new role.
So rites of passage create culture on the inside by the mindset that the experience creates. So the beliefs, the attitudes and fears that are the result of your rite of passage. Think menarche, birth, menopause, create your mindset and therefore, like the lens you look out of.
And it also creates culture on the outside because most women have the same experiences or people in, you know, because men go through these rites of passage too. So most people have similar ignored rites of passage or even damaging rites of passage. So everybody has the same mindset or similar beliefs, attitudes, and fears. So that then creates the culture. And then all you have to do is look at the statistics around menstrual pathology, which is, you know, your menarche is the beginning of that birth intervention and birth trauma and menopause intervention and control to see the messaging about how our culture values the next role. In other words, they don't, you know, and. Or it's the messages like, say, at birth, with less than 50% of women push babies out of their vaginas now. So the message there is, you know, but your body doesn't work. It's dangerous. Just hand over the power to the other, the experts to make the decisions, for example. And then at menopause, you know, there's this whole thing about menopause is being framed as a disease and a hormonal deficiency that is actually dangerous for the rest of our lives. And we have to take artificial hormones, change our hormone Profile to avoid the symptoms, which changes who we are, so we don't actually turn into that harvest woman. So one rite of passage leads to the next. That's the actually really interesting thing. You know, she who was initiated into womanhood at Menarch is the woman who shows up to give birth completely enculturated into how she's supposed to behave to be accepted as a woman. You know, so that. That will be unique, but also pretty generic, and that's what the stats reflect.
So the other good thing about all of this is that we can change rites of passage, create a future by the people that come out of it with the mindsets, beliefs, and attitudes and fears. So we can change the culture and the future by honoring our rites of passage. And that doesn't mean everybody has a orgasmic water birth. It means everybody has an empowering experience where they're, you know, in their body being treated with kindness and respect so that they go through the transformation of birth to become a mother.
Now, the other part to this is that at every rite of passage, so this is the message for women approaching their next rite of passage, which everybody is, whether it's another birth or menopause or cronehood or whatever, that when you come to rite of passage, you come to a fork in the road.
One way is the usual way, the way it always happens to me, the same old, same old way.
And that is often the wounded way. But we don't even realize it. It's just the way it always happens. And then the other fork is the healed path. But to even know there's a healed path, you have to realize you're on the wounded path. And then you need to do the inner work that bridges the two, that sets you off in the healed direction. Which doesn't mean all of a sudden everything goes your way. It just means you start to be aware of the decisions you made that kept leading to the same old same hole, and you make different choices and decisions that will then change the trajectory of your life.
So rites of passage are where we have power to be able to heal previous rites of passage. You can do that in other ways as well. But at our impending rite of passage, we can choose the healed path by noticing what this previous rite of passage creates as a setup and then looking at the experience that sets up the next one and doing the work that makes us let go of those fears or update our beliefs or, you know, whatever is required.
So that's the really important thing to know, that these are rites of passage are Happening. And that's not some New Age concept. That's an ancient traditional culture practice. Everybody had rites of passage to mark the.
The ways we change through our lives.
So the important thing, I think, and I'll repeat it, is that if you don't have a celebrated or honored or even conscious rite of passage, it still happens. And whatever happens creates who you become, who you think you're supposed to, what you think you're supposed to behave like, to be accepted and all of that.
So that's the backstory of what a rite of passage is. So how we move through these life seasons with these rites of passage is that we change from one version of ourselves into the next version of ourselves and never to return to that previous version. You know, once you begin your menstrual cycle, that's it. You know, you're a woman, you're fertile, you don't go back once you've had a pregnancy, not even a live birth, that completely changes you. Things grow in your body that were never there before.
And then once you reach menopause and you're no longer fertile, everything changes.
You might not even recognize yourself at the beginning of it. And then the eldership, the crone hood, you know, like, that's the winding down, you know, when you're there, you don't go back.
You're going forward. So it's a transformational event, life event, developmental phase and stage that has a physical and emotional, a mental, a psychological and a spiritual aspect. And the story, our life story, plays out in our rites of passage on all those levels.
So physically, you know, there's the body changes, emotionally, there's the emotions that are associated with the hormones.
And then mentally, the same, you know, the neurological changes that happen at each of those rite of passages change the way our brain works. And we make fun of that.
Oh, baby brain or brain fog or can't remember anything. Like that's the process we're going through. The adjustment of our brain changing to be the way it needs to be for the next phase. It's not pathology, it's a process.
And then psychologically, you know, it's like how we, how we navigate these incredible transitions is. Is going to be informing our psychology, and our psychology will inform our experience.
