Meeting Menopause with Myth with Jacqui Bushell
Introductory Highlights
I realised one of the things menopause took from me was certainty. I started developing more confidence, but I became more uncertain about everything. It gave me the gift of living mystery.
One of my most favourite things about getting to midlife and having a little bit more time and wisdom and not being caught up in the, the hype of everything is being able to sit with the ordinary. And how can I have a rich experience of this ordinary thing?
It sounds really simplistic when I say fairytales have saved my life, , in a literary and a literal way, but I cannot overstate the impact that they’ve had and the number of groups that I’ve facilitated with stories as guides, as these old, old tales that have washed over so many tongues, so many women’s tongues in weaving rooms around fires for thousands of years.
Welcome to the Peri Moon Podcast: Stories, Myth and Archetypes
How did Jacqui Bushell and the Peri Moon podcast host first connect through story?
Welcome to the Peri Moon podcast. I think today I might even introduce my guest with a little story. If anyone is deserving of a story, it would be this beautiful woman. Um, so we first met when I was at university, my final year of study, and Jacqui was my clinic supervisor and. Saw something within me and we got to play with flower essences together.
And there was something so archetypal that she recognised in me that was just such a glory to, you know, be, be witnessed in that way. And then about five years later, I had an incredible vision of Mary Magdalene and I went on this little Mary Magdalene rabbit hole, and a few months later I was in an organic hairdresser and I saw, um, a piece on the Cathars that was written by Jacqui.
And then about five years later after that, I was writing my book and Jacqui popped up as the story coach, like the teaching story. And it was just, so at that point I’m like, this is a, this is my woman. You are my people. Absolutely. And Jacqui, it is just such a delight to be with you here today. You are the most crisp embodiment of a wise woman I have ever encountered.
And it’s just such an honour to sit with you today. Thank you so much for joining us. Oh, it’s such a pleasure to be here with you and to be with you in this incarnation. And what a glorious introduction through story and through how we’ve woven together, and crisscrossed at key parts of your life.
And I guess so much of what has been really important to me has come through story has come through myth and through symbols and plants. So you are, you are a living embodiment of that. So thank you and hello to everybody. And it is interesting because the flowers, you know, when we were playing with flower essences, the tertiary institutions were kind of pushing them aside at that point where it was like, this is not real.
And it’s not researched enough, even though, you know, we have clinical evidence that it works for people. Um, it was such a light-hearted and it just felt so natural being able to play with that. And then, you know, moving as we, you know, I’ve sort of moved more into storytelling and being able to, um, understand archetypes deeper.
They were really just archetypes and the plants are archetypes and everything is an archetype, and you just have a gorgeous way of, of introducing them. Like they’re beautiful friends. It’s not, it’s not like this is a very structured and, and, um, you know, linear thing. They’re beautiful, undulating, swirling experiences that each hold patterns.
And I’m, I just love the way you express how each archetype. Moves you. It is such a beautiful thing when you, whenever you’re speaking of metal or mugwort, I’m like, it’s like you’re speaking of a beloved friend and thank you, thank you for sharing that and giving me that insight into how we can live life.
Relational Herbalism: Connecting with Plants Beyond Their Medicinal Properties
How is relational herbalism different from simply studying the medicinal properties of plants?
It’s a relational experience in so much of the education of herbalists and naturopaths through the colleges. It’s a medicinal experience of learning constituents and actions and indications, which are important, but it’s based on very much the material realm, not the heart realm. And it’s based on key aspects of a plant rather than a holistic, uh, a holistic experience.
Like I don’t, I wouldn’t describe you as the woman with hair this colour who wears these clothes that would be missing out on the essence of what you are. Uh, the same thing with plants. Each has its own character, has its own way of being in the world. Each has its own pattern of consciousness. So when we can slow down and learn to perceive from within that perspective, then we come into communion with it.
And then we can offer that plant from, uh, a place of deep knowing and reverence and honouring. And it’s a participation. It’s a conversation that you’re then sharing rather than something that is a discret as in, um, D-I-S-C-R-E-T, as, uh, a medicinal action. So it brings us deeper into the world. It brings us into an embodied embeddedness.
And I feel that that relational experience is absolutely crucial. I think so much of my life, I guess my life path has been about how am I listening, how am I living with this being or, or that being, I realised very early on that I perceived a bit differently from a lot of other kids, and I learned that I couldn’t trust my perception because I would often miss things.
Perception, Intuition and Learning to Listen with the Body
How can we learn to perceive the world through our whole body and senses?
I kind of have perceptual gaps. Uh, I literally don’t, can walk into a room and not see something that other people will see. Like, like we’re talking obvious physical things. And I learned that I would have to look and scan and I realised that perception was so much more than my eyes. And for me, my life has been a teaching about how to learn to listen with, with my body and with all of my senses.
