Is Your Hormonal Cycle Reflecting The Death Of Your Dreams?

leaves hang on rope
For as long as I can remember my menstrual cycle just hasn’t felt right.

My period started at age 13 and every month it came with extreme cramping. Back then I don’t think doctors knew much about PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome) or conditions like endometriosis and so I took 2-3 days off school when it came on during a school week. I would cry, rolling around on the floor at home while my stomach, back, legs, everything hurt and hot water bottles and even painkillers were simply not cutting it.

As women, many of us were not initiated into the power of our cycle, instead, we were thrown a sanitary towel and told to basically, ‘Get on with it’. This included keeping busy when exhausted, keeping sweet and nice when raging, everything stuffed down, unnaturally.

I turned 40 last year and I’m finally starting to get to know my cycle and the power held within it.

After reading about tribal societies where women were honoured and given the time, space and reflection time to bring back wisdom to the tribe, I knew deep down that we have a powerhouse inside us, but alas, I got lost again.In 2016 I was diagnosed with PCOS and I changed my diet to a gluten-free, eliminated milk products, cut back on over-consumption of inflammatory based foods like white rice, potatoes and refined sugar and I lost weight and felt a lot more balanced, with the exception of a few days before my period, a few days into my period and also a few days around ovulation. Something was obviously not working and I wanted to find out why.

At each period I felt like I was dying, something inside me was dying, and it was. Until today it hadn’t fully dawned on me what was happening and you may relate to this experience too. The rage, the irritation, the sadness, the pain.

My eggs were being released, but they were not being fertilised. They were being discarded when I bled. A part of us dies when we bleed and with each death is always a rebirth, but how many of us have honoured these deaths within us and reflected on their meaning for us on a deep personal level?

I woke up this morning feeling incredibly heavy.

My period was very heavy during the night, my blood pressure felt low. I felt this irritation inside me screaming and so I got out my journal and started to write. I didn’t write much, but instead, I doodled. Doodling can reveal a lot if we allow it.

At first, I could not stop drawing spirals (spirals is something I doodle a lot anyway), but this time I was drawing outward directing spirals and then enclosing them in an egg shape or circle. At first, I didn’t the know the significance, but then I started drawing these… over and over again and I wondered, ‘What are these? They look like eggs!’.

 
So I took myself upstairs and lay on my bed and meditated and I did some Ho’oponopono (see here for more information). I gave love to the dying eggs, love to my ovaries, love to my womb and thanks and then I cried and saw the eggs as lost dreams. Fallen dreams.That pain, that cramping, that hormonal issue you may experience may be because of dreams and inspired ideas that were never nurtured, never brought to fruition. You may have been gifted from your soul amazingly beautiful dreams and ideas to bring into this world, so you became excited, you planted the seeds, but if, like me, you felt overwhelmed by the number of dreams and ideas, you didn’t nurture them, for any number of reasons.
 

How Are You With Creation?

I am curious… if you are reading this post and are deeply affected by your periods or lack of periods, how are you with creation?

How are you with birthing your inspired ideas?

I have noticed in me and other women I know who have intense periods, serious hormonal crash and burns, that they too are inundated with a passionate creativity and beautiful dreams, but due to conditioning and early life insecurities for one reason or another felt unable to nurture those dreams and instead they miscarried.

Are you able to bring those dreams into your heart now and nurture those dreams? Are you able to forgive yourself for not nurturing them and being unable to at the time or now take steps to re-awaken those fallen dreams?

Are you overwhelmed with too much to do?

Too many inspirations wanting your attention?

And this overwhelm leaves you exhausted and unable to follow through on anything at all?

I have been like this and I now notice this inside myself. At my menstrual time, the pain, the anger, the sorrow, the feelings of self-doubt and failure arise and scream inside of me ‘Why am I dying?! What is dying! Why??’.

It makes so much sense to see those unfertilised eggs as unfertilised dreams and now it’s time to make peace with this and take action on those dreams still held within our sacred wombs.

What Can We Do?

 

Firstly forgive ourselves.