So, you know, like, our psychology is kind of made up of the beliefs and attitudes and fears that we've inherited and all we've adopted and, and how we think we're supposed to be and, you know, all of that kind of stuff. So it's all linked. And then the Spiritual aspect, you know, so that is that required. To know there's a spiritual aspect of these rites of passage requires a spiritual perspective.
And that can be something that actually women develop around a rite of passages because they see often a bigger picture, like a, A deeper meaning. And that can either support a spiritual belief that you might already have or create and so reinforce something or create something new. And, you know, like the menstrual cycle is a spiritual experience. It's like a transformational opportunity to rebirth yourself every cycle.
Giving birth, my God, that is like the incredible transformation of traveling between realms and bringing souls into this real. Like, you know, that's as cosmic as it gets.
And that's often denied. Right. We just see it as a dangerous event.
And then the spirituality that often opens up either next level or for the first time at menopause can be the thing that changes women's lives. You know, the meaning making that we can do. The connection we can make to the earth and cycles and others and spiritual journeys and practices around menopause is huge because we've got a bit more time then than we have at childbirth because we've got a baby to look after.
Around menopause, though, it's like a return to self and an invitation and opportunity to engage in the spiritual aspect, which is huge.
You know, at menopause, women often, post menopause, women often have whole new lives open up to them. You know, like missions, receive missions, or purpose, or, you know, like they step into their role as the women the earth needs now and do the work that's required.
So each of these transitions, so thinking about them spiritually and psychologically require, well, a change, you know, transformation actually, because the difference between transmutation and transformation and change, transmutation, which is what's actually happening, is you don't return to that ever again. Yeah.
So there's, there's letting go that happens with that. You know, at Minark, when I've talked to so many of the young women, big girls turning into young women, you know, they, they, they have to let go of their childhood.
And that's, that's something to mourn. I mean, often they're champing at the bit to get to the next phase, but many are noticing, oh my God, I can I play anymore?
You know, my relationship, my, my dad is going to change dramatically and mourning that. And maybe, you know, sometimes they don't even notice it, but sometimes they do.
And so lots of letting go and the metaphoric death and rebirth at each of those times, you know, like the, the, the ending and the new beginning that happens at each of those rites of passage is happening whether you notice it or not, or whether you honor it or not. So, you know, you get the more out most out of something and get more out of something, the more you lean in and make the meaning of it. But the thing that is probably the way we actually experience it on every level, psychologically and spiritually especially, is that our priorities change.
And as I said before, that's because of the hormones. That's what makes our priorities, our desires change and our reason and meaning for being changes.
Now, like, if you're invested in maidenhood, then that's not going to be very nice.
If you're invested in fertility and motherhood and, and your identity is of that lushness, when that changes, that goes.
And that can be a capsizing event. If your entire identity was focused on your, your relative, like in the mother summer season, your relative beauty and useful, strong, fit body. When everything changes, if that's who you, you want to be, you can't be her anymore.
So we have to make space for the mourning and the grief as well when we shift from one to the other. But to know that what's on the other side is actually better than what you've ever experienced before. You know, as a midwife, I didn't think that there could be anything more transformational than giving birth until I went through menopause.
So I want to talk about women who go through, going through menopause who haven't had babies, physical children, humans.
And this came up as something that really needs to be talked about.
When I did my siren call tour over in the UK and Europe in 2024, there were three big things that came out of that whole tour. There were 700 women sat in circle and, you know, over 23 different workshops in multiple different countries.
And in my summarization of it, I came away with three things that need to be addressed that aren't. Weren't being addressed.
And one was the initiation of boys into manhood.
Not enough going on about that for mothers that I met. You know, guidance, ideas, community support. And the other two were around menopause. And one was menopause for women with small children, which is happening more and more. You know, the birth rate over 40 is increasing in our world for all kinds of reasons. And it's not that women in their 40s never had babies before because, you know, often they did, but there's more now. So there are, there is a whole demographic of women who, who've waited to have their babies either because of their doing their career first or saving up and buying their house first or whatever, you know, whatever or were.
And so had their babies later. And then they start to go through the changes that you're feeling at 40 when they've got babies and their hormone of accommodation and self sacrifice wanes.
And that the accommodating and self sacrificing required to look after a baby, which is nature's way of making sure the baby gets looked after when that's going away, that affects how you feel about this.
And it's not that you don't love your children, you just have a different orientation because your hormone profile is different, your desires are different, your behavior is different, who you are is different. So that's a big challenge.
