RECLAIM YOUR POWER AND YOUR WELL-BEING | NAVIGATING THE MENSTRUAL CYCLE PHASES WITH LIZ VIVIAN

Can understanding your menstrual cycle really transform your life? Liz Vivian, founder of Raising Flora, joins me on The Femme Cast to reveal how embracing each phase of your cycle can lead to emotional healing and personal empowerment.

From the highs of the follicular phase to the introspective luteal phase, Liz breaks down how these natural fluctuations shape our energy levels, emotions, and behaviors, and how recognizing these patterns can create a positive impact on our lives.

In this episode, you'll hear practical strategies for aligning living, loving and healing with each phase of your cycle, including the best time to start a relationship, the best time to end a relationship, and the rest of the hot mess in between.

Let's do this.

Check out Liz's website for links to all her socials and resources:
https://www.raisingflora.com/

Books and resources mentioned on this episode:
https://www.amazon.ca/Do-Less-Revolutionary-Approach-Management
https://www.amazon.ca/Wild-Power-Discover-Menstrual-Feminine

Are you ready to create a massive uplevel in your life and relationships? If so, use the link below to book your 90-minute Uplevel + Flow Intensive. This is a powerful 90-minute session where we go deep to energetically shift your relationship patterns, so that you can magnetize more loving and supportive relationships without the chase...just flow!
https://thefemmecast.com/healthy-love-intensive/

Are you ready to begin your heart healing journey today and manifest the love that you desire? If so, use the link below to register for my FREE Magnetize Love Meditation Series . A 3 part series designed to help you heal from heartbreak and manifest love you've always wanted, but never thought you would find.
https://thefemmecast.ck.page/meditations

Are you ready to rewrite your love story + glow from the inside out? If so, use the link below to register for my 21 Day Radical Self-Love Challenge.
https://thefemmecast.ck.page/21daychallenge

Want to get to know the more intimate details of my story? If so, click the link below to access The Femme Cast Diaries.
https://thefemmecast.substack.com/

Transcript

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 0:33

Hey you guys, what is up and welcome back to the show. I'm so excited and grateful to have you here and I am so excited and grateful for today's conversation. You guys, I have Liz Vivian with me. Liz is the founder of raisingfloracom. She is passionate about giving our tweens and teens a healthy and positive start to their menstrual cycle. She is a red school trained menstruality mentor and a femme and femme teen teacher, and she is just a well of knowledge.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 1:04

We are going to be talking all about our menstrual cycles, from beginning to end, so I mean all the different phases within our cycle and how to use each and every one of them to our advantage to create our best life, to facilitate healing and to give ourselves the love, grace and compassion that we so deserve. Basically, it's all about how to use your cycle to supercharge your healing journey and how to use it effectively to create your best life. It's truly magical what your cycle can actually do for you and when I think back to all the years that I just thought my cycle meant the five days that I was menstruating, that I could not wait to be in the rear view so I could go to my much more favorable non-menstrual days, and that was about as cyclical as it got for me. So I'm curious, let me know, and you can reach out to me at the Femcast on Instagram. I will leave all the links down below. Let me know if you know.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 2:03

Do you dread your periods? Do? When you people say your cycle, do you assume that it just means you're menstruating days? Are you aware of the full breadth of phases that are available to you for your personal empowerment within your menstrual cycle? Because I'm telling you guys, most of us did not learn about this stuff in school and I wish we would have. So, anyway, let me know, hit me up at on Instagram, at the femcast, and let me know where you're at and we're going to dive right into today's conversation. Let's do this. Liz, so excited to have you. Welcome to the femcast, thank so excited to have you Welcome to the Femcast.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 2:38

Thank you so much, Maria. I'm really happy to be with you.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 2:42

I'm so happy you're here. We've been trying to get this together, you guys, for weeks and it's just well. It's mostly my schedule that's been pretty wacky, so thank you for your patience, Liz, to get you on here. We connected through a networking call, I think it was, and we just got off the call and hopped on another one and I think we just kept going and going and going Really in sync. You have so much value and information to add and you really added a lot of value for me because, while you have a lot of information to share in terms of what I'm going through right now, which many of you know, I've talked about it all the time on the show, you know, hello perimenopause I feel like my body's been hijacked.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 3:24

