Episode 179 - The transition to motherhood with Jane Hardwicke Collings
Mel:
[0:00] Welcome to the Great Birth Rebellion podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Melanie Jackson. I'm a clinical and research midwife with my PhD, and each episode, I cast a critical eye over current maternity care practice by grappling with research and historical knowledge to help you get the best out of your pregnancy, birth, and postpartum journey.
In the interest of keeping this podcast completely free to you, this episode is sponsored by my dear friend Poppy Child from Pop That Mama. She's a doula and hypnobirth practitioner and her online hypnobirthing course, which is called The Birth Box, has already helped thousands of women. I'm so picky about who I allow to sponsor this podcast, but I really get behind the work that Poppy is doing. What I love about The Birth Box is that it's so practical. She's had so many amazing reviews and results from the work that she's offering women. In the birth box, you'll learn the tools that you need to manage the pain of labor and also stay steady and calm your nervous system during this really big event.
Mel:
[1:09] The mindset that you get from doing hypnobirthing and more specifically the one that Poppy has put in the birth box. It works when the big day of birth comes but also in the big days that will follow in your life as a parent. There's a little cherry on top in the birth box. It's called the oxytocin bubble and it's a full album of soundtracks to guide you through labor and help you stay in the zone. The birth box has been rated five stars across the board and with my code Melanie, you'll get 25% off at the cart. So if you're preparing for birth, go to the checkout. You'll be so glad you did. The link is in the show notes below.
Mel:
[1:49] Use the code Melanie for your discount. That is the birth box by Pop That Mama. Welcome to today's episode of the Great Birth Rebellion podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Melanie Jackson, and I've invited Jane Hardwicke Collings with me today because we're going to talk about the transition to motherhood, but also transition through life. I'd love to speak to you along with Jane about the idea or the reality actually of matrescence. And so that's the topic for today. Changes through life, transitioning into motherhood, but also other life transitions like menopause and the power of that. Welcome Jane to the podcast.
Jane:
[2:30] Thank you so much, Melanie. Thank you for be inviting me and hi to everybody. This is a wonderful honour to be speaking at this most wonderful podcast.
Mel:
[2:40] Jay, can you describe who you are and why you are the right person to be having this conversation with?
Jane:
[2:48] Well, I think there's probably lots of right people that you could have this conversation with, but I think the thing that I can bring to this conversation is my midwife heart and midwife eyes. So... I am a 67-and-a-half-year-old grandma, post-menopausal woman. I was a home birth midwife for 30 years and I founded the International School of Shamanic Womancraft, which is an international women's mystery school, which focuses in on all this stuff that we're going to talk about, which is the women's mysteries, the rites of passage, the transitions, actually transformations that we have in our lives through our rites of passage. Passage in each life season that we go through. So I've been around for a long time and I remember when you were a new kid on the block and so happy about that and all the research that you've done and all the amazing things that you've created. So it's so wonderful to see the leadership in midwifery and the birth culture with people like you.
Jane:
[3:51] So thank you so much, Melanie, for what you're doing.
Mel:
[3:53] Oh, thank you, Jane. I've always felt only kindness and support from you right from the beginning this can be a very tricky and hostile space for young and new players and I always felt safe and supported in your presence you know I'm also grateful to you for that but yes right from the beginning Dave you know yes you watched me join the ranks of midwifery here we are I'm still united yeah absolutely so I want to start with that idea that that women have transitions through their life. We're not just living one big life chunk.
Jane:
[4:31] No. Well, it could look like that and feel like that, but it has its bookends all the way through. So I think the first thing to remind us of is that we have life seasons or stages. Just like the earth has seasons, spring, summer, autumn, winter, we do too because we are as if the earth. We do all the same things that the earth does, And that's a really good thing to remember, you know, that the earth is nature and we're nature. We don't visit nature. We are nature. We're the human variety of nature. So we play out the cycles of the earth in our body and in our life. And so spring, summer, autumn, winter of our lives, and these are all bookended or divided up by rites of passage, which is the kind of the anthropological term to use to describe the transformations and transitions that we go through in our lives. So rites of passage are not some new age thing. They've been around forever and they happen whether we pay attention to them or not. So that's one of the most important things to get, that if you had a rite of passage, so let's think about our menarche, our first period, our initiation into womanhood.
Jane:
[5:48] And then every pregnancy results in a birth, even if it's a loss or an abortion, and then menopause. So these are the women's mysteries, the blood mysteries, which is basically ancient feminine wisdom, very relevant for us today. Because if you don't have an honored rite of passage, you still have a rite of passage. And whatever happens is the rite of passage. And how these rites of passage work is that whatever happens or doesn't, who's there, what they say, who's not there, what doesn't get said, and then what's going on in the individual's world at the time. All of that adds up and we are taught by our experience, whether it's conscious or not. It's a subliminal teaching. We're not aware of it. And it's a process of enculturation, which is really just a nice way of saying brainwashed. And what happens in the rite of passage, is that everything adds up to teach us how our culture values the next role we're going into. And so at menarche, that's womanhood. At pregnancy and birth, that's motherhood. At menopause, that's our wise woman years, the second half of our life. So our experience of navigating the process of transformation is.
Jane:
[7:04] Teaches us how we're supposed to behave to be accepted by the culture in our new role. So we don't have to look too deeply at the stats to see what's happening and what women are learning. And that is that, well, for example, right now in the modern Western world, less than 50% of women actually push their babies out of their vaginas. Therefore, over 50% of women are learning things like, my body doesn't work. I don't go into labor on time. I can't handle the pain. something's wrong and so therefore that sets up this situation where rather than be able to be connected to their inner knowing and have the experience show them what they're capable of that we those women learn subliminally that it is safer and their experience proves it to trust the experts to hand over your power to the experts and not trust your own body your your intuition etc And that sounds heavy, but that's actually what the results of it are. And the thing about rites of passage is that one leads to the next. So it creates this trajectory that we go on in our lives. And so how we experience our initiation into womanhood at our menarche, our first period.
Jane:
[8:23] Sets up our whole life as a woman. She who was initiated into womanhood at Menarche is the woman that shows up to give birth, completely enculturated into how she's supposed to behave as a woman to be accepted by this culture. And all we have to do is look at the stats of menstrual pathology to see how much the menstrual cycle is upset, so to speak. So the thing about the menstrual cycle is if we ignore her or don't flow with her, she will do whatever she has to do to get our attention. That's often what the pathology is. So how we experienced our menarche, it's an opportunity to see the setup that it created. And we can reclaim and we can heal our menarche. So I'll just give a little sideways how to do that. Recall your menarche story. So listeners, write it down and then figure, ask yourself a couple of questions. What did that experience teach me about being a woman?
Jane:
[9:24] And this is the stuff I do in my workshops about this. And what pattern or theme did that set up that's been going on all my life? And therefore, what new message do I want to give the inner maiden in me? Because she never goes away. She's mostly in the driver's seat most of the time and most likely in her most wounded form. So a new message to our inner maiden is wonderful change in direction. So if you figure out that your menarche was disempowering and you got the message to not make a fuss and hide it and carry on business as usual, that does not serve a woman in the menstrual cycle. That's ignoring the cycle. And that's what causes pathology or some way that the menstrual cycle is trying to get our attention. So you figure out what the new message is you want to give your inner maiden about being a woman and live by that.
