Women's wisdom & the menstrual cycle

Worldwide menstrual cycle survey

I am currently running a number of menstrual cycle surveys as research for a number of new books I am writing. My aim is to gather quotes from women around the world to show how the menstrual cycle can be an exciting and empowering part of women's well being, relationships, creativity and spirituality.

About the survey:

The survey asks you to keep a record for a month (or more) and to compare your experiences of 4 distinct phases: the dynamic phase, the Expressive phase, the Creative phase and the Reflective phase.

The survey is open to any woman who has a menstrual cycle - this includes women with a natural, medically managed, regular, or irregular cycle, as well as women experiencing the menopause.

Participants' questions:

The response below is about the use of the term 'Creative' for one of the phases. The participant's point was that she felt the whole menstrual cycle is creative. She also felt that some of the abilities and attitudes she was being asked to be aware of she had throughout the month and not only for particular phases:

The difficulty with anything to do with the changes in the menstrual cycle is that we do not have any definitive language to specifically describe certain experiences. The term ‘creative’ is one which is exceedingly broad, and the menstrual cycle is in itself a cycle of changing forms of creativity; we can create mental solutions to problems, create emotional relationships, manifest ideas into the physical world (the more traditional meaning), and can create a deeper awareness of ourselves through our intuition. We also have a society which tends to think of women’s creativity as the traditional mothering skills and aptitudes. Unfortunately this limits our own awareness of what is 'creative' in our lives! At the end of the day what is important is our awareness of the changes in our cycle, and we can use whatever words feel best to us to describe it.

I was interested that you felt that some of the qualities in the survey could be seen as fixed character traits rather than variables. The impact of the menstrual cycle is that it offers us times of heightened abilities. This doesn’t mean we can’t do these things during the rest of the month, simply that we have an opportunity once a month where we can excel at certain things. These abilities and their application are going to be unique to each woman, but we can generalise to a certain extent as women do share common experiences.

To take part in the worldwide menstrual cycle survey:

> Please send me a copy of the survey - I wish to take part!