“Women have always been healers. They were the unlicensed doctors and anatomists. They were abortionists, nurses and counselors. They were the pharmacists, cultivating healing herbs, and exchanging the secrets of their uses. They were midwives, traveling from home to home and village to village. For centuries women were doctors without degrees, barred from books and lectures, learning from each other, and passing on experience from neighbor to neighbor and mother to daughter. They were called “wise women” by the people, witches or charlatans by the authorities. Medicine is part of our heritage as women, our history, our birthright.”
― excerpt from Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers by Barbara Ehrenreich & Deirdre English
Hello, Sir.
This essay is written for the men who love women that are embracing their feminine awakening. I realize it can be quite a confounding experience, because we women are bucking modern traditions of patriarchy, and that can leave men gasping for air. This is meant to orient, educate, and inspire you to come with us, to support the evolution of humanity, placing women back in the center of a respectful and devotional culture.
For many women I’ve worked with over the last decade, their journey begins with healing their menstrual cycle. Reclaiming it as a source of power and healing, rather than a curse each month. Unfortunately, extreme pain is often the catalyst. For women to come back to their bodies, their intuition, and their reproductive health, often they must walk through some fire.
As you probably have witnessed first hand, many women suffer from intense physical discomfort and emotional instability due to the hormonal fluctuations of their menstrual cycle. It can be a difficult and isolating experience.
As a man who loves women, it is important to provide support and empathy rather than disregard or ignore. I hope this essay will help you understand how to do that.
I’m writing these essays to you as a partner to such a woman, to help you be her greatest ally, to educate you and inspire you, to give your role as her champion a sense of purpose.
There’s a lot of anger we are processing - your woman and women collectively - and rightfully so. I understand this can be very intense to be with. It can easily be taken personally and cause defensiveness.
You may not have directly caused the pain she’s unearthing, but you CAN help her heal it. You can be the ocean to hold her tears, a rock for her to lean into when she needs to keen. When you're on the defensive, you may not be aware of how you minimize her plight, which kills the healthy polarity between you and destroys trust and safety.
My goal here is to help everyone create deeper intimacy and love. With a little understanding and a few specific tools, I believe it’s possible to resurrect trust and safety, and rebuild polarity for us all.
If you haven’t already, read Part 1 of this essay. Many good tips in there for building trust.
The wild menstrual cycle, and how it relates to you.
I say WILD menstrual cycle because many women’s cycles have been tamed by the European/Western medical profession. I’d go so far to say, it was a calculated ruling-class campaign of terrorization.
Men, it’s really important to acknowledge that for the last few hundred years, generations of women were demonized for practicing well-woman care. This fear of the power of women's bodies was so deeply rooted that men tried to control them any way they could. This included limiting their freedom, controlling their education, and preventing them from having control over their own reproductive systems. They even crucified, hung, and burned women healers at the stake.
The rise of the medical profession gave men the power to dictate women’s healthcare decisions, and women were left without control over their own bodies. Midwives, witches and nurses were no longer able to give women the advice and expertise they needed to make decisions about their own health. This had a profound impact on women's health for generations to come.
It is sad that women are no longer aware of the folk medicine that has kept their cycles and births healthy for centuries. Most women today don’t question the standard narratives in gynecology and obstetrics because they’ve never learned the old ways. In a medical culture without feminine wisdom, they have accepted the malaise they feel in their wombs as 'normal'.
So what is a Wild Cycle? It’s a cycle that is not chemically or mechanically interrupted, by hormonal birth control, IUDs, or hormone replacement. A wild menstrual cycle then, is one that’s flowing by its original design. When women befriend and reconnect with their cyclical nature, there is beauty and rhythm and deep power.
In this moment in history, women have to fight to keep our bodies from being altered. It’s a bold thing for a woman to reclaim and defend her wild cycle. If you’re reading this, (I’m assuming that she sent it to you) then you should know the ancestral weight of her choices today, of what it took, and still takes, for her to reclaim her reproductive sovereignty. She’s a warrior!
How does this relate to you? Well, first of all, you get to be with a very badass woman who is not settling for bullying and abuse at the hands of her ‘healthcare’ providers. She’s fighting for her life-long health by defending her wild cycle. She’s fighting for her fertility. She’s fighting for her hormone health. She’s fighting for her libido and rights to pleasure and sexual sensation. She’s fighting for less painful periods and less painful sex. She’s fighting for her mental wellness and resilience. And she deserves all that.
What are the phases of a wild menstrual cycle?
