speaker-0: Welcome the rage, it's here for a reason. What a disservice to ourselves to shove it down. The suppression of anything comes out eventually.

speaker-1: Cultural continuity is maintained. If we lose our relationship to the elders and their minds and their memories, then we lose who we are, where we come from and where we're going.

speaker-2: Those things can be extremely difficult for women to accept and process and the psychedelic experience itself seems to help a lot with women to fully accept and integrate what that means.

speaker-3: Welcome to Stand in the Circle with me, Dr. Roslyn Watts. I'm a clinical psychologist, researcher, and founder of Acer Integration. This podcast is about how we get connected in a culture that pulls us apart. We talk about the hardest experiences of being human and the circles of care we have needed, couldn't find, and are searching for now, with stories from people who've lived it and researchers and practitioners. Healing in community is the older way. The work of our times to rebuild our connectedness to ourselves, to each other, and to the living world. This podcast is about the stories of the circle, first-hand experience. In our Acer sharing circles, the ethos is that we share our stories and others listen, and nobody gives advice because what's right for one person is wrong for another. So sometimes in this podcast, I'll tell you what the research says or what the guidelines say, things that may have helped others. And that's a starting point for deeper reflection and for conversations with people who know you. And a word on psychedelics, which come up a lot in this episode. They're very strong medicines, they're absolutely not for everyone, they can cause real harm. Again, the stories in the circle are meant as starting points for deeper discussions. This week you'll hear from three practitioners. I spoke first with Melissa Whippo, founder of the Deva Collective, an organization looking at women's health and researching microdosing San Pedro. For perimenopause. The Deva Collective's ethos is all about raising up the work of other women. And so when we spoke, Melissa mentioned the work of Dr. Grace Blesthoppley, a neuroscientist and founder of Histelica, exploring psychedelic research from a women's health perspective, and also Michaela Delamico, a lay wound practitioner who works with herbs and water and story. So I spoke with them both too. We'll start with Grace to set the scene. Welcome, Dr. Grace Blesthoppley.

speaker-2: was able to found Hystallica about three or four years ago. We are a research organization that is focused on understanding psychedelics for women and in women's bodies and we've been able to conduct observational research and now produce a number of educational materials in order that we can help people to understand what we really need to know so that we can use these substances first and foremost safely but also possibly in ways that could be extremely helpful for women. We really are at the beginning of understanding. We don't have a huge amount of empirical data that has been collected to look at this. But one of the things that we have been doing at Hystallica has been using observational research. And I love observational research in the context of psychedelics. I think it's an extremely powerful tool because we've got these very complex and highly controlled substances. that in clinical trials it's very, very difficult and very expensive to be able to really get under the hood and understand what is happening on large population levels, but with observational work we can do that. So we ran a survey at Hystallica that was asking women who've been through large psychedelic experiences what happened to their perimenopausal and menopausal symptoms. And we found that many women were reporting after doing a large dose of psychedelics, they did see improvements with the symptoms that women A, experience first in menopause, which is the cognitive symptoms, the mood symptoms, and B, are the symptoms that women actually say are the ones that affect them most. Although if you were to look at how we've developed menopause drugs, you'd think that vasomotor symptoms are the only one that bother us, right? Hot flashes. Now those are the ones that are really very visible and can be seen, but they actually happen much later in the menopause transition. It's the previous five years that you felt like you're losing your mind that's really been the problem. So we've really seen a lot of positive signal of women saying that they've had a real benefit from using psychedelics, improving things like their anxiety, their depression, even their brain fog in some situations. We do need to be... really kind of open and honest about what it means from a psychological level to transition into menopause. A, your hormones are all going to change and that's going to change a lot about how your brain is working, potentially how your body is working, how muscle is being built, how you're metabolizing food. But beyond that, it's how you're viewed in society. There's a sort of a value placed on women that perhaps is diminished once we move into our older age. The fact that you are no longer in your foot. fertile years and you can no longer have a family, know, those things can be extremely difficult for women to accept and process and the psychedelic experience itself seems to help a lot with women to fully accept and integrate what that means. And when we talk about, you know, HRT, I think it's really important to say I think HRT is fabulous. I think it really should be, you know, first line treatment when we think about treating women in perimenopause and menopause and I am absolutely astounded by the way that we've treated giving women HRT. You've had to really fight for it. You don't deserve to be able to give in this symptom relieving treatment. And yet if you turn up as a young adolescence who wants to block their fertility, ⁓ yeah, sure, have as much hormone or contraception as you like. And so this double standard of what is what is safe and acceptable in terms of hormone treatment and what isn't seems to only be thought about in terms of who it's benefiting. And let's think about who hormonal contraceptions benefit compared to who HRT benefits. So I really, really think HRT is wonderful. And the way that we, know, HRT works is that it acts to replace the, you know, hormones that we have lost during perimenopause and menopause. And so, you know, one of the things we need to consider when we might be taking HRT with psychedelics is could there be any crossover there? And one of the ways that there could be some influence is when we think about people taking estrogen, is that estrogen in itself acts to increase serotonergic system tone, it increases the 5-Hg2A receptor density, it increases the amount of serotonin that's available, it changes the way that it's metabolized. And so it could be that women on HRT when taking a psychedelic may have some sort of increase in terms of the serotonergic action that takes place. But from what we've understood and from women who are on HRT and who are taking psychedelics, be that microdosing them or taking large doses, I have never heard of, I've spoken to many women who work with this population specifically, any of them having any significant issues. that have been ⁓ in regard to HRT. I don't have the evidence to say it's definitely safe, but I've certainly not seen any adverse effects coming out from people taking psychedelics with HRT. But why might that be? Why might that interaction be? And why might psychedelics be good as well as HRT? Or in the case of women perhaps who are not able to take certain types of HRT, perhaps in cases of breast cancer, for instance. why might a psychedelic be useful? And it's of precisely for what I just said. It's because of this increase in serotonergic tone that takes place from ⁓ psychedelics. So we see this upregulation of the serotonergic system that also helps us obviously then to have an increase in activation within that system, but it doesn't just stop there. We know that psychedelics can also act as powerful anti-inflammatories. They also act as very powerful neuroplastics, help with neurogenesis. These are all three mechanisms that estrogen and progesterone also do. And when we take HRT, we are trying to mimic the effects of our natural hormones. Well, when we take a psychedelic, we see that we are also mimicking some of those same pathways. So could it be that psychedelics are able to help women? you know, not just sort of process the experience of moving through menopause, but actually regain some of the physiological benefits of their hormones, but instead through a psychedelic.