Jane:
[10:19] Rewire your brain. We know we've got neuroplasticity. We know we can rewire our brain. So the step one in this work is to figure out how it started.
Jane:
[10:29] And the thing about rites of passage is that one leads to the next, as I said. But every time you come to a rite of passage, you come to a fork in the road. And one way is the usual way, the same old, same old way, the way it always happens to me or in my family or in my community or in my culture. And that is often the wounded way, but we don't even realize it. It's just the way it always happens.
Jane:
[10:54] And then the other fork is the healed way. but to even know there's a healed way you have to realize you're on the wounded way 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 means you start to realize the decisions and choices you made that kept leading to the same old same old so you start to notice that and make healed choices rather than wounded responses or fearful decisions and things like that. So then you start to head into a more self-authorship sort of situation where you are choosing your path. Now, a healed rite of passage when we come to birth does not mean necessarily an orgasmic water birth. It could be a planned cesarean that a woman chooses. So what the healed choice looks like is individual. So it's not about judging birth experiences. It's about women choosing them with consciousness and from an empowered perspective. And I know we talk about empowerment all the time, but to be able to have the freedom to make the choices and decisions that we want to make is basically that. And so-
Jane:
[12:07] This just keeps going through our lives. So we have the menarche in the spring of our lives, and then everybody goes into the summer or mother season of their lives at around 25 years old, regardless of if they've had babies or ever have babies, because when we're in the summer, just like the earth, there's so much going on. It's full bloom. So it's births and births and births. And when we're in those fertile years, we also conceive, gestate, birth, and need to look after all manner of things besides humans, you know. Like you're a classic example, you know, your career outside your life, you know. Like so, I mean, it is your life, but your PhD and all your research and then, you know, your latest baby, the convergence of rebellious midwives. So all of these things are births, metaphoric, but still take on all the characteristics and qualities of what sets them up and where we go from them. So the thing is that rites of passage.
Jane:
[13:09] Are what create the future. So rites of passage create the future and they create the culture and they reinforce the culture. So the way rites of passage create culture is they create culture on the inside by the mindset, the beliefs, attitudes, and fears that the woman has as a result of the experience. And then that's how she operates. And then it creates culture on the outside because most people have similar experiences, therefore have the same beliefs, attitudes, and fears, so everybody's choosing or fearing the same things.
Jane:
[13:44] And there's another thing that links them together that I think is such an important piece for us to remember or realize is this interconnectedness throughout our lives. Birth, for example, is not some random medical event, and neither is menopause. How we give birth is like a readout of our beliefs, attitudes, and fears, and also the culmination of our life thus far. We have the birth we need to have to teach us what we need to learn about ourselves to take us to the next place on our journey. And it might not be what you want, but we break into the Rolling Stones song now and say, but if you try sometimes, you might just find you get what you need. So, you know, and that's a big teaching because births are our teachers. And if we can meet them like that, like everything in life, you know,
Jane:
[14:38] it doesn't necessarily go the way you want, but the things happen that teach us. When we know that births are our teachers, then that's so, so helpful. And then everything that hasn't been...
Jane:
[14:50] Integrated or healed or digested will come out at menopause, which is not a terrible thing. It's a wonderful thing. It's a healing opportunity. And we'll go into that, I'm sure, in a little while when we talk about how menopause works and what it does. But I just want to add one extra thing to place our rites of passage in context. In psychology, they refer to life stages, developmental stages. It's the same thing. We all know adolescence, the becoming an adult, And that takes some time. Like that's not a short process and, you know, maybe some people never actually even navigate that, but adolescence. And then the next big one is matrescence. And matrescence is the becoming a mother.
Jane:
[15:37] And that takes, again, as long as it takes. And it happens every pregnancy. Not just you just become like a mother and that's it. Like mother of two is a very different creature to mother of one. Mother of three, very different to mother of two. So matrescence is a life stage, a developmental stage in our lives where we become mother. And we'll talk more about what that means. And then menopause, and there's pre-menopause, there's perimenopause, there's menopause, there's post-menopause. I think everyone is so confused about what that even means. So I've decided to rename it. What did you name? My name for all of those pre, peri, post, blah, blah, blah, in keeping with adolescence, matrescence is sage essence. The becoming a wise woman, sage essence. The sense means state. So, yeah. So, adolescent, matrescence, mother, sage essence, wise woman. And interestingly, just in case you need any more proof that they're all connected, the same things happen at each one. There is neural pruning at each of those, at adolescence, every single pregnancy and birth, not just once. And then again, at menopause, neural pruning, cutting away the neural pathways that are not used anymore and therefore creating more real estate in the brain and then increased.
Jane:
[17:07] Neuroplasticity because we need to learn all the new ways we need to be as an adult and then as a mother and then as a post-reproductive non-fertile woman grandmother whether you've had grandchildren or not that's kind of like grandmother and so these are all connected so So that in and of itself is a really important thing that we need to remember and reclaim,
Jane:
[17:34] that life is not a series of random events. It's our life as it unfolds.
Mel:
[17:41] So our lives as women are so cyclical, full of transitions, where we let go of one phase of who we are to usher in the next. And there's a little bit of upheaval in the transition as we tune and prune our brain to this new phase.
Mel:
[18:02] And I feel like society doesn't get that when it's set up not to cater to the lives and changes in women's lives and I even noticed that for myself partly in parenthood but definitely in business and work some weeks I feel like creating and generating new things and I feel really productive and other weeks I'm sitting down questioning my whole life's purpose and I'd and then you know I'll get a bleed and I'll go ah that's what happened I was I was coming up to my bleed. I was questioning everything and now I'm reinvigorated and ready to go out to the world. But the world doesn't work like that. You're not invited to be cyclical in that way. What I hear from you, Dane, is a call firstly for women to realize that you don't just transition into womanhood because you have your period. There's actually a huge societal change that happens around you. There's physical, emotional changes in your role. When you go through adolescence and then again when you go through matricence and how well that happens bleeds into how well you transition into those phases into the stages of life
Jane:
[19:24] Yeah and what you have to face or let go of or learn or whatever and like you said it the menstrual cycle is our teacher of the cyclical way everything on the planet is running on a cycle everything there is only one cycle and everything goes through it just at different speeds. And the cycle goes birth, growth, full bloom, harvest, decay, death, rebirth, over and over and over. Some cycles are literal, some are metaphoric, and some are both. And we live in what's called a negative menstrual cycle culture. And we could add negative birth cycle culture, sorry, negative birth culture and negative menopause culture, which is something I think we need to notice, what we can see is that all our portals of power, so to speak, the places where we access our inner knowing, our intuition, we learn about our own self and what to do about various things through these, is that all our portals of power, the menstrual cycle, childbirth, and menopause, have all been pathologized, medicalized, weaponized against us, and monetized. When we are initiated into womanhood at Menarche, Like whatever happened for the individual is going to create the teaching that they got about how to behave as a woman.
Jane:
[20:50] But one thing that isn't often spoken about is that when we are initiated into womanhood, we are also initiated into a patriarchal culture kind of over theme. I don't know that's such a word, but you know what I mean, of menstrual shame. So menstrual shame is part of the patriarchy. And I'll just do a little sub thing. Patriarchy is the culture that we live in, and in a patriarchy, the masculine and men are held as the right way, the way, and the feminine and women, the energy is suppressed or oppressed. So this is no new invention. This has been going on for millennia and millennia, millennia. It's better than it's been in some places. In some places, it's worse, but basically...