So we talked a lot about that. We also talked a lot about and I'm going to just open this up and let us let this conversation take us where it wants to take us, Because we also talked a lot about how, what an opportunity our cycle is in order to like, facilitate really profound emotional healing. I think I want to start there with you Beautiful, I love it.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 3:52

But before we do that, tell us, you know tell us a little bit about who you are, what you love to do and what got you started.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 3:59

Oh my gosh. I mean I love to talk about menstruation, but I also live in Seattle with my husband and daughter and big dog. I am raising a teenager, so that is like that takes a lot of time and energy right, and I love to be outside, I love to enjoy nature, I love to walk. I'm training for a half marathon later in.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 4:25

December. Yeah, that's one of my big goals. Right now I have a business called Raising Flora and I am on a mission to give our tweens and teens a healthy start with their cycle, a positive start with their cycle. And I work with moms because I think that moms are the key to their tweens and teens early cycling experiences.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 4:52

And in my work I talk a lot about first periods because, while there is like one singular first period that we need to care for that moment because it is so meaningful and special, it takes years for the conversation between our ovaries and our brains to solidify, for our daughters to figure out how to take care of themselves, not just the days that they're bleeding but throughout their whole cycle. And so we have a lot to offer to give them a healthy, positive and maybe even meaningful start. So that's the kind of work I do. I am a menstrual health educator, a fertility educator and coach. I am a trained menstruality mentor, which means I help people understand the whole lifetime of their cycle and I love to, in my work, bring both the hormonal, biological piece with the inner seasons energetic piece of our cycle, because they're so intertwined and oftentimes those things are taught or talked about separately, and I just think it's a beautiful experience to understand ourself and our body together in through our menstrual cycle.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 6:11

Yeah, and it's so funny because you're explaining what you're doing and in my mind I'm going. I haven't thought about this in years, literally in years, but I can remember being in grade five and it was just this rat race as to who was going to get their period first and there was so much pressure and I can remember. I still remember like it was yesterday my we were in school. My friend came back from the bathroom. She was just crying because she was one of the first ones and she was just all distraught because I don't know if her mom had talked to her about it or hadn't. The teacher was just kind of consoling her and word got out what had happened.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 6:45

And now now there's all this pressure on the rest of us and we're like checking every day do, did we get it? Didn't we get it? Who's got it? Who's got? And then anytime someone did, it was almost like the other girls kind of almost alienated them, like cause they're almost felt, not threatened. But it's weird. It was this weird mentality. I've never experienced it before, but it was like everyone racing to the finish line to get their period first. I don't know why. Can you explain that?

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 7:16

I mean, I don't know that I can explain exactly that, but it is a big growing up moment and there's a lot of feelings about it. It can feel big and so while we look forward to big growing up moments, they can also feel a little unsettling for us and we don't know how to be about all of them because they're not front and center in our culture really are they?

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 7:46

So we're a little at a loss about how to move through big growing up moments with each other, and so we can get weird. Plus, that's the age at which a lot of girls start like feeling this pressure to compete with each other and and sort of this, like, well, there's only room for one of us. Yeah, have this happen as opposed to like building a collective sisterhood, which is what we would hope is the way, you know, we treat each other right?

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 8:19

I still remember my best friend being so mad at me because mine became before hers did and she was furious with me. Oh, my god, I think back now and it's hilarious, but honestly, when you think about it like it is, it's so. It is so much for a young girl to take on, especially if you're, if you don't understand and you don't know how to cope with all the feelings that are literally brewing up to the surface and begging for your attention at all times. It's a lot. It's a lot and everybody's telling you you're being too emotional, you're being too sensitive, and it's and just the simple fact that I applaud you, just for the simple fact of coming on here. And like the second sentence out of your mouth was I love to talk about menstruation. I think you're the only woman I've ever heard say that ever.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 9:10

I realized that I am unique. There are other people like me, because I'm not the only menstrual health coach in the world. However, can I share an experience with you that I had? Okay, so this is partly why I do the work that I do.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 9:28

So I was leading an organization, a group of people were doing an icebreaker, and it's the kind of icebreaker where one person stands up in the middle of the room and makes a statement and everybody stands as close to them that shows how much they agree with that statement or as far away.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 9:47

So people stand up and some people say things sort of innocuous like I drink coffee in the morning, or earrings are my favorite jewelry to wear, or what have you. And then one person stood up in the middle of the room and said I hate my period, and all the other women in the room like could not have hugged her tighter and just sort of sat there like wow, what if we didn't hate ourselves? I know this is normal and it is so. As you and I have talked about, not only is bleeding normal, but living cyclically is normal, and using our journey through our monthly menstrual cycle is a great key to understanding ourselves and to managing our energy and to accomplishing so much in life, so meaningful, right. And so I just thought oh my gosh, let's like foundationally, let's not hate ourselves.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 10:51

Yeah, because it is part of our physiology, it is part of who we are. It's an important part of who we are and so many women are hating themselves through it and hating that they have to go through it there's.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 11:13

You know, not all of that is our fault. Some of that are choices that we can make about the way we think about ourselves and the way we treat ourselves, and we're just swimming in our culture right now?