speaker-3: Hmm. Gosh, so interesting. Thank you, Grace. How do different phases of the menstrual cycle affect psychedelic experiences?

speaker-2: Again, we are at the beginning of this and thank God we have this opportunity to ask a community of women who are using psychedelics in many different ways. And there's so many different places we can get evidence from. Another really wonderful place is to look at cultural and indigenous use of psychedelics and speak to people who've really used them for a long time and understand what they do. And one thing we see in that space is, you particularly thinking about within ayahuasca traditions, for instance, often There are number of tribes who don't allow women to drink when they are bleeding, for instance. And then in other cultures, people like the Santidaean, they do drink, but they alter their dose. So they take much less when they're in their late luteal phase or when they are bleeding because they can find the experience to be very intense. We've recently done some survey data at Histelecom. We've asked women across different... sort of areas of their menstrual cycle, what their experience was and looked at things like their mystical experience scores. And we did see that these sort of shifted across the menstrual cycle. But I think the question has to be much more personalized. And it starts with the question, how much does your menstrual cycle affect you? Full stop. And for some women, they don't really have much of an effect. The fluctuations in hormones, although they are changing somewhat their brain structure and function, they're not really having that big impact on their sort of mood and their cognition. So there could be a case to say that when we have high estrogen, higher serotonergic action, maybe we are going to get a higher amount of activation going on with a psychedelic. So that's something that needs to be considered. But does it really matter in the overall experience? Does it really matter in the overall outcome? We're not sure. But one thing that we really know matters is set and setting. And I like to say that we've missed one out there. It's set, setting, and body set. And our hormonal profile really plays into our body set. And our hormonal profile plays into things like how our nervous system is primed, things like our HPA axis. So our HPA axis is our stress response. We wake up in the morning, we have a cortisol spike. that tells our body to wake up and go through the day and if something stressful happens to us we have another cortisol spike in response to that. Now if you look across the horm... the menstrual cycle that changes dramatically. So in our early follicular phase, the first part of our... first half of our menstrual cycle when we get up every morning we have more cortisol but when a stressful thing happens to us we release less. When we look at the luteal phase we see the baseline cortisol is lower, but our stress response cortisol is higher. Now that's going to be important when we think about our body set going into a psychedelic experience. How much is our body going to have a cortisol response to this? How comfortable do we feel in our body in terms of perhaps physical discomfort and pain? We know that women experience an awful lot of chronic pain. This can change dramatically over the menstrual cycle because of the way that our brain interprets pain. changes as things like our dopamine ⁓ function changes over the menstrual cycle. So understanding body set is going to be a real crucial part for understanding how women experience psychedelics. And then of course, from the body to the mind, what is happening in our mind over the menstrual cycle. For some women, They move through the menstrual cycle and, you know, maybe they have a little bit of discomfort or a little bit of annoyance towards the end of their menstrual cycle. But for other women, they can have complete and utter changes in the way that they are feeling, in the way that things like intrusive thought patterns come up, in the way that they sleep, in the way that their memory is working, in the way that their emotional processing works. And for some women, that can mean that in the late luteal phase, they can start to have things like... high levels of suicide ideation, for instance. And if you've got women who are having, you know, very high levels of anxiety and stress and these sort of difficult thought patterns occurring at a certain time, well, surely in good prep and preparation for any psychedelic treatment, we should consider how that is going to play into the experience. How do we then take those people through these experiences safely? Well, it's ensuring that they feel extremely safe in the setting, which we have to think specifically how we do that for women, that their mindset is in the best place and they are most resilient to the experience that is going to come and that their bodies also feel comfortable and safe for them to be able to really kind of let go and enjoy the experience and not feel sort of trapped in their bodies with pain and things which can sometimes happen.