And I've been having some conversations about that on Instagram. So if anybody's listening to this and wants to have a look, go on my Instagram page and look in the highlight archive things around that. And then to get finally to this group, menopause for women with no children. Now I think we can divide that group into three or maybe more categories. But women who never intended to have babies, women who didn't have babies because of circumstance, you know, like Mr. Right didn't show up in time.
Or the third group who have experienced infertility and haven't been able physically to do what they wanted to do, which is have babies.
So those three have different experiences of menopause with no children and each will be, well, the second to the didn't meet Mr. Right Circumstantial or infertility there.
And even they're different.
But if we look at the infertility, which is actually sadly common in let's wait and have babies group doesn't happen.
So in that group there's a lot of mourning and grieving and letting go of something that will never happen now, because that's the big thing at menopause.
I mean, saying that never say never. Right. Like ours.
I'm just trying to think of an appropriate adjective for our culture.
Strange culture.
They'll figure out how 70 year olds can give birth sooner or sooner or later, or robots will give birth sooner or later. So weirdness is happening with all of that. But back to the women who wanted to have babies but couldn't at menopause. They, you know, that dream that like probably fixation that they had in however many, over however many years, the amount of money that many spend on IVF and other associated assisted fertility processes at menopause it's over.
So how an individual experiences that will be their unique story. But you know, we can expect some grief and mourning and letting go that needs to be honored.
And then the group that Mr. Wright didn't show up like that, that has its own mourning to do and will be associated with again, a letting go and a death and a rebirth and the morning of that.
And also because of our crazy culture, like some fear about will I ever, you know, and now I'm, and now I'm getting older and therefore in my culture that means undesirable or at least less desirable compared to the 25 year old.
Yeah. So you know, like, oh my God, what's going to happen to me?
And what pressure women may feel they have to put on how they look, etc. To be still attractive, a partner and mate post menopause, like that's a whole new ball game.
And then to the women who never wanted to have babies in the first place, like the question arises for them, you know, we've, we've heard all the, everybody talking about their biological clock and you know, all of a sudden I've woken up and I must have a baby and all of that kind of stuff. So again, hormone profile, running your life and your desires.
So not all women who never intended to have babies experience that, but many do because it's just the body saying, okay, are you gonna do it or not? Last chance, last call.
So that will bring up whatever that brings up for that woman who never wanted to have babies. It could be like, oh shit, I'm changing my mind. Or it could be, oh my God, thank God, I don't have to worry about that anymore.
Like, or, and, and all the places in between that.
[00:50:11] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:50:11] Speaker B: The crossroads that you mentioned.
[00:50:13] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
Fork in the road. So you know, it's.
And then add to that how a patriarchal culture, which is our culture, which is fixated on youth and beauty and honors the masculine and the yang version of everything as. And oppresses and suppresses the feminine and the yin and even ignores it in terms of the cycle. Like, you know, the patriarchy is all about growth. No rest, just growth.
That the culture that honors growth and the 25 year old and the mother, you know, like, got to keep the babies coming. In our culture, lots of fixation about decreasing birth rates and blah, blah, blah.
But the attitude of a patriarchal culture to a woman who has chosen not to have babies.
Not that you would ever know. Right. If she'd chosen it. Mr. Right. Didn't show up or she's been infertile. You know, once the stories, once it's happened, say menopause. But, you know, women will share their stories or whatever. But the overarching opinion of a patriarchy of women with no children is not good.
So that won't be something new that women with no children have will be picking up on. They would have felt that, you know, like, obviously different pockets, honor whatever women choose, etc. But, you know, overall, it's not a preferred way of being a female. You know, what's the use of you? What have you got to offer? What have you left behind? You know, all that kind of terrible way of looking at stuff. So there you go.
[00:51:56] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:51:57] Speaker B: Thank you so much, Jane, because I fall into that category. I haven't had my own children. I have stepchildren.
And it's been a really interesting journey because I was heavily in corporate and I. The women around me that were at the top, none of them had children. And so it was like this.
You know, that's your two options. You know, you can either be at the top, and then that no longer was interesting to me. Once you get to that level, you're just like, oh, is this it?
And so I feel like that is where I've really come more into my spirituality because I have needed that as really my support system, as a purpose. Because in our culture, the children are your, you know, seen as your purpose. Like, this is what my mother was, you know, told and that as well. So I find that so fascinating that you've addressed because these are. When you're speaking about this, I'm like, this is massive to navigate and women are really not having these big conversations like this. So I can highly recommend going to Jane's Instagram and reading the comments, because the women that are commenting and sharing their stories is so empowering.
So I absolutely love what you're doing there.
