the female body

I sometimes wish men had the opportunity to bleed and to feel what it’s like to live inside of a cycle that takes you up, down and round a-round.

Often when I’m bleeding I’m literally pulled to the earth.

I am forced by the powers within me to lay, to stop, to feel and to be born again to the new version of me that will come knocking in 2-4 days time.

Women get to feel and embody the metaphysical process of descension through their bodies.

Men must experience that through other means. It’s no wonder so much of religion, spirituality and our culture pulls us up up and away into thought not feeling.

Men must also descend because humans age and grow and change and grieve and love and lose.

Going down is just as much part of life as being up. Straight spined, thoughtful and decisive.

But for men, it’s not an inbuilt programme. So descending into flesh perhaps comes instead through the love of another or an opening of body, heart and soul. Through putting their hands in the earth, of holding their children, of being initiated through the beauty and pain of a human life, regardless of so many of the old rites of passage having been lost.

The dominant over-culture has pulled the 24 hour testosterone cycle into a 24 hour news cycle and a race to the end that no one can keep up with anymore regardless of body or blood or best interest.

There’s so much to unpack these days about men and women and gender and bodies.

In the thickness of a bleed it feels so clear -

We can all better remind ourselves that we are human.

We must rest,

To honour the cycle
To die to who we were and be reborn
To not forget that the work will also happen tomorrow
To remember that some days are precious, that some memories must be made now
To respect our differences
To learn from our biologies
To lay on the earth and remember,

We all came from her and the only thing we know for sure is that, that’s where we will return.

Flesh to flesh
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