speaker-3: That is ⁓ such a powerful idea, the idea of bodyset. I'm still kind of really that's still landing with me how crucial that is, and I kind of can't believe that we didn't already include it. And I think back to our psilocybin trial, and I think we had some kind of questions on our form about whether where people were in their menstrual cycle, but it was certainly not enough of a discussion, which, yeah, is a real shame because I wonder how much it would have changed some people's experiences if we had made space for How is your body right now? I'm imagining women listening to this thinking, actually I do want to try something psychedelic for perimenopause or PMDD. Is there anything they can access legally?

speaker-2: think it really starts with education and you say, what can we do now that's legal? Well, educate ourselves about our bodies is probably the number one thing. You know, there are places and there are amazing retreat programs that are provided that can do that. And one of the things that we're trying to do more at Hostelica is, you know, understand where those really high quality, well supported retreat programs are taking place so that we can signpost people to them because, you know, finding the right retreat and the right retreat provider is really, really important. And we actually have a small bit on our website that gives some advice to women about how to do that. If you're going to engage with a psychedelic, it's a moment to be truly curious about yourself and really kind of get to know yourself on a fundamental level. And I think for women, a lot of that is about getting to know your body and accept your body and accept, you know, your hormones and, you know, how we look and how, you know. ⁓ our body functions is a big part of that too. And feel kind of normalized within that. know, sometimes as I say, we are in these little silos as women because we have been taught to not really talk about what's going on with our bodies. And the moment you actually sit down and say, you know what, actually this and then someone else goes, yeah, me too. And it just immediately lifts the weight, right, of having to carry that alone.