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 11:45

I think so, and I think the big thing you know, we've heard it called, you know, in my mind, when people used to say your cycle, you know that used to me mean just my period right, it was just a polite way of saying period, but it actually is a full monthly cycle where, at every different point within that cycle, you are operating at a different hormonal I don't know frequency is the right way to put it but at a different hormonal balance and, and you know, your, your, your strengths, your, your, your focuses for those periods really start to change. And and you can, and I know there was an author and I wish I would have looked it up before we got on the phone, but you probably know it she's the author of do less. Have you read that book?

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 14:58

I'm going to look it up after we get off this call. I'm going to put it in the show notes, but she basically and it's more dear, no, tell me about it. When we can actually work with our cycle instead of constantly fighting against it like we're always being taught to, you know, it can be a very different experience, I think.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 15:31

Yeah, it can be a very different experience and it's so important to remember that we are living in a cycle and that our hormones are like helping to drive that cycle. There's a reason that we feel rising energy and our follicular phase and falling energy and our luteal phase. That's the first half is follicular, the second half is luteal, and so it is understandable. And yet there is a lot of pressure to be always like that ovulatory, fully blossomed on top of the world, in charge of everything Ovulation is the best week of the month.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 16:16

You know what it is for so many people. And then for other people it's like it gets a little too bright, it's a little too scorched, or like a little um, a little too much energy up here, and people are like, oh my God, can I have some relief? Can I have some relief in that? And so, um, yeah, but there's so much pressure to perform at that ovulatory state all the time. This is a very accommodating part of our cycle. It is biologically designed to get us pregnant and to make babies to keep our species going.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 16:58

So we want to say yes and we are like our sex drive is up, our creativity is up, we're like hello world, like if you think about the a seed cycle or a tree cycle, right, that is like full bloom is ovulation, and so that is kind of the expectation of how women are in our culture Like we're performing, we're doing well at work, we're taking care of everything at home.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 17:25

We're saying, yes, we're on top of our game, but that's only a quarter of our cycle, right. There's the rest of our cycle. That has both opportunities and challenges, and when we give ourselves permission to live fully through each phase of our cycle, it allows us to show up in our full bloom moment, truly full blooming, because we have had the fallow inner winter menstruation where we have done very little, and that rest gives us the opportunity to then move into our spring, where we're like, oh hello, there's little buds coming up. Then we move into full blossom and then we have an opportunity to reflect and compost and harvest as we go through our inner autumn intentionally, as opposed to holding ourselves in that inner summer ovulatory phase all the time regardless. We actually have the opportunity to take advantage of our our cyclical ways in the world and like our own unique way of showing up through each phase of our cycle.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 18:48

It's so amazing what you said, because it's true. Like, when you think about it, that week of ovulation week is really our. That's when we shine, that's when we're agreeable, that's when we're accommodating, that's when no problem, I can do that for you. That's when we say yes to all the wrong partners and that's literally who the world is always wanting us to be at all times. Can you just it's like, it's almost like an under note of, can you just please get back to your ovulatory state and just put the rest of this to bed? Right, and it's interesting. So I really okay, there's so much to unpack here. I may have to have you back a few times, but can we talk a little bit about just give us a little breakdown of the different phases and what? How do we use each one to our advantage?