Jane:
[21:38] Coming back to our lives now, when we are initiated into womanhood, we are introduced and initiated into menstrual shame. Now, menstrual shame as a beginning when you become fertile is a tragedy,
Jane:
[21:51] but it's happening to everybody. You can't not have menstrual shame. You may think that you bleed shamelessly, but what do you do with your rubbish? Like in the public toilets, the girls sit there unwrapping tampons and pads, fearful of the noise of it making, and then everybody will know. We'll all have terrible, shameful, embarrassing experiences from our menstrual cycle. But menstrual shame leads to body shame. Then we're also encouraged to reject our menstrual cycle in our culture, you know, like turn it off or drug it or ignore it. And then she'll do whatever, like I said already, she'll do whatever she has to do to get your attention. because the menstrual cycle, and I've learned this as a midwife, is preparation for birth. You know, the menstrual cycle is a teaching in cyclical intelligence and body literacy. Like if we practice listening to our bodies, like you just gave an example, and hopefully next cycle you remember that it's the same thing you experience every cycle.
Mel:
[22:55] Oh yeah, that's right.
Jane:
[22:57] Exactly. So if we, you know, our menstrual cycle is running our lives. So it's actually sensible to run your life around your menstrual cycle. When we reject our menstrual cycle as we are encouraged, we reject our body. We reject our body like what's left of us. And the other thing I want to say about menstrual shame is to quote a Queensland women's health practitioner, Sharon Maloney, who did a PhD on menstrual shame and how it affects childbirth. Her quote is that menstrual shame is one of the organizing principles of the patriarchy to maintain the oppression of women. You know, it has us hiding our power, hiding our blood, hiding our weakness, you know, which I'm not saying is true. But for you, you just gave the absolute wonderful example of there is a part in your cycle when you are on fire. You just like, you know what to do. you you've got like 100 plans and all of the things like that's a part of the menstrual cycle because the menstrual cycle dictates our hormonal profile and whatever our hormonal profile is will run um every part of us including what we can and can't do so well and including our desires our behavior all of the things so.
Jane:
[24:16] Paying attention to our menstrual cycle is step one. Let me just give you the results of the PhD. Yeah. What she found was that menstrual shame leads to increased intervention at birth. And we all know that increased intervention leads to the likelihood of, well, one in three women getting birth trauma and one in 10 of that one in three having PTSD, a brain injury from their birth experience. So women who experience menstrual shame do not go into childbirth thinking, oh, my body is so awesome. I know how my womb speaks to me about what I need to do, so here we go. I'm ready for this. I trust my body. I trust my intuition. I trust the birth process. Here we go. So rather than that, you know, that's not what's happening for most women. And why, there'll be lots of whys, but menstrual shame and their relationship with their menstrual cycle is the beginning. It's kind of like the thing that we need to remember is affecting everything because our menstrual cycle is running our life, whether you want it to or not. And so the best thing is to work with it rather than have this like, what's wrong with me? And then go, oh, yeah, that's right.
Mel:
[25:36] Yeah. I mean, I remember it. I remember when my period came and what happened to me. My dad doesn't know it, but he was pivotal in how I transitioned through that. I don't remember much of what my mom did, which is fine. It's probably a good thing because maybe it was just fine. But I remember coming down and my mom announced, coming downstairs and my mom announced to the whole house, Mel got her period. And my dad cheered. And he's this, you know, Cypriot migrant, very kind of proper, you know, you don't burp or fart at the table or in public and it's all very sensible and polite. And he cheered and he was very excited and then there was no embarrassment or anything about that. And then I remember a few cycles in, we were holidaying at a beach location and I got my period.
Mel:
[26:39] And we were at the beach and I said to him, I don't feel very comfortable. I want to go home. And without question, he packed everybody up and he brought us all home And it just sent this real message of that, yeah, there's no shame around your period. And also, if you don't feel like doing life right now because of it, we're going to honour that. I mean, he could have just as easily said, excuse me, we're on a family holiday and we're all here at the beach and you're just going to have to tolerate this situation. He was just like, oh, well, we are not staying. And he wouldn't have known that that was important in those traditional periods. But I mean I recall them now I was bleeding at the age of 12 and I'm now 42 that those memories stick um and still to this day I will message people hey I'm not coming today I got my period I want to stay home you know beautiful naming that whereas some people would be like oh I don't feel it but I'll go um gorgeous
Jane:
[27:43] You know what dads do is really important. Like if there's a dad around, how he welcomes, reacts, whatever is huge. You just gave a classic example of a positive version and there can be some negative examples as well. I've written a dear dad letter. It's on my website, janehardwickecollings.com. And it's basically advice to fathers about what to do and what not to do, you know, like to absolutely not, sexualize any of it and to not make any jokes and not any like, oh, here we go, I'm going to be in a house of all women now, what's that, you know, all that kind of classic stuff because whatever happens at these rites of passage is an imprint so it stays with you. So you've just beautifully talked about that and, you know, for you to have that much faith in your dad will then... You know, transposed to your relationship with Dan, who is like your biggest support, you know. So it's like you have been led to believe your life has taught you that the men in your life will support you. Yes. And there are, yeah.
Mel:
[28:57] Yeah, well, he even, I'll say to him, oh, my gosh, I feel this. And he said, you know, you're about to get your period. And I was unaware that that is what the feelings were linked to because I hadn't even made the connection and he's doing maths in his head going well I know where she's up to in her cycle I can sense it he can physically tell when I'm about to get my period but he sees the behavioral changes before I even recognize them so I mean yeah and then If I say to him, hey, I'm bleeding, he's like, rightio. I mean, there are flick switches in his body too where he's like, she's bleeding, it's time for a different household order for the next few days.
Jane:
[29:43] Yes, you're sensible.
Mel:
[29:44] Right?
Jane:
[29:45] So good. And also there's some fun facts in the menstrual cycle that are like prequels to what comes next. So everybody will have some connection with week three of their menstrual cycle. So halfway, the first half of the luteal phase, shall we say, from ovulation to day one. And for those who are speaking of their menstrual cycle in terms of inner seasons, it's the inner autumn or inner fall. And so this is the time post-ovulation when estrogen starts to go down. And estrogen is known as the hormone of accommodation and self-sacrifice. And when that starts to go down, it's like, oh, I don't want to do it anymore. I just want to either confusion about what you're supposed to do or you start telling the truth. It's known as the time in the menstrual cycle, the truth-telling time, the time when women no longer comply and when the status quo is upset, so to speak, not in a bad way but actually in a good way. So that week three is like the prequel for what it will be like in perimenopause. So it's a great place to practice telling the truth and meeting your own needs without... Decapitating anybody or whatever and then the training.
Mel:
[31:02] Ground for how with low estrogen
Jane:
[31:04] Exactly okay and then the next one so that's so that lowering estrogen is week three and then just before your period starts so at the end of the luteal phase at the end of week four when the estrogen and progesterone are both you know at their lowest and therefore For testosterone, the other hormone, well, there's lots of other hormones, but is relatively high compared to the relationship they usually has. So testosterone is higher, but not, you know what I mean, in relation to the levels of the other ones. So that's the prequel for what you'll be like post-menopause. Because post-menopause, our hormone profile is lower estrogen, lower progesterone, and our dominant sex hormone post-menopause is testosterone.
