blood cringe

I’m on my period.

(Welcome back to me giving too much information to strangers on the internet.)

I’m doing too much.

Just me in my car, stuck in traffic, crying about my period, venting to a metal box. It’s not what you’re thinking unless maybe it is. And if it is, for the love of God, connect with me. Let’s make a blood bond in the name of never doing too much again.

My daughter gave up naps at 14 months. I fought it until she was 18 months reaching the height of what a red-dye-park-mommy would call “regression.” After 4 days of inconsolable confusing symptoms that left her (us) sleepless, (no literally, sleeping less than 20 minutes at a time and screaming for hours in between) we landed in the ER. Magically, she fell asleep in triage and slept through every preliminary screening and test taken over the course of 6 hours. 6 fucking hours of uninterrupted sleep. Woke up only when we put her in the carseat upon discharge to ask for cheesecake. We obliged. Who wouldn’t want cheesecake after a trip to the ER?

She slept 18 uninterrupted hours when we got home. Only a few grand to discover that nothing was wrong. No ruptured abdomen. No brain bleed. No underlying CF exacerbation. She was just sleepy and needed cheesecake. Have mercy. She’s turning 4 in October and she still “doesn’t like to sleep.” Her words, not mine. Others include, usually with a thousand tears —

I want to sleep with my eyes open so I can still play.
I’m never going to sleep, I just want to be awake forever at night like the owls.
My body is saying no to sleep and I will never ever ever ever sleep!!!!!!

Don’t go diagnosing her (or my mothering). The kid is more whole-heartedly nourished than most in every realm of her life (and I was made to be her mother just as I am.) I’ve wondered enough for all of us - wtf is happening here - so spare yourself.

I’ve always concluded it’s a me thing. ‘She got it from her mama’ never rings more true than in the weird energetic mother-daughter jujitsu my therapist calls ‘mirroring.’

Mirroring. It’s always true, but never for the faint of my heart.

Enter Monday night. She’s throwing down with the owl saga full body tantrum lip sass. I’m in my second day of bleeding and keeping/wrestling her to the bed. That’s the boundary, currently. In/on bed, regardless of sleep. And as she’s doing everything in her pig-tailed power to get out of said bed, it clicks.

This is my energetic posture around Rest.

Her expression is my suppression.
Resist. Escape. Kick. Fight. Scream.
Throw a punch, dart out the door, to catch a thousandth second wind.

If only I had an adult to hold me to a boundary…oh wait, I’m the adult. Right. Cool.

Get in bed, Olivia.
I don’t care if you sleep.
Just lay there till you aren’t triggered by Rest.
Take as long as you need.
I got you.

This is tough talk for a girl who has a stimulation kink.

The facade has fallen and I can see that kink so clearly. “The Clarity Winter Brings” — I read that in a Cageless Birds Magazine once. Never thought I’d be tying it all back to my menstruation years later.

If there is one word to sum up my menstruation thus far as a woman it would be ‘mindless.’ Like how you put gas in your car. You know it’s a part of getting where you need to go but there is no mind to it. Just a light on the dash and a sigh of “wish there was a world where I didn’t have to do this over and over again.” Back to it.

(((‘It’ being a woman who has convinced herself she’s the Simone Biles of perpetual spring. “How do you do it all?” is a question I am often asked. I hate it. I genuinely am not doing it all. I say no more than yes. Yet, I still appear like I’m doing it all and I still feel like I’m doing too much. When will I get it? Expansion/growth in early adulthood is not about collecting more things to do. It’s about getting more clear and precise on who I am and where I’m going, then pruning. Always pruning.)))

Back to my cycle — My body is fully aware. Regardless of my mind(less-ness).

And this is why I was crying on the highway.

My gas station relationship to my female body.

A QuikTrip Delusion.

My body-mind disconnect. Both apathetic and resistant in posture.

How many cycles have been met with this posture in the form of a mindless bleached tampon, a pack of pills, and a heaping side of eye-roll glad the pull out method is working (but ew now I have to bleed again)? How many cycles past to grieve? How many cycles future to relish?

I haven’t done the math. But one day, it will be the last. That hits like never before. NFP and bleeding into a cotton cloth can’t be the pinnacle of my female body awareness and embodiment. Is smearing blood on my temples at the creek the depth I crave? Idk. It’s cringe to imagine. I’m more domesticated than I’d like to admit.

I crave the depths even in my cringe. The weight of an ancient template built within me. The recipe for creation - what I’m here to steward on earth.

My menstruation has always been a subtle energy. Usually symptomless. It’s easy to remain meh and mindless about an energetic subtlety. The opposite being that “raging in your face (bitch)” energy - the main menstruation energy in my conception work with women. Women looking/paying for anything to get their cycles to stfu.

Mine is a whisper ding coupled with an icon flicker on the dash every month. 25 miles to empty. I hardly hear it. Silent period.

I guess the universe sent me Johnny Love instead. Who can’t stfu to save her life. In fact, raging b-word energy is spot on for her bedtime demeanor. Thank you, God.

Again, this all points to me. Which is maddening and enlivening. Overall epic.

A Wake Up Call to Rest —

Who is the Olivia who leans into the creation blueprint built within her?
How does she embody the seasons and cycles of her feminine essence?
What value is her blood? Her rising and falling progesterone?
How does she nurture her womb and honor its seasons?
How does she Rest? Move? Start? Stop?
How does she wake up in the mornings?
How does she fall asleep in the evenings?
What is her energetic posture in everyday moments of stillness, chaos, blocks, and ease?
What are her beliefs about herself? Others? God? Life? Death?
What are her priorities? What are her boundaries?
What does she say YES to? NO to? And why?
Who and what is she surrounded by?

Earth Autumn has arrived.
Turning colors once again.
Clarity and letting go are coming.

XX