And yeah, I wanted to just add on to this psychological stage because I can see how it's so easy to get stuck in that. That mourning process, especially if you haven't, you know, like you said, there was things that you wanted to happen in that stage that you didn't have happen in that stage. And then getting stuck and not being able to move through that and wanting to hold on to those earlier seasons.
Is that why you're seeing that grandmother stage and that wisdom, not wanting to come through? Because we're so.
We're in the rear vision mirror. We're not embracing, like you said, it's that transition. Like you're you know, how you're preparing and I love that. And I am now looking at those menopause years and I, and I'm so glad that you brought this up as well because the narrative that I'm seeing around menopause is that it severely affects your brain and it's going to reduce your capacity.
And yeah, you need this intervention. And the way that you speak about it and the way that I've seen the women comment on your, your posts is just like, yeah, it is the second spring. They're like creating new missions. They're doing things that they have never been able to do in their bleed years.
And so where do you see this?
[00:55:22] Speaker A: What I'm trying to say is how.
[00:55:24] Speaker B: Can we not push but how can we honor in society more of the grandmother wisdom and more of this so that it feels safe for women to transition? And I know that's a lot of your work. What I see is your supporting.
But is there anything that we can do as women as sort of that rite of passage that can mark that, that would, that would support that in.
[00:55:53] Speaker C: Our day to day life at menopause? Something.
Yeah, well, we need to do ceremonies at each of these because that way, because humans love ritual and ceremony. Like it's something that's always happened in one way or another.
And so marking, you know, think about children who have the privilege of having birthday parties say you know, like that's huge and they know they've turned whatever and that's the new place. So amp that up big time to a actual rite of passage ceremony.
And at menopause it's a crowning.
You know, it's, it can be a crowning at each stage and at going from mage autumn into winter. Crone. Crone actually means crown.
So there's a real importance that we crown our elder women.
But a ceremony to honor say menopause, the transition from mother to mage or fertile to not and all that that brings up. If we mark that with a ceremony, it changes us. You know, we feel honored and celebrated.
And one of the ways I love to see these things happen and recommend is that you hold a circle and the woman who's being honored. And there could be many at once, but each woman gets her own experience of this where she sits in the center of the circle. It's like she's the altar and the circle goes around from woman to woman and they each speak having prepared for this to the woman who's the initiate. Because that's what a rite of passage is, an initiation. So you become an initiate.
So each woman on the circle, or it could be men as well, but let's just focus on women, say to the initiate what they've learned from her, what they see in her and what they wish for her.
So, you know, to do that when a woman's pregnant is an awesome thing for helping her be honored by her community, going into motherhood for whichever time first or whatever.
At menarche, it's a little bit different because, you know, that got to be mindful of not overwhelming an 11, 12, 13 year old, say, but at menopause, like it's so important because it is such a change and it's in our culture, we kind of been taught to think it's valueless.
So to be. To be sat in a circle of your friends and peers and relatives and close, you know, people, your inner circle basically, or your community, and be honored for what you've done and where you're going has a massive effect on us. So. So that's one thing you like. I saw in the, in the local community that I was very involved in for some decades, that when we were doing the honoring of menarche and the girls were having a community ceremony, and it was a beautiful thing that the younger girls, well, the mothers were healing their menarche and the little younger ones were just like, I can't wait until I get my period so I can have this ceremony.
How beautiful, you know, and let's hope we get ours at the same year so we can do this together. And how can we do that?
You know, plotting and planning to be honored like that. So if you know that that's part of it coming, that's kind of cool.
And you know, that it's an honorable thing, something that's worth honoring. So back to the part about how we can do that trans transforming into our autumn years. I think the most important thing is that women are educated and that they know what's going on and know what to expect. Like, you know, as we focus on preparation for childbirth, you know, like that's a thing. There's entire industries around that, you know, yes, yes, this way and that way and blah, blah. And, you know, pretty much that's acceptable. Everybody, you know, obviously it's a privilege to be able to do any sort of education. And I'm, you know, want to honor and say that, but just the point I'm trying to make is that preparation for childbirth is a thing.
So preparation for menopause should be a thing rather than women just arriving there like oh my God, everything's changing. Where am I?
Like, better would be like for somebody who's preparing for childbirth.
Was that a contraction?
God, I think it was a contraction or whatever, you know, or my membranes eruption, you know, exciting or whatever. But they know what it means. So likewise, imagine for menopause, if women knew what to expect, then they could. And their people need to know what to expect as well. So it's not a surprise for them in the same way that they need to know the childbirth. So look, we've learned so much about childbirth. We need to bring to menopause.
[01:01:19] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:01:20] Speaker C: You know, like. Yes. We can't throw the baby out with bath water. Like, you know, we know how to do that. We need to do that at menopause.
