Hello there!
It’s been a little while since I’ve checked in, so buckle up and get ready for a life update…and then prepare to be sick of me when I start showing up every week in your inbox.
Read on for:
University update!
Coming off birth control
Menstrual Cycle Awareness
Foster kitten realness
Reflections on death and grief
Communing with the dead
Huberman prays?
Perth > Melbourne (yay!)
I have my university degree in Nutrition (almost!)
After 3.5 years and too many hours spent bleary eyed over my laptop trying to understand gluconeogenesis, I finished my final exam! I’ll find out next week if I passed everything, but I feel quite confident that I am good to go and have officially added my cute lil letters to my IG bio (BSc) and have started offering Discovery Calls for clients. If you’re looking for a Holistic Nutritionist grounded in an Intuitive Eating approach who loves to start client calls with a breathwork session and finish up with intention setting, I’m your gal.
I came off birth control and cried about a shampoo bottle
I came off birth control in 2020 and felt like a different person - it was a weird experience. But I didn’t have many people to speak to about my personal experience - perhaps because so many people are on birth control. So I thought I was going a little crazy. I would become highly emotional. Exhibit A: crying thinking about my husband’s shampoo bottle sitting on the self - omg I’m not joking! The “beingness of it all” it was too much. Haha. If you think deeply about anything you might just cry at the vulnerability and perfection of life, so although it sounds eye-rollingly mad, it’s also…not.
D. H. Lawrence, the English novelist and poet wrote:
If you live by the cosmos, you look in the cosmos for your clue. If you live by a personal god, you pray to him. If you are rational, you think things over. But it all amounts to the same thing in the end. Prayer, or thought or studying the stars, or watching the flight of birds, or studying the entrails of the sacrifice, it is all the same process, ultimately: of divination. All it depends on is the amount of true, sincere, religious concentration you can bring to bear on your object. An act of pure attention, if you are capable of it, will bring its own answer. And you choose that object to concentrate upon which will best focus your consciousness. Every real discovery made, every serious and significant decision ever reached, was reached and made by divination. The soul stirs, and makes an act of pure attention, and that is a discovery.
SO. It’s actually not that mad to cry about a shampoo bottle. It’s pure awareness and we out here making discoveries about the cosmos!!!
Everyone who bleeds needs to track their menstrual cycle
I’ve always tracked my period, but had never heard about tracking all the phases of my menstrual cycle. I’m not planning on getting pregnant, so why do I need to track when I’m ovulating?
But once I was off birth control, I discovered that there were certain times during the month when I would feel highly emotional (see shampoo bottle story above for case in point) and other times during the month I noticed my libido was sky-high. I felt like a teenager experiencing my hormones for the first time; I was exuberant and extraverted or solemn and quiet, overall I felt wildly more connected to my body and to the natural world. But because I didn’t know why I felt so different, it was concerning. I didn’t know what to expect each day. Enter Menstrual Cycle Awareness (MCA).
MCA is the process of being conscious and informed about one's menstrual cycle. It involves understanding the different phases of the menstrual cycle and how they can impact various aspects of a person's life, including physical, emotional, and mental well-being. These different phases are referred to as seasons and they each have different superpowers and challenges.
My sister Liz (who holds both a Graduate Diploma in Sexology from Curtin University and a Diploma in Tantric Studies from Sanctuary of Ananda) and I are hosting workshops where we discuss biohacking the menstrual cycle, erotic sensuality, supported nutrition and more; follow along on my IG for updates for the next event!
Liz has foster kittens
Thanks to everyone who helped name them on Instagram! Introducing:
Watching these babies grow up and being nurtured by their Mumma has been such a magical experience.
Quick suggestion to download the Substack App
I’d strongly recommend you download it direct to your phone and start subscribing! It’s what I like to read when I eat my morning toast or when I’m waiting for a friend to meet me for lunch. Instead of watching a 12 year showcase their Drunk Elephant 12 step skincare routine on TikTok, you could be learning about “Grigori Rasputin, mystic, accused lover of the Russian Queen, sexual deviant, and all-around bad guy”, or why beauty brands that effectively say, “Acne is beautiful! Here's how to get rid of it” are problematic. Jessica Reed Kraus of House inHabit asks us to “imagine how different articles would read if all writers were catering to their own voices rather than narratives funded by the self-invested billionaires who own the outlets that employ them”. Plus, it’s how I sound smart in conversations with friends.
In just over 12 months I lost both my grandparents
I’ve shared previously about the process of losing my Nonna last year, but when my Nonno passed recently, it was different. It was hard to connect with him emotionally as he was of the stoic-rough-mountain-man-breed, but I always saw in him a soft sensitivity and lovingness that he had difficulty expressing. I truly believe my Nonna passed before him so that he could have the chance to connect more with his children and grandchildren. We were used to visiting their home and all our attention was always on Nonna, but now all of us had a chance to spend time with him one-on-one. He didn’t transform into a different man, all our problems weren’t magically healed, and the memories we created in that time may seem small, but they meant something to me, and I believe they meant something to him, too.