And to not just look, not just look once, but look twice and three times and four times. And so I guess that’s what I teach and share, which is what I’m continually learning. How do we live in relationship? What does, what does intimacy with the world mean and where do I pull away and shy away from that?
And. So I guess that’s my underlying everything. It just comes out in different ways. Um, fairytales as maps, plants, as maps and wisdom teachers, the land around us. Um, Magdalene as a teacher of embodiment, it’s so beautiful. And you know, what I’m hearing is that you, you make the mundane magic.
Finding Magic in the Ordinary During Midlife
How can midlife help us slow down and find meaning in ordinary experiences?
And I think that’s a choice that we all get. And, and one of my most favourite things about getting to midlife and having a little bit more time and wisdom and not being caught up in the, the hype of everything is being able to sit with the ordinary. And how can I have a rich experience of this ordinary thing?
And how can I, you know, open myself up further and receive more. It’s such a glorious time of life to be able to make that an intention, to be able to sit with my little plants outside. We, we have so many plants here. And the other day my youngest son was like, I want two more plants. One called Eric and one called Darcy.
And they’re like, you know, parts of members of the family. They all come in and we’re like, you know, it’s such a beautiful experience. Rather than just rushing over, you know, this is here, this is there. It’s like, well, I get to sit with it and I get to be with it. And we, we are relational beings. We have come from, you know, we were born of a mother who, you know, that was, that was, we were conceived of a relationship.
Like everything is a relationship. And if we’re missing that with the, you know, the, the mundane things, um, I feel like that’s when life starts to get really dry is when we’re just sort of, that’s just a table or that’s just a plant. Uh, everything has its own little story. Everything holds memory. Oh, absolutely agree with you.
Reconnecting with the Sacred Through Everyday Relationships
How can everyday objects, plants and our surroundings help us feel more connected?
If we aren’t able to sit with the sacred and sit with seeing beings, seeing plants, seeing home, seeing your piano there as, as part of a conversation, then we get disconnected and there’s already just so much disconnection in our, in our world. So I think that’s where we start, is with our re uh, I was just thinking of, I usually start in any of my workshops with a relational experience of breath that we are being breathed just as much as we are breathing.
That breath itself is an allowing of air in our being, of bringing air into the most deep, intimate part of self, and that we are being explored. And it’s, it’s like little perception shifts that then change the way that we walk and move in the world and also change the way our relationship with I and, and bringing I into we, into, into us as an ongoing lived experience.
Seeing the World Without Hierarchy
What happens when we stop seeing ourselves as the centre of the universe?
I had a revelation once many years ago of realising, oh, I’ve always had a sense of myself as my own totem pole of existence. It’s like me as the centre and then I perceive everything around me and I suddenly realised that everything is its own totem pole. Everything is the centre of its own universe.
And I realised all we are a… universe is coming together. And it totally changed my sense of, of coming from me as a central pillar into recognising everything is its, is its own central pillar. If that, if that kind of makes sense. It was like suddenly realising, ah, the importance and the non-hierarchy of, of all things.
It was one of those immensely humbling moments of realising how precious, but absolutely unimportant I was. And the same for everything. I’m having almost the opposite experience of that at the moment, which is I’m realising that not the opposite. There is no, I, there’s just so many archetypes within me, and they each get a voice every day.
Archetypes, Identity and the Many Parts of Ourselves
How can archetypes help us understand the different parts of who we are?
And one day, this, this may be, you know, at the moment I’m really exploring my art more and expression more. And sometimes it might be, you know this day the whimsical wants to show up and she’s the centre of the universe, but, you know, the rest of us have to take a back seat. And, and it, it’s, it’s a beautiful reorganisation of who I am and how, you know, one day an archetype might be something I’d consider a part of me, but it’s very much in my peripheral.
And then I feel like there’s an extension of that. There’s a oneness because there’s Darcy over there, Ari’s plant. That’s also an archetype, that’s also an extension of me. So it’s almost like I’m having this dissolution, but each of those archetypes is, is the centre of the universe for that moment.
Mm. Oh, I love the way you are describing that. I’m having a, a sense of this enormous mansion of numbness and incredible doors that you can open and, oh, there’s this aspect of me and, and this and this, and realising that there actually aren’t any walls at all in this there.
Perimenopause, Menopause and the Language of Midlife Change
Why is it important for women to have conversations about perimenopause and menopause?
Yeah, and I think it’s interesting because, uh, at this point in life, you know, one thing that we’ve, I’ve heard a lot over the past 10 years or so is that there, nobody talks about perimenopause.
Nobody’s talking about menopause, you know, and, and it’s very much an isolated thing that we have to deal with on our own. I feel like these archetypes do show us, they’re not like, Hey, I’m a perimenopause archetype, but I feel like there’s so many archetypes that have forged the, you know, forged the path and show us the way.