And then it's like, oh, I feel a bit hotter beginning, you know, and it can be welcomed. Not like, oh, fuck, something's wrong with me, I must have a fever or whatever.
[01:01:43] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:01:44] Speaker C: You know, so if women knew what to expect and their people, their families, their partners and whoever are in their, you know, inner circle.
[01:01:53] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:01:53] Speaker C: Then they share it with them and they honor it.
So not sure if that answered your question.
[01:01:58] Speaker B: Oh, that really answered it. I think that is so beautiful, Jane. Just like, just hearing you talk about that just made me like a little bit emotional because I think that is just stunning. And I'm going to support the women in my life like that because I think it is incredible bringing that, bringing that in.
So thank you.
[01:02:24] Speaker C: Just, just say it helps us as individuals to make sense.
[01:02:28] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:02:29] Speaker C: Of the life, our life, our life cycle, the life seasons and you know, like it's, it's happening in the earth. Like right now where we live in Australia, it's springtime.
You can not notice that.
[01:02:43] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:02:43] Speaker C: You know, and in, in the northern hemisphere and where we'll be in six months, it's autumn or fall and you can't not notice that and everything changes. And I think another perspective which is really helpful is to remember we're animals.
We're a special kind of animal or not special specific kind of animal called a mammal because we suckle our young.
But we're animals and we are like every other animal on the earth, completely affected by everything that's happening on the planet, especially the changes of the seasons.
So it's not a mystery, it's a connect the dots.
[01:03:27] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:03:28] Speaker C: We've got this attitude that we're, I don't know, rulers of the planet or some such, you know, and look what we've done, you know, bad news.
[01:03:38] Speaker B: Yes. And this reminds me of a post that you did yesterday about the menstrual cycle. And I think this ties back on our society's attitudes of how we've really tried to control the menstrual cycle and then, you know, how we're trying to control nature. You can see that overlay there.
[01:04:02] Speaker C: Totally.
[01:04:03] Speaker B: But you said on this, and I wrote it down because it was so impactful for me and I feel now at 40, I feel like I'm, I've just understood my menstrual cycle did not, I mean, I want that earlier for women.
And you say, you said the menstrual cycle is a stress sensitive system.
Everything that isn't working shows up in your cycle.
And I was just like, yes, this, it's so important. And when we haven't given the menstrual cycle enough importance, how it's linked to the moon, how it affects everything in our life.
[01:04:52] Speaker C: So everybody.
[01:04:54] Speaker B: Yes, yes, everyone, yes. Even, you know, trying to explain it to, you know, my husband, you know, the hormones and the cycles and. Yeah, so I'd love to have your, your thoughts on the menstrual cycle and.
Yeah, just how we can lean into that more and come back to our nature.
[01:05:23] Speaker C: Great. Like, you know, it's actually as simple as that.
If that happened, everything would change.
You know, so like where, where we are in our, I don't know, culture and where humans are in the West, a post nature paradigm where we think we can do better than nature and that nature's doing things that are risky and dangerous or whatever and if we control it, we'll do better. So that's happening not just in women's health, it's happening in agriculture, education, technology, industry, business, like control and do better.
So one of the first things that gets chucked out is the menstrual cycle. You know, there's people saying it's dangerous and you lose too much blood and you know, and it disrupts your life and like, you know, go on the pill and turn it off or have this other hormonal contraception. Remember your hormone profile changes who you are and how you behave and that happens with hormonal contraception as well.
But the menstrual cycle is like the stress sensitive system. Everything that's not working in your life shows up, especially physically, like, you know, as a result of the hormones that are being metabolized or not in your body due to other things, you know, so the menstrual cycle is like the readout of your, of your eating each time you Have a cycle. When you get to week three of the cycle, which is the equivalent of the harvest, you have the bio feedback, like physical experience, the feedback from how well or not well you looked after yourself when you were bleeding.
So this again is back to the cycles. The bleeding is the beginning, the spring. What happens there affects everything that comes.
So that's been pathologized. It's now called pms, but it's actually a biophysical feedback of how your state of your body based on not honoring your bleeding.
Like we're supposed to rest when we bleed.
Like, you know, if you tune into your body. That's what she's saying. She's not saying, like the tamponads put on tight white jeans and go climb a mountain or ride a horse. It's the last fucking thing you want to do.
[01:07:46] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:07:47] Speaker C: So we're ignoring that because we'd be more productive. But our menstrual cycle, therefore, is our compass.
You know, it's our. It's our.