Mel:
[31:51] Okay. I'm just recalling a few months ago where I just sat in the bath and cried for a few hours the day before my period. I thought, oh, no,
Jane:
[32:01] What's going to be? And what is that? Like that's a behavior of isolation in a good way. You know, you took yourself to a safe place where you could be alone. That's one of the things that postmenopausal women need, alone time. Okay. And then the other thing you did was you cried. Like that's letting go and releasing. And that's what happens at the end of the menstrual cycle is everything that you need to let go of because it no longer serves you will be there for you to see so you can consciously and purposely as you bleed, say, as I bleed, I let go of whatever the things are that no longer serve you. There'll be fears or whatever.
Mel:
[32:42] Society would have us suppress that. Totally. So society would have us kind of just carry on, put those feelings aside for now because we don't operate in a cyclical way in society.
Jane:
[32:55] And pathologize it.
Mel:
[32:57] Right. So maybe, maybe you need some medicine. And I want to just quickly touch on, you know, you talked about how when girls enter into their adolescence and they start bleeding and having their menstrual cycle, how that can become a sexualized time. And I feel like society really sees those girls and women as just, oh, now you can get pregnant. We might need to put a stop to that. Here's some contraception. And then the whole hormonal opportunities lost and they're kind of minimized to just potentially pregnant women now, you know, and they dull down the whole hormonal opportunity at life.
Jane:
[33:37] And it changes 150 mechanisms in your body, the oral contraceptive pill, the pill, it's so famous, it's called the pill. And the other tragic thing about it, and I, you know, I hate to be the bearer of this news if you haven't heard it before, listeners, but when you're on the pill you're attracted to a different kind of man that you would be attracted if you were not on the pill so when we're on the pill we're in like a pseudo pregnant state and we're attracted to partners mates who will who are like family and will look after us and so you know that's fine when you're on the pill and then you meet your partner and you go off the pill to go and make babies, and then as your hormone levels return to what they're supposed to be, not some pseudo-creation to avoid ovulation and trick your body into thinking it's already pregnant, comes back into fertile. So the first thing that happens is like, you don't smell right anymore and smell as in pheromones. So when women are not on the pill, they are attracted to a mate who has as much different chromosomal genetic material as possible to them because that ensures the highest likelihood of the survival of the concepsis, right? So this is tragic.
Mel:
[34:58] Okay, we're starting to see the issues, I think, with how the world has pathologized
Mel:
[35:04] the stages and rites of passage and transitions of a woman's life. So now women have moved through adolescence and we're coming to the phase of matrescence where we're transitioning into motherhood. Can you tell us about that transition?
Jane:
[35:24] Yeah. So it starts at conception. And so if you've had a loss or an abortion, the whole physical thing has been switched on and you are actually transformed forever. This is the thing about rites of passage. Once you go through them, you can never return to the previous version of yourself. And that's not a threat or a bad thing. It's obvious. You know, like once you start bleeding, you can never not be not started bleeding. Once you're pregnant, you've been pregnant and then you have a birth and whatever. And once you finish your fertility, that's it.
Jane:
[36:01] But in terms of matrescence, matrescence is a term that was coined by Dana Raphael in the 1970s to describe the becoming a mother in basically what I was saying already about like adolescence. We know what that's like, right? So the becoming an adult. So matrescence is the becoming a mother and the becoming and being a mother each time. And I think that it's taking off and people are understanding it. It's only 50 years since the phrase was coined, but many people still don't know about it. But it's so helpful. I think that the benefits of being aware that matrescence is a thing is that mothers, women who have had their baby and they're like, oh, I don't feel like a mother. I don't know what I want to be to be a mother. all that so this is say the freedom to to you're becoming a mother and it's about the identity and the responsibilities of being a mother and depending on your life so far depending on your red thread your mother line and what you've inherited all of this stuff is going to impact.
Jane:
[37:21] This process because one thing leads to the next, like duh, you know? So the point of it being that it describes the becoming a mother. Because when we grow a baby in our womb, which, you know, basically we don't have to think about that, right? It just happens. It just happens.
Jane:
[37:39] And we're growing not just a baby, but we're growing ourselves into being the mother as well. And then when we birth our baby, we give birth to our baby, but we also, in that birth process, birth the next version of us, the mother, and mother of one, two, three, whatever it is. And that is happening whether we're paying attention or want it to or not. It's just what happens. and to know that that's a thing and that another way to describe the rite of passage of pregnancy birth and ultimately mothering, to give it a good name and help people to understand the process, it's so helpful when we can understand what's going on rather than think, oh my God, what's going on? The thing for me as a midwife was that, Birth taught me all this. I could see in my antenatal care for the women in preparation for birth and then in the unpacking of the experiences that they had that it was so much to do with so much else. And that was not being talked about and I'm pretty sure it's not even talked about now in midwifery education or anything really.
Mel:
[38:50] After birth really, if a woman was to listen to mainstream messaging about what happens to you in the postnatal after the birth, The maternity care system is only interested in your physical recovery. So how are your stitches? How's your perineum? How's your wound? How's your bleeding? How's your boobs? How's your nipples? Kind of thing. A little bit of monitoring of, you know, how are you feeling? Are you having a rest? Are you whatever? But a lot of the focus is on your physical recovery, if I'll call it, from birth. It's not until later. Where women have to discover for themselves and make sense for themselves what is going on with me. And then the only real touch point is maybe women would go to their GP and say, I don't quite feel right. And then maybe their GP is ill-equipped and says something like, hey, maybe you could be depressed or maybe you could be iron deficient. Maybe we should try a blood test and a medicine. You know, it just minimizes the whole transition into motherhood down to this medical event where you're physically recovering from something and, hey, if you're not coping, there's a medicine for that.
Jane:
[40:03] Yeah, so the pathologisation and medicalisation, which robs us of the rite of passage-ness of it. You need to show up and you need to be with all that arises and not think that that's pathology. It's a process, just the same as in labour.
Mel:
[40:24] What do you say to women about their healthful transition to motherhood? There's got to be a way to do this well. I mean, obviously, it requires consciousness. You're conscious that you are at that fork in the road that you mentioned, that you get to choose the path that you're going to take. You don't have to accept the one handed to you.
Jane:
[40:47] What else can you do?
Mel:
[40:48] Yeah. What else can you do?
Jane:
[40:51] Well, one rite of passage leads to the next. So the setup for your next rite of passage is whatever the rite of passage was before. So you want to be looking at that. If that's your menarche, well, probably so menarche, then first sexual experience. Then pregnancies, et cetera. So everything that's happened before the pregnancy and the birth is present. So if there's any deep, dark secrets that you haven't dealt with, it's a good idea to deal with them before. Because I mean, sure, all midwives have the stories of a woman in labor where everything kind of stops or stalls or whatever. And the magic question of what are you worrying about now or what's your fear? And then it all tumbles out and then all of a sudden you've got a baby. So that's a healthy thing to do too, is to think about what your fears are before labor. So this is something I do in my face-to-face workshops and in my online programs as well, is to encourage women to acknowledge the fears that they have and not buy into this weird thing that we've got going in this culture that if you think about your fears, you're going to create them.