And, um, I know you do so much work with story and archetypes. Are there particular folk tales or fairy tales that you lean on or you move towards to explore these deeper.
Menopause as an Initiation and Transformation
Why can menopause feel like an initiation rather than a single event?
Actually, what I’d like to do is to backtrack a little bit Hmm. Uh, for a preamble to, to fairytales and archetypal energies. I think one of the things that is great that I’m starting to see so much more over the last decade is US women in our forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, are having conversations which enable us to have a language around what it is that we’re experiencing as we go through, go through perimenopause, menopause, and the, and the cloning years afterwards, it gives us more of a cohesive language to understand the uncertainty of what it is that we’re, that we are going through.
So, because there isn’t a, with menstruation, there’s a key threshold. You’re either bleeding or you’re not bleeding. Uh, and there’s a beginning that you can mark and you remember, I’ll, I’ll always remember that day when I was 13, but with, uh, going into perimenopause, it slides in for a number of women, uh, over, over years.
So there’s not one, there’s not one pivot point. And it also, it, it puts tentacles, little cobwebs out into every aspect of our life. So it’s not relegated to, um, to reproduction only. It’s related to how we think, how we feel, how we act, how we move in the world. So it’s, it’s this organic universe sized, non-threshold.
Threshold. It’s an initiation process. I think one of the, one of the things that really came in for me, uh, I actually had a very sudden, uh, menopause hit. I had, I was regular every three weeks, and then I had an emotional shock that was, was quite vast, and that was it. And I never bled afterwards. And I went straight into menopause at 48.
Menopause, Identity Shifts and Finding a Different Kind of Knowing
How can menopause change our sense of identity, memory and inner knowing?
One of the other things as well, with menopause, it’s just becoming accustomed to those incredible identity shifts, uh, in our, in our sense of self. As what I was saying, just totally disappeared from my mind. I’ll just digress for a moment. What I’ve, one of the things I’ve found is that because I can’t rely on my, my mind memory in the same way, uh, and I’ve found for myself in talking with a lot of women, which is back to why conversations are so great, is that we need to rely on a different place from where voice and memory and knowing comes from.
It’s this cat, uh, earthy, uh, drawing up a voice that comes from belly, that comes from ground, that comes from rock and plant, comes from Darcy, your other Eric. Um, it comes from around us as much as, um, truist. So there’s a different way of being a conduit. I feel that, um, I’m only just starting to get language around.
So having conversations really, really helped with that. One of the things that really kicked in for me was going from lunar cycle to venous cycle. The moon cycle was too fast for me. Uh, once I, I stopped bleeding. Uh, I didn’t have time to drop in. So a whole other awareness of an initiatory cycle came in and I began dropping in very deeply with, with Venus and the myth of Anana, because I had a, I had a month with each different stage.
I had nine months of, in the descent, nine months roughly in the ascent. I had underworld time. So it meant that there was, uh, a, a cycle that I was able to allow myself to recognise how embedded I was within, within that deeper, longer cycle of, uh, it’s about 19 months, uh, and the petals of the rose. So there’s, I feel it’s really important in this somewhat amorphous time of amorphous in that, that it is so profoundly changing and yet it’s slow and it’s deep.
And so, so many different levels of our being that become altered. And it the way that it changes our sense of self and our sense of identity. Um, I was thinking of questions as well with when you were mentioning the, the podcast, and I was thinking, uh, uh, as well around like, what did menopause take from me and what surprised me?
What Did Menopause Take Away and What Did It Give Back?
What did menopause take from Jacqui, and how did it change her relationship with uncertainty?
And questions around, well, what do I trust now? And I realised one of the things menopause took from me was certainty. I started developing more confidence, but I became more uncertain about everything. It gave me the gift of living mystery. Mm-hmm. And I realised within living mystery, and also for me, I had, um, a few years of health challenges, uh, as well, which threw me into, I cannot trust my body.
And it threw me into, uh, I’m walking with death in a, in a different way. And it brought me into a relational experience with my body that I’d never had before. The upshot of all of that was I realised I needed maps. I didn’t have a map. I didn’t even have a, I didn’t have a lamp. I needed something that would help give me, uh, give me a labyrinth to walk around.
And I also wanted some wisdom guides along the way. So what I’ve, I began relying on more deeply were fairytales and I, it was, it was accidental in a way. I’ve been working with story for a long time, but suddenly it was like rising up from my being were fairytales, which I was initially despising of. I loathe Red Riding Hood, I loathe sleeping beauty, and they were too.
How Fairytales Can Provide Maps for Life and Transformation
How can fairytales act as maps, guides and frameworks during major life transitions?
