Honoring the cycles in your life – Longer Rhythms
So far, the cycles we’ve been talking about have been shorter – a few weeks to a few months. But there are also longer cycles in our lives.
We experience biological cycles (maiden, mother, elder) and we move through life changes (new jobs, moves, children, relationships beginning and ending). Some of these cycles can take months or years to move through, some a lifetime.
We also move through emotional cycles (grief, anticipation, sadness, joy, fear, excitement, and more) which may last moments, or may last years. The stronger our mental & emotional hygiene routine is, the quicker we’re able to process unwanted emotions.
Regardless of how long the cycle lasts, it is a cycle, and it’s our job to recognize and honor each step as we move through them.
Biological Cycles
As women, we move through three distinct biological life cycles (depending on the school of thought, you may add a fourth stage between mother and elder, often referred to as queen).
There are two major events which mark the transition from maiden to mother and mother to elder. We begin the transition from maiden to mother at puberty. We transition from mother to elder at menopause. Both of these transitions take place over a number of years, and are marked by a shifting in our bodies, from our hormone levels to the actual structure of our bodies. Even if we make the choice not to have children, we still experience the biological markers of the mother cycle.
It’s all about your mindset – is this a loss or an opportunity?
You’re not alone if you view these transitions as a time of loss. Puberty marks the end of childhood and the beginning of adult responsibilities. Menopause marks the end of our childbearing years and is a reminder we’re aging.
However, trying to stop these cycles is as difficult as climbing up a down escalator in motion. You might manage to stay in place, maybe even gaining a little ground, but you could also trip and fall, being propelled into the next stage lying on a moving escalator with little dignity or grace.
OR, you could take a deep breath and celebrate these cycles.
By honoring each stage of life we’re able to transition with dignity and grace, riding the escalator up to the next level while honoring what we’re leaving behind and celebrating what we’re moving toward.
Puberty marks the blossoming of womanhood. Yes, there are additional responsibilities that come with this part of life, but it also brings additional opportunities.
Menopause may mark the end of our childbearing years, but it also brings in a freedom and wisdom that only comes with age. As I enter the beginning of perimenopause (like my mother, I began this cycle in my late 30’s), I’m excited to see what this new chapter brings.
Instead of stepping onto this escalator with a sense of fear and loos, I’m instead focused on supporting myself through this transition in the most holistic way possible, and excited for the lessons I’ll learn as I move through the next several years.
Life Change Cycles
There are several life events which are generally considered “major life changes”. These include – having a child, changing jobs, getting married, ending a relationship, and moving.
And all of these changes bring their own cycles of transition, providing you the opportunity to learn lessons along the way as you navigate the new environment you’re in.
New jobs
After a job change, you’re faced with an uphill climb, learning new skills and a new corporate culture, but after a year or so, most people find themselves cycling back to a place of comfort in their skills and knowledge at the company.
Changing relationships
When a relationship ends, you not only grieve the loss (its own cycle), but you also need to discover who “me” is without the “we”. Sometimes this is easy – you might have done the work during the relationship to ensure you held onto the essence of “me” throughout.
Sometimes this is much harder if you lost the “me” in your relationship as you struggled to help the “we” survive. But this is a cycle too, and one day you’ll wake up, emerge from your cocoon, and recognize the person looking back at you in the mirror. She’ll be different and changed, but you’ll once again know that reflection as “me”. In my experience, that moment is a little miracle, when what was lost becomes found, different, but reclaimed.
But the end of a relationship is just one stage in a cycle – you also started by meeting someone, your relationship grew, perhaps you moved in together, maybe you even got married. And just as one cycle ends, you open the possibility of beginning this cycle again.
Other major life changes
There are also changes in life which may feel major to you even though someone else would view them as minor. If you live in an apartment and are single without children, adopting a dog might rock your world. You suddenly need to go for a walk several times a day and have someone depending on you for their survival. If you have a large fenced in yard and are used to caring for several children, letting the dog out into the yard and feeding one more hungry mouth might not feel like such a large transition.
As these cycles come into your life, it’s important to honor your experience. It won’t look like anyone else’s, and that’s just as it should be. If something feels major to you, then it is major for you – respect and honor each stage of the cycle just as you would any other major life cycle.
Emotional Cycles
There are emotional cycles which may come into your life without any understandable connection to your daily experiences (often this happens when an old trauma is triggered), or they may enter as part of another cycle.
When you experience a loss, you not only have to adjust to the day-to-day reality of that loss, you also move through the cycle of grief. It’s important to recognize and honor these emotional cycles, being curious along the way what lessons each stage offers for you to learn.
I was hit with several losses – both physical and metaphorical deaths over a six month period. As these hit me in waves, it forced me to revisit each loss and reexamine what I had learned (or in many cases hadn’t learned) from them. Through this process I felt like I was taking two steps forward and one step back.
Instead of focusing on the backward movement, during my meditations, asana practice, and journaling exercises, I focused instead on moving forward. Even if it was incremental movements, I was headed in the right direction.
Joyful Cycles
There are also joyful cycles – like when you’re falling in love, everything in life seems better!
Dr. Helen Fisher outlines three phases of falling in love: “The first, lust, is driven by the levels of testosterone (men) and oestrogen (women) in our bodies. The second, attraction. The emotion of euphoria, and the release of chemicals in the brain, including dopamine, adrenaline and norepinephrine, can make falling in love feel like an addictive rush. The final phase, attachment, sees the release of dopamine and norepinephrine replaced with oxytocin (the ‘cuddle’ hormone).
It’s just as important to honor each stage of this cycle as it is the stages in the cycle of grief. By honoring and celebrating these joyful stages, you create balance in your life.
In the 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People, David Nivens quotes a study conducted in 1994 – “The Hedonistic Consequences of Social Comparison: Implications for Enduring Happiness and Transient Mood.” This study found that “the average unhappy person spends more than twice as much time thinking about unpleasant events in their lives, while happy people tend to seek and rely upon information that brightens their personal outlook.”
By paying equal attention to both the uncomfortable and comfortable cycles in our lives, we’re able to create a balance, and reinforce the knowledge that we’re not stuck in one place, instead, we continue to progress through a series of cycles.
Getting unstuck
One thing to be attentive for – especially in emotional cycles where you can get mired down – is ensuring that you’re continuing to focus on your experience as a cycle. Taking the time to learn the lesson and then use that knowledge to move forward.
If you find you’re stuck and feel like you’re unable to move forward on your own (especially in the cases of grief and depression), I urge you to seek professional help to navigate the cycle.
Ready for the next step? Check out the last post in this series on honoring the cycles in your life. It addresses recognizing and honoring the process of moving through your cycle as well as ways to support yourself on that journey.
I leave you with the Byrds – this song has been running through my head as I work on this post – if you are not familiar with it, you can find the full lyrics here:
To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time to every purpose, under heaven
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