Is it "Just a phase"?

The beauty of seasons within seasons

One year my garden just kinda dried up.

There was no real reason. I just stopped tending to it. But the beautiful part was that it gave me volunteers. Wild tomato plants popped up sporadically in protest as if enticing me to come see. My herbs of lavender, thyme, rosemary, oregano, lemon balm and mint grew wild along side the weeds. It was hot and dry yet arugula sprang up and survived with its spicy pungent aroma and its nutty bite. I enjoyed strawberries that were a bumper crop that year and a big tall mullein plant sprouted and provided its leaves and flowers for drying and tincturing.

I gave it nothing that year. Yet it still gave back so much. Fruits of my labor, I suppose. But my desire, motivation and inspiration to garden dried up with the scraggly pepper plants that year.

My friends came by and they would look at the mess of tangled garden boxes and ask, “So, how’s the garden this year?” I cringed and laughed as I took them on the volunteer garden tour.

And then the following year…

My poor little tomato plants in July 2023. Gah! What happened to my beautiful green thumb!?

When I first started journalling about my phasic energies almost 5 years ago, I remember this kind of aha moment.

Seeing the shifts over and over from Summer phase to Fall phase in my cycle, I recognized a very abrupt if not disturbing shift. This transition day happens around day 19-day 21.

There was a very obvious shift in my energy patterns going from an outward energy of saying “yes, lets go and do all the things” to an inward energy of “I need space but I didn’t know I needed space until riding in the car with all these people”.

My ‘aha’ moment came one day as I was contemplating the Seasons within the seasons. Seasons of the menstrual cycle lining up with the seasons of the yearly cycle. The parable of the yearly seasons demonstrating the parable of the feminine biology.

But let’s pull back the lens. Are there phases of our lives? The archetypes? Spring Maiden, Summer Mother, Autumn Wild Woman, and Winter Wise Woman, these are the phases of our lives. *Cue the daytime soap opera music.

What I saw in my life phase shift was an almost tangible shift in the Summer Mother phase to the Fall Wild Woman. I felt unready for this new over-riding energy that decidedly said “No” alot. No to gardening, No to cooking, No to mothering, No to grocery shopping, No to cleaning. No to going out. No, No, No.

Where was all this “no-ing” coming from? I was so used to saying, “Yes”! Yes to parties, yes to going out, yes to cleaning and cooking and shopping and mothering and tending and giving. “No”, just felt… well, wrong. And at first, saying “No” was really not enough, right? There needs to be a reason to say no and people seem to expect and explanation. Not just… NO. So when I gave my “No”, I followed up with my reasons or justifications for my new found boundaries. No was just not enough information for people to accept. Or at least that’s what I thought.

Turns out, I can just say “No”. Although, it is still uncomfortable.

The Wild Woman phase is full of boundaries and being uncomfortable.

Finding boundaries starts with asking that question that comes up every time in Fall phase. “What do I need?”

The tending, mothering and giving is now turning inward. If I ignore the signals from my body that it needs something, then I find this bubbling up and out of frustration.

Sometimes I have hijacked myself. I decide to do something that I really don’t want to do or have the energy for and before checking to see what it is I need, I overcommit and wind up on a boat in the middle of a lake. That might be fine if I were paddling my own boat, but this one is at full speed, wind whipping through my hair, body jolting at every crashing wave and my spine compressing with every bounce while cramps attack my uterus. This isn’t a joy ride people, this is a breathing exercise and imaging my happy place back on land, perhaps in a hammock. And the thought occurs a little too late, ‘I should have said, no’.

Have you ever hijacked yourself? Whether it is planning to host a big party that lands on Day 1 or taking a cross country road trip that starts in Fall, or volunteering in a classroom during a migraine, we have all been there, right?

The Wild Woman phase of life (my 40’s) has called me to come home to myself. To remember what I need, to remember that I can slow the doing and going and just be and rest. When I allow for these planned moments of rest, I find I am rejuvinated to keep the day going.

But this phase isn’t all tidy in a box. There are moments of wild energy, creative flow, frustration, and silence.

Yes, the Fall Wild Woman phase is just a phase. It will merge into the Winter Wise Woman phase when menstruation comes or in the life phase, Post Menopause, which will bring its own relief and challenges.

Last week I turned 45. I am navigating the seas of the Wild Woman and I am still appreciating the inner seasons of my month as I see it as a way to practice the other life phases.