That led me on years long journeys. And I don’t believe there’s any one particular fairy tale for any woman. What I, I do is I support women in exploring tales that might arise for them because I feel that our own stories and the stories that come to us are portals. They, they’re gateways into resurrection, restoration revelation.
It’s very alliterative, isn’t it? Mm-hmm. Um, into, into a lot of our words for ourself, revelation, restoration, resurrection, uh, into nourishment of self because it gives us a framework. Our own stories. That gives us time for reflection to actually realise that we are living within stories. If we don’t reflect, then everything melds into everything else but a story and recognising what the stories in our life actually are, it enables us to seize the dough of our life and to recognise our role in the shaping of it.
Because the name that we give the story, how we tell that story shapes our perception and shapes the way we live our life. So that’s something that is malleable, that we can need, um, as in ked, that we can need and pull and tug and shape and perceive and rece, uh, in order to be able to live into them in a way that is of greatest grace and rebirth and empowerment for us, the fairytales give us a map, a framework that lead us from an entry point through a dark forest and out the other side.
Why Fairytales Matter for Women’s Inner Lives
How can traditional fairytales help women navigate change, growth and self-discovery?
It sounds really simplistic when I say fairytales have saved my life, um, um, in a, in a literary and a literal way, but I cannot overstate the impact that they’ve had and the number of groups that I’ve facilitated with stories as, as guides, as these, these old, old tales that have washed over so many tongues, so many women’s tongues in weaving rooms around fires for thousands of years.
There’s a reason why they were told even if they might come across as, uh, on the initial reading as simple, when we in allow them to, to work us, to rub against our bones, they, they pull something more from us that we don’t know that we have. They, they, you, you’ve used the word archetype a number of times.
It’s, they teach us how to talk symbol. They teach us how to live into metaphor and into places where there’s a threshold between this world and the other world. They teach us to live in the mythic realm, and they teach us to be bigger than we think we are, and they give us the, the tools that enable us.
Sleeping Beauty, Dreams and Reclaiming Personal Power
What can the Sleeping Beauty fairytale teach us about power, protection and personal transformation?
I guess the word I’d use is to live into our own wholly. And wholesome divine template. They, they help reawaken what is dormant within us. So, for example, the Sleeping Beauty story, which I’d thought of as one of the ultimate passive stories, but oh, I can’t tell you how much I loathed it, but easing that out, sitting with it, letting it work me, I realised I started working with the power of sleep and dreams in a new way.
I worked with the way that I was walling myself off in my own power from the world with the ways that I wouldn’t actually extend myself, the ways that I was scared, the ways that I was withdrawing from power or holding myself in, in a small way. But I love the way fairytales hold polarity. That tower was protection and withdrawal, but it was also sanctuary and sanctum and safety and, uh, a place of restoring.
So it was a place of holding as well. And the other thing that it really brought in was, uh, the energy of the briar roses. Those bri, those done briar roses killed any prince that was coming to find the princess. They were s they kept her protected and safe and supported until the right one came in. Uh, and then that was all right.
So it really steeply. This was back when I was about 48, so it’s what, a dozen years ago. And I dived just absolutely headlong into the energy of the rose and rose, or rose still carries me and, and holds me so much. It’s a huge teacher. Uh, and Rose allowed me to be vulnerable in new ways. And, and so did that story.
The 13th Fairy and the Wisdom of the Older Woman
What can the 13th fairy in Sleeping Beauty teach us about ageing, boundaries and being unapologetically honest?
The other part of that story that I just adore is the absolute kick ass fierceness of the 13th ferry. Because what I was realising at that time as well, that 48 to 50 was, oh, it’s true what they say about women of a certain age becoming more invisible. And I was looking at that role of the 13th Theory as the invisible older one who is actually also the one that oversees everything.
She is the only one who is not constrained by any curses or spells or enchantment. She’s the one who is the one who is prepared not to be nice. So it, it also taught me a lot about my people pleasing aspects and my good girl aspects. She was the one who was saying, bugger you all, I don’t care about the gold plates you’ve got or the, the golden goblets there.
I’m going to stride in and go straight to the head honcho and say, Uhuh, this sweet little princess has gotta go to the underworld. It’s a no brainer. Everybody’s gotta go there. ’cause everybody else was determined that there is no such thing as an underworld. There is no such thing as anything other than sweetness and yum.
And she was the only one who was determined that Uhuh, she’s actually gotta die and to die before she dies. And I will see this through. I don’t care whether you hate me or not, this is imperative. So she was the one who helps remember the mysteries and who helps do what’s needed, but not what’s nice. Uh, so the 13th Ferry was, she has, has helped me enormously.
I’ll often just go to her ’cause these stories have been told so long that the, the characters in them are energies that you can turn to. So I often turn to the 13th variant and say, okay, what am I not seeing here? You are the one who sees clearly who has the overview, what’s, what am I missing? There’s something I’m not getting.