Jane:
[42:03] That's not the case. Acknowledging our fears as step one in preparation for birth, it brings them out of the dark or whatever. Sometimes when you simply speak about a fear, you think, oh, actually, that's not even a thing. But there's a process. First, acknowledge your fear. Then, to deal with the fear, the thing is that you have to believe something that, that enables the fear. So every fear has a belief that underpins it as a fear. So we get to do this process in preparation. So this is one of the things that I recommend in preparation for birth is to acknowledge your fears, figure out what the belief is you have to have to have that fear.
Jane:
[42:45] And then ask yourself, do you even believe the belief?
Jane:
[42:48] You know, we've inherited so many messed up beliefs about birth in our culture. And half the time, you don't even believe the belief that's running the fear. So then you can just let go of the fear. If you do believe the belief you have to have to have the fear, then you've got two choices. And the first choice is, do I want to have that belief? You know, oh my God, I've been led to believe that birth is dangerous. Do I want to believe that? No, I don't. So you update your belief system. You change it from birth is dangerous to birth is a process that will unfold or whatever your belief is. So then you don't have the fear but if you if you acknowledge the fear and you do believe the belief you have to have to have the fear then that's your red flag that's your warning so for example if a woman fears intervention in birth and she realizes that the belief you have to have to to validate that fear is that it's a reality and she's booked into the big city private hospital who has intervention rates of like, you know... 90% induction rate and 100% cesarean, like I'm making that up, but as an exaggeration, which might not be much of an exaggeration, then that fear is warranted.
Jane:
[44:05] It would alert them to, well, this place has a lot of intervention. If I fear intervention, then clearly what I need to do is not go there, for example. A big part of the preparation is understanding what's going on in your head about the fears and stuff. And then that other thing I said before about the menarche with a new message for your inner maiden. But the thing about pregnancies and births as we go along, so say you've had baby number one and it was some sort of ridiculous, sad scenario of being controlled by policies and protocols and unnecessary intervention.
Jane:
[44:45] When we come to the next pregnancy, birth, and labor, we will return to the scene of the crime. So we have the opportunity in preparation for the next one to go back to the preceding one and think, where did what happened happen and what do I need to be better prepared for that because it's part of the process next time? So when women do that, sometimes it's just done and they just progress through that place in labor or pushing or whatever it is. But for others, they get there and they go, this is the time when I have my new idea about what this means. And then it progresses. So, so it's, it's really about learning what the previous birth taught you as well, so that you can take it into the next birthing experience. And the way we figure out what a birth teaches us is that it can be, it can be something that we didn't do or didn't have, You know, birth can teach women about surrender if they didn't surrender.
Jane:
[45:46] Birth can teach women about the need for appropriate support if they didn't have it. So you see, it can be the absence of something that's the teaching, or it can be something that you had to draw on from deep within yourself to be able to navigate the experience. And the nice little fun fact is that whatever you learn about yourself in birthing the baby, and it might not be the birth that's the biggest part of the teaching. It could be the conception. It could be the pregnancy. It could be the postpartum. The teaching can also be, well, it's the quality you need to bring to mothering the baby as well because our births are our teachers and then our children are maintaining that and continue to be our teachers.
Mel:
[46:31] Yes. So we've moved from childhood into adolescence. Adolescence, we continue on until we meet our matricent phase. Oh, if you could talk us through the hormonal profile of matrescence and how that makes us mothers.
Jane:
[46:51] Yeah, depending on whether you breastfeed or not and how long and all of that kind of stuff. But I think that the main thing for us to know about the hormonal profile through matrescence and if we just see that as a whole life stage, you know, like the becoming and being a mother, So that's the story. So it's not just an incident or an event. It's the whole story. That basically the hormonal profile, like there's lots of hormones, but the main two are the estrogen and the progesterone. Estrogen is the hormone of accommodation and self-sacrifice, which has us...
Jane:
[47:29] Looking after our babies. Someone's got to look after the babies. The way nature has organized this is that our dopamine system, when we're fertile, is organized around looking after the children. We get richly rewarded when we do it. It keeps the whole thing going. She doesn't bother to look after herself so much. She just dedicates everything to her children. And this is also the case for women who are mothers of other things. Like you go through all of this same stuff with a similar hormone profile if you're birthing businesses or careers or whatever. And the estrogen has you sacrifice yourself to look after the thing that you're primed to look after. So this is like, you know, she who rocks the cradle rules the world. This is what keeps the world going is this dedication and self-sacrifice that we experience from the hormonal profile through matrescence.
Jane:
[48:27] And is it a good thing or a bad thing? It's neither. It's what makes everything work. And then the menstrual cycle is happening at the same time, so we're journeying through the inner seasons as well. Like you had that perfect description of where you were, you know, like, oh, it's easy now and it's great, and now what am I doing, and now I want to be by myself, and then, oh, my blood. and then it's building and it's easy now, you know, round and round and round. So that's what's going on through our matrescence years and it keeps us showing up, you know. It just keeps us showing up and doing the things that need to be done.
Mel:
[49:08] Right. So then what happens when we meet our sage essence? Right.
Jane:
[49:14] Well, the first thing that happens is that we don't necessarily ovulate every cycle. And that's because our progesterone goes down. Now, progesterone is also a mild sedative. So the first thing that happens in our journey of sage essence is that we are no longer sedated. We may never have realized we were mildly sedated, but we definitely realize when we are no longer mildly sedated. So yes, in our motherhood, matrescence journey, we are mildly sedated.
Mel:
[49:50] So we're mildly sedated and estrogen is the hormone of compliance and self-sacrifice. So it's almost like we're in a state, we're primed and willing to be in that during that phase because it's what our children need of us. It's what the world needs of us. There has to be a nurturer who's going to raise up and almost happily raise up the next generation. But we leave that phase. It's only a season.
Jane:
[50:20] That's right. It's kind of with physiological menopause, there's kind of a way you can predict when your period will stop, you know, when your fertility will stop, that in the healthy scenario, we usually are fertile for about 40 years. So you get your age of your menarche plus 40 years, give or take a year or two is probably when you would have your last period, not your beginning of the sage essence, your last period. So that's not the case for everybody, but it's a bit of a rule of thumb that gives a bit of an idea. And the other thing that's suppressed when we're fertile is our immune function so that we don't, you know, what's the nice way to say it? We don't reject the baby. In other words, our white blood cells don't go and eat it. And so that's another thing that happens post-menopause is our immune system gets to 100% functionality, which is pretty amazing.
Mel:
[51:20] So do be, because there's so much else.
Jane:
[51:23] Let me tell you. So the first thing that goes down is we're no longer mildly sedated. So we wake up. And that can be a bit of a shock, not just for yourself, but for everybody else around you. And many women wake up pretty mad. Because the other thing that progesterone does is it keeps a lid on all the things, you know, or a lid on all the unresolved, unintegrated, unhealed things just keeps us, our anxiety levels lower. And then when that goes away, all this stuff, we've just barely been keeping. I don't want to deal with that. I don't want to listen. I'm not thinking about that. It's too hard. That all is there. and on purpose because menopause is a massive healing opportunity. And what arises for us at menopause is the results, the feedback.