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 19:35

Okay, great. So there are four phases to your cycle, every cycle for most people. Let's call that a month ish, but that what's normal ranges, um for what a cycle is? So, um, there are, um. In the beginning we start with menstruation, because day one of our cycle is day one of our period. So that starts the new cycle period. So that starts the new cycle. Menstruation corresponds with our inner winter and that's the first one, day one through maybe day six ish, and then you move into the pre ovulatory phase, which corresponds to inner spring. So you're hearing and how I'm explaining that our cycle mirrors the seasons that we experience, or the life cycle of plants and trees. You know we are a human mammal.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 20:34

All mother nature, it's all connected to mother nature.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 20:37

Yeah, absolutely so. Menstruation, Absolutely so. Menstruation inner winter. Then we move into pre ovulatory inner spring, and then at about day 12 ish we move into our ovulatory phase or inner summer, and that goes maybe until day 19 ish, and then from day 20, thereabouts you move into your premenstruum phase, which corresponds with inner autumn, and that goes until you're just maybe in the day before your period is going to start and you kind of drop into winter and then your bleed starts.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 21:20

So when is the most emotional period for a woman within that cycle? When is the most emotional phase? Would you say it's the pre-winter or the autumn?

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 21:30

Pre-menstruum and the autumn, I would say for many people. It is true, hormonally you are experienced 30 to 50% shifts in your hormones during the ovulatory phase because estrogen is rising rapidly and that is prompting your brain to release luteinizing hormone, which triggers ovulation, and then the luteinizing hormone falls off and estrogen falls off and progesterone rises rapidly, and so so much is happening there. For many of us that can feel energizing and it can also feel a little unsettling and we come off of those like all of those rising and like corresponding hormones, and we move from inner summer into inner autumn, and so one place that can be challenging for people is coming off of that ovulatory high of hormones yeah, okay where they are falling and we can feel this sort of clunk at the end of our inner summer as we shift into a different kind of gear in our inner autumn.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 22:42

So that can be like a little emotional around day 20 ish can be a little.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 22:48

So about a week before, that's exactly when I usually hit my slump. And I know when I hit the slump. Okay, my period. Well, back in the day now it's like on its own schedule, but in the day when everything was regular and working the way it was supposed to, at the time, everything I I would always know, because when I hit that slump I knew I was seven days out. Yeah so you know your body, so well, yep, yep.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 23:13

For many women, the inner autumn and our luteal phase is when our premenstruum is, when our hormones are all falling, they're all descending and so you're coming off of a high, your energy is waning and the kind of the veil between yourself and the world is becoming a little thin. We can become sensitive, we can become easily frustrated and teary. During that time where things shake us, we also, like speak our truth. There is so much that becomes clear to us in that inner autumn, premenstruum, where we were like up in another phase of our cycle. We're like that's okay, not a problem. And we get to that premenstruum inner autumn and we're like that's a big no, that is not okay with me, I don't want that, I don't need that, I am irritated by that.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 24:21

So we speak our truth in our inner autumn, right, and so Is it true, though, Because I always find I always say this to myself if I feel it before my period, I'm not going to voice it until my period is passed, Because then I know it's truth. Otherwise it could just be hormones talking.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 27:20

It could be, it could could be, it could be. And I also think there is an opportunity to like, really pay attention to yourself, yeah and um. You know, we definitely can struggle in that phase to um, have conversations with our inner critic and sometimes that spreads outside of us where we are, just like our critic is spewing everywhere and everybody in our life. Right, that can feel really like a challenging piece, and so I'd love to talk about our inner critic in a minute. But I want to say that when you feel like that might be your truth and you speak it, you have an opportunity to go into your next period and have some moments of rest and be with those questions like you're talking about and say like, oh, is that clearly what I feel? Our inner winter and that stillness can give us clarity and we can come out of our period feeling like re-envisioned, reclarified and sort of like clean, cleansed. I love that In a way through that process, balanced that.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 28:43

I love that through that process, because you really, it really is a great time to just sort of you know, like I call it incubate, like just incubate in what's happening, what you're feeling, what you're experiencing, and really like dive in and, um, not meditate on, well, yeah, like reflect, just really understanding who you are, what you're feeling, and and really hold, like holding the, the, the holding presence with that for the duration of those days, to see where you kind of end up, like if you can identify and I've done this before where it's like you kind of sit down and you're like, okay, well, you know this is coming up for me and that's coming up for me and I'll write it down, okay.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 29:20

So I know that these, these are pain points for me right now. So I'm just going to say I'm just going to let them be, I'm going to try not to fix, I'm going to try not to make any, I try not to make any decisions. I never, I try never to break up with anybody during. I always wait till after. And then you know, once I've had those few days of, like you know, incubation and reflection, then I can be like you know what I have like crystal clear clarity now. These, this, this and this was just that, was just a symptom of my inner critic. But five, five, six and seven, they're legitimate concerns. It's time to do something about that.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 29:59