speaker-3: So amazing work there from Grace and other researchers looking at women's health. The tide is finally turning. Next you'll hear from Melissa Whippo of the Deva Collective who's researching microdosing San Pedro for perimenopause. And before she starts, San Pedro is a mescaline-containing cactus. It's illegal in most places, including in the UK. And the evidence so far for microdosing has not been that impressive or convincing. Yet we are still in a very early phase of research and we hear some very powerful stories from people that are using this method. There's a good book by Eyelet Waldman, and there's work by Jim Fadiman's team on microdosing. If you want to read more, that's in the show notes. It's important to note that microdosing interacts with antidepressants, and it may not be safe for everyone, particularly anyone with a personal or family history of psychosis or bipolar. That's why we need more research, and I'm so grateful that people like Melissa Whippo are out there. Asking these really important questions for women. So Deva Collective is a non-profit organization. They currently have fiscal sponsorship from the Shakruna Institute and they just turned three. Melissa founded Deva Collective three years ago because of the noticing so many gaps in the field, particularly in psychedelics, when it came to women's health, not just in terms of dosing, but also the way that different medicines interact with the female physiology, and that's been really understudied. And she wanted Deva Collective to be a true collective, working in community with other practitioners who were interested in this work and wanting to amplify and uplift these different aspects of women's health. As a therapist working with women, she kept hearing about this feeling of institutional betrayal, women feeling completely mystified and often going to their medical provider and coming away feeling gaslit, misunderstood, and underserved. So our conversation started off with something we both have in common, PMDD. In week one, in this month of the terrain of perimenopause, I talked about my PMDD. And I guess we can summarize PMDD as a hellish week before the bleed every month. But in our conversation, Melissa talked to me about how in perimenopause, for some women, the ovulation phase, which the week in the middle that's supposed to be the good week of the month, can also start to become difficult. Things that we've we talked to a little bit about before, but I'd love to come back to is is PMDD because This is something that I've experienced and I think many women have actually have experienced this and it's not spoken about enough, which is having horrendous hot kind of emotional disruption and like the week before your period, the the loot to your period. But then ⁓ then when you're coming into kind of the perimenopause phase, maybe there's a bit more of a sense of I'm used to this disruption, I kind of know how it goes. Do you yeah, what's your sense what's your experience with with that?

speaker-0: Yeah, two things come to mind. There's a shift in the ovulation phase of the cycle in perimenopause. And I've actually been doing a little bit of research I'm just reading up about this. ⁓ because actually estrogen can fluctuate much more wildly and erratically during ovulation. So not only do you have, you know, the the luteal phase and potential for I've I've talked to a lot of women and myself included who experience more PMDD like symptoms in the luteal phase and also during ovulation. So may whereas before, maybe some would could count on with some regularity, okay, I feel pretty good during this phase. And it's then it's when I get to the later luteal phase right before I bleed that my mood becomes more unmanageable, erratic, labile. ⁓ and the rage piece of feeling out of control. I can't like who feeling sort of Like an observer witnessing ourselves. Like, I don't know who this person is right now. This is not me. I d I don't know how to manage it. There's a lot of fear, frustration, and shame. ⁓ but I'm also noticing that about the ovulation time as well. And it it's what led me to look at it because I thought, this is not, I'm not used to this. This is different. And I'm 50 and I feel like I probably started these symptoms a little later than some people in my late 40s. Most of the interventions of Western medicine will tell people well you can take an antidepressant. ⁓ but for me that that's not favorable and f and for other people as well. And so you know I think our our culture also wants a solution. Okay, I feel bad. I don't want to feel this. I want to feel good. But there isn't actually any quick fix to any of this. And so we're really in a an exploration of learning, How to manage, how to cope

speaker-3: what about ADHD as well and how ADHD seems to be because this is again something I'm like, ⁓ I also realise I have ADHD and it's only been in menopause that I realised I have ADHD.

speaker-0: Yes, and in in my practice and for myself personally, that is also the case. There's a large number of women being diagnosed later in life with ADHD. And this is not a a scientific hypothesis, but this is just an observational, anecdotal ⁓ piece that I've observed over working with women at this phase of life. ⁓ I think the capacity and the ability to mask is much stronger when we're younger and perhaps more intact with the regular flux of estrogen and things not not quite fluctuating as wildly. And then when we get to this phase, we simply can't. It kind of reminds me of the third trimester in pregnancy where there comes a time where, you know, I'd be running to catch the train for work. And just one day it's like, ⁓ I can't run anymore. This is not possible. And it kind of feels that way with ADHD. It's okay, I've met so many women that at this phase they get diagnosed and there's a relief and also a grief, sort of the realization that they've been masking their whole lives and and that's no longer possible. And so there's a real reckoning. And and I hope, actually my hope and my prayer for all of us in this phase of life is that this reckoning leads us to a place of acceptance and learning and grace for ourselves that we're actually not meant to be masking. We're actually not meant to be stuffing things down and carrying on as if everything is okay, that actually naming and noticing and being with the reality that we find ourselves in is really important and I've I hope decreases the shame that we carry and that so many women carry. That this is happening, this is my reality, and I I get to discover different ways of being that better serve me, my family, my work, my life, my community.