And she’s the one who shoots it from the hip and takes no prisoners. Um, bless her. Um, so for me, there’s been a cross weaving of story. These, these old tales that have been teachers, they’ve carried me, they’ve carried me into the tower and out of it. And through plants. There’s a, I think one of the things with the fairytales as well is that they anchor us in a world that is, that is alive, that is animus, that is anchored in with the other world that they root us with mystery with, with the mythic.
The Original Fairytales: Grit, Truth and the Work of Transformation
Why can older versions of fairytales be more confronting and meaningful than modern adaptations?
They, they open us into, into those worlds. They help us remember what it is that we’re forgotten or what’s not obvious. So they, I, one of the other key things with them is, and why they’re so great for, for women is that they, they’re really honest. While Disney has, ugh, I won’t even go there. Um, Disney fired things for their own reasons.
Um, and the Grim Brothers also. But the, the early versions of a lot of these fairytales, they’re gritty and gutsy and honest. They don’t say, sweetheart, it’s going to be easy. You’re just going to marry and be happily ever after. What they say is Uh-huh, you are, we are not going to give you the gift to make magic, but we will support you.
The trees will support you. The animals will support you. The earth will support you. But sweetheart, you gotta have your hands cut off. You are got to, um, weave nettles and have no voice for seven years. You’ve actually gotta do the hard yards that, wow, there’s going to be a hell of a lot of magic along the way that will help you do this.
But you’ve actually gotta do the work. And the work is going inwards and going down. It’s going down to comb the hair of dragons and to learn about ourselves and to recognise the level of support that there actually is around us. So I’ve learned that I can trust them.
They don’t give me false promises, but they give us the gift of seeing more truly and of knowing what it is that we’re capable of, that no matter what we go through, we can grow our hands back. That we can learn to be kinder and more compassionate and more loving. And we can become companions of baba yaga, that we can walk into the forest and we can shine our own light and we can live in relationship with the darkest, fiercest, most potent things.
And they can be, become companions and part of our being. And we can walk in and to walk out again with wholeness and integrity and love and trust. And with pockets full of skulls with fire beaming out through their little eye sockets. And we can bring that fire home. There’s something about they, these fairytales give us, give us the gift of the half back.
Women’s Circles, Community and the Power of Sharing Stories
Why can exploring fairytales in a group be more powerful than exploring them alone?
Hmm…. and they bring us, they bring us together. One of the things that I realised early on is I can’t just keep this to me. This, this what I’m going through. I need more voices. I need more conversations. So for very, very non altruistic reasons, I started creating, um, circles with fairytales because I wanted, wanted to make it bigger.
And I, um, started, um, having a lot of groups where we’d explore for weeks and months on end, some of these tales and where they took us, whoa. That just, that just knocked my, knocked my wig off What was, what became possible within the, the chalice of a group. And that’s what I feel is really so crucial for us through this.
Um, these, in these initiation years of the menopausal years of our crony of becoming a, a maven, there’s, there’s what’s important relationally of land with self, with, with all that we are becoming. And with each other, I’ve realised the importance of being, I’m such an introvert, but the importance of community.
Yeah. The importance I think, um. I’ve been in your groups. They’re amazing. And yeah, I feel there’s something about sharing the medicine of folk or fairytales in a group that you can’t experience on your own because, and I think this is, you know, maybe it’s an evolutionary thing. We used to sit around the fire and listen to these stories.
Um, there are little highways in our brain that are like, receive them with such ease and we can drop that, the, the linear mind and the, the cause and effect and a and we move into more of a what if and infinite possibility. And when you’re in a group, it’s interesting because somebody might be, you know, feeling like, oh, I, I didn’t like this character.
It made me, you know, I really evoked this experience with me. And the other person’s like, oh, but that’s where I got my hope from. And, and you can see just how multi-dimensional all of the characters are and how the story is so dynamic. And, and every day, you know, you go back to the same story and it’ll be like, oh no, today I am feeling like this part of the story can hold me.
And, and this part’s the part that’s I’m rubbing up against and it doesn’t feel so good. So maybe I should be doing a little bit of work there while that other part holds me. And while you know this, this maiden just frolics in the field, you know, there’s so many aspects to it all, and it, and it is such a, such a gift to be able to sit amongst other women and hear their experience and, and to be present with the experience as well.
Why Fairytales Feel Alive and Continue to Evolve
Do fairytales change when we tell them, hear them and experience them?
Yes. I think of these tales as like, like animals. They’re like, they’re living creatures that, that literally engage with us. That, that, I can’t tell you the number of amazing stories I’ve heard of, of women engaging with the stories and things within their environment create synchronicities or, or bump up or what people say or what they, what they notice.
