Friday 13th: Celebration or superstition?
A theory around the reason behind chronic illness being so prevalent in women.
How do you feel about today being Friday 13th?
Do you see it as being about a day of bad luck?
Is it a day for superstition or is it (like chronic illness), deeply misunderstood and lacking awareness?
I’ll take you on the journey I’ve been on, starting with my excessive screen time this morning…
I read on Moon and Astrologer guide, Kirsty Gallagher’s, Instagram post that in times past, today was a day of the Goddess. A celebration of the divine feminine.
That the number 13 corresponds to the number of the lunar and menstrual cycles within a calendar year.
Friday associates with the divine feminine. Named after the Nordic Goddess, Freya or Frigg.
The Goddess of
- Love
- Marriage
- Fertility
- Sex
- Magic &
- Predicting the future
Astrologically, Friday is the day of the planet Venus. A day to celebrate:
- The feminine
- Romance
- Beauty &
- Love
At one time, both the number 13 and the day Friday were together celebrated, considered to bring good fortune and the Goddess was worshipped.
What would change in our lives if we saw today as a sacred day?
A day in which to honour the feminine and the cycles of life: endings and beginnings, death and rebirth?
The feminine creative life force surrounds us daily. A life force that we can tap into to create ANYTHING WE WANT. (I can say this with certainty because I’ve tried it)
This way of working, this way of looking at things, this way of honouring that changed in the Middle Ages. (And boy, haven’t I felt the wrath of that).
Is it time for us all to reclaim Friday 13th, reclaim the Goddess, the Witch and the Wild Woman?
Personally, I’ve experienced a huge amount of resistance in connecting to the Wild Woman within and reclaiming this part of myself.
Let’s back track
A couple of years ago, I was part of a women’s circle overseas. One of the many alternative, unusual and out there things I did to keep myself sane over lockdown. Each session was held in the middle of the night my time, so I watched it on catch up by myself. One activity was to connect with the wild woman within. To dance. To take up space. To go within. Something within me didn’t want to do it. So I didn’t. Not straight away. Then one day I spontaneously put the track on and started dancing in the kitchen. Busting out my best most magnificent and free-flowing moves. Probably whilst waiting for the kettle to boil.
Afterwards I wrote the words:
Wild Woman.
I am here.
I am fierce.
I will let nothing hold me back.
Nothing will stand in my way.
No one – not even me – can stop me.
40’s: Fearless and Fantastic.
This is my time now.
It felt freeing. It felt liberating. I was connecting with a part of myself in a way that I hadn’t before. The long. The lost. The forgotten. But always there, nevertheless.
Fast forward 2 years
We’re in 2022. I’m 4 years into healing the fuck out of myself.
To the extent that I’ve sold my luxury city centre apartment and am now living in a static caravan. Without any central heating.
Whilst everyone else is out earning money to pay for their mortgage and cost of living crisis, I’m surrounded by nature learning to regulate my emotions.
When I look back on the past 4 years, I’ve spent it in its entirety reclaiming the lost, the long, the forgotten parts of myself.
Starting with drowning out the noise around me.
Going within.
Tuning in to what I knew to be true all along.
Taking back the reigns of creation for my own life.
Standing in my own inner power.
Tapping into an inner strength. An inner determination. An inner wisdom that was there all along.
Learning to Slow. The. Fuck. Down. (Hardest challenge of all).
Going against the grain.
Was it the masculine way all along? That had become so toxic to my thoughts, to my body and all its systems that it was eating me up like some kind of disease? Oh, that’s right, migraine is a disease. Turns out, the headaches are full on attacks. My own body is attacking itself. Trying to get my attention. Trying to get me to listen.
Not that I am in any way slating the masculine. We need the masculine as much as we need the feminine. Both are two equal parts. The difference is, somewhere along the way they have become unequal. Out of whack. Out of balance.
Is it a case of learning to bring the two energies, the feminine and the masculine, back into balance?
For us to no longer see one as more superior to the other?
For us to no longer focus on certain qualities and supress the rest?
Balance Your Hormones, Balance Your Life the book said. It’s certainly worked for me.
Let’s go back to last year
Static caravan. Never-ending visitors. Holidaying. Retreating. Finding peace.
During one treatment here with a client friend who had come to stay, I unleashed the gift of channelling. It was a regular bodywork session, on a regular week day.
This client was the very first person I ever received a message through during a facial, back when we first met in Newcastle.
Now there was message after message flooding through. Heartfelt messages. One after the other after the other. Insight after insight. Feeling after feeling. Healing after healing. Deep. Expansive. Limitless.
Afterwards… SOOO MUCH ANGER ! Anger at being supressed for so long. Anger at being told to quiet down. To sit still. Be a good girl. Barely breath.
The breaths I was taking to breath into it. Big. Expansive.
The movement I had to embody to move through it. Yoga. Walking.
The connections I had to make to release it. Nature. Voice it.
The nourishment I had to digest to ground it. Food. Wholesome. Nutritious.
What the chuff does this have anything to do with health?
Especially chronic ill health??
When you look at all I’ve done to get to where I am (a place of wellness, a place of freedom, a place of peace), from the get-go, I’ve (re)connected to my own innate feminine wisdom, my feminine qualities have led the way.
From the very moment I connected to my own inner knowing, I was branded selfish, told I didn’t know what I was doing, that I was too vulnerable to make decisions regarding my own health.
If you think about it, back in the era of the witch hunt, I would’ve been burned at the steak for reclaiming my own inner knowing, my own ability to heal from within and connecting to an energy force that you couldn’t see, hear or quantify.
It seems we’re no longer burning with fire. We’re burning with words. With actions. With judgement.
But I digress.
Because this next bit is important.
What’s happened in an overview (there’s a book coming with the finer details) is this:
I broke the chronic pain cycle in 6 months.
I broke the chronic fatigue cycle in a couple of years.
By year 3, I began to make giant leaps forward with menstrual migraine.
Year 4 (after fully releasing ALL that I had been supressing), I could function through attack.
Year 5, the pain I now live with is consistently mild. The symptoms are few.
Hands up migraine sufferers who live with or have ever experienced pain that you would describe as mild? Or symptoms that you would describe as few?
Up until this last year, me neither.
The masculine way to look at our ill health has been to manage, to control, to get rid of (womanly periods being one of the “let’s get rid of”).
In the medical world of masculine dominance, what I’ve achieved is considered impossible. Or only for the lucky few. An anomaly.
“I don’t know how you’ve done it” sort of scenario.
Yet all that’s happened in my world of being cast aside by society, as if flung on to a scrap heap with all the other chronic illness warriors, is that I have - as was my intention - healed the fuck out of myself.
Back to the now
Lately, I’m seeing so much around the mystery of chronic ill health affecting predominantly women and the reasons for this alleged as being unknown.
Could the reason for our mounting illness, increasing disability (and lack of interest in it) be that we’ve been supressed for so long our bodies will no longer take it?
Has anyone even looked?
I’ve sent you a video of me kitchen dancing as a laugh hehe 🤭
This is a great post Amber, your journey sounds really interesting and I am glad to read that you are on the path to healing. Thank you for sharing