speaker-3: You talked about the kind of shame and that masking as well, that trying to fit into the system that we are in, which was essentially built for men, not for women. The routines, the rhythms have been built ⁓ on a ⁓ on men's systems. So it's not surprising that when we get to menopause or our luteo week, if we're you know, if we struggle during that time every month, we it kind of all falls apart because it's it's not meant to work. And maybe there is something about menopause thinking about the transition of menopause as a time somebody said something to me that was really helpful, which was thinking about ⁓ puberty going from being kind of a young girl to being a woman as this first big transition. And then menopause being this other transition and that it's just as much of a transformation and just as much as going from a girl to a woman in that first kind of puberty phase, going from in menopause, going from, you know, kind of menstruating women to post menstruating woman is has massive gifts and opportunities and positives. Can you speak to some of those a bit?

speaker-0: Yeah. I really am encouraged by my elders who have been through this portal and they pr they all promise that on the other side there's ⁓ almost like an awakening, almost like a kundalini awakening of power, creativity, inspiration, knowing, deepening of intuition. And deepening of trusting ourselves. It's my favorite thing about aging is the capacity to trust myself, to listen to my intuition, to slow down, and to not feel like I have to be caught up in the pressures of productivity. That we actually can move at the cycles of the earth and the cycles of nature. And so many of my elder female teachers. Say things like that to me. I'll say, How are you doing? And they'll say, I'm moving slowly, I'm staying close to the earth, I'm listening. And that feels really good to me. Because this, you know, that I think our our culture has ⁓ there's this negative connotation of women being left behind when they're no longer fertile, when they're no longer able to produce offspring. What is the utility, right? And and actually, you know, the the archetype of the crone ⁓ is so powerful because she's a wise woman who has a lot of knowledge, information, and power. So she's terribly threatening to the patriarchy, to the systems. And I'm fascinated by her. I I'm I want I'm excited about that. And so again, part of my prayer about maybe taking a different approach, looking at these phases as transformative, transformational opportunities with support. I'm not saying figure it out, ladies, you know, I just but how can we help each other in community, in connection with nature, in connection with our elders and our teachers?

speaker-3: Beautiful. And maybe this is a good time for you to tell us about so Deva Collective is doing work with microdosing with psilocybin and a study looking at San Pedro, which is mescalin, microdosing for perimenopause.

speaker-0: The study is a naturalistic observational study. So we're collecting data from people. And partly why we wanted to do it this way is that I really believe, and particularly when it comes to women's health, that we can learn a lot from the wisdom of women and what people are doing in real time with their personal relationships with these sacred medicines. And so that's partly why we wanted to do the observational study. I had heard Anecdotally from a lot of women, ⁓ I microdose San Pedro. It's so helpful for me in this life stage. And so two years of back and forth with the review board, we finally got approval to conduct this study. And so we're looking at women who self-identify being in perimenopause who are working with microdosing San Pedro. It's not an efficacy study, it's not an investigational new drug study. We're merely looking at what applications this could possibly have at this life stage. And partly why is because there's a little bit of information about mescaline having anti-inflammatory properties. And as we talked about earlier, a lot of the issues that come up in this phase of life have to do with inflammation, whether it's skin issues, mood issues. sleep issues, brain fog, and and also in a spiritual context. It's it's been used ceremonially for a very, very long time. And it's been used as a way ⁓ to support initiatory passage in life. And so this is, you know, as you were saying, could be ⁓ looked at as an initiatory right of passage in a woman's life in her life cycle. So this medicine seemed like a good ally to look at for this phase of life. And if you look at the Andean traditions ⁓ that date back very, very long time ago, and you look at, you know, here ⁓ in the United States, the Native American church has a relationship with this medicine as well. And So there are different ways ceremonially to work with this medicine, but it's widely believed to be a heart-opening experience and more gentle in some ways than classical psychedelics like ⁓ LSD or psilocybin. ⁓ longer lasting in in some ways. ⁓ hopefully we're compiling this information so that for future generations it'll be a little bit easier that I can hand my daughter something that says Here you go. This is something that you can hopefully will help you in your future life cycle changes.