Yeah, oh, that's so beautiful, yeah, yeah, it does give us an opportunity to come home to ourself, yeah, and that inner autumn kind of ushers us in, and so for many of us, our inner autumn is a productive, creative time for me.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 30:19

I well, I don't cycle anymore, I'm in menopause, or I like I'm I'm in menopause or I like I'm I'm partway through my menopause journey, I would say Okay, but it for me, my autumn always felt like so productive, I was like checking things off a list, it's like I was climbing the mountain, walking, going, creative, getting things done and then like ready to drop into winter and rest. But for me it was always a very productive time and a sensitive, teary time, for sure. And partly what shifted that or made my relationship with my cycle different was having a different relationship with my inner critic, because I have a couple of pretty nasty inner critics and there's one that is always saying like that's not good enough and she has a lot of toxic positivity. You know, that inner critic is like I believe in you so much that I know you can do so much more, so much better, right. And then I have another inner critic that is like you're a little bit too much. That's too intense for people. You're a little bit a lot.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 31:35

You're a little bit much.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 31:38

Yeah, interesting, those critics used to be present all the time on any given day. Yeah, you know decades of my life. They were, you know, at times pretty quick to be on my shoulder yeah, in my ears Right. And as I came to understand my cycle and how I moved through it, I could then tell my critic to go away for a little while, because I knew that every inner autumn, where I was editing and producing and composting and considering and speaking my truth, that I would go for a walk, my critic and I would walk our dogs together as a way to reflect and have a conversation, because I found that she did actually have helpful things to offer me at the point in my cycle where I was ready to meet her. I had produced, I was ready to reflect.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 32:36

Oh, that's a great idea. I love that.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 32:38

Right, and so you're talking about how you take a question into your inner winter and you consider it and think about it. And then you come out into your inner winter and you consider it and think about it, and then you come out into your inner spring and you initiate and you plan and you dream and you play. Then you come into inner summer and you say, yes, you're like the most external that you are and you produce you're like um, bringing forth all of your ideas are coming to reality.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 33:07

And then you come to your inner autumn and you're like, yeah, that's amazing Inner critic. Do you want to talk about it, cause I just did a lot of amazing stuff and you're not going to pick me apart. But I do want to hear some thoughtful reflections. I love that and so you can have a relationship with her that is productive, when she is not hanging out all over your inner spring where you're meant to be playing and testing ideas. So my cycle helped me, like put her in a spot where she wants to be. Oh my God.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 33:41

We could, I can, oh, my God I can. I'm actually seeing like this is so brilliant because it literally takes you through the like. If it takes you through the entire healing cycle, if you partner it with your menstrual cycle because that's literally what we do yeah, right, but it's almost like if you broke it out into the different phases of the cycle it would. How much more powerful would it actually be? That is brilliant. I love that. I love that I, but I don't love you know. What I don't love, tell me and I'm laughing is how many people I've said yes to that I should have said no to when I was ovulating.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 34:20

Yes, yes, yes, in retrospect. Yes, because you're magnetic during that time, right, and so sometimes what we need to learn to do is to channel that ovulatory creative, like wanting to produce energy, into other projects. Yeah, and sometimes we have to keep that energy for ourselves and not give it away to everybody else in our lives because it feels easeful to do that at that time it does. But learning to keep some of your ovulatory summer energy for what's important to you and to channel that can be so helpful. I found that really helpful. I used to think of my ovulation season, my inner summer, as like one big dinner party, and it was like all twinkly lights in the backyard and like having the best time.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 35:16

And then I was like you know what? No, I'm going to go in a room by myself and write, because like that is when my ideas were bubbling and I wanted to save it for me, versus like magic.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 35:29

Yeah, absolutely Magic. It's funny Cause I remember I don't know if you ever, do you ever watch Seinfeld back in the day? Oh my God, yes, High school. You're taking me back to high school. Do you remember the sponge worthy episode? Remember when the sponge was being discontinued? Now it's like are you magic worthy? Like I just don't know if I want to give you any of this magic right now. Yeah, yeah. You get to choose where you put that energy.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 35:58