The Beauty of the Fractals of Phases Within Phases

Photo by Skyler Ewing on Unsplash

Images of fractals facinate me. Take broccoli. This is a simple fractal. The head and stalk of the broccoli is a shape we all recognize. When I was a kid, I remember tearing each little sprout off of my broccoli spear only to find it looks just like the broccoli spear. The head of the brocoli, the spear of the broccoli and the tiny nub at the top of the broccoli are all almost completely identical. An image within and image within an image. So simple but it blows my perfectionistic mind.

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The weekly cycles, the yearly seasons, and the life phases

I image this fractal setup like the chinese stacking dolls. One daughter neatly nestled into the mother nestled into the grandmother.

chinese nesting dolls

I’m experiencing the cyclical phases while enjoying the yearly summer season right in the middle of my Fall Wild Woman phase of life.

Spring Maiden Phase (Days 6- 12) feel fleeting and have an over riding Fall filtered lens but I can choose to relish in the feelings of my younger self and give myself a little push during this time.

Summer Mother (Days 13-18/19) are also more tempered and there are moments of really wanting to tackle some chores and tidy and clean and find fun stuff to do. Yet the wild woman in me says, ‘take your own car’.

Fall Wild Woman (Days 19-28) I am slowly coming around to enjoying and planning downtime in my Autumn Wild Woman to give myself space in this phase within a phase.

Last year I noticed that I felt fully in my element when I was in my Fall phase menstrul cycle in my Fall phase of life in the Fall leaf season of the year. Have I confused you yet?

Today I am Day 23, Fall phase, and I am taking the day very slowly. I have a checklist beside me and next to each item I put either, “resting” or “doing”. This helps me to go with my energy as Fall has a tendancy to be up and down. So when my energy is down, I try to tackle the “resting” items and when I get a surge to organize or do a small project, I check the “doing” items. In the next few days I know that I should really only being doing the small stuff because well, that’s Fall y’all.

Am I the only one that lost her mothering desires?

I have read a few posts lately about letting go. Laura Lippman writes of letting go of cooking, titled “I don’t Know Why #2”.

I Don't Know Why #2

This quote! This is how I feel around day 28/day 1. Sometimes I eat popcorn, chocolate and nuts for dinner. This pricked my brain to come back to this dusty draft of the phases of life and pick it up again. The outpouring of responses to her writing reminded me that there are real shifts in each life phase. And Laura’s somewhat breaks the conventional mold in that she was in her Wild Woman years when she gave birth to her daughter. She is biologically in the Wise Woman phase now with a teenage daughter. Just as not all women follow a 28 day cycle, not all women fall into the categories of life phases fitting neatly into a chronogical box. I am not saying I know why she all of a sudden can’t stomach to cook, but it is definitely something worth chewing on ;-)

@lauramlippman Laura, thank you for writing what so many women experience at some point during a life shift.

There are definite life phases and biologically our bodies know what phase we are in even if our minds don’t.

Going with the flow of our life phases

Here’s what’s cool. While we are still cycling (and even when we aren’t) we can practice the phases knowing that it will help prepare us for each life phase that brings such different changes, challenges and abilities. Like the ability to simply say, “No” in Fall and the ease of saying “Yes” in Summer.

Even when we aren’t cycling? Yep, even in the Winter Wise Woman years (after menopause) because we have been cycling for so many years there is kind of a muscle memory in our bodies for it. Many women who want to continue living cyclically find that shifting phases with the moon provides them a guide for their own shifting energies. How cool is that?

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So for now, I have no vegetable garden but I am enjoying the local farm membership and my always reliable produce stand right down the street. Either the inspiration with charged energy to garden will come back which sounds lovely, or it won’t and something else is on the horizon. Either way, I’m just gonna ride the flow on this one.

Tell me what you think!

What about you dear cycler?

What life phase are you in?

Have you experienced the shifting of life phases, Maiden to Mother? Mother to Wild Woman? Wild Woman to Wise Woman? What was that like for you?

Do you notice that it has an affect on your monthly cycle phases?

Have you ever found that something from one life phase has lost it’s flavor? If so what was it?

Have you ever hijacked yourself? If so what happened?

Have you ever had a creative flare, like gardening or crafting and then just one day lost it?

Thanks for joining me on my nerdy fractals idea.

Stay in the flow,