speaker-3: Yes, I really I'm so with you there. And that brings me on to a another another question I have for you, which is really about rage. Rage is an experience of part of peramenopause, certainly part of PMDD, sort of peramenopause and potentially menopause too. ⁓ and this idea about the importance of coming together and sharing our experiences and as well as sharing what helps us, what herbs help, what we try, what things are good, sharing books also sh spaces to share our rage. I just wanted to know what you thought about that because for me it feels like something our culture is desperately lacking because I think it's quite hard sometimes for women to express rage. And that this seems like in paramenopause we are compelled to do so for good reason as well. With I think it has a social function that women will be expressing that. But that it's not only difficult because we've been kind of brought up not to But because there aren't any spaces where it's okay to do so. It feels like s we need to fix this quite urgently.

speaker-0: Yeah. It's why I love your story about ⁓ screaming into the maple tree. Like more of that. I I often recommend that people go to the ocean because the ocean is so loud. If people have so much self-consciousness, women in particular, about being a spectacle, being you know, it's like ⁓ Freud's hysterical woman, you know, we we've been programmed from very, very early on to keep a calm demeanor. There's so much gaslighting. You know, even in beautiful practices like Buddhism, telling someone to find their equanimity. When actually what is healthier in that moment is to move the energy of the rage. The rage has a purpose. I look at all feelings are information. So rather than try to suppress them, push them away, mask them, numb them, what are they here for? How can we learn from them? How can we welcome them? Like I that's why I love Rumi's guest house so much. How can we welcome the rage? It's here for a reason. It has something to say, it has something to tell us, and actually What a disservice to ourselves and to our brothers and sisters on planet Earth, our fellow earthlings, to shove it down. The suppression of anything comes out eventually. You know, like I think about a child having a tantrum. And that what does the parent do? ⁓ no, no, no. No, it's okay, it's okay. And I remember my kids saying, It's not okay. And I remember having that epiphany in that moment. You know, that you're right. It's not okay. You're really upset right now. All right, let's find a way for you to safely express all these feelings. You know, certain behaviors are not okay. It's not okay to direct our rage on another person that causes harm. But actually, right, paradoxically, the more we welcome our rage, the less inclined we are to cause harm. Because when we when we neutralize the relationship to it, when we take out the shame, this is actually a normal, healthy experience that I'm having a response. To a situation or something that I don't have any control over because of what's happening in my body hormonally. This notion of grin and bear it or suppress or hide or mask, it's really causing damage and harm over time throughout generations. And so the more we can welcome, acknowledge, and have practices and ways, that's gonna look a little different for everybody.

speaker-3: If you think about a woman listening to this or somebody listening to this who is going through the experience of perimenopause, they're in the thick of it. They are really struggling with the exhaustion, with the rage, with the confusion with it all. They're really bogged down. Is there something that you would want to say to that person that you wish someone had told you when you began this process and this kind of gauntlet? That is per menopause.

speaker-0: One of my teachers says this a lot. It doesn't have to be a problem. Let's let's shift our view. Let's acknowledge the challenge of it. There's nothing wrong with you. You're not doing anything wrong. It's not your fault. You were never meant to tolerate this aspect of your life cycle without support, without help. You're not alone. There's help available for you, and it is temporary. And there's help for you and there's support. And I say this to people a lot because shame is such a reflex. And shame really forecloses on our opportunity to be curious and to learn and to heal and grow. So I I invite us all to when the shame arises to use it as a heuristic. ⁓ there's the shame. Okay, that's a a good Invitation for me to notice to slow down. Do I really need to beat myself up right now? Can I be with this? If I don't know what I need in this moment, that's okay. But can I be in the inquiry? Can I ask for help? And and I assure you, anyone, any woman who's in this phase, there is help. There isn't, you know, we don't have it all figured out. It's not a one size fits all solution and it's not quick. But I think I actually feel like it's important to move away from the notion that anything is a quick fix. That's not how it is. That's not how nature works. That's not ⁓ I think it's something that capitalism really teaches us. ⁓ if I just buy this thing, if I just have this product, then I'm gonna be happier, better, healthier, whatever. It it's not it doesn't have to be that way. Slow down, ask for help, forgive yourself, and maybe it doesn't have to be a problem. You don't have to like it either. You could you can have all of your feelings about it and you don't have to be in it alone. There is support for you.