There’s a, there’s a dynamicness to them. They, they interact with us just as much as we interact with them. And there’s something as well about telling these stories in the old way, in the oral way. Mm-hmm. It helps, it takes them off the page and it, it helps bring them alive. And, and I have this kind of curious, backwards idea of.
It, it’s not just the gift to us, but I feel like when we share them with our sensibility and how we run with them sometimes literally it helps the energies within those stories as well. I, I think that sleeping beauty story was held for several hundred years in this passive moralising kind of way, and the happy ever after.
As we engage with them, we’re bringing new life into those specific archetypes. The sleeping princess, the, the, the, the trope of Happily Ever After. We’re, we’re actually extending those energies for them to live in the planes that they live on so that there’s a breadth to them, which can then influence other people, other women.
So it’s, it, it’s like making them bigger and stronger and more robust in some ways. So there’s this two, two-way interaction I feel that’s happening. So it’s like we’re also of service to them. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I, and it’s interesting because every, everyone that speaks a story, you know, there is, even if it’s not even a word change, but just as a slight vibrational, like an intonation that’s slightly different.
The stories are always evolving and they’re always showing up with what’s most necessary and most ripe for the moment that they’re being spoken and shared. Um, and I don’t think, you know, when you’re reading it on the book, it’s the same story every time. But when I hear you speak a story and then I hear somebody else speak the same story, it’s never the same.
My experience is never the same. And that reflects that I’m changing, that my environment’s changing, that culture’s changing. Um, somebody that’s a hero in the 13 hundreds becomes, you know, an outsider in the 1800. You know, it’s so dynamic and we have to have room for stories to be dynamic if we wanna find hope in them, because otherwise, if they’re static, we will feel static.
Why We Need to Return to the Same Stories Again and Again
Why can repeating the same fairytale or myth reveal something new each time?
Yes. Yeah, you’ve put that really beautifully. Um, yes, definitely. There’s, there’s something about feeding the story as well for them to then feed us. And there’s also something about. Hearing the stories, um, over and over. I remember, um, once a number of years ago, uh, I was, I was doing a, a, a another Persephone ceremony and someone said, oh, and I’ve done Persephone.
And I was thinking, oh, okay. I shouldn’t put on another one. I I did that, I did that two years ago. And I realised, no, we actually need to hear these stories over and over. Venus doesn’t just do her cycle of, of the rose, the rose pattern of her transit, that pentacle in the sky. Once she does it every, every eight years, there’s a pentacle that’s formed in the sky.
There’s something about the repetition and how we hear it each cycle. It, it is not just one month of the moon going around or 12 months of different lunar cycles. It, there’s an eternal cycling. There’s something as well about coming back to rest within a story and coming back to it in the iteration that you are here now.
There’s, uh, for example, with Red Riding Hood, the, and the story of La Loba, uh, the, I’ve, I’ve run groups called Wolfs Song, and I think I’ve run them about six times now. There’s something different each time. I’m still, I’m still learning from those stories and I, I don’t think I’ll ever stop because how they interact with me keeps becoming richer.
Becoming a Storyteller: Deep Relationships with Stories and Plants
How can we develop a deeper relationship with the stories and plants we choose to work with?
And I realised that when I initially realised, oh, Jacqui, you’re becoming a, a storyteller. And I, I had a thought that, oh, okay, I’m gonna have to learn lots of stories. And I started reading lots and I realised, Uhuh, I can only tell the stories that I carry. I can only offer plant ceremonies with the plants that I specifically know very deeply and carry and live with as an ongoing relationship.
There are some plants and some stories that are just not mine to carry delicious, though they may be, they’re, they’re actually not my, they’re not my tail. So I guess as a storyteller, I’ve got only got a small chaus, a little, a little cauldron, um, of maybe six very deep well-known stories that I’ve lived for some of them I’ve been living for about 10 years, but at least three years with each story and letting them work me and pull me apart and remake me.
So make me, those stories live me. So it sort of, it’s, there’s something about. Not flitting over many things. There’s something about being able to drop in deeply with just a, with just a few and being worked over by them, which I guess is also really relevant in our culture, which is so very much like a dragonfly flitting from one gorgeous thing to the next.
Menopause as a Time of Dissolution and Reformation
What can menopause teach us about identity, dissolution and becoming someone new?
There’s so many, I guess quick bits of information and scrolling stuff. So this, I feel that menopause is, is a time where we’re actually really be able to deeply have a sense of, of our own, like you were describing gorgeously before. Um, it’s a dissolution, it’s a dissolving of self. It’s a, it’s a chrysalis. And I, I read, read this glorious thing about, um, a particular type of, of moth the other day, and the, the cocoon that it forms, that little grub that goes, that makes the cocoon, it dissolves.
