My bleed came after more days than expected. I am a perimenopausal woman and my cycle is changing, unknown to me again, ready to be discovered and tamed. My womb is open and releases through pain. The memories of the past are painful and rooted deeply within me. The connection is so very strong that I must find this perfect place between movement and stillness to hear and connect to them. The voices in that place are the strongest – memories, the most vivid – the pain most manageable. My womb releases the past through pain. I am connected to this pain as it was my faithful companion throughout lifetimes. Pain and fear – layers build up within me in tenderness and strength. Sometimes I’m tempted to imagine how it would be not to have a womb anymore and stop carrying the pain. But those are the moments when I’m fighting with pain; when I soften into it, when I surrender, it’s easier to cope with. I love my womb and would have missed her dearly. I don’t want her to go. I know this pain is my teacher, but sometimes I’m not getting those lessons. Or maybe I do… maybe they are the lessons and teachings on surrender and softening the body, releasing the contraction and embodying expansion. Because the bleed is the expansion – the wisdom of remembering from within is my offering and gift to the without, to the world, to nature, to all of us.
If I relax long enough through pain, then I can hear the voices from the past. I cannot hear anything while I’m running away. It’s only possible in this perfect place of balance between movement and stillness. This is a difficult place for me to hold. My mind is running constantly – thoughts engulf one another in constant rush. My body is trying to catch up to my mind but is usually left far behind.
Being non-productive is frowned upon in our society. But is constant productivity the truth to behold? Can we be constantly productive? I don’t believe so. We flow with cycles, and the fastest we accept our cyclical nature, the better it is going to be for us. Throughout my cycle I have super productive days, and days productively different – when I venture within and spend time building my resilience and exploring the forgotten or sometimes unknown realms of my psyche, soul, and body. Time when I remember, and through that remembrance I fertilize my creativity and connect to my purpose. It is so easy to forget about the importance of this in a constant rush we are finding ourselves each day. It’s easier to allow the painkillers to numb this inner longing, but in the long run it is not sustainable. It is truly disastrous for us not to know, not to connect, not to remember and not to discover the purpose our soul is singing about in our dreams, and in the sound of our flowing blood.
To inhabit your body is to turn within – to listen, to move, to be still, to tap into cellular wisdom that whispers only silently inside our inner-ear, our inner-knowing. To embody your truth is to live truly; and if the pain is here to remind me this knowledge – so, be it. I don’t like it, but I will take this lesson with love and gratitude. And when I hold my aching body, when I cry and gently sway, I am also listening within. And the song I can hear is beautiful and filled with promise. So, I connect to that song and remember its words, and each one of them triggers the awakening within me. But without pain I would be running too fast to hear this truth, this remembering, this song of my ancestors that is present in my blood, the tale of my being and becoming.
This is our choice so let’s choose what is best for us at this moment. For me it is to rest in this magical place between movement and stillness and to listen; and whatever comes I will welcome it with love and gratitude, with gentleness and softness, as this is my truth. Truth told and received through pain. So, I journey through pain, through my body, through expansion – to the truth of my being.
My story is beautiful, and so is yours.
With love,
Agnieszka