The Science & The Sacred

Sinead: Welcome to episode six of The Science and the Sacred.

Sinead: In this episode, I speak to Kitty Maguire, menstrual mentor and space holder, about how she got into the field of menstrual medicine, the magic of reclaiming her feminine power, and the challenges of loss and grief.

Sinead: So Kitty, thanks so much for coming on today for the guest of Science and the Sacred.

Sinead: So yeah, I'm absolutely delighted to to have you on and I know of the I know your work we're chatting a lot there before we we started recording.

Sinead: But I'd love for you maybe to introduce yourself and like the work that you do, and while you do it, just for anyone who's listening, who maybe hasn't come across you and.

Kitty: Your work before HM.

Kitty: Thanks, Vinay.

Kitty: Yeah, it's lovely to be here and an honor to be the first guest.

Kitty: I don't think I knew that.

Kitty: So that's really cool.

Kitty: Yeah, I suppose who am I in?

Kitty: The work is a I suppose I go by immenstruality mentor.

Kitty: And that basically means that I hold spaces for women through the full spectrum of womanhood.

Kitty: So from their first bleed to the last bleed into the elder years, into the mature years.

Kitty: And I suppose I've had to niche down in the last couple of years because that's quite a broad spectrum.

Kitty: And I had to learn then that I couldn't be all women.

Kitty: I couldn't be one woman for all women, for all women.

Kitty: So as much as I'm passionate about all those thresholds and supporting women through those changes, I decided to kind of really focus on the menstrual years because that's where I am.

Kitty: And I suppose I was really folks, I have been really focusing on just nurturing and nourishing my own fertility and and then I suppose as well through repeal, repeal the 8th, the movement back five years ago now I suppose well that's when we actually repealed.

Kitty: But I suppose over the last kind of 7-8 years I really saw that that was a void for.

Kitty: People experiencing abortion in Ireland, that there was just zero conversation around that.

Kitty: And I was in a lot of circles and it was like this elephant in the room and it always came up, but it came up in the small little two or three circles.

Kitty: And I suppose I'm so conscious of how trauma impacts our our body, but also I'm really conscious of how.

Kitty: Trauma impacts our bloodline and so if we're have, if we've come from a bloodline or our our ancestry and has had a lot of trauma in their true womanhood, I'm really conscious how that's carried on through through the lineage.

Kitty: So I suppose it just became clear to me how deeply rooted shame was in the Irish.

Kitty: In the Irish psyche of the womb, and for me then I suppose womb sovereignty just became this.

Kitty: It just was so loud.

Kitty: It was just like, I just need to, yeah, let women know that there's somebody out there that is saying that their experience is valid.

Kitty: They're worthy of love and care and and healing, because that's not a narrative.

Kitty: That is offered and all we hear is criticism, judgment around the abortion topic.

Kitty: And I suppose that's the thing.

Kitty: It is a highly sensitive conversation.

Kitty: So for me, it was kind of just coming in with as much compassion as possible and letting people know that it was a safe, secure space and whatever their story, whatever their choice, that they could come and just.

Kitty: Just be with a clan of women and and people that were were saying I have your back, but it was so silent before So I do, I get, I get, I get quite emotional when I think of it because I've sat with so many women and it's funny because I can see the relief in their eyes.

Kitty: I can feel it in their bodies and I can feel it in the space.

Kitty: Just like shame is so powerful when it's it, it's like a gremlin it it, it thrives in silence.

Kitty: And I think when worries are shared and shame is held and shared, you can just see it like sand through your fingers, that the power of the shame just starts to lessen.

Kitty: Like it loosens in the PE in people's bodies and and I suppose that's been my own story as well.

Kitty: I suppose it's just the relationship with shame as an Irishwoman and you know the mother and baby homes are in my own family that I and I and I I I don't think.

Kitty: I don't think we'd have many people that wouldn't have a connection to some kind of institution in their in.

Kitty: Whether it's their grandfather or their grandmother, there was something of like to do with control or some controlled institution through religion or colonization.

Kitty: And so I I I think for me it's it's pretty deep.

Sinead: Yeah, I know.

Sinead: But it is you know that's I think we often come at these things at so surface level.

Sinead: But actually, to your point, you go back through the layers and it's so generational, you know, not whether that's directly or just as a society as a whole.

Kitty: Yeah, and I think, I suppose it took me a while as well to get really clear and confident and just strong in the work.

Kitty: Because I can remember when I first start putting myself out there, how afraid I was starting to post support on my social media, on my Facebook or my Instagram stuff.

Kitty: I'm just feeling am I going to lose community?

Kitty: Are people going to stop?

Kitty: Coming to my yoga classes like this was my livelihood, but it's mad because the integrity of it for me was just too big.

Kitty: And actually it was the making of me because I was I had decided to just say no.

Kitty: I'm putting my voice to something that I don't see done in my country and I it just.

Kitty: It was like, not that I didn't have a choice.

Kitty: Of course I had a choice.

Kitty: That's what this whole thing is about.

Kitty: But like it was totally part of my path.

Kitty: And looking back in reflection, I can just see how integral that was for me as as a woman's worker and and a woman's facilitator.

Kitty: And I still get women to these days to this.

Kitty: Like I got one only like I think six weeks ago, writing to me about the work that I done with somebody five or six years ago.

Sinead: And they're incredible you know to say and I we so we never know that butterfly effect we exactly.

Kitty: Just even I always say that to the women, I'm say mentoring at the moment, I'm like, put something out there, start putting your the heart and your work out there and people will see it.

Kitty: There's loads of lurkers there and mostly people who need the work.

Kitty: Won't like interact or share it because there could be deep rooted shame in their body.

