I just came back from Edinburgh where I took Autumn Woman, Harvest Queen, a menopause workshop with the incredible Jane Hardwicke Collings. Even though it was about menopause, it was very relevant to birth.

Historically we've considered the female experience as a triune of phases in the form of the triple goddess. Maiden, from when we're born until we reach our mid-twenties/have a child. Mother from our mid-twenties/when we have child until we reach menopause. And crone from menopause onwards.

This three phase concept doesn't really fit our current reality. There's a world of difference between the wise, elder woman in her 80's and the mid-life woman in her 50's. And so a fourth phase has been added to describe the post-menopausal woman.

Many words have been used to describe this stage of the female experience. Maga is the most common but you might also hear enchantress, mage or high priestess among others.

This version of woman is the one who leads in the community. Who has wisdom and experience but also has energy and vitality to be active in how she shares and implements that wisdom. No longer caretaking children, and no longer sedated by the effects of her hormones, she is a force to be reckoned with.

Jane shared that in sea mammals whose females live beyond their reproductive years, these are the leaders of the pods.

The anthropologist Dana Raphael coined the term 'matrescence' in the 70's to describe the process of becoming a mother. Even though we become a mother almost in an instant, the transition from maidenhood to motherhood is a process. Much like we technically become an adult the day we turn 18 (or whatever age is deemed adult in culture/society), becoming an adult is the process we go through in adolescence.

Jane has coined the term 'sagescence', the becoming of the sage, or wise woman, to represent the transition that happens as we enter menopause. It's not a singular event. We don't know we've had our last bleed until we're looking back at it from many months after it happens. And as is the case for adolesence and matrescence, the transition from being our fertile, mother selves into our post-menopausal maga selves is also a process.

We looked at the cycle of life in context with the cycle of the day and the cycle of the year, and understanding how our needs and actions align with those patterns. Our maiden years, from birth to 25, align with the season of spring and with the morning. Our mother years, from 25-50, align with the season of summer and the period around the middle of the day. Our maga years, from 50-70, align with the season of autumn and the afternoon. Our crone years, from 70 onwards, align with the season of winter and the evening/night. The qualities of each of those seasons and dayparts mirror the qualities of each of our life phases.

The autumn is harvest time, where all the work we did earlier in the year comes to fruition. If we did a good job, and got lucky with the weather, we'll have an abundant harvest. If we didn't take good care, or we had a lot of challenges to deal with, it will be less so.

So it is for us in the autumn of our lives, when what has happened before comes to a head. A combination of the hand we've been dealt and the inner and outer resources we've had to handle that hand.

Many women struggle with menopause, and Jane posited that the more stuff we haven't dealt with from our younger years, the harder it will be. The invitation for us in sagescence is to heal the wounds from our maiden and mother years, so we can step more into our power.

Jane invited us to look at all the major transitions in our life so far. Our birth, our menarche (when we started menstruating) and our birthings of our children. We shared those stories in detail and looked for the patterns between them. Jane told us the patterns we saw would also show up in menopause and they hold the key to navigating our sagescence.

Each of these transitions and rites of passage become a highlight where all our stuff comes up to be healed. We either heal them or we don't, and they come up again with full force at our next rite of passage, whether that's a bith or our menopause.

The traumas, beliefs, limitations, challengs that we havn't addressed from our maiden years will come up as we give birth. And our birth trauma will come up again at menopause to be healed. Perhaps not in the same clothes, so we might not identfy where it has come from, but there will be inner work for us to do to break the patterns.

Often we're aware of the things we need to heal, but sometimes we're not. We don't often have a conscious awareness of our trauma from being born, our in utero trauma or our generational trauma.

Energy healing allows us to heal all those layers and timelines, conscious and unconscious. We can receive healing from someone trained in energy healing, be that a professional or friend/family member, or we can do it ourselves.

The more we can heal, or be healed, before we give birth, the easier our birth journeys will be. And the more we can step into motherhood and sagehood as full, powerful women.