Three rituals for the bleeding week.
A letter for the slow week, when the cycle begins again.
Dear Friend,
The first day of your period is not, technically, the worst day of your cycle. It is often a quieter day than the two or three that preceded it. The luteal storm has broken. The body is doing what it was always going to do.
But it can feel like an arrival — of relief, of tiredness, of something you've been carrying all week finally finding the floor.
I want to offer you three small rituals for this week. None of them are productive. None of them require equipment beyond what is in your kitchen. They are not the kind of rituals that appear on a list of ten things you should be doing in your menstrual phase!!! They are, in fact, the opposite of that list.
A ritual, in this letter, is just a small thing you do on purpose. Something you choose to make slow, rather than do quickly. The repetition is the point. The acknowledgment is the point. The doing-something-on-purpose-for-no-reason-other-than-attention is the point.
Three of them, for the week ahead.
One. The first cup of tea on Day 1.
In the morning, before anything else — before your phone, before the inbox, before the unfinished list waiting in the kitchen — make yourself something warm and sit with it for the length of time it takes to drink.
Not drink quickly while doing emails. Not sip in the car. Sit. Put the cup down occasionally. Look at something — a window, a plant, a slightly chipped corner of the wall — for slightly longer than is useful.
Somewhere inside this slow cup of tea, mark the day. Write Day 1 in a notebook, on a calendar, on the inside of your wrist. The marking matters more than the medium. You are noticing the start of something, which is the first act of any practice.
The week begins now. You have just sat with the beginning of it. The rest of the morning can do what it wants.
Two. The smaller plate.
At some point in this week — once is enough, more is better — make yourself a meal that is small, warm, and mineral-rich. Not a project. A bowl.
Lentil soup with a squeeze of lemon. A broth with rice and an egg cracked in. A small chicken thigh with greens and a sweet potato. A bowl of oats with stewed apple and a spoon of almond butter. Anything that includes iron, or warmth, or both.
Eat it slowly. Eat it sitting down. Eat it without a screen in front of you. If you can manage it, eat it with a real spoon, off a real plate, while looking at something other than your work.
Your body has just released a meaningful amount of blood. It is rebuilding. It is asking, in the quietest possible voice, for warmth and minerals and a few minutes of your attention. This bowl is the answer to that voice.
You don't have to do it every day. You don't have to do it perfectly. One small warm bowl this week, eaten without urgency, is the entire ritual.
Three. The hot water bottle, and the early lights.
At some point in the evening, well before you would normally consider sleep, fill a hot water bottle and put it on your lower back. Or your belly. Or your feet, if your feet are cold (they probably are; the iron has gone elsewhere).
Then dim the lights of your house, earlier than feels reasonable. Lamp instead of overhead. One candle, if you have one. Whatever turns the room from workspace to evening.
If you can manage it, get into bed an hour earlier than usual. Read something slow — a novel, a poem, a cookbook, a letter from a friend — for as long as you can keep your eyes open, which on Day 2 or 3 of your bleed will probably not be very long.
Your body wants the dark. It wants the heat. It wants the kind of sleep that only the bleeding week asks for — long, mineral, recuperative. Give it the lights it is asking for. Give it the warm thing pressed against the place that hurts. Give it the early end of the day.
The hot water bottle is a deeply unglamorous piece of equipment, and I am suggesting you become absolutely devoted to it.
That is the entire practice. Three small rituals — a warm cup, a warm bowl, a warm bottle. None of them require an app. None of them ask anything of you that the day was not already asking quietly underneath everything else. Each one is a small act of yes, I see you directed at your own body.
You can do all three this week. Or you can do one. Or you can do none, and just sit with the idea of them for now. Rituals work whether or not you complete them perfectly. They are not a checklist. They are a small habit of attention.
The bleeding week will pass. It always does. Day 7 or 8 will arrive, and the light will come back to the kitchen, and the body will start asking for different things. But until then — slow tea, small bowls, hot water bottles, and the lamp on instead of the ceiling light.
Tend the body that is doing the work. The work is real.
With care, Freyja
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