Jane:
[52:17] The harvest of our life lived so far. So menopause, again, is not some random event. It's actually predictable what's going to happen. It's a setup because what emerges at menopause is the feedback or biofeedback or results of your life lived so far. So the next thing that happens, the progesterone goes down, you're no longer mildly sedated, and it's like week three of your menstrual cycle, similar. So then the estrogen starts to go down, and it can take 10 years. It's like the hormones are just adjusting and going down to the new normal hormone profile, which is the same as it was pre-menarch, which is interesting.
Jane:
[52:55] And so as the estrogen goes down, remember, estrogen is the hormone of accommodation and self-sacrifice, and it's a veil. It's a veil that descends upon us at Menarche, the veil of estrogen. And what that looks like as self-sacrifice when you're 12, 13, 14, is that you sacrifice who you were and what your interests were and all your special things to be able to be part of the pack, part of the group, part of the tribe. You want to have the same clothes. You want to go to the same places, you know, like it's really important to belong, like it's important to belong. But that shows up with this estrogen thing around Menarche, and then it has us look after our babies. And then as this veil rises around the sage essence journey, then instead of that accommodating and self-sacrificing behavior, what shows up is more like, how come I'm the only one who does anything around here? Pick up your washing. What's wrong with you? Nothing's wrong with me. Pick up your washing. So when nobody realizes what's coming, then it is so easy to blame the woman and say, you're crazy.
Mel:
[54:02] We lose our tolerance for things. And then our family doesn't change, but we change.
Mel:
[54:08] And they're all wondering, well, who's this person? She's always done the washing. She's always done the things. And now all of a sudden. So I guess it's important to educate the people around you too of, hey, just so you know, the mild sedation that I've been conveniently under in order to nurture you all is about to fall away and say Jess and Mel is about to show up and you all need to be prepared and I did hear this from you at a workshop that I went to about parenting through perimenopause and postmenopause because there are women having babies potentially if you're older you might be parenting a 10 year old as a menopausal woman or a 12-year-old or a 15-year-old or you might be parenting a 19-year-old through your menopausal years. And that will change the type of parent that you're going to be as the hormones change. If you're less tolerant, less interested in nurturing others over yourself, that's going to change your whole family's experience of you. Is there something we can do not to become complete dragons?
Jane:
[55:20] Totally. There's lots we can do. And the first thing is to realize it's going to happen, you know, and accept that this is part of, this is the cycle of life. So the average age of menopause is 50, so 45 to 55, and then there's the outliers of which there always are.
Jane:
[55:39] And so these changes happen about five or more years before the last period. So they're now deciding that perimenopause is starting at 35, which is freaking out all the mothers who are thinking, I'm in perimenopause when actually they're in postnatal depletion, which is not the same, but there are many symptoms that are similar because it's the same body and it's the same thing that's, you know, there's similar things going on. So there is this freak out now about younger women being in perimenopause when they're not. So just if you think you're 35 and you're in perimenopause, it's probably not. Only 7% of women get menopause under 40 and that's like considered pathology it's not the normal range i mean some of them will be normal but it's not right so in terms of preparing for what it's going to be like when you have children and you know there's many women who are having babies in their 40s now not that that's a new thing there's plenty plenty of women who had babies in their 40s when you know when our mothers were alive the thing is that that the this is what we need to know is it is absolutely going to happen If you have a baby when you're like 42.
Jane:
[56:59] Well, anything in your 40s that if the average age of menopause is 45 to 55 and changes start happening at least five years, it's pending. So just bringing awareness to the fact that this is coming is so important because most women have no understanding of menopause, don't even realize it's happening when it's happening. You know, like, for example, we've figured out that preparation for childbirth is a good idea, right? There are entire industries dedicated to preparation for childbirth so that women know what the things are that might happen that herald the beginning. You know, oh, is that a contraction or is that my membranes will rupture and there'll be fluid waters everywhere and whatnot so that they're ready for these things. But hardly anybody's ready for what the things are going to be, the changes, the physical experiences. says, I'm avoiding saying symptom because that implies it's a disease and it's not a disease, although that's what it's being poached as. If women knew preparation for menopause, if women knew that that's what's going to happen, then they'll be aware of it in the same way that we are about what heralds the beginning of labor.
Jane:
[58:09] So preparation for menopause for everybody is really necessary, but especially for those who are having babies later in their 40s, because it will come and it will come soon. And so there's lots of things that we can do or suggest that will help them navigate the intensity of the need from us when we're mothering, because the fact is that the progesterone and estrogen are going to go down and you're not really going to want to sit on the.
Jane:
[58:43] You're not really going to want to just sit and answer all the why, why, why, why. You know, you will, you will or you won't, but you won't necessarily. It changes in its priority. And the dopamine system, the reward system changes. We don't get rewarded for that. We get rewarded for self-care. So like, yeah, everything goes a bit skew-wiff in terms of what it was like, But there's lots we can tell to women who have got little people that they're looking after and that the hormones are changing. And the biggest and most important thing is to be aware it's going to happen and therefore what can you invest in now that will make that transformation easier for you and your baby, your children, your family. And so awareness obviously is the critical thing. But the thing to focus on is prioritizing a secure attachment. Yeah. Now, there are lots of ways to do that, regardless of what kind of pregnancy, birth, or early postnatal experience you have. There are ways to cultivate secure attachment that also will affect our hormones, which will even keep menopause a little bit away if you're breastfeeding.
Mel:
[1:00:00] Do you mean like secure attachment to our children and our partners and the people in our lives? Is that the idea?
Jane:
[1:00:05] I mean the baby.
Mel:
[1:00:06] The baby.
Jane:
[1:00:07] Got it. Yeah. The new baby who's going to experience you as a less available devotee, which is going to happen. And it's no judgment of you being a bad mother or anything. It's the change in your hormone profile and it changes what you want to do and whether you will or won't, you know. So prioritizing secure attachment with that baby. So the ways to do that are co-sleeping, baby wearing, and spending the time with the baby all the time. So that baby, and like if you're bottle feeding or breastfeeding, not being on the phone at the same time, you know, like this conscious devotional practice of presence with your baby is going to teach your baby and help them be securely attached to you. This is what I hope everybody's doing, but necessary for the women who are about to bottom out on estrogen and progesterone.
Jane:
[1:01:11] So other ways to do it are to be mindful about what to do to trigger oxytocin release in yourself and the children. So it's really advisable to establish routine and predictable so that the children know this is going to happen. say I don't know like three or four or as many as you can.
Jane:
[1:01:33] Things, thing, favorite word for a post-menopausal woman when you can't remember what the actual word is, say thing, but events or experiences that will create the release of oxytocin for everybody, the bonding hormone, the hormone of love. So like that can be singing, that can be eating together, that can be laughing, touching, being in nature. Like it's really easy to get a little bit of a how to increase oxytocin list and then make those into daily practices. And then the most important thing is to just let go of any guilt that you're feeling about it because it's going to happen. and it doesn't matter what you think about it. It's going to happen. So the investment in the early childhood, I mean, obviously the whole childhood, but the early childhood is where the attachment style is being created and the imprinting is beginning. So to create a home environment that feels safe and loving and predictable, You know, that's going to help the children.