Love ourselves for noticing that this has been happening and take stock of those lost dreams.
 
Secondly, look at our lists. Especially during the week of menstruation (Lisa Lister in her book ‘CODE RED’ talks about the menstrual week being a time we reflect and look at pressure sources).

Who are we? What wants to birthed? What wants to be released?

I’ve been taking my long list of ideas, which is at least 2 A4 pages and I am pondering what is so passionately felt in my being that still needs my attention, love and care?

I know I have resistance to taking this action. There is fear about completion and birthing still. I have birthed 2 books and they were challenging pregnancies also, but I feel proud, I birthed them, but so many of my ideas have not had outward expression yet.

 

So what is stopping you expressing your ideas?

Ask yourself this during your downtime, during your reflective period. Even if you no longer have periods, or you take a contraception that stops your period, you are still a woman and have a natural feminine cycle.

 

PMT and RAGING QUEEN

And consider intense anger and pre-menstrual imbalance as the potential knowledge of death coming OR for me it was also the death of my childhood. A reminder I was no longer a child, but a woman and a part of me did not feel women had been great in my life. My prior experience of women was that they were untrustworthy gossips or who were incredibly bitchy to me. So why would I want to be a woman? Seriously?

PCOS and RESPONSIBILITY

A friend told me about an author (forgive me I have forgotten the author’s name), who writes about the symbolic meanings of certain health issues (not Louise L Hay as I find her symbology far too basic), and that PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome) could reflect a woman who does not want to grow up, does not want to be a woman, does not want on some level the responsibility of being a mother. This is not written to upset those with PCOS desperate to be a mother, but simply to question if being a child feels safer, or if your own mother over-mothers you and you may be resistant to growing up and cutting those mother apron strings?

I can relate to this too. Responsibility for me is scary. When I left home to live in Gloucester, my father died a few weeks later. Something in me felt responsible for his death because I chose to be responsible for myself (I know there is some deep stuff going on there I am still healing through).

But we are complex creatures and also equally simple…

 

COMPARING our UNFERTILISED EGGS with FULLY GROWN BIRTHS

egg-shell

 

And so what do we do in our dark time during our menstrual cycle as the old dreams are released and we have feelings of failure arise?

We look to other women who have fully birthed, growing dreams, flying high and we compare our miscarried dreams with theirs? Woah!

We need a whole lot of love, don’t we?

This does not look good. We need to nurture ourselves.

If you have a friend, who had miscarried a child, you would love, nurture and comfort that friend, but here we are with miscarried dreams floating out of our uteruses causing us pain and sorrow and we compare with others, beat ourselves up for not having our shit together, and we forget who we are.

I love you. You deserve better. WE deserve so much better.

And menfolk… you are not left out in all of this. Consider any prostate issues or issues with your sperm later in life. If you are not fertile or not spreading your seed, could it be you have un-nurtured dreams also? And can you look at those dreams again and forgive yourself for not nurturing and bringing to life those old dreams that can be re-awakened now? Maybe this will bring an inner change for you too.

 

What do you think?

So is this ringing any bells for anyone?

Let me know in the comments your own experiences and thoughts and let’s converse.

 

RESOURCES

Great resources I have found so far on this topic (and some I am yet to read) are:

 
 
 

DIVINE FEMININE Author? 

If you have published a book that helps women manage and bring balance to their womanly cycle, please contact me via my contact form for potential review on my blog and possible inclusion in this post if your book is supportive.
 
 
*Please note: RESOURCE links to books in the post are affiliate links and help support my writing and keep me in coffee and biscuits.

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Kelly Martin
Kelly Martin

Kelly Martin, author of ‘When Everyone Shines But You’ is a dedicated writer and blogger who fearlessly explores life’s deepest questions. Faced with a decade of profound anxiety and grief following the loss of her father and her best friend Michael, Kelly embarked on a transformative journey guided by mindfulness, and she hasn’t looked back since. Through her insightful writing, engaging podcasts, and inspiring You Tube channel Kelly empowers others to unearth the hidden treasures within their pain, embracing the profound truth that they are ‘enough’ exactly as they are.

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