It's the, it's the way we're going one cycle to the next. And there is so much personal growth and inner work and personal self development that you could possibly want in a menstrual cycle. You know, when you use it as a spiritual practice, you can turn into the next best version of yourself each cycle. Like, you know, that's fast transformation. Nothing else happens that fast.
It's the, you know, tracking the lunar phases, as you said.
So, you know, in the 90s, 1990s, the American college of obstetricians and gynecologists, like one of the versions of God in our culture, proclaimed that the menstrual cycle was the fifth vital sign for a woman. So temperature, pulse, blood pressure, respiration, and menstrual cycle, these are the indicators of her health, her well being, or lack of. What we see is that all our places of power in a woman's life, these rites of passage in our menstrual cycle. So menstrual, menstrual cycle, childbirth, mothering, pregnancy, childbirth, mothering, menopause, all of those are times of great power for us. Accessing power, portals of power. And they have all been pathologized, medicalized, weaponized against us, and monetized.
So menopause at the menopause is a $16 billion industry right now.
In 2030, there's going to be 1.2 billion menopausal women. Everyone's trying to figure out what product they can make that those women want, you know, like, monetized.
So way, way Back in our lives, culturally, in the media, whatever. We're encouraged to, in our families, in our workplaces, we're encouraged to reject our menstrual cycle. Don't pay attention to reject it, control it, turn it off, but reject it.
If you reject your menstrual cycle, you reject your body.
You reject your body.
You know, what have you got left ahead?
And what we're actually initiated into at menarch and what the prevalent perspective, or.
Yeah, perspective of the menstrual cycle and menstruation and blood and all of that is we actually are initiated into menstrual shame.
Now, menstrual shame is prevalent all over the world. Actually. It's part of a patriarchy. That's what it's part of it. And you know, you can't not have menstrual shame because it's just the way, you know, you might think, oh, I don't. But watch how you navigate carrying tampons and pads around.
[01:10:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:10:51] Speaker C: And what you do with them. And if you soak your cloth pads, how you feel about the bucket of blood in the laundry, you know, all the things.
So menstrual shame. I want to give you a quote from a woman, Queensland women's health practitioner, who's written a great book, her name is Sharon Maloney, and she did a PhD on how menstrual shame affects childbirth.
And she said that menstrual shame is one of the organizing principles of the patriarchy to maintain the oppression of women almost.
And menstrual shame leads to body shame, and body shame leads to.
Sets off actually the cycles of shame. But body shame leads to low self esteem.
Low self esteem leads to all manner of wounded behaviors like eating disorders, self harm, and risky and dangerous sexual decision making.
So if the culture doesn't value your menstrual cycle, therefore it doesn't value your body unless it's highly sexual, then, you know, you reject it too.
So menstrual shame leads to birth shame because you're meant to go into birth. Meant to go into birth or honoring and trusting your amazing body, but that is determined by your relationship with your menstrual cycle. And if you've grown up with a menstrual cycle thinking this and experience pathology because you ignore it, because that's, you know, if you ignore your menstrual cycle cycle, she'll do whatever she has to do to get your attention.
And then, you know, menstrual shame leads to increased intervention at birth because women don't trust their bodies. They haven't learned body literacy through the menstrual cycle. That's another thing she teaches you. She talks to us, tells us what we need to do and stop doing. And that really amped up at menopause, too. It's the same process, but, like really turbocharged. But so menstrual shame leads to increased intervention in childbirth, which leads to increased birth trauma, which sometimes results in ptsd, which is a brain injury. Like, you know, the menstrual cycle is actually one of the ways, but an easy, as I said, easy way to get everybody back on track.
Honor your menstrual cycle, actually connect to it, learn about it, notice it touch your blood.
You know, lots of women do all kinds of things with their blood, but what's a really important thing is to pull, pour your blood on the earth.
A whole thing happens when you do that. That's not like weird. Woo, woo. It's like your blood is in the earth and then you care about that part of the earth that's got your blood in it because it's got your DNA in it. It's part of you.
So it's. The menstrual coach and educators worldwide dream that all women return their blood to the earth. There's even a Hopi prophecy that I hope everybody's heard that when women return their blood to the earth, men will return from war.
[01:14:12] Speaker A: I love that.
[01:14:13] Speaker B: I haven't heard of. I haven't heard that from the Hopi. That's beautiful.
[01:14:17] Speaker C: I paraphrased it a bit. There may be some different words, but that's the meaning. That's the.
So the menstrual cycle, it's the. Like we have childhood and let's hope that's beautiful.
And then you become fertile and you've got a menstrual cycle. So if you reject that there at 13, everything that will unfold will be connected to that rejection of that.