Jane:
[1:02:44] The babies of post or peri, like women going through that process because they know they belong. They know mommy loves them. They know that we're nearly coming to the time where she'll sit down and read a book with us or we're getting to the point now where we're going for our walk. So these predictable experiences are going to really help the babies and the children to... To know that you care.
Mel:
[1:03:10] Yeah. Well, then what's the power then? Because there's some power in each phase. And there is a power to being postmenopausal that, again, has been pathologized because a lot of women are encouraged to use hormone replacement therapy, which means we don't get the hormonal changes that come along with postmenopause. But there's some big power in being post-menopausal because you're no longer tolerant of stupidity, I maybe would call it, or tolerant of anything that challenges our needs, then the estrogen's gone. So we're less interested in nurturing people around us, more interested in nurturing ourselves. What changes does that create in us for that new phase for what we're going to be offering the world? Because we can't, I mean, to be a person in community is not to prioritize your own needs over all others. So there's got to be a reason for this powerful phase, for that hormonal situation. What's our new purpose in the world?
Jane:
[1:04:21] Yeah, it's huge and important. And just for context, so traditional Chinese medicine, they call menopause the second spring, right? That's not the beginning of the end, right? The second spring. And there's a First Nations Native American saying, or teaching actually, at menarche, a girl meets her power. Through menstruation, she practices her power, and at menopause, she becomes her power. Okay so those two ancient traditions or teachings that are really important to to to put it into context now there's with the hormonal things that change the hormonal profile that changes it changes us like it does in any other case so i'll go through and tell you what those changes are and what the gifts of menopause are but i just need to also say two other things that are connected to it. Now, evolutionary biologists posed the question, why do human women live beyond their fertility? What could possibly be the use of them?
Jane:
[1:05:29] And so they looked to nature, which is what they do as an evolutionary biologist, to develop a hypothesis, right? Not proof, a guess. And basically, what they found when they looked at nature is that there are only five creatures on the planet that go through menopause. Human women, Belusia whales, pilot whales, orca, and narwhals. So they're called the toothed whales. So then the evolutionary biologists looked at them, or what's the point of them post-reproductive?
Jane:
[1:06:00] And what they found is that the post-reproductive grandmother whales are the leaders of the pods. And if there isn't one, the pod goes to shit. Nobody knows what to do. And when the post-reproductive grandmother whale is there as the leader, what happens is her grandchildren thrive, her daughters have more babies and she keeps her sons out of fights she is the holder of the wisdom of her lifetime of where the food is what to do in this weather where the current's doing this and whatnot so she is a vital leader so therefore the blueprint for mammalian menopause is to step into leadership now there's a lot of other reasons for us as humans why that is why that works and I'll get to that in a minute, but I also want to just share that I've had the privilege and honor to share time with one of the Australian Aboriginal First Nations law, L-A-W and law, L-O-R-E, women of the Wiradjuri group.
Jane:
[1:07:08] Min Maya, who's taught many of us. And I was talking to her about menopause to see what her culture, how her culture views it. And she's. I said to her that, you know, what we're taught is that we have to renegotiate so that we can get back to, through the process of menopause, renegotiate things so we can get back to whatever we were doing or things need to change and transform.
Jane:
[1:07:35] And she just laughed at me and she said, that's such a Western way of thinking. She said, I don't know any women, white or Kuri, who are ready for the honor of Mimi, which is their name for grandmother and it's not whether you're a grandmother or not it's the you know next stage I don't know anybody who's ready for the honor of Mimi everybody's trying to be a cougar so you know trying to look young and all of that she said it's not post-menopause is not the same role it's not getting back to business as usual post-menopause is a whole new role. And the new role is that post-menopausal women need to weave the dreams for the grandchildren.
Jane:
[1:08:23] So not come back in and be the same you were, but it's a different job. So the other thing, like what you were saying, you know, what's our new role? We usually step into our life purpose and our mission in our lives, which is the application, so to speak, of the harvest of our lives. So it's a whole new thing. And, you know, if we think about women in leadership, imagine how different the world would be if the grandmothers were the leaders. And that's not even a new idea. There were grandmother councils in all traditional cultures. The things that happen to our hormones, with our hormones that change us, have many, many awesome effects. So I already mentioned the immune system. Immunity is at 100%. The other thing that happens is that our amygdala, so that's the part of our brain that is the first thing that sees the information and has you either leap because you think it's a snake or turn and run or have a temper tantrum. That comes from the amygdala. So postmenopausally, our amygdala is less reactive, so we're calmer.
Jane:
[1:09:34] Another great attribute for a leader. And because we no longer have a menstrual cycle, we haven't got those big ups and downs, which I'm not saying are good or bad. I think they're amazing and we need to work with them. But we go from this larger up and down cycle to a much smaller. So we're more stable when we're not having the surges of the fertility hormones. And we are oriented to ourselves possibly for the first time in our adult life and then we start to notice all the things that we've been doing that are not good for us and want to change them we have increased wisdom and increased clarity and there's the opportunity for all the the healing that will happen because of the progesterone being gone away and we have the opportunity to learn our new ways of being because we're doing the neuroplasticity. So we have also, because of the testosterone, longer and stronger orgasms. So that's another thing that happens.
Jane:
[1:10:40] The thing is that our brains don't deteriorate at menopause. They're resetting to the new next life season that has us step into our leadership roles, carrying the wisdom of our life so far, clarity of thought and the clarity of thought is because the brain changes the way it uses the kind of fuel it uses so in our reproductive years we use glucose to fuel our brain and then when we're going through the transition of, of fertility changing and going away, the brain changes to wanting to use ketones for fuel, which is when you burn fat. And so if anybody's ever done a ketogenic diet and they remember the clarity of thought, that's the menopausal brain, post-menopausal brain.
Mel:
[1:11:28] So we get, I mean, we get so much better in so many ways in the same way as when we go through pregnancy and birth, our brain changes to suit matricence. Then when we go through menopause, our brain changes to suit sage essence because it's the new phase and we need to become a new person because we have a new role.
Jane:
[1:11:52] Exactly.
Mel:
[1:11:54] I'm seeing a massive opportunity here for the sages of the world to create a world that suits the mothers of the world.
Jane:
[1:12:05] Completely. Like, it's more than an opportunity. It's a bloody responsibility.
Mel:
[1:12:11] Right, because the mothers, I mean, the women who have kids are busy mothering and nurturing. And so we need the women who are done with that phase, who have now entered into this new powerful phase, to step into the leadership opportunity that they've been given by their new brain and new life phase and their incredible orgasms. So now they're like right I'm ready to go I'm ready to change the world not just be in the world and nurturing the world you're I mean postmenopausal women are now in a phase where they could change the world and I imagine they care a whole lot less about being in the herd as we did at the point of adolescence where we wanted to be amongst the majority that was important And I imagine that gets a lot less important for a post-menopausal woman who just no longer cares what anybody else thinks. They're on their own path.
Jane:
[1:13:13] Exactly. Except for those of us who've been drawn into the patriarchal perspective that post-menopausally, like, you know, What's the use of you?
Mel:
[1:13:27] Well, yeah, the discarded women of society. But is there not power in that, that nobody realizes that we have that capability? They're not expecting postmenopausal women to rise up and claim their power. So, I mean, that's a powerful position to be in.
