Your womb is a mirror.
In the Australian Aboriginal tale of rainbow snake, there are two sisters. One gives birth and the sight of her blood flowing causes her sister to spontaneously menstruate, at which time they are both engulfed by the rainbow snake who takes them into the psychic watery underworld. In another version of the tale they make entwined rivers with their blood which summons the snake.
I can't remember the amount of times my womb has opened during a birth or directly after I've returned home. Often I have questioned our modern practice of fertile women birth tending, because traditionally it would have been maidens and crones holding this rite of passage. Women who would not spontaneously bleed in the presence of blood.
One of the biggest predictors of whether a woman will conceive is if the women in her friendship group or at work are pregnant. When I worked in a coffee shop we used to joke it was the office chair, but really our wombs were mirroring each other. It makes sense, historically we could have nursed each other's babies when needed, could have moved through the rite of passage together... Or maybe these are groups of souls agreeing to come down together.
I don't think it's a coincidence my own baby entered my womb in the month that I attended a birth and a baby blessing.
In the Yurok Native American tribe the story goes that the women used to menstruate together, where they would dive deep into a lake to retrieve precious shells that would increase their abundance. Whether you believe it was a literal lake or whether it refers to the potent psychic powers of the menstrual state, it doesn't matter.
If a woman was out of sync with her sisters she would sit under the full moon and ask to be aligned. We now know that exposure to bright light around the full moon causes menstruation with the new moon.
Premenstrual tension only exists in industrialised societies that have no spiritual beliefs surrounding menstruation or ritual to mark it as a time of rest and reflection, and women who experience PMT are more likely to have male partners living with them, children and full time jobs. At this time we lose the ability to gaslight ourselves that we are fine with our lives and our needs are being met. The womb screams as she mirrors our true feelings back to us.
When we go on our womb journey, we reclaim ancient wisdom that has been lost to us - the insights from the psychic depths of menstruation, consciously releasing from the womb, the ritual that meets a fundamental need for wholeness. The cosmic mystery of it all that mirrors the moon and the wombs of other women.
You can work with me one to one or through my online courses Sacred Womb Journeys and The Medicine Wheel of the Womb.