And I’ve always thought, okay, they dissolve, they become mush, and there’s a pattern. They become a moth. Uh, it does it 36 times. Isn’t that crazy? It starts forming and it starts becoming something, and then it becomes mush again and dissolves. Then it starts forming into whatever it is, and then it becomes mush.
So there’s this, I suddenly realised, oh, it’s okay Jacqui. You don’t have to know exactly who and what you are. You can, you can moth it and you can become mush again. So it was like hearing that gave me permission. It’s okay to have a long time in mush state. I actually don’t need to know, but there’s something that is an immense guiding force that is forming and reforming and dissolving.
And for me, menopause has been very much about how on earth do I live? Somebody who was, who loved her certainties, who loved knowing exactly what I was to come to terms with that constant dissolving and, and sense of self falling away. It was like it gave me a, a container of okayness rather than panic.
It. That story of the moth shifted, uh, a panic at my own inner confusion into a trust of there I am being shaped. So it was like a surrendering into the river of uncertainty that mm-hmm.
Finding Perspective When You Feel Stuck in Your Own Story
How can story help us step back and become an observer of our own experience?
I love that, you know, we can find these symbols that, that show, give us that permission slip. And I, I feel you are very similar to me.
We’ve probably always had a, you know, a relationship with story and curiosity and sort of stepping back from things and having a, a wider scopic of what’s going on. But I know for many people they, they live very much in their own world. And how would you help somebody if they’re, they don’t know how to step back and look at themselves as, oh, this is a moth experience.
Navigating the Initiation Process Through Story
What can help when life feels chaotic, uncomfortable or uncertain during a major transition?
You know, is it just through sitting in circle or is there something you would recommend as far as, you know, processes to be able to be the observer and not be so, not clutching so tightly to our own story so that we can let those other stories flood through us, shape us, give us other possibilities.
Is usually something that sparks a question or recognising that there is a question brewing in us, and that’s something is usually uncomfortable and chaotic. I’m not coping. I’m feeling, uh, I, I feel, feel kind of crazy in myself. I’m having a breakdown. My nervous system is falling apart. Uh, I am, uh, it could be an emotional state, um, a mental state.
There’s something that usually tips us in some way, and then we realise that we’re, we’re becoming a, a seeker because we’re not coping in a way that, that we used to. And there’s a, there’s a level of vulnerability that we’re, that we’re tapping into that is. That insights, curiosity, and usually dis extreme discomfort in in some way.
Oh, and how to, how to navigate that initiation process for me.
Shaping story has given language, has given structure, has given a container to help hold chaos and uncertainty and, uh, and fear and, and all of tho all of those shape shifting things, uh, story gives us language in which change can take place and enables us to also question the language that we’re using for, for story.
The Role of Community, Accountability and Trusted Maps
Why can group support, accountability and a trusted framework help us navigate change?
It’s tricky… tricky just to do that by yourself. So, for me, I always find having some kind of group experience, because it gives me momentum, it gives me accountability. Otherwise, I would just distract myself and not, not engage, or I’d start and just not follow up. So something that gives continuity and accountability I, I find is really important. Um, finding something that will be, uh, a map for you, something that you can trust.
For me that’s been myths and, and fairytales. And Venus, Venus has been doing her pattern for, for billions of years. I can trust that that pattern will continue and there’s an enormous body of women’s knowledge and information about that which has been encoded into myth. So we can actually, um, read and, um, and journey with, um, an nana’s journey as a, as a map, and as a way of navigating those underworld experiences.
And that will also bring you up. So we need things that can carry us through and bring us up as well as, as well as hold us as we go into that underworld experience, into that descent. So, so that we don’t get stuck in any of those places. So there’s a, a carrying that that happens, um, for some and for other women that might be exercise.
Menopause and the Changing Relationship with the Body
How can menopause change the way we relate to and care for our bodies?
I think really in menopause, the relationship with the body changes so much as well. I’m, I’ve grieved how I’m no longer as strong as I was, not as physically strong. Um, there’s been a, a change in my, in my strength and a different relationship that’s had to come in with how I nourish and support my health.
The things that I can’t take for granted anymore. My body has stopped being something that enabled me to do what I wanted into something that I’ve actually needed to tend in a way that I’ve never had to tend before.
Plants, Landscape and Place as Wisdom Teachers
How can plants, landscape and place become guides during periods of transformation?
So, that physical body relationship, as well, starts to come in. So for me, the other really huge thing has been the way landscape and plants will hold me.
And there been wisdom guides. There’s been, for me, there’s been particular key plants. There’s been rows mug, wart, nettle, um, Yaro is coming in in the last year as well. So there’s been key particular plant teachers of growing them, living with them over, over months, over years, knowing their cycles, taking them as a tea, uh, talking with them.