[01:14:40] Speaker B: That is so illuminating, Jane, like how you've spoken about that body literacy and also the menstrual shame and putting those links together.
I can see that now on reflection in my life. And I had not put those links together. So that is absolutely fascinating and just.
Yeah, more reason to.
Yeah. Honor.
[01:15:06] Speaker A: Honor this cycle.
[01:15:07] Speaker B: And yeah, for the younger women as well, like, speak about it and not have that shame around it. Because definitely when I was growing up and going through that phase, there definitely was, you know, you didn't talk about it, but I see with my stepdaughter that is. That has shifted a lot, which is really beautiful. To see, but you can see the.
[01:15:31] Speaker C: Ripple effect of totally. Totally. I want to add one thing that's not well known and can be dealt with, and that is, you know, one of the things I mentioned that menstrual shame can lead to is this body shame and body dysmorphia and eating disorders.
So eating disorders, which are common, are one of the leading reasons for osteoporosis at menopause, because eating disorders are basically trigger the body into a starvation situation. And then the body will just get the minerals and whatever it needs from everywhere, anywhere else in the body.
And the bones is one of those places.
And that's fixable, you know, so for the.
For the women who are listening who have had eating disorders or do have eating disorders, you got to look after your bones.
And so it's not just a case of drinking milk. Like, you go and see a person who knows all the things you need to do to increase your bone health density if you've had an eating. Or have an eating disorder in preparation for menopause.
[01:16:56] Speaker B: Thank you for that, Jane.
I have so much more to ask you, but I want to ask.
I always like to ask my guests around the gift of aging and.
[01:17:16] Speaker C: What.
[01:17:18] Speaker B: What is something.
I know you've touched on your lessons, but what is something that you couldn't see when you were younger about aging and this process and even how you. You have personally moved through, I guess, mourning the loss of that youth. And what is some empowering philosophy or lens that you look at through aging and you've touched on it a little bit, how you now feel grateful and you think it's a privilege to age, which I love.
But is there anything that, yeah, is. Is sort of a mantra that you hold as.
As that wisdom for women as. As they're aging?
[01:18:09] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, for me, in my adult life, you know, when I started to learn about all of this stuff, which really began at 25 when I became a midwife, and then I learned as I went on and on, that in terms of a mantra and what I.
The question I ask if I don't know what to do or think about something is I.
I see nature as our greatest teacher because we are nature.
We don't visit nature. We are nature. We're the human version of nature. So I use nature as a guide for the cycles and the process of life.
And, you know, like, apple tree sharing her harvest is a magnificent thing. So that would represent the menopause and a.
I'm just starting from there because obviously a tree in the Spring is incredible as the leaves come out. This is what we're seeing now in our garden. The blossoms and the birds and the bees. And it's just like so maiden spring energy. And then the summer of the apple tree is about the growth of the fruit. And the autumn is about the harvest of the fruit, the sharing of it. And the winter is the stillness when everything's gone. The tree is bare and the earth beneath the tree is gestating the seeds from the apples that fell down and decayed.
So I would always go to nature to be my guide and teacher. But in terms of the gift of aging that I couldn't see when I was younger, I couldn't see because I was young, you know, like, it's so funny being the parent of a 40 year old, you know. And so our children are in their 30s and just turned 40. We have four together, a blended family.
And I remember being their age, like I remember being your age. And I thought I knew everything, you know, I thought I was the, you know, the pinnacle of my life.
Now in terms of the cycle, third late 30s, 40 is actually the peak of your life if you live long enough. Now, peak doesn't mean best, it just means peak. It's the highest point. It's like midsummer, you know, like, like noon, like midday.
So from, from that perspective, you know, I would just think about, oh, what am I going to be like when I'm an old lady?
Like not knowing. I mean, watching my mother age, obviously I saw what the, what her journey looked like. But the thing that was the gift that I didn't realize would happen was wisdom.
And what that actually is. Like, I'm well seasoned now and I can see life from a perspective that it makes sense.
Like I know who I am now, and from that perspective and position, I know where I'm going. There's no mystery to me. I mean, there will be mystery, there will be things that happen that I have no idea. And I can't. I'm not saying I can tell the future or I know what's going to happen tomorrow or anything, but in terms of the map of the cycle of my life, using nature as my teacher, I know where I'm headed.
And that's, you know, in a lot of ways, very confronting, but it's also what happens.
Like, you know, one of the greatest teachings of the wisdom of the cycles and one of the main tenants of shamanic woman craft, which is the modality that I've created, which is from my school, a women's mystery school, International Women's Mystery School, the school of Shabbat Woman craft. One of the main things to do is to be with what is.