I’m sure you’ve seen something like this before, and it probably made your eyes glaze over. But this is quid pro quo if you want to love a cyclical woman. Trust me, if you can trade bitcoin with an iPhone, you can understand this simple biology.
Phase-by-phase for you guys, here’s what this all means. Imagine it like the seasons, all happening in an abbreviated 28 day cycle.
Phase One: Period (Winter)
This is when she’s bleeding. She needs to rest a lot. Imagine a hibernating bear. She’s deep in her dreaming phase, a time of letting go, of allowing what’s dying to be released. Support her without making too much noise, and she will emerge from this cave feeling very grateful for you. She needs help with lifting, cooking, childcare, laundry, all that shit. She also needs space, most likely. Take yourself and the kids out for the afternoon on some adventures, and encourage her to take this self-care time.
Phase Two: Proliferative (Spring)
The follicular phase, when her body is selecting an egg. This is when she’s finished bleeding and before she’s fertile. This is a ripening and emerging season of her cycle. She’s becoming more interested in engaging socially and erotically, but needs time to warm into it. A great time for displays of love, taking her out somewhere romantic, and meaningful time together.
Phase Three: Ovulation (Summer)
She’s blossoming into her most ripe season here. This is the fertile window, typically about 24-48 hours after she ovulates (the body releases an egg). If you want to support her getting off chemical birth control or never needing it, this is when extra contraception is required, like condoms (see below). A time for more strenuous athletic adventures, for going out to social events, and for bigger relationship conversations. Progesterone, the super hormone, begins to fill her with radiance.
Phase Four: Secretory (Autumn)
This is the luteal phase, the longest phase, and it has two parts. The first half is similar to the energy of Summer, a great time to ‘hit it’ together. The second half is the watery phase, where she becomes more sensitive. Tears come easily, emotions run higher. It’s an extreme sport, managing these reproduction hormones as they all drop together. It’s a deep preparation time, culling the garden and composting. Be gentle with her when she’s irritated, it’s not a good time to poke the bee hive. Affirmations, acts of kindness, foot rubs, and gestures of your love go a long way.
Menstruation is the Fifth Vital Sign.
Reading the blood cycle is just as important as blood pressure and heart rate. This has been confirmed by the college of obstetrics and gynecology. The best way to detect the first warning signs of ill health is through a wild menstrual cycle. The wild cycle shows a woman each month (like a report card) how well she did managing her jing (feminine reproductive energy): how well she rested, how well she worked out, how well she slept and ate and managed stress… it’s incredible how much wisdom can be read from a woman’s cycle.
It’s a most joyous part of my work to offer women the Menstrual Cycle Analysis. This is a personalized one-on-one session where we go through all the symptoms and imbalances of her cycle. I teach her to read the wisdom in her cycle, just like our witchy ancestors used to do. It’s a very good gift, by the way ;)
If she’s on hormonal birth control, or her body is fighting to expel an IUD, or if she’s carrying a burdensome toxic load, all these factors affect her wild cycle and hormones, often inhibiting her ability to be the woman you love, bright and radiant.
That said, Ovulation is the Main Event.
Only women with wild cycles ovulate. Ovulation is the main event of a wild cycle. It’s when the ovary drops an egg. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not menstruation that is the star of the show, although most of the derogatory and shaming cultural /historical references are about the BLOOD.
Ovulation is most important because it’s the only way a woman produces natural Progesterone, and this is the super hormone that makes women feel safe, secure, and sexy.
Additional benefits of Progesterone:
Eases anxiety
Promotes memory
Helps to prevent overgrowth of certain types of cells, which can help protect against some cancers including those of the breast, cervix, or the uterus
Helps to prevent overgrowth of cells of the endometrial lining and prevent endometriosis from forming
Helps prevent fibrocystic disease and ovarian cysts
Helps with symptoms of PMS
Increases ability to handle stress
Helps the metabolism by contributing to the use of fat for energy
Assists in preventing plaque from forming on arterial walls
Helps to lower triglycerides
Essential for bone growth
Assists in the proper function of the thyroid gland
Can help to slow down the aging process
Improves insomnia
Improves libido
Reduces or eliminates migraines
Reduces inflammation and joint pain
Regulate menstrual cycles
Reduce hot flashes
Reduce weight gain
How can you support your woman to ovulate? It tickles me to imagine a man asking an awakened woman this question. How it would feel to have this level of understanding, this level of care and tending? Permissive. This level of permission is what women need often, because we have it wired in us to go-go-go and to care for everyone else first.