Um, sitting with them, knowing their stories, knowing their myths. They’ve been huge, absolutely enormous teachers. They’ve given me, I guess you’d say pillars of wisdom. Uh, the energies of, of the Magdalene and the gnostic wisdom of Sophia has been calling me and I’ve been travelling to France.
Um, I’ve been lucky enough, um, to be able to go to France most years for two to three months. And the landscape over there has, has taught me a lot about the wisdom within the way of love. So it’s, it’s been an, an allowing of landscape of place to teach me of water, of earth, of fire, of air, of the elements and what’s held in the land there, what stories are held there.
So it’s, it’s very, been very much a, uh, an ecology of story of place and how that speaks to me and through me. So, coming into that relationship, I, I guess it’s not a very simple, easy three step answer to that question that you’ve asked, but plants, place and story and Venus have been the guides, the map, the framework, the wisdom for me to dissolve and to land in what it is that I can trust and to help find what might be true in me and around me.
The Venus Rose and the Symbolism of Venus
What is the Venus Rose and why does it hold such symbolic meaning?
I think it’s one of those cases again where you can’t, you can’t expect full and rich relationships with people if you’re not opening yourself up to full and rich relationships with your landscape and with the things around you. Um, one thing I would like to say is, if anyone hasn’t seen the Venus Rose and the pattern it makes in the sky, I highly recommend you Google it.
Um, it is such a spectacular illustration of the innate wisdom of creation. However, however you feel creation, you know, magically happened or spontaneously it happened, um, you cannot deny there is something innately beautiful in the Venus Rose as it makes its procession through the sky. And it’s no wonder that it’s been revered for thousands and thousands of years as like, you couldn’t look at it and not think that is, that’s perfect.
You know, it is perfect. There’s a definite, a definite shape to it. There’s a definite map there that we should be following. I don’t think, you know, even the moon, you know, as you were saying, it is quite rushed. It is quite a rushed experience being like two and a half days in each sign and, you know, you’re really trying to anchor in.
You just start to anchor in. Then it’s changing again. Whereas with, with the Venus Rose, it’s such a beautiful. It’s such a beautiful thing to witness. It brings up that symbology of the rose relationships, love the path of love, the path of beauty, all of those wonderful things that, um, that you get to teach when you’re over in, in France and you’re holding your retreats and the things that you really anchor into, um, in your work.
The Venus Rose as a Symbolic Dance Through the Sky
How does the Venus Rose represent cycles, beauty, love and symbolic intelligence?
Jacqui, it’s been such a pleasure having you here today. I feel like I could talk forever, but I I’m mindful we can do this again. It’s Yes, absolutely. I would love to. That’s a, that’s a delight. I was just thinking of Venus. Why just travel in a single ellipse? Why, just why travel in a line when you can dance in circles in a pentacle and you can spiral around the sun.
I just always think of Venus doing this glorious sensual dance, this, this gorgeous belly dance around the sun. Uh, over, over the, each eight years forming a, a new petal. It’s, it, it just anchors us in this symbolic intelligence in this glorious rose in the sky. Um, it’s, it’s such a beautiful dancer.
Gorgeous, beautiful. It’s so beautiful. I’ve, I’ve, um, I’ve studied astronomy, you know, it was always a, a key interest of mine throughout school, and it’s only through mysticism that I found the Venus Rose. I’m like, how is this not taught in astronomy? It, it, it, my mind boggles because it’s so obvious and so evident, and it couldn’t be anything but a rose.
And for people to just wash over that absolute, you know, just that illustration of divine beauty in our sky is like lost on me.
Where to Find Jacqui Bushell and the Peri Moon Podcast
Where can listeners find Jacqui Bushell and learn more about her work?
Jacqui, where can our beautiful listeners find you in the world? Okay, where they can find me is, um, my new website is being redone at the moment, and that’s Jacquibushell.com. So Jacquibushell.com.
I’m on, uh, Substack called the Nectar Tree, so the Nectar Tree. I, I put up different posts every month and have fairytale circles through there and also through my Facebook under Jacqui Bushell. And I really look forward to hearing any comments or anything that might have come up from you. I love to extend out, into, into conversations in all sorts of wild weaving my silly and eating ways.
Closing the Peri Moon Podcast Conversation
What is the closing message from this conversation about story, wisdom and midlife?
So thank you so much, Nelle. Oh, thank you. Been a pleasure. And I love what you’re doing. Oh, thank you so much. You’re such a, a great mentor and inspiration to me. And you, you really walk the path. It’s such a, such an honour to watch you and all of your wisdom and how you show up in the world and how you serve.
And thank you so much, Jacqui Bushell. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you for sitting with us today. It has been an absolute joy. If you’d like to work with me or connect with any one of our beautiful guests, you can find everything at perimoon.com.au. And until next time, may you find yourself all the way alive.