Mainly not what you wish was happening or what you plan to happen, but to be with what is. It's also Midwifery 101, be with what is.
And so from this place where I sit now in the winter of my autumn, a couple of years away from the winter of my life, I can see back on my life and I can see out into the world the results of cycles. And I think that for me is what I call wisdom.
[01:23:01] Speaker A: Beautiful.
[01:23:03] Speaker B: Thank you, Jane. I would love to hear what you're currently working on, what you have coming up and also with these events that you have, this sisterhood that you've created, this women's gathering.
Whenever I do that in my my own community, it feels so powerful. So I love what you're creating. Could you speak into what you've got coming up and the power of women gathering like that?
[01:23:37] Speaker C: Absolutely.
So I run workshops, one day workshops and an eight day intensive called Earth Woman Rising. I've got a workshop that focuses on each of the seasons of our lives. So Moon Song, which is about the wisdom of the cycles and healing our menarch first period rite of passage and the spiritual practice of men of menstruation. Then I have another workshop called the Shamanic Dimensions of Pregnancy which is about preparing for birth, but also about understanding the effect of how we were born, our birth imprint. And that's for everybody, all women, whether you've had babies or not, because as I said earlier, you birth all kinds of things and that is relevant. And then the Autumn Woman Harvest Queen workshop which is about menopause.
And then Winter Woman Bone Wisdom which is about Crohn aging and dying.
Now they happen face to face and mostly on the east coast of Australia.
And I've got some coming up in Sydney and Manly in October and also Tasmania in October. These are all on my website and also on my link tree on Instagram and then up in Mullumbimbi, northern New South Wales. And I also have an online course for each of those. Not the Winter Woman Bone Wisdom one yet, but online courses for each of those for women who can't, you know, who don't live anywhere near that. And I also have been running year long programs that go deep into this, but now moving towards this eight day program and I'm planning to bring that over to WA, where I know is your home in 2027 and also go to New Zealand and do that then. So I've also got another big online program which is the deep immersion into the cycles and you know, know thyself and understand and heal everything so far and moving forward and all of that called Earth Woman. It's an online program that's part of the school of Shamanic Womancraft website at the moment. But I made that course with help from many women including Sequoia Glastonbury when I give great thanks for that.
And you can do that in two ways. You can do it yourself or self paced or you can do it guided by a teacher who's somebody I've trained how to do that. So someone midwife you through it over a year.
So there's lots of opportunities especially online for women all around the world to do this work, this, this shamanic woman craft which is piecing together your life so far and learning the lessons that it offers and doing the inner work of healing your childhood and, and preparing for your next rite of passage and all of that. So I'm very active on Instagram too as we've mentioned, so there's lots of information I share there. But the thing, and you said you see it too, but when we gather together in circle, magic happens and it's like we go into a different world where we arrive from.
I kind of love that and tell the story of it maybe like the queens from all their different realms arrive and sit in circle and meet together to share and learn and whatever.
And we come from a culture that encourages us to live as the wounded sisterhood. You know, the place where we are competing against each other, which I'm sure you saw in your corporate life. Comparing ourselves to each other, criticizing each other, judging each other, gossiping about each other. These are the behaviors of the wounded sisterhood which is what the patriarchy encourages.
It's an age old war tactic called divide and conquer. And it works because whilst ever we are against each other, criticizing, competing, comparing, we are not united. But if we live the healed sisterhood which has all of us simply respect each other and understand that we all make the choices we need to make, what else would we make? And then what you choose to do and what I choose to do, there's no better. It's just what you're doing and I'm doing and whoever, whatever. So if we don't compete with each other, if we don't compare ourselves and judge ourselves, criticize each other and gossip with about each other, then we co create the healed sisterhood and that's a whole new world. And that's one of the things I feel is the most, one of the most important things of the work of our time is to co create the healed sisterhood because if we are united, we will not be easy to control and everything will change.
Wow, Jane, what a note to leave.
[01:28:35] Speaker B: Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for your work And I will leave all of the information how to work with you on a deeper level because this is yes, so needed.
So I want to thank you so much for your time and your wisdom and everything that you're doing in the world.
[01:28:56] Speaker C: Thank you so much Tara. And likewise. Look at you.
Thank you for doing what you're doing. You know, you're being one of the women that shares this information because that's the most important thing.
So thank you, thank you.
[01:29:13] Speaker A: Thanks for tuning in to Star Being. May the wisdom shared resonate in your soul. Until next time, stay connected and keep.
[01:29:21] Speaker B: Reaching for the stars.
[01:29:23] Speaker A: This is Star Being signing off.