So as a man holding down the energy of protection and service, know that your attention to this is enough. It’s going to heal so much, just the fact that you’re literate about progesterone and it’s deep importance for a woman’s life-long health.
And if you tended to these things for a woman in the second half of her cycle while she is producing Progesterone (after ovulation before menstruation), that would be extra EXTRA credit…
Progesterone is allergic to three main inputs:
1. Starvation - help her get fed! Most women don’t realize they are triggering a starvation response by not eating enough high quality organic food, especially grass-fed animal proteins and fats (80-100g/day)
2. Artificial light - this messes up melatonin production big time and throws off the circadian rhythm, and that means sleep and digestion get disturbed, and we all know about the cascade of trouble this causes. Get some red bulbs for nighttime lights, install blue light blockers on all devices, buy some candles.
3. Stress - do you know the routine things that cause stress or overwhelm your partner? What helps her feel resourced and safe? Are there any burdens you can cary during this time of her cycle, to help her de-stress?
Building resilience through touch.
Down-regulating the nervous system together is a potent doorway into experiences of stress-relief and trust. Conscious touch is one of the most direct ways I know to establish this co-regulation.
On his last visit, my partner supported me with a beautiful nightly ritual of conscious touch. It widened my resilience, opened my body, released stress, build deep trust. It wasn’t a fancy technique, and any man could do this for his woman.
Here’s the recipe: He asked me to lie horizontally in bed, and brought a chair to the edge of my side of the bed, near my head. He then brought his hands to my head and worked my neck and scalp with very slow, very gentle massage. Sometimes he just was still, holding my head. No talking, just breathing.
His presence was with me, and nothing else. I could feel his love for me pouring into my body through his hands. He would stay til my breathing slowed, usually for 15-20 min. Then after, he’d kiss my forehead and tell me he loved me, and I’d fall into the deepest most delicious slumber, and so would he.
He did this every night for his three week visit. I gave him an out several nights, as we were both tired, but his dedication was steady. He believed in the benefits for us both, and I know he enjoyed it as much as I did. Our nervous systems dropped into a liminal space together in these sessions, and it brought us incredible resilience in our waking moments to navigate the challenges we faced.
What happens when a woman is loved by a man who knows her cycles.
Women evolve every fucking month. We cyclically go through a life-death-life cycle every month. We shed and create anew, we evolve and grow, we change. Look at your woman fresh in the Spring phase of her cycle each month, be curious about her transformation.
When women are beheld in reverence and awe for being mystical creatures of creation by the man they have chosen, they are allowed to heal the generational trauma of their mother’s mother’s mother’s pain. There is bone-deep safety and dearmoring possible when a woman knows that she won’t be reduced to being “crazy” or “hormonal”.
Because men, now you know the nuances of what she’s going through, phase-by-phase. There is nothing crazy going on. There are hormones being produced during ovulation that act like a drug to make women feel like everything is FINE! even when it’s really not. Progesterone helps us feel safe, secure, supported and sexy… it does so to put us in the mood to further the population.
So as the hormones drop (just before the period) it often reveals the truth of how she’s been feeling. It does not however, create drama that wouldn’t otherwise exist. That’s fake news. This is the big patriarchal lie. It’s the tool used most often by men to gaslight women. To take away our self confidence, our inner trust of ourselves, and our power.
It’s been modeled to you by almost every adult male on the screen and likely in your home growing up. It’s okay that you learned it, but now is a good time to upgrade your narratives about women, now that you know the functions of these mysterious “hormones”.
This is all part of the miraculous orchestra of many systems of the body organizing around one potential moment of creation! And then organizing to do it all again next month. And again and again…
A woman might find new RESPECT when she meets a this level of curiosity and interest in you, when she sees the effort you put in to educate yourself. Respect plus safety is the best recipe for polarity and intimacy that I know of.
Birth control is your responsibility too.
Sixty years ago “The Pill” revolutionized women’s emancipation. It was marketed to millions of women to liberate them from the labors of unwanted pregnancy. But the science has caught up with the propaganda - it’s actually toxic and now we know.
Hormonal Birth Control (HBC) was originally developed for men, but when male researchers started seeing the side-effects they refused to take it, so they modified it and sold it to women. True story.
HBC remains the most prescribed medication among US women aged 18-44, despite the dangerous side effects from blood clots and heart attacks, even death. It’s prescribed for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with pregnancy prevention, as a catch-all “cure” for painful periods, hormonal acne, mood swings, endometriosis, and a host of other gynecological concerns.
