The Sacred Rage of the Feminine

Something ancient is stirring in me.

I am in menopause.

My hormones have shifted.

My body has been through fire.

And now there is a heat in me that feels older than this lifetime.

It isn’t bitterness.

It isn’t hatred.

It isn’t even anger in the way we have been taught to fear anger.

It is a remembering.

There is a primal current running through my bones right now.

A deep knowing that something has been out of balance for a very long time.

As truths surface in our world, truths about power, corruption and harm, I can feel that imbalance more clearly than ever.

But this is not a post about men being bad.

It is about systems being distorted.

For thousands of years we have lived within a hierarchy that severed us from our cycles. From the earth. From the tides and the seasons and the stars. From the sacred rhythm of being human.

We have been taught to clock in.

Clock out.

Measure worth in productivity.

Live in spreadsheets instead of seasons.

Somewhere along the way we began calling our natural state woo woo.

But what if woo woo is simply what we are before we are conditioned?

Cyclical.

Intuitive.

Connected.

Creative.

The end of the Snake has officially passed.

The great shedding.

The exposure of what was hidden beneath the surface.

The slow unraveling of old skins that no longer fit.

The Snake does not rage.

She sheds.

Now we move into the Fire Horse.

Fire illuminates.

Fire purifies.

Fire moves.

Perhaps that is what so many of us are feeling in our bones.

A shedding has happened.

And now something wants to run.

Menopause has stripped something back in me.

There is less tolerance now for pretending. Less desire to shrink. Less willingness to silence what I feel.

Out of thousands of mammal species, true menopause is extremely rare.

It exists clearly in humans.

In elephants.

In orcas.

In pilot whales.

What do they share?

Long lifespans.

Deep social bonds.

Cultural knowledge passed through generations.

Group survival dependent on elder females.

It is almost as if evolution said, when wisdom becomes more valuable than reproduction, menopause makes sense.

Scientists call this the Grandmother Hypothesis.

The idea that survival improves when elder females no longer bear young but instead guide, protect and pass down knowledge.

The pod survives because she remembers.

The village thrives because she steadies it.

Stepping into menopause is not a biological failure.

In species where it exists, it is associated with leadership, memory, stability and guidance.

This is the season of the Mother Crone.

Not the withered caricature we were taught to fear.

But the woman who has birthed life and now births wisdom.

The one who has mothered others and now mothers truth.

The one who no longer bleeds outward but bleeds insight.

The Mother Crone does not compete.

She does not perform.

She does not seek approval.

She sees.

And lately, I feel something else moving through me.

I feel my ancestors.

The women who swallowed their words.

The ones who endured quietly.

The ones who learned it was safer to shrink than to speak.

For generations, voices were softened.

Truth was diluted.

Instinct was dismissed.

Not because women were weak.

But because the times demanded survival.

Sometimes survival meant silence.

And I can feel that silence in my bones.

I can feel thousands of unspoken sentences resting in my lineage.

Ideas never voiced.

Boundaries never drawn.

Wisdom never fully shared.

It feels as though their voices are not asking me to rage.

They are asking to be born.

To be spoken clearly.

Calmly.

Without apology.

Through me.

Not in vengeance.

Not in rebellion.

But in integration.

I do not speak against men.

I speak for balance.

For truth.

For wholeness.

And with that comes something unexpected.

Peace.

A deep, steady peace.

Because the repression stops here.

The swallowing of words stops here.

The Mother Crone does not scream to be heard.

She stands and speaks.

And the earth listens.

Perhaps this fire in my body is not chaos.

Perhaps it is clarity.

The rage I feel is not here to burn the world down.

It is here to protect what is sacred.

It is here to say, enough.

This is not about overthrowing one energy with another.

It is about restoring balance.

The patriarchal hierarchy has wounded women.

It has wounded men.

It has disconnected us from the earth and from ourselves.

The feminine rising is not about dominance.

It is about integration.

Creation requires both energies in harmony.

The Fire Horse is momentum.

Courage.

Movement.

Maybe what we are witnessing globally, and feeling in our bodies, is not collapse.

Maybe it is ignition.

Not destruction.

But propulsion.

The labour pains of balance returning.

Almost 2 years ago, when I began chemotherapy, my best friend gave me a journal. On the first page she wrote one word.

Alala.

The sacred war cry.

In ancient Greece, Alala was not simply a shout of battle.

It was invocation.

The embodied sound that rose from deep within before stepping into something fierce.

A summoning of courage.

A declaration that you would not retreat.

At the time, my body was fighting for my life.

My cells were in battle.

I did not feel powerful.

I felt tender.

Vulnerable.

Uncertain.

But that word stayed with me.

Alala.

Not rage.

Not hatred.

But a sound that says, I am still here.

A sound that rises from the belly, not the mind.

A sound that does not seek destruction, but survival.

And now, in this season of menopause, I feel that same current rising again.

Not because I am at war with the world.

But because I will no longer silence what is true.

Alala is no longer a cry of battle for me.

It is a birth cry.

The sound of voice returning.

The sound of lineage unbinding.

The sound of the Mother Crone standing.

And speaking.

Lot of love, Steph xo