You get to choose where you put that energy. Say as like a sidebar for parents is that this inner seasons analogy of the phases of our menstrual cycle can be really helpful for tweens and teens because it's so accessible. We can look at the outer seasons you know here in our world and we can look at the life cycle of a flower or a tree and understand it, and it can be really helpful to help tweens and teens think about where are they going to put their creative ovulatory energy into a performance. It's like you're on stage and you're comfortable saying yes to that. It's like you know we can't always time every part of our life.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 36:51

But I was gonna say how do you? Yeah, because their time, their life is timed for them. So how do you, how do you get them to? I was gonna say monetize is not the right word, but take advantage of all these different phases within their cycle.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 37:05

Yeah. So on things where you can control it, I'll give you an example. Say you have a teenager who's applying for college and there's months long process in that to get from I want to apply to college, to. I have submitted my application, and one way that you can take advantage of a menstrual cycle in that process is to take the inner winter to reflect and journal about what's going to be important to you in a college. You're dreaming a little bit about how do you picture yourself on campus, what does that look like? How do you feel, what do you want? So that you get some clarity.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 37:45

Your inner spring can be the time that you're drafting your application essay. You're getting your ideas out, you're playing with it. Your inner summer could be the time where you do a campus tour and an interview, where you're feeling confident and willing to be seen or to show yourself. And then in the inner autumn you've gone back to your essay and then you're editing it and you're pressing go before your next dinner winter. So that can't all happen maybe within one 28 day cycle for a teenager, but you can, over a number of months, sync up that process. You can.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 38:23

And then I would say the flip side of that, when you can't time out certain things in their life, like when a performance is going to happen or when soccer tryouts are where you want to be like feeling really energized. But you can just at least understand where you are in your cycle. Yeah, so that you can have self compassion, for this is in sync or it's not in sync, and when it's not in sync, as a parent I can offer extra support. Yeah, I can. I can also help my daughter and other parents can as well to call on some of the strengths of those other parts of their cycle that they can like. Remember that they have that capacity and that they are in a cycle and the other part of their cycle is always ahead of them.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 39:19

Because it's a cycle, right, every winter comes to an end right Every winter comes to an end Every time, Every every winter comes to an end Every time. Every year we transition from spring to summer.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 39:30

Yeah, and sometimes I think when you're younger, like I can remember feeling like the winters would never end, like sometimes it got so heavy, right, but it always did. The winters always came to an end, right, and I think that you know teaching younger it's. It's so amazing that you're doing this work and I wish they would. Actually, I would love to see a world where this was taught in schools.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 39:55

You know to really like help women understand what's happening in their bodies every month, because it's so important, so important, and we've been sweeping under the rug and, you know, dealing with the symptoms and trying to, like you said, show up in our ovulation phase as much as humanly possible every single day, when that's just not what we're built to do. We're actually we're going against the grain of what we were built to do, and you know a lot of people, you know this might be new information for a lot of people who are listening. Maybe you've heard all of this before and you're just, you know, taking it all in, but the reality is is that, as women, how we're programmed to show up in the world and how we're actually designed to show up in the world and support the world are two very different things, and you know your work is such a testament to that.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 40:59

Thank you. I want to give credit to the two women who I don't like invented is that the right word but like wrote down summarized the way our inner seasons work, and that is Alexandra Pope and Shawnee Hugo Wurlitzer, who are co-founders of the Red School, which is one of the places that I trained. They have a beautiful book called Wild Power, so if people are hearing us talk about this and are curious to learn more, I highly recommend getting Shani and Alexandra's book Wild Power as a way to learn about the ecology of your inner seasons and what you might experience and how to think about your relationship with your whole cycle, like you've said, beyond just the days that we have our period.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 41:54

Yeah, because there's so much more to it, and then, when we learn how to use it properly, we could, there was so much more we could be accomplishing, both emotionally, mentally, physically. It's truly a powerful thing. So thank you for sharing all that and I love the way you broke it down. It made it just made. It made so much more sense than anyone I've ever heard to explain it to me before.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 42:17

You're so welcome. Yeah, I, I love it and I love that I have like learned it and I feel it, and I love that I have like learned it and I feel it and I want other people to learn it and feel it too, because it is life changing. This is transformative and, like you said, then we can apply it to knowing ourself, we can apply it to our healing process, we can apply it to the questions in our life, the who are we? Questions in our life and like I don't want this to be too much like we're capitalists and we're just like producing, producing, producing, and we're going to like use our cycle to get better producers, but we also are able to produce during certain parts of our cycle.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 43:04

