How the Moon Cycle Can Help You Find Your Way Through Menopause

One of the questions I was asked was:

How can the cycles of the moon help me if I’m going through the change?

One tool I use to help me with change is the Moon.

I’ve used the moon cycles as a tool to help me on many levels. I use it as a guide to tune into myself and orient myself. I use it for planning my work schedule, my social calendar, and it’s also been a useful tool for me in managing my feminine health - my menstrual cycle, and now this menopause journey.

Because this journey can feel disorienting.

Maybe you consider yourself to be entering perimenopause. Maybe you feel very much in perimenopause right now. You could find yourself on the other side of menopause, or you may be in some kind of no woman’s land at the moment.

Not sure whether you’re in it one minute, out of it the next, and then you get symptoms, body signals that tell you otherwise.

It can be confusing.

We can start to wonder if there’s something wrong with us. It’s difficult to get a grip on life sometimes if we’re suddenly forced into an emotional high or an emotional low, or our body starts to do something that we just don’t want it to do.

And all of this gets reflected out into our lives as well - into our relationships, through our work.

It’s a lot.

Sometimes we do just want the world to stop so we can catch up with ourselves.

We’re going through a time in our lives where we’re starting to lose parts of ourselves. We’re starting to wonder who we are.

What are we doing? Why are we here? And what do we actually want?

The things that we thought we wanted, we no longer do.

And often with so little time and less bandwidth to even think, we’ve got to do things for ourselves that don’t take up so much time.

We can start to create pockets of time where we can start to find ourselves in those moments.

And this is where the Moon comes in.

I don’t have a menstrual cycle at the moment to use as a gauge to orient myself, so the Moon has become really useful.

I like to choose four points in the lunar cycle, because they create four specific anchor points in my diary throughout the course of a month.

New Moon, First Quarter, Full Moon, and Last Quarter

Those four points also correspond with the seasons, which I’ll share more about later.

You don’t need to know when they are off the top of your head. You can find the dates online, or you may already have the Moon phases marked in your diary or calendar. Drop me a line if you'd like to know how to find them.

Those anchor points create a sacred appointment for myself to just tune in and give myself an opportunity to notice where I’m at, have a chat with myself, and get familiar with where I am and what I’m doing.

Tune in physically, tune in mentally, tune in emotionally, and give myself the time and space I need to return home to me.

I call it: Dropping out of my head and into my body

At the weekend I did my new moon journal, and it just felt so great to have a moment.

It wasn’t long. I think I spent about 20 minutes.

Maybe 20 minutes feels like a luxury. Maybe you’ve only got 10, and that’s fine.

I put pen to paper and started to think about myself and how I’m feeling, taking a step back and noticing what’s been occurring.

My biggest realisation from all of this was having a moment to reflect on my self-care, the things that actually matter and make a difference, and keeping it simple.

So for now, I’d love for you to get those four main entry points put in your diary.

It doesn’t have to be on the exact day. It can be the day before or the day after. It doesn’t matter what time you do it.

What’s most important is that you actually do it.

Allow yourself the permission to go:

Right. Okay. The Moon is here.

It’s time for me to sit down for a moment and just orient myself.

I’ll share more over the coming months about what each part of the Moon cycle means and how you can use it to support you.