Reflecting on death, I wanted to quote from Ram Dass:
There will come a moment when all of a sudden, you awaken to the fact that the love that you shared with that person is still here… you will begin to let go of that person as a separate entity, and allow them to merge into your soul…in love. When you and another person enter into love together, you enter into a unitive moment that transcends death. Recognise that you feel enriched by everybody you have loved, instead of deprived by the loss of their form. You’ll realise they continue to live in your heart.
Communing with the dead isn’t as weird as it sounds
Since losing both my Nonna and my Nonno, I’ve spent time Googling how I can best chit chat with them (as you do). Perdita Finn’s name came up as one to follow - she teaches workshops that empower participants to collaborate with their ancestors and is the author of ‘Take Back the Magic: Conversations with the Unseen World’. So of course I bought the book and have now been driving my ancestors mad with my incessant chatter….
Hold off on buying the ouija board and conducting a full blow séance, it’s simple to contact the dead - you simply need to call out their name. As soon as you call on them, they’ll be there. No request is too big or too small. Ask them for help with your new job, or getting a parking spot or providing you with the motivation to pack up your house. Perdita writes:
Our ancestors are standing by to help us overcome obstacles, seize opportunities, answer our yearnings, and make the impossible possible. They long to be involved with us again, and they have resources we cannot imagine. When we do [call on them], we will experience the lived reality that no one is ever lost to us and no one is ever alone.
Prayer isn’t just for white Mormon influencers in Utah
Prayer has a bad reputation. Isn’t not exactly cool to ask for help. It’s less cool to ask for help from an unproven deity that in our world of science and logic and rationality says doesn’t exist. I feel like everything we say now has to be back up by scientific evidence; there is no room for spirituality and only materiality. If we can’t test it and touch it then we can’t prove it. This podcast episode by computer scientist Lex Fridman with neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Huberman is a great starting point for anyone feeling uncomfortable about the concept of prayer.
Huberman says:
I’ve started a practice of prayer in the last year which is newish for me… There’s certain aspects of myself that I just couldn’t resolve on my own. No matter how much therapy… plant medicine… other forms of medicine… or exercise or podcasting or science or friendship… it was just not going to resolve.
Huberman goes on how to reveal that he prays to help him take “right action” and “remove characters flaws” so that he can be a better person. He acknowledges that he never thought he would talk like this but if “we don’t believe in something bigger than ourselves, we at some level will self destruct”.
One of the commentators on this video wrote: “Man, I'm 27 and just trying to figure shit out. I've started praying for myself recently. I don't know why.. but it does feel like there is a level of embarrassment behind it to admit (especially when you're a logical thinker). For Huberman to talk about this topic was very comforting”. I just love this! Faith isn’t something to be embarrassed about.
I’ve been praying regularly since last year. I pray the Hail Mary and the Our Father, attend Catholic Church and pray the rosary. We make assumptions about these prayers and what they must mean about people who pray them. It’s been a curious experiment to find out what these rituals mean to me without viewing them through the social constructs they’ve been developed. To explore them and create my own meaning and from the prayers.
I’m very close with my two sisters and prayer has been something we have all found ourselves slowly finding our way back to (we were raised in a traditional Roman Catholic household). We wanted to develop a practical step-by-step technique to manifest your heart’s desires and we knew prayer was an integral part of the process. We’ve been putting the final touches on our method, set to launch in early 2024.
Onto something lighter… I’m moving to Melbourne!
My husband Sid is officially in his artist era and I feel so happy watching him bloom and cheering from the sidelines! We’re planning to move from Perth to Melbourne early next year so Sid can enrol at RMIT to complete a Masters of Fine Arts. Another tidbit of proud wife news… in partnership with Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Sid has been accepted for a residency at Khoj in New Dehli for 6 weeks. We’re planning to head over to India next year with my mother-in-law (we’re besties!) and have all sorts of fun visiting all the temples, buying up jewellery and eating all the roti.
Phew! I think that’s enough of an update! As always, I love to read your comments and connect with you on Substack or in my DMs.
Warm hugs,
Madalin xxx
I’ve been missing your emails! So glad you’re back writing 🩷
Love that you’re writing about (and practicing!) MCA. Have you read Wild Power by Alexandra Pope and Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer yet? ❤️ The most beautiful guide in Menstrual Cycle Awareness I’ve come across to date. It’s like my Bible, I return to it each Inner Winter. Agree - honouring the inner seasons has completely revolutionised my world & relationship to cycle! Love these wise women 🙏