speaker-3: Yeah. Melissa, thank you so much. Thank you for all your wisdom. Thank you for all your work. And just to reiterate, as I did last week, when we're talking about PMDD and especially the experience of rage, it can be really extreme and there can also be strong thoughts of self-harm and suicide. And what works for one person may not work for another, may even be harmful for another. So once again, the IAPMD organization is a great resource for support and to connect you to others going through the same thing. And if you're really in an intense place, then you do need peer support and a really good doctor who knows you not to be experimenting solo. Your village is out there. You don't have to go through it alone. And now we meet Michaela Delamico. She's a lay wound practitioner and she works with herbs and water and story. And she makes a really important point at the end of our conversation that the phrase plant medicine belonged to herbalists long before psychedelics borrowed it. There is a whole world of working with plants that doesn't involve altering your consciousness at all.

speaker-1: I am a lay womb practitioner. I am a facilitator, a mother researcher. I am very grateful to have many elder women and much tutelage of, you know, many practitioners to support in my knowledge base around the changing woman way or at least the ways that we transform through our relationship to the female reproductive system. There is a lot in terms of how we come into our bleeding time, how we come through maturation, how we cycle, how we change cycles. And I also just want to name that the term changing woman is also from Dineh or Navajo traditions. I also want to talk about storytelling and who we become when it's our time to disseminate knowledge and information. And that that is one very powerful way that traditions of all kinds, traditions of old, every community has storytellers in it. So storytelling as a component of menopausal change and stepping up into that role and responsibility for being this mouthpiece for the culture is really important. So I wanted to name an Aztec or Nahuatl Diosa della Tierra, which is, you know, an earthlord, a goddess or an archetype, and her name is Tlatekutli. And Tlatekutli not only is a giant toad who, you know, of course starts as a small egg and then transforms into a tadpole, which then, you know, moves and changes into this beautiful, stately, giant wet toad ⁓ who is a knowledge bearer, who is quite fierce in her way. So I also want to name that because I named pleasure. As a big part of you know, and sensu and sensuality and all of the beautiful ways that we engage in in beauty. But I also want to name that there is a fierceness that comes with this time. And I was I was just in Colombia and I saw a beautiful ⁓ poster that in Spanish said fight like a grandma. And ⁓ I just really love that because not only as the storytelling keepers of culture, But also the preservers and also the ones that, you know, engage in in that steadiness. Like I'm not moving from this place. I belong. I belong here, you know. ⁓ I got my grandbabies here, I got my home that I've lived in for 50 plus years. Like this kind of steady rootedness, I will not be shaken from this place, ⁓ is vital and important to this this archetype as well. And so I this t this toad person. Tlatagutli is not only like a beautiful wet toad, but actually she's quite gruesome, fierce. she has these large claws. There's a giant stone carving of Tlatagutli in Mexico City, and it's a huge monolith, and ⁓ she has these hanging and sagging breasts, she has these belly rolls, so you can tell that she's given birth and in her mythological presence within the story. She is responsible for teaching all of the shamans how to make snuffs and manioc beer. And so she also is kind of this forebearer for altered states, teaching, recipe sharing, and is quite a fearsome a a fearsome earthlord who has really s stabilized herself as I I am ⁓ belonging here and I am not moving. I wanted to share actually this this wonderful book if anyone is interested in just feminist histories, knowledge around myth, story, these archetypes. ⁓ there's this wonderful book by ⁓ a writer named Barbara G. Walker and ⁓ this is a very beat-up copy from the thrift store but it's called The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets and it's quite thick. And ⁓ it covers so much around women's changing times, the nature of the body, the nature of history. And so if anyone would like to just wrap themselves in a blanket and sit down in a chair ⁓ with a beautiful candle and just read something that's really special and divine and rich with with story and r reconstructing our worldview with myths that center our experience. ⁓ I would say that this book is a really wonderful little take take home. When I walk with people that I'm also serving, water is a huge part of the work that I do with them in so many ways. And another water right that I would say is the rite of Bajos or Yoni steaming. I don't know if the audience has maybe heard of preparing tea in this way, but it's essentially an herbal infusion Decoction depending on how long you let those herbs sit. If anyone is dealing with reproductive upset of any kind, ⁓ painful menstruation, irregular, releasing vaginal dryness of any kind, even mood, and just wanting to find a practice that really centers them and all parts of them, steam is kind of where I go. And the reason I go with STEAM, and this works for people with hysterectomy, this works with people of all phases. ⁓ even even male bodies can benefit from steams. ⁓ and and non-binary bodies, all bodies can benefit from steams. So in my instruction as a lay wound