The Menstruality Podcast

1 in 2 girls in the U.S. say they feel embarrassed or ashamed about their period and only 22% of U.S parents feel “very comfortable” talking to their kids about puberty. We need to rewrite this script, and our guest today, menstrual educator Amy Wilding, has written a book to do just that. 
Amy has supported hundreds of families through her Period of Change programs, helping them reclaim menarche as a sacred and empowered transition. She’s also a queer and inclusive author, and today we’re chatting about her latest book, Period Of Change: Welcoming Your Daughter’s Period with Care and Confidence. 
As Amy says, this is not just a practical guide to puberty and periods. It is a call to reclaim what is our birthright: an understanding of our bodies and the framework for seeing the power and wisdom of our cyclical nature. 
Our chat today is full of practical guidance and tips to support the teens and tweens in your life through their menarche and beyond - my favourite were the conversation starters, especially when Amy shared the most important thing to say (and not say) to your child when they get their period for the first time. 
We explore:
How to throw a Red Party for your child, and all kinds of ideas for how to celebrate together in big and small ways.
The importance of how we speak about our bodies in front of our kids, and affirmations to help your daughter move through generations of cultural shame, silence and discomfort, and model how to honour our bodies and cycles.
Amy’s journey supporting her trans kid and guidance for how to show up as a supportive parent and maintain a connection of trust with trans kids when they’re starting their periods.
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Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love
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The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [email protected]
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Social media:
Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy
Amy Wilding: @amywildingofficial - https://www.instagram.com/amywildingofficial/

Today we’re sharing a replay of one of our most listened to podcasts ever - and it’s all about how getting to know your cycle can be a vital foundation for mental and emotional health.
Alexandra and Sjanie, the co-founders of Red School are both retired therapists, and today they share their learnings from their own personal cycle awareness practice (as well as working with thousands of students over several decades) about how mental and emotional health rests on us knowing ourselves, feeling our value and worth, and understanding the nature of cyclicity. All of which are skills we learn from connecting to our cycles. 
We also explore how the root of much of our collective menstrual and emotional turmoil as women and people who have, or have had cycles is the cultural denial, shutting down, ignoring, belittling, and suppression of our cyclical nature.
We explore:
Alexandra’s personal journey with dissolving the shame of her early years and claiming her worth through cycle awareness and menopause, so that now she is emotionally resilient to the extent that she is immune to toxic shame.

The two stable poles of the menstrual cycle, and the two transitional phases and how to work with them all to understand ourselves better and create emotional and psychological wellbeing.

How following the call to stop and rest at menstruation is medicinal for us emotionally and psychologically. 
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Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love
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The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [email protected]
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Social media:
Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy

Today it’s our great pleasure to be joined by Chloé Zhao. Chloé is an academy award winning filmmaker, and amongst many accolades, Chloé is the first Woman of Colour to have won an academy award for best director for her film Nomadland.
In this conversation, Chloé chats with Alexandra and Sjanie about how menstrual cycle awareness has shaped her creative process, including how she worked with the wisdom of her menstrual cycle to create and direct her most recent film, Hamnet, which received eight Oscar nominations.
When Chloé turned thirty seven years old, she started to get menstrual cramps for the first time. Although it wasn’t comfortable, she felt something important was coming to life within her. This coincided with what she lovingly calls a ‘midlife crisis’ that ultimately led her to discover the practice of menstrual cycle awareness, which she says helped her to learn a language that her body had forgotten to speak.
We explore:
Intuition as our greatest currency, and how becoming more aware of our menstrual cycles prepares the body to be a vessel to receive deep intuitive knowing. 
The cyclical advice that Chloe has for all young filmmakers about the importance of wintering, and the power of seemingly non-productive work of rest, tending to your inner soil, and composting (even in the middle of a film set!).
How the premenstrual and menstrual phases of the cycle have taught Chloe to embody creative death and rebirth, and how this played out in the creation of Hamnet.
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Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love
---
The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [email protected]
---
Social media:
Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy
Chloé Zhao: @chloezhao - https://www.instagram.com/chloezhao

As we enter our early forties, we step into a new life phase with a very different atmosphere and tone. We’re shifting into a new paradigm, often accompanied by changes in our menstrual cycles and ourselves, some of which may be startling or very tricky to manage.
Brain fog, memory issues, irregular cycles, heavy periods - the list goes on. You might notice that you have less tolerance for stress, tire more easily, and that your trusty sleep pattern isn’t quite so trusty anymore.
Today I’m chatting with Alexandra and Sjanie about how the practice of menstrual cycle awareness can be a vital source of support as we navigate these challenging years. 
Sjanie shares generously about her own experience of perimenopause, or as she calls it, the autumn of the menstruating years; from experiencing new levels of love, to reckoning with childhood trauma, and how her recommitment to the fundamentals of cycle awareness has supported her. 
Whether you’re experiencing the psycho‐spiritual shift in the years running up to menopause, or you’re supporting women and folks in the thick of it - perhaps your clients, family members. friends or colleagues - we hope this conversation helps to plug you into the practice of menstrual cycle awareness as a vital perimenopause resource.

We explore:
How to practice menstrual cycle awareness when your cycle is very irregular and how to claim your rest, even when you don’t know when your next period is coming.
What is at work on the psycho-spiritual level in the forties, and how the lens of the ‘quickening’ can help to make sense of the challenges of these years. 
How Sjanie has navigated her trauma healing process in perimenopause, and the importance of community support in this life phase. 
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Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love
---
The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [email protected]
---
Social media:
Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy

Today we’re replaying one of our most popular episodes -  a frank and feisty chat about one of the hot topics in our community - premenstrual and menopausal RAGE.
Have you ever been driving in your car and felt compelled to wind the windows up and actually roar because you felt so wildly angry on day 24? 
Or, if you’re navigating menopause, have you experienced your own ‘burn-the-house-down’ moment when your fury threatened to destroy everything you’ve built so far in your life?
What is going on with this rage? Why are so many of us feeling it? And what is it trying to tell us? 
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Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love
---
The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [email protected]
---
Social media:
Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy