How Trauma is Stored in Your Menstrual Cycle

I've been chatting with a potential client this week about what it means to have trauma stored in your menstrual cycle, and since I'm convinced nearly all of us do have wounding in our wombs, I wanted to share with you, too, what this might look like, how menstrual cycle work was the key for me, and invite you to ask any questions.  

First, how am I defining trauma? 

Of course, it means the major traumas some of us may endure--whether physical, mental, emotional, etc. Severe distress that rocks us to our core, rewriting our internal wiring after a traumatic event or experience.

But it also means all the little traumas--the smaller disruptions to our felt sense of safety that accumulate in our systems to detrimental effect.

The little things we might be tempted to downplay because they're not life-threatening, or because they "happen to everyone." 

These can be very specific to your own life, but there's also another element here that's often overlooked: 

The systemic traumas we all experience as women and womb-holders. The cultural narratives around our worth, capacity, value, appeal, restrictions, appropriateness, and so much more.

Our bodies register these traumas. Our wombs hold onto the lessons learned from these traumas. Our nervous system patterns itself from these lessons.

The past is not a linear thing to our bodies. In some ways, the "past" is virtually irrelevant to our bodies--if we haven't tenderly addressed our traumas, what happened to us in the past is written in our bodies, ready to express at any moment--in some cases, even expressing at every moment. In this way, the past is sometimes the present to our bodies. 

Which can keep us stuck and struggling, suffering and confused about how to move forward.

The womb in particular tends to hold on to a lot of feminine wounding and trauma. 

Often that trauma shows up in menstrual issues since our body is utilizing our cycle to communicate with us (our menstrual cycle functions like a canary in the coal mine).

And beyond issues with menstruation itself, many women and menstruators, myself included, experience disruption in other cycle phases. 

One of the reasons is because the four phases of the menstrual cycle correspond with different life cycle stages or years of our lives. 

For example, I experienced trauma in childhood and through menstruality work realized I tended toward dissociation during the inner spring phase which corresponds with your childhood years. 

Others may have experienced woundings around different aspects of themselves which may show up in their corresponding cycle phase.

There is so much insight held within our bodies!

It was menstruality work that offered me the most understanding, release, self-connection, and ultimately empowerment.

My relationship with my body and my femininity is utterly improved, which grounds my entire sense of self--impacting my life every single day, every single minute.

 Through menstruality work, I discovered and am healing:

• Dissociation in my inner spring of my cycle.
• My tendency toward masculine-energy ways of being as a trauma response, prioritizing the via positiva of my cycle over the via negativa.
• Womb traumas and life disalignments that manifested in intense menstrual pain.
• Womb traumas that have manifested in scanty, short periods. 
• Feminine wounding due to multiple, interwoven external systems I was operating within for decades.
• My first period experience and what I was navigating at that time; why I acted and felt the way I did at that time that had previously been a shameful mystery.
• The stories I've believed about myself because of all these traumas and responses. 
• And so much more.