The concept around the LUNA GIRLS GROUPS

For around 10 years now I have held mentoring groups for girls making the transition into womanhood. I felt the calling to do so during my personal discovery about the wisdom of my monthly cycle.

I had bled heavily once a month since my teenage years. Named by my mother as ‘the curse’, it had truly become so. When I stepped into an immersive nurturing and demanding teaching role in my twenties, the monthly pain became unbearable. 

I began the long journey of understanding where my body was guiding me. 

Nowadays, once a month, I celebrate the loss of blood, the return of part of me to the Earth. The loosening of my heart. My other heart that guides me in my womb as sure as my primary heart guides me in my breast. She quietly asks me to trust her wisdom, to flow with her. A predominance of stress or tension and this intuitive heart immediately responds with tightness and discomfort, physical pain and distress.

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Once a month, when I begin to bleed, I put away my ‘to do’ list. I take time to dress: a small manageable ceremony (for a mother of toddlers). I dress with silk leggings, silk vest, a woollen red waist and kidney warmer, red alpaca wool wrist warmers, ochre cashmere goat wool socks, red hand made leather boots. Soft red trousers that hug my hips. A red bone necklace from my mother in law who guides me from the other side, a red head band that serves as a hat and ear warmer, red and purple scarf (a gift from my beloved who became my dear husband), a wool waistcoat and a red woollen wrap completes my outfit. 

I breathe deeply and settle into the luxury of being clothed in these fine materials and with the support of those who gave them to me. With their protection, I feel ready to be out in the world on a day when, ideally, I would be curled up in my own private, cosy cave.

Thus equipped I can go out with my boys and look for red everywhere around us. With each natural red flower, stem, leaf or berry I feel a childish sisterhood glow inside me.

My uterus letting go of what is no longer required helps me to grieve, to let go of that which I no longer need. I slowly feel lighter.

And I celebrate wintertime, a peaceful, quiet time.

I celebrate where the moon is in our skies. I celebrate the weather and whatever mood it brings. I celebrate the season on the Earth and my own, internal season. 

This day gives me the key to the rest of the Lunar month. If I can nestle and nourish myself on this day, even just for a couple of hours, I can ride the waves of the hormonal monthly shifts with more harmony.

With ovulation at mid cycle I celebrate summertime, emotional warmth, social events, lightness.

Before young women settle into their own monthly rhythm, I encourage them to cycle with the moon. To notice their moods around the exciting full moon and around the quieter new moon and the ebb and flow in between. 

As I grow towards the end of this cycling time of my life I understand more about the interplay between the different phases. The four internal seasons within each month and how they flow into each other. 

On a larger scale I look at the seasons of my life. This type of self enquiry inspires my work with the teens and pre teens. I ask more questions about how my teenage self still lives in me.

I challenge my buried self. My teenage warrior. I challenge her to voice her wishes and desires as well as her anger and frustration. That young woman’s mind chattered away with so much negativity. It told her she was too fat and ugly, too tearful, too weak, in short: unloveable. She looked for love in all the wrong places. She gave her unloved self to those who had no idea how to love. So now, I begin to release her from her long held silence. To welcome any shame back into the heart of my womb. To transform past experiences into gifts to share. 

As I consolidate this process I am amazed at that young woman, at so many young women. I am full of admiration. I celebrate with them their ideals and their growing sense of self. Sometimes I am full of sadness. How can so many incredibly capable young bodies grow up so full of self rejection? To counteract that I strive to paint a vivid picture of the impressive transformative ability of our bodies…..daily, monthly and throughout the seasons of our lives.

I am astounded by the female body. My admiration grows daily. When I look at my wrinkled belly and neat scar, I remember it being stretched beyond recognition to house my two babies for nearly 40 weeks. I birthed two good sized babies from my tiny frame. My breasts grew to about five times their normal petite size to feed those babies. Then it all gradually shrank back, with a fair amount of discomfort but in a relatively short time. Leaving mottled skin and two healthy boys in its wake. 

It is this feeling of wonder that I aim to grow in me every day. To water and tend to. To share. It is the same sense of wonder I feel when I watch the trees around our home, when I watch a garden flourish or a river transform from little trickle to raging rapids.

I welcome in the raging red faced, black haired baby that I was, alongside the sweet, conscientious, quiet little girl. The highly idealistic teenager and activist with the more internal quest of discovery. I notice now where my body needs to heal old scars as symptoms reveal themselves years after traumatic events. 

I welcome all these experiences in order to be of service to  the young women that come to the Luna Girls Groups for guidance.

I feel blessed to have been born into a woman’s body and to be able to experience transformation at such a physical and personal level. It is a challenging dance to remember the gratitude and wonder more often. It is the dance of humanity: how to transform ourselves again and again, how to flow with our natural cycles.