How does it do all this? By tricking the woman’s body into believing, at least hormonally, that she’s already pregnant. With synthetic hormones, it is essentially putting her body’s endocrine system on lock-down. The ‘pill bleed’ is not a real menstrual bleed caused by the decline of progesterone, it’s a withdrawal bleed from the synthetic hormones in the rest of the pack.
The Business of Birth Control is a highly recommended documentary that highlights all these claims.
Why should you care?
There’s a well-documented phenomenon that when a woman gets off HBC, depending on how long she was on it (and for some women this is decades) she realizes she is not actually physically attracted to her husband. All of a sudden her pheromones change, and he smells different. Her brain thought she was already pregnant, so her chemistry while on HBC was orienting her to find good male friends (and not search for a mate). If you meet a woman while she’s on HBC, it’s a good idea to support her going wild for the future of your compatibility.
Additionally, women who go off their HBC in preparation for trying to conceive often have a hard time restarting their natural hormones. This can take months or even years if a woman isn’t doing womb care, detox, and cleansing work. This can result in inaccurate ‘infertility’ diagnoses, which then lead couples down a very expensive and stressful journey of medicalized ‘fertility assistance’. There are holistic ways to support her body to heal from the toxicity of HBC, I’d recommend you start there before you go into the world of Big Fertility.
I hope these two points alone might make you want to take more responsibility for your role in conception. Women should not be poisoned in order to prevent pregnancy (or to achieve it for that matter).
Other techniques include the fertility awareness method (understanding her fertility cycle), playing with non-penetrative pleasure during ovulation, getting a vasectomy, and everyone’s least favorite - using barriers. These options are safe, effective, and far less damaging than using chemical birth control.
Notice how I did not suggest the pull-out method… that’s because it’s not a method, guys. It's estimated 18 to 28 percent of couples pulling out will get pregnant within the first year. That's largely because it's hard to pull off a perfect pullout.
Eros, nature, and intimacy
Eros is attunement with the energy of the natural world. It’s an opening to life itself, in reverence of the woman, the iris, the honeybee, the child, the tree, the soul at rest in trust. It’s the original energy that bodies radiate. It’s the energy that we all crave.
It’s an endangered energy, with every modern technology sucking your attention away from the miracles of nature. It’s a big task to keep eros alive, to resist the screen, to tend to your animal instincts and body, to reconnect with the waters and the stones. To appreciate and experience eros, you must cultivate your own energy of it, you must connect with the earth yourself.
Women are designed in connection with the earth, we have our cycles that tether us to this planet and to the moon, and when we are brave and reclaim our Wild Cycles, we also reclaim our Eros.
I believe true intimacy happens when the polarity between men and women is invigorated by their respective relationships with eros. Attunement with the energy of the natural world, felt though the bodies of people who are willing and able to feel. That is what we seek, as cyclical women, as humans.
There have been so many experiences of conquest, of conquering and stealing eros in women’s histories. This is a big ancestral wound (and a this-lifetime wound for most of us too). Time and time again, men have failed to cultivate or intentionally severed their own connections to nature and eros, only to come around and expect women to give up their own.
How to truly be a king for your queen?
Respect the work she does each month to nurture her eros, and respect that she may not want to give it to you. You may have some rites of passage to attend to. You may have some conquest energy that’s hiding under the surface that you aren’t even aware of. You may be patriarchalized, born into unconscious systems of stealing and oppressing the feminine. You may be good-natured and willing but still haven’t faced these latent tendencies.
Understand that eros is like the fruiting body of a mushroom, and the mycelium is the slow growing web of trust and safety and respect.
This is what the woman with the wild cycle is calling for. Respect.
Thank You.
If you got this far, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being willing to read my thoughts and advice. Some bitter pills in here. I welcome your responses. I’m actually hopeful for the state of humanity, because I see men like you willing to slog through the trenches of your own distasteful heritages, to make amends, and to do better.
I want to champion you, because you’re doing so much right. You’re changing the paradigm in so many ways, and it’s making the lives of the women in your life better, and therefor, everyone’s lives improve.
Women are the center. For the vast majority of history, women were revered for their capacity to bring life and connect humanity to the cycles of the Earth. The goddess worship cultures spanned the globe. The very first human art was devoted to the miracle of the vulva, as a portal to bring life. None of this is new. It’s just old ways that have been forgotten, being reclaimed.
Thank you for your absolutely critical role in this reclamation.
i love you,
Sarah WolfMother