Women's Things

Tips, tricks, herbs and rewilding (special attention will be given to you awesome males later)

Hi there, fellow females. I just wanted to let you know a few things…

Painful periods are avoidable.

There are better ways to control birth than using chemicals or flimsy rubber.

And if you are looking forward to giving birth… with the right preparation, there’s no reason to say why it can’t be an ecstatic experience.

Spirit of the Hag

There’s a few different things to cover here, and there is absolutely no reason to be ashamed of our nature.

There’s quite a thought-provoking book called Kissing the Hag, by Emma Restall Orr. I’m bringing it to attention here because it has a theme of describing all the nasty - or simply unspoken - aspects of woman. Things we’re told to not talk about or show. But the truth is, all of us have these archetypes in a different combination. These are Virgin, Whore, Mother, Witch, Bitch and Old Bag. She will describe to you how put together, these aspects make up thee Hag, but I will run through what these mean in my own words. The different traits might be more dominant in different stages of our lives, but it’s more about the mindset rather than a physical stage of your life cycle. So for example, you don’t actually need to be a mother to have the traits of nurturing and and wanting to give care to anyone smaller or weaker. Just like you don’t have to stay a virgin forever to enjoy the feelings of independence, childlike awe or zest for life.

In social settings such as the workplace, society would have us cover up our less savoury aspects, ignore them, hide them, keep it to yourself. Having trouble with the hormonal rages because it’s that time of the month again? Tough luck! Get on with your job, silly woman. Some might disagree, but there is a downside to feminism, which started off with a noble purpose and then grew to something that’s out of proportion. (Eradicating every white male off the face of the Earth is going to cause more problems than it solves. Just saying…) In the sense of work, it makes sense that everyone get to choose their path according to passions and skill rather than gender, but there is a reason why some roles are typically suited to one better than the other. Your average man probably wouldn’t feel at home with a dozen toddlers running around his feet in a nursery, just the same as a lot of women wouldn’t be drawn to heavy labour and building work. Because deny it or not, our brains and our bodies are built differently. Even going back to the periods, this has an effect on us biologically which means that sometimes we’re not going to be on peak performance, some days we may not fancy leaving the house and might be in actual pain. So the fact that men can do certain jobs more easily and consistently isn’t an insult, it’s just that they don’t experience the same cycle. While the genders might be equally important, our strengths are different. And I feel this is something to be celebrated rather than argued over. Women’s intuition is a good deal higher, as is her empathy. This being able to naturally pick up body signals better stems from childbirth, when it takes a knack to being able to figure out what a baby wants before it can speak. Although intuition, of course, can be used for far more amazing purposes than simply reading how someone is feeling.

So society may want to keep the Hag locked away at all costs (or at least, they give that impression) but occasionally, parts of woman’s raw, untamed nature is going to break through. Sometimes the blood will leak. Some days you’re going to be caught out full and bloated and ungroomed. Sometimes the Bitch will let her anger off the leash, intending to hurt anyone unfortunate enough to step in her path. These things happen. What can you do about it? But of course, there’s always more than two ways to express these aspects of ourselves, and some of these ways are healthier than others. The Bitch is a great example of this. Why? Because anger isn’t necessarily a terrible thing. Yes, it can be used to destroy, but it can also be used to create. Righteous anger can be one of the most powerful driving forces in this world. You see an injustice, an innocent person or group being wronged, and you can channel all that rage into taking down exactly what you don’t want, in order to make space for the new to be built. This is what happens when the Bitch decides she’s going to fight for good. She's definitely a force to be reckoned with and, naturally, some people aren't going to like that. What can I say? Powerful women are scary to those who see that as a threat. However, what I would suggest is instead of shying away from that power, step up to it yourself and imagine how strong you'd be as allies.