That's wired into us too, because we are resting at the opposite side of our cycle and if, like, two things are true if we're not producing, then we get to the rest and we feel like we don't deserve to rest because we didn't produce Right. And so the beauty of the cycle is like one phase leads into the other and they all work in concert, the way our hormones are working in concert throughout our body.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 43:36

Yeah, and I think we need to. Just I think we need to sit with the definition of productivity just for a minute, because there's many ways to be productive other than just. I mean, there's many different definitions of productivity and I think we need to open that up, I think for a bigger conversation. Okay, so we are almost at time, we're actually at time, but so we'll have you back to talk about menopause and perimenopause, because that's obviously something that I'm obsessed with right now. I'm in that season, cause that's obviously something that I'm obsessed with right now. I'm in that season, that is very much my season, but would you mind if we did like a quick like round of like, questions of like. So best time for healing during your cycle is when emotional healing, would you say?

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 44:23

your menstruation Okay. Best time for making big decisions coming out of your menstruation, going into pre-ovulation okay, best time for breakups inner autumn in your pre-menstruum yeah.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 44:55

Best time for figuring out who to say yes to, since we know ovulation is not the time.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 45:02

Okay, I'm going to say two. So pre-ovulation is when you're like getting ready to say yes to things, and that's when you should be experimenting, okay, and like learning. I like this, I don't like this. Okay, like testing. Okay, like testing.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 45:16

Yeah, okay, I love that, I love those questions. Oh, my God, no, that was amazing and I guess the best time to really you know if you're, if you're, if you're thinking of exploring what's out there for you and what you want and what you truly desire, when's the best time to do that?

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 45:38

Well, I think that's your inner springtime.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 45:41

Inner spring.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 45:41

It's like an exploratory time, okay, and then inner summer also gives you an opportunity to be like out and trying things.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 45:54

I love that.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 45:56

Oh my gosh.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 45:56

That is so good. Thank you so much. That's amazing. I hope you guys had a journal out and noted that, but this show is here for you whenever you want to refer back to that. But I think that was amazing. If people want to follow up with you, find out more about you, where do you want them to go?

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 46:14

Okay, I want people to go to my website, raising Flora. You can also email me, liz at Raising Flora, so that's Raising Floracom, and there you will find information on the classes that I teach, and I want to let everybody know that I do free Ask Me Anything. Hop-on calls where we all gather to ask any questions about your inner seasons, about your biology, your hormones. When are we going to air this episode?

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 46:50

Usually a couple weeks lead time, so probably towards the end of June.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 46:56

Okay, perfect. So there'll be July. Ask me anything, so then you'll find information on my website. Hop on, I like there is no question, you can't ask me. I love to talk about this all day long and like, really you can bring anything?

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 47:11

Is that on your Instagram or is that like a private zoom call?

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 47:15

That is a private zoom call. Interesting to do it on Instagram.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 47:20

Yeah.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 47:20

Also follow me at raising Flora on the Insta.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 47:24

Oh my God, that would be maybe do. Maybe we do like a joint live or something one day. Live Q and a. That would be so much fun.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 47:29

Oh, that would be really fun and I'm super excited to talk more about menopause, because I am on that journey and I get it, and so many of the people that I work with as a mom we're in a perimenopause menopause and our girls are going through puberty and that combination is quite something.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 47:54

It can be very sweet and it can be very spicy, it can be very spicy, because I'm going through it now, thinking I think, I don't know, like I can't, I've kind of disconnected with what it truly felt like to be in puberty at that time. But this feels really intense. So I don't know if it's as in more or I don't know, but yeah, I can't imagine. Well, mind you, my mom was going through menopause or perimenopause when I was going into puberty. So yeah, but we weren't that spicy, I don't think.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 48:31

Yeah, my daughter and I are synced up in that way and yeah, that's why I say like it can be so sweet. Yeah, Also be biting.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 48:42

My mom might have a different opinion than me, but I don't remember.

LIZ @RAISINGFLORA: 48:47

But you might want to ask my mom I love it, I love it. Um yeah, let's talk more about menopause, oh absolutely.

MARIA @THEFEMMECAST: 48:56

We're definitely going to have you back to have that conversation, because I need answers. We all do. Thank you so much for being here. It was so amazing. You're so awesome to talk to and guys, I encourage you to reach out. I'm going to leave all her links down below, so feel free to reach out to her. Connect with her on her website. That is all for now, you guys, until next time, massive love.