Opting Out of New Year & Into The Cyclical Wild
I’m learning to care for myself in a cyclical way and I’m learning to care for myself as a cyclical being
I was having my Monday call with Jas Spirit Nurturer and told her I’m opting out of new years. It wasn't something I planned to bring up in our self-care check-in, it sort of jumped out of my mouth.
With a curious look on her face, she said “what do you mean?”
For a few years now, I’ve opted out of the western holiday of christmas, but this wasn’t always the case. Growing up in Guyana, I don’t remember decorating an evergreen tree or going somewhere to visit santa. But there was something different in the village during this time of the year. I can still remember the smell of delicious red apples and driving to see all the decorated houses with lights and ornaments. Guyana old houses are beautiful. It would be after migration and living with my Agi for a lil that I first saw an evergreen tree in a house and participated in the decorating of this tree. I was maybe 7-8 years old. Somehow, along the way, it became an adoption and we did it like everyone else.
Few years ago, I decided I was done with all that, it wasn’t an easy transition as a single parent trying to transition a young child as well. Just imagine the entire society participates in this event and you’re trying to teach a child why we don’t participate and help them reconcile with that friction of culture clash. I was slowly moving away from western traditions and trying to help my child reconcile with this.
But this year 2023, my renouncing of western traditions took a turn when my relationship to my ancestral lineage continued to deepen and take me into another journey with myself. For months now, I’ve been guided to work with my menstrual cycle. This relational change with my body and menstrual cycle started changing in 2018 and continued to unfold progressively in the preceding years.
As I spent more time in nature this year for my own self care, the ways of nature’s cycles started to amplify in my awareness. I was moving into a more cyclical way of being and living in accordance to nature. I started tracking my entire cycle and my desires started shifting for my days to be in accordance with my cycle. Tracking my cycle is one of the best habits I added to my lifestyle. I don’t only track by discharge, I use the moon phases noting the start and end of my period to connect with my own inner living cycle and the nature of the moons influence on my cycle and my emotional world. Moving into this process opened up the desire to create in a cyclical way as well.
I wanted the way I work on projects to mimic my cycles. I wanted to ensure that I am starting projects when I am in my inner spring and I am resting and taking breaks in my inner winter. I wanted to make sure I captured my ideas when I transited my inner autumn and noticed the rhythm my inner fire burning and all my arising desires. I started eating whole foods that would nourish, replenish, and compliment my different cyclical needs. I ate less hot peppers during my inner winters and ate more soups and soft earthy roots like cassavas. I started rotating herbs accordingly for each cycle’s need.
I’m still walking this path and becoming more aware of what my needs are in a cyclical rotation. Since working with my cycles, I feel I am anchoring into an intimate layer of care with myself. I’m learning to care for myself in a cyclical way and I’m learning to care for myself as a cyclical being.
This “new” care looked like organizing work according to my cycle. I made sure during my period I was not doing anything strenuous and was giving myself ample rest and herbal brews to replenish. I started communicating this to the closest people around me, including bringing in cycle awareness into my creative calls and check-ins with Jas Spirit Nurturer.
Becoming aware of my cycle in this way helped me manage the ebbs and flows of my emotional world and taught me how to meet the needs of that emotional world. I learned to connect with my inner fire, Agni and started recognizing the flow and burning rhythm of my Agni cyclically. I connected with the way my fire would ebb and flow in my entire moon cycle- my sacred cycle, because it taught me to become aware of my inner living cycle of Creation and Destruction inside of me.
As I deepen in my Lalita Sahasranama taught and mentored by Dr. Kavitha Chinnaiyan, I give gratitude for the way the Divine Feminine is guiding me and taking lead in my life. Through the teachings of Lalita Sahasranama, I reconnected with the moon in a way where I can be with the cosmological magnificence of myself as my nature ebbs and flows in its natural cycle. I found my way to an emotional acceptance of maturity grounded in the cyclical nature of creation and destruction inside of me. I can sit with the extremes of my nature as the forces of Creation and Destruction working through to feeling my world in completion.
On Monday, I was just ready to let it go. This process brought me to acceptance that I no longer wanting to live linearly. I want to live cyclically. I don’t want to invest my energy in the idea that “new year” is December 31, 2023. I instead want to focus on the cycle I am in and the intention I have for the cycle I am entering into collectively.
So as we approach the end of autumn and enter into the start of winter in the northern hemisphere- these cyclical transitions are what I am focused on. As we approach the northern winter solstice in the energy of the Dark Moon, I am in my ovulation phase. Where my inner fire is set with reflection and feeling into my blazing desires with intention for my transit. The questions of my spiritual compass points to ask,
What is this cycle I am entering in showing me?
What am I leaving as this cycle ends?
What is sparking?
What is dying?
As we move into the winter solstice, what intentions are you setting for yourself for these next few weeks into this cycle? How are you using the cycle of your mensuration to settle into our collective cycle in the northern hemisphere? Are you creating with your inner living cycle in this cycle we are entering into? When is the new year for you?
A Helpful Practice
(1) As we collectively approach the northern winter solstice, in the energy of the dark moon, notice how your Agni feels. What are it’s desires?
(2) On the winter solstice in community or with yourself, practice settling into this phase with a small ceremony or ritual. Connecting with our Mother Earth’s shadow work can help us transit with her into our own shadow world for comfort, growth and wholesomeness. In this ritual with yourself or in community, set your intention for this cycle with Mother Earth.
(3) Print out a calendar and have visible with you the moon phases of each rotation until the norther spring equinox. Chart your period and entire menstrual cycle along the moon phases as we transit into the winter solstice through to the spring equinox.
(4) Notice how you are responding to the collective shadow as you transit the moon illuminating, dissipating and becoming full with light and darkness of your cosmological space and vessel. This too is your contribution to humanity. Self-Awareness. Creation. Destruction.