Standing at the Shield of the West

Standing at the Threshold: The Spaces In Between

Something in me is changing.

I can feel it most in the quiet moments — when the world becomes quiet, and I notice how my body, my energy, my being is no longer the same as it once was.

For years I created and moved from the pulse of my womb, that ancient place of knowing, creativity, and power.

Deeply un aware yet always in a cyclical movement of Eb and flow

The places that birthed my children

Something I was blessed to experience

It was my compass, my drumbeat, the place I trusted to lead me every month.

Well it was set each month a ritual that would happen.

Sacred never the less.

A time that I cherished, and I am aware that this is not the same for many

other women.

But now… something is different. I find myself standing at a threshold, in the spaces in between what has been and what is still becoming. My energy no longer gathers in the womb in the same way. It drifts upward, into the chambers of my heart with a stronger firm unfamiliar pulse.The language of my body has shifted. The rhythms I once knew so well are quieter, asking me to listen differently.

This change is not without its challenge.

There are days of fatigue, where rest is a necessity. Days of mental fog, where clarity feels out of reach and I must learn patience with myself. Oh goodness, patience — a lifelong lesson of mine. There are days when I don’t fully recognise this new version of me, and yet I am asked to meet her, to sit with her, to get to know her. And there are days when those around me must weather the storm too — the moods that shift like sudden winds, the tenderness that sometimes comes out sideways. This change is not only mine to navigate; it ripples outward.

No one speaks about the sadness and grief of a release of an old self. Maybe the residue of untapped potential.Which is not parsee a truth but certainly a question that arises as so many.

And still, I know this time is so sacred.

The spaces in between always are. They are where the weaving happens, where the shedding and the becoming dances, where we are asked to surrender control and trust what we cannot yet see.Once again we get to learn.

And as my hormones are all over the place it is not as though there is a nine-month time frame with the promise of a baby. This time, I am unsure what lies on the other side.

What I do know is that this dismemberment will lead to a deep remembering.

In many traditional cultures, this passage is honoured as a rite — a crossing of a powerful threshold, when a woman’s medicine shifts into a new form. It is a time when her wisdom deepens, when she carries the stories of her lived body into the wider circle, no longer moving towards one cycle but woven into the greater cycles of the Earth and Sky.

To remember this is to hold myself with more reverence, even when the path feels rocky and deeply thick and delicious.

I do not have all the answers. I am still finding my way.

I am not a doctor but I am a woman with her own lived experiences.

A Mother, a Sister a Friend.

What I do know is that I am grateful. Grateful to still be here, alive, changing and experiencing.

Grateful to walk this threshold, even when it feels uncertain.

Grateful to discover that life has new ways for me to listen, to love, to create.

Perhaps this is what it means to grow older, to soften into new centres of power, to surrender one language of the body for another. It is a new initiation — one I am consciously called to honour.

If you wish to be held in your process as you step into or over your thresholds

please don't hesitate to connect.

We have just completed a beautiful weekend with wonderful women who held space for each other, laughed ,were heard ,cried ,created and received beautiful initiations to continue their personal journey.

Our hearts were filled with joy and I am still feeling the deep ripples of the personal and collective work that was done.

Many Blessings

Sjoukje