Perimenopause calls us evermore deeply into an intimate connection and relationship with fire. Fire is an active element that requires tending, feeding, and directing.

The heat can help the frozen grief to begin to thaw.

The heat of the fire can open up the nectar, the honey, the life-force, the mana.

The heat may contain the energy of anger — and this buried energy can be worked with to uncover suppressed passion and enthusiasm.

The word “enthusiasm” originates from the word “enthusiasmos”, which meant “to be possessed by God” or “divinely inspired”.

Group sharing and connection within well-held containers is a space where the fires of communal alchemy can occur. We work to explore our relationship with fire and how to approach it with slowness, curiosity, and respect in Perimenopause As Portal.

I long to witness more of the vitality that we see radiating from the elder woman who has traversed the darkest deepest inner wilds of her soul, psyche, soma, and womb — and made it through this alchemical process, that is has likely been a messy and mysteriously alchemical endeavour. 

She who no longer exiles parts of herself at the expense of being accepted by all. She who refuses to shrink in shame or to sever herself from her lifeforce. She who consistently claims what she desires. She who only offers what she truly has the capacity for, as she shares her gifts with her community. She who embodies her fullest expression of her sexual and her creative self. She who rests when she needs rest. She who grieves what longs to be grieved. She who has been humbled and alchemically changed forever, because she has been willing to orient herself and her heart towards which will bring her closer to the embodiment of the truth, as a doorway to true aliveness and radiance from within. She who has become an entirely different being, perhaps even to herself. She who walks in the world as a truly embodied elder.

She didn’t slay the Dragon,
She became the Dragon.

She radiates a different kind of vitality
and power and inner fire — that we, as a culture, are not familiar with.
It originates from within. 
She did not go out THERE to find it.
She went INSIDE to ignite it.

There are obvious reasons why this particular rite of perimenopause into menopause is the least talked about, researched, or communally explored.

Because — IT HOLDS POWER.