Jane:
[1:13:45] Yes, exactly. Exactly. Can you imagine just if all the post-menopausal midwives in all of their places where they are, and they'll be in places that they've earned to be, you know, like whether that's from sticking with working in the system and elevating their role to leadership roles or whether it's been working in community and, you know, like years and years of practice. So by the time we get to this post-menopausal, say, Jessence life stage, we've got a lot of wisdom, you know, and that needs to be shared.
Jane:
[1:14:25] That is such, that's like a, that's gold. You know, I know that with, say, some of the publications, midwifery today and the tricks of the trade where older midwives share the things that they've learned and whatnot, that is, that's what wisdom looks like in terms of midwifery practice, you know? So if, if, if a new midwife was able to sit with an older midwife, post-menopausal midwife, even if she's not actively practicing, because, you know, she might grow out of that as such. She might not want to. Part of the thing that happened for me was that I wanted to make a difference and be a positive contribution to the culture in the healing of it. And I could see that working one-on-one, that was wonderful, but I could have a bigger effect if I was working with groups of women. So that was a decision that I made without even realizing it. And one of the things that was so incredible was that when I started the School of Shamanic Womancraft in 2008 was when I was 50. And I didn't realize it, but that was the beginning of my, say, Jessen's journey. So this was when my progesterone was born.
Jane:
[1:15:39] Going down and my estrogen was starting to do all the things. So without even realizing it, I began my mission at that time. So, you know, it's really interesting for those who've been through it and are on the other side and are the wise women to look at the things that happened along the way and what actually just happened seemingly without you planning it as your life unfolds through these developmental phases. So, you know, all we really need to do is show up to what's happening. Just the same as being a midwife at birth. We have learned so much about birth that we need to apply to menopause.
Mel:
[1:16:16] Well, and I think it also gives women permission to surrender to their current life phase, where you're at, because that's going to pass and change, but you won't get it back again. So for women who are sort of like, oh, I actually had all these hopes and dreams and now I'm in this stage of life where I'm caring for my children willingly or not but maybe fighting against that life phase without realizing that actually you know hey sister in 10 to 15 years or maybe less you're about to be gifted a new life phase where you will actually all the things you're dreaming of are going to happen and you'll be wired for them but for now you're wired to raise this next generation to build this next big project that you're working on to birth the babies of the world and then like watch yourself step into your power and you I'm excited because that feels like almost new life again for women who maybe are feeling really in the trenches at the moment and thinking,
Mel:
[1:17:25] gosh, I'm just going to be worn down and then get sick and die. And I do think that one of the major solutions is to just realize where you are.
Jane:
[1:17:36] Yeah. Like, duh. It's to have a map. We need the map.
Mel:
[1:17:42] Well, it's the same as me sitting there going, oh, my gosh, why do I feel like burning my whole life down this week? And then my husband going, hey, you're about to bleed. And I go, oh, well, that changes everything. In the same way as, for example, if my children would have this weird period of not sleeping and you go, oh, wait, they're having a developmental leap. Oh, hang on, that explains that situation. I could definitely get through this. This is not our whole new life where my kids will never sleep. They're just going through a change, a developmental change, in the same way that you would be as you cycle through your periods.
Jane:
[1:18:18] So the map is what we all need, and that's what's missing in our culture. And we have to remember that we live in a patriarchy that holds up youth and beauty as the ideals and 24-7 availability and instant gratification and growth. Grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. Every company has new growth targets every year. And there is nothing in nature that doesn't change that's healthy. So nature is our greatest teacher. And if you're thinking, what's the map? The map is the Earth's seasons. And the menstrual cycle is a monthly encounter with that, with the inner seasons. And then our life cycle is the full, however long it is. And the year cycle is the year cycle of it. And then there's the lunar cycle. So we are cyclical, whether we want to be or not, and we're living in a culture that denies cycles.
Mel:
[1:19:15] Yes, that is the big thing that I've realized too, is that we live in a culture that is, It does not appreciate ups and downs and turns and spirals, but women are typically, we're up and down and we're turns and spirals and we're ever-changing, and we've been taught not to honour that. Steadiness is not in the woman's biology, I don't think.
Jane:
[1:19:40] No, it's not. It is in a man's, but it's not in a female.
Mel:
[1:19:44] The world is made for men. It's made for the steadiness, but we are not steady. We're not supposed to be steady. We're supposed to be, yeah, one week I'm ready to change the world. The next week I'm ready to rest on the couch. I need a bag of chips. And maybe that's a great, that's just how women are.
Jane:
[1:20:01] Yeah. Cyclical, full stop. But it's not just women. It's everything on the planet as well. Right.
Mel:
[1:20:07] Except men for some reason.
Jane:
[1:20:09] No, no, but men are on or off. You know, it's a different cycle. But they are also like every other creature and thing on the planet affected by the lunar cycle, which is a 29-and-a-half-day cycle of the same cycle. So, like, you know, everybody is affected by the full moon. Everybody is affected by the dark moon and the new moon. So there is that cyclicality, but men don't have a menstrual cycle and that's a very big difference.
Jane:
[1:20:36] And our menstrual cycle is running our life whether we want it to or not.
Mel:
[1:20:40] Jane, I think we've got it. I think if everyone can just understand this very fundamental point, then I think we've done our job today.
Jane:
[1:20:52] Yes. Well, just to add to what you just said then, that women ask me, oh, I'm just new to this whole, all this stuff. What can I do? And it's pay attention to your menstrual cycle. Chart your menstrual cycle. Notice how different you feel every day and start to recognize that that's who you are, cyclical. And then once you connect with your menstrual cycle, everything changes.
Mel:
[1:21:17] Well, connect with it and then honour it. And then maybe, for example, and although the world is not set up like this, you can't just unfortunately take three days off work and have them actually understand that. Wouldn't that be amazing? I mean, I can't.
Jane:
[1:21:32] But that's starting. Like there are workplaces, yeah.
Mel:
[1:21:36] Yeah, or if you work for yourself or if your full-time job is to parent your children, you can build your life around your cycle and sort of goes, you know what, for those days, I'm not going to have a four-hour park play. That's not on the cards. We're going to stay home that day or something, something where, you know. Exactly. Yeah, for me, I can go, I'm not actually going to work today. I want to just sit in the bath and then watch a very sad movie or in the weeks that I'm feeling invigorated, go, right, I'm working 12 hours a day and I'm going to smash out this project that I want to do and I'm going to enjoy it and feel invigorated by it, knowing that next week I'm not going to work at that capacity.
Jane:
[1:22:18] Exactly.
Mel:
[1:22:20] Yes, Jane. Okay. I think we've done it. That has been today's episode of the Great Birth Rebellion podcast with myself and Jane Hardwicke Collings. And in the show notes, I'm going to put all the details about Jane and her offerings and her website. And so go and have a look, deep dive into Jane's work.
Jane:
[1:22:39] Yay. Yay.
Mel:
[1:22:41] Thank you, Jane.
Jane:
[1:22:42] Thank you, Mel. Been lovely.
Mel:
[1:22:45] To get access to the resources for each podcast episode, join the mailing list at melaniethemidwife.com And to support the work of this podcast, wear The Rebellion in the form of clothing and other merch at thegreatbirthrebellion.com. Follow me, Mel, @MelanietheMidwife on socials and the show @TheGreatBirthRebellion. All the details are in the show notes.
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