Letters To A Young Woman - To The One Who's Raging

This series consists of a collection of letters for young women, letters to celebrate, console and encourage during a time in life that can feel relentlessly hard and alienating. This is a letter about allowing ourselves to experience the full range of our emotions, without diluting them or escaping from them. When we no longer need to run from our emotions, confusing and addictive behaviours have less of a hold over us and this is what freedom is made of!

Transcript

Une Before we start today's letter,

Allow yourself a moment to ground.

Feel your feet firmly planted on the floor,

Or your seat on the chair.

Notice the physical sensations in your body.

To the one who's raging.

Can I actually not stand him,

Or have my progesterone levels just dropped?

Your hormones might make you feel insane.

One moment,

You'll be revealing on top of the world,

And the next,

You're being crushed by the weight of it.

I spent many years in fear of when my hormones would strike and leave me feeling unable to cope,

Angry with those I love and loathing of myself.

In my experience,

Riding a rollercoaster of hormones whilst also traversing the tricky terrain of life doesn't get much easier.

But,

As with all things,

Your choice in how you face these times is everything.

You can choose to view PMS as a curse on women,

Or you can see it as a time where our social conditioning to be nice or pleasant,

Agreeable,

Well,

It just feels that little bit more of a constraint.

There is a clear-sightedness that comes with this time,

And although it can involve a lot of self-doubt,

It can also help you to see the areas of your life which are intolerable to you.

Your hormones do not just make things seem problematic,

They are a monthly reminder to call out what is already problematic.

Go gently,

And don't go to war on your hormones.

Learn to live with them,

And use them as yet another guide pointing you home to yourself.

A chainsaw.

You