care practitioner, steam was our primary mode of addressing many of the ailments that we see in people and and many of the discomforts that we have in the body because heat and f you know, fire as an element, ⁓ the steam being the air element, the herbs being the earth element, the water that we are doing the infusion and being the water element, it really encompasses all those elements together and ⁓ provides a service to the body that's extremely unique. It's very rare that we as women drop draws in a way that is just meant to serve our comfort and well being. And that alone can be very nourishing to the body. And I've seen Yoni steam and just bajos, you know, vaginal steaming or steams in general do so much to soothe the body, to relax the muscles, to open the pores and the mucosa to release through sweat. And that is very healing and detoxifying, relaxing in itself. And then coupled with these helpful herbs that we might learn about later in life, you know, for this changing woman phase. you know, black kohosh, vitex, oatstraw, dandelion, nettle, like all these good friends and allies that you know, rose petal, cedar, all of all of these good friends that purify the blood, that that soothe the heart, that cool down the heat, 'cause there's a lot of heat that comes up in this time. So when we are are growing to this phase, We are accumulating a great deal of story. We're accumulating a great deal of past relationships. We are accumulating a great deal of of maybe misfortunes or failures or disappointments about how we've grown up and raised our kids and life a life unlived and all of the things. Right? And so finding those moments of of cleansing and release and and letting the release valve go. ⁓ and and self-acceptance and water as compassion. you know, we deserve that through all phases and especially as we grow into these older phases because we've accumulated a great deal. And so ⁓ these water rights, these rights of supporting the body through water, steam, and flowers, you know, and herbs and roots is also, you know upheld in traditions that work with water like the ineppy, you know, or sweat lodge or thamascal, right? Like this is a big cleaning of the spirit on the inside out that incorporates song, that incorporates, you know, beauty and culture sharing. ⁓ this way of sweating together, this way of like opening our pores and kind of releasing what is inside is shared among many cultures around the world. It doesn't just belong to Native American traditions, but like steam baths and and this way of, you know, like my mother taught me to make a pot of herbs and to put a towel over my head and let that facial steam really clear up my mucosa, help me when I'm sick. It also helps you when you're well. I just wanna name just the beautiful and brilliant Robin Rose Bennett, ⁓ who's who's also named that the plant medicine psychedelic community has also kind of overtaken the name plant medicine when the terminology plant medicine it comes very much with the painstaking work of herbalists and the and the plant community and the and the herbal medicine making community and the the plant relationship community and now you know we've kind of absorbed that and like made that a big part of the psychedelic community. And I just want to name that yeah the plant nations and our plant allies ⁓ Have very spiritual qualities, have these sensitivities that help to open, you know, sensory perception and emotional gateways and things like that that are really gentle on nervous systems, as I mentioned over the course of life accumulating disappointment or accumulating a life unlived or those kinds of stressors and pressures of life. But I also want to name, you know, many of our elders are survivors, you know, of sexual assault perhaps. And so you know, opening up these gateways so late in life and it's not always a positive experience, right? So it's just engaging in a practice with these plants in a way that doesn't just jostle every possible memory box, but instead provides kind and compassionate and competent support to people in this phase can I think be a wonderful service. So I just wanted to name, you know, the plant medicine community that I'm speaking to is the herbalism community. And there is room for us to be together, these psychoactives and these and these ⁓ and these many plant people and many plant allies, but there is a little bit of a distinction that I just wanna make sure that I honor, you know, in that. And that is an assignment that I was given, you know. So ⁓ thank you so much for letting me, you know, enter the apothecary into our community because All of these these medicines belong in a continuum of living beings. And so it's important to recognize that there is a a s a spirit, a presence and the ability to transform even if it's not a super hugely psychedelic experience, but can be just as meaningful, just as cathartic and just as effective and sometimes even more so.

speaker-3: Thank you so much. So two practical notes on what Michaela described. Steam burns can happen, and if you have an infection or an IUD or you're pregnant, it's a conversation to have with a doctor first. And on herbs, they're not automatically gentle just because they're plants. Some of them interact with medication, including HRT and antidepressants. And a few of the ones commonly recommended around menopause aren't right for everybody. So talk to a specialist about this if you're interested. Three really important conversations and they came back to the same theme underneath the theme of the importance of the circle. It's about the power and the necessity of being held through times of transformation and initiation and change. So a few things.