Kitty: But you advocating and being a voice for something that is represented represents their story.

Kitty: Don't underestimate that.

Kitty: So whether that's one person like that's, it's huge.

Kitty: So yeah, it's being quite, it's been quite full on.

Kitty: I'm not going to lie in in reflection to it, because.

Kitty: I suppose I've ended up getting here, and the root, the root of it's being true shame, yeah, and suffering.

Kitty: But for me, it's totally been this thing of The Alchemist turning your pain into purpose.

Sinead: Yeah, I love that analogy.

Sinead: And I love your analogy of the butterfly effect because I do think that's so important because you have a conversation with one woman, one person, and then they have a conversation with their friends or they tell someone about something or you know, they they introduce the concept or even just starting the conversation.

Sinead: You know, because say for so long you couldn't even start the conversation and not not not far.

Sinead: And like ago or even, you know, for some people, that's their lived experience right now where they might not be able to talk about that.

Sinead: So to see someone having those conversations in a safe way, in a safe circle or on a platform like that, like it's hugely it's hugely inspiring and even just caught provoking for people may who maybe didn't even know that that's an option.

Kitty: I know and I think what's, you know, considering we're five years on from repealing the 8th and it's like it, we women still don't have and people who are pregnant who need like abortion as a healthcare option.

Kitty: It's still not like I think there's still 8 hospitals that aren't providing the service in the country.

Kitty: So if you're in rural Ireland, you know, so again, it's people in rural Ireland that are suffering from this.

Kitty: And I think that's what was so remarkable about repeal was with such a such a landslide of a vote.

Kitty: I think people really underestimated rural Ireland and they forgot that this story would belong to some of those women too.

Kitty: The mothers of women or people that didn't have that option or maybe they'd have to go into imagine laundries or mother and baby homes.

Kitty: So I think for looking back at us, it was, it's huge.

Kitty: It's it's still, it still brings me to tears because it was a massive movement for the women of Ireland and it gains black like Ireland's being changed from that and it like look at, you know, look at what we're doing.

Kitty: For the likes of us to be able to come forward and be so bold and so brave and courageous in this work and just say, yeah, I work with the menstrual cycle.

Kitty: Like that's my my job, my title, my website and everything is like the menstrual cycle.

Kitty: You know, 10 years ago that still would be like sure, to be honest, even for me five years ago.

Kitty: And even still, to this day, I get people, they'll go, oh, what?

Kitty: And my partner works in like.

Kitty: TV.

Kitty: So for at something, they're like, oh, what do you do?

Kitty: And Sam's like, I work in TV and then they're saying, Kitty, what do you do?

Kitty: And I'd be like, oh, I'm I work with like in menstrual health and they'll go, oh Jesus, what to Sam?

Kitty: So will we.

Kitty: And I'm just like, okay, Yeah, you're right.

Kitty: It is much more digestible and acceptable just like Jesus, who wants to talk about that?

Kitty: But then.

Kitty: It has been amazing because, and it's not just from men like I've had that from women, You know, I've had kind of like why do you, why do you, why do you need to even talk about abortions and miscarriage?

Kitty: And they might say, I had one and look, I was fine.

Sinead: And I'm like, but that's your story, yeah, that's your experience.

Sinead: Not everyone has that experience.

Kitty: I'm like, I am so delighted for you that you've got to move through your experience, not feeling the impacts of it.

Kitty: Massively.

Kitty: And I'm sure it impacted you in some way, but I'm like, but what about the people that this has just helped them, held them prisoner in their body and they're like, well, I just don't want to hear about it.

Sinead: And I'm like, okay, that's yeah, I'm like, well.

Kitty: That's not really.

Kitty: I'm here for the women and the people that you couples who do need it.

Sinead: So yeah, but the people will find you like.

Sinead: I think that's one of the biggest thing I learned, Stephanie.

Sinead: A bit like just working for yourself or doing something that's maybe a little bit like left afield or you know, that might be an uncomfortable topic for for some people who are an unusual topic to be specializing in is that people who need you will find you or the people who want to work with you will find you.

Sinead: And everyone has their own flavor and their own approach and their own story and that will resonate with different people.

Sinead: So the the people who need you will be able to to come and it's it's about letting that letting the people who maybe don't get it or who don't need you, you know.

Kitty: And that's what I always say.

Kitty: I'm not here to convert anyone.

Kitty: I'm just the service here in my country for people who are ready and wanting.

Kitty: And then sometimes some people come and they're like, I don't even know why I'm here, but I'm here.

Kitty: Like, I've had people come to my Yin yoga training and they're like, I hate women circles.

Kitty: Like this.

Kitty: This.

Kitty: Hate women circles.

Kitty: And hate all your pokes that you put up.

Kitty: And sometimes when you acknowledge things like Yonis or you talk about **** power or you and the diners and vulvas and I'd be like, well, it's it's their female anatomy, you know.

Kitty: And and I I've just said like aren't you pretty amazing that you've come on a training with me knowing that the baseline of my work is true, like.

Kitty: Everything, like, even yoga, I come at it from a female body, from a fee like a female and a crime system.

Kitty: And I was just like, so maybe, yeah, maybe let's just trust in the process and take it really gentle and really slowly.

Kitty: So there are people that come in kicking and screaming.

Kitty: I'm like, I I didn't.

Kitty: You signed up so you can see, you can see your breakthrough and often that will have, I suppose.

Kitty: In our world, it's probably called a breakdown because, you know, for people to come and then let their story be heard or witnessed and by somebody who's like, I'm not afraid of your story.

Kitty: I'm not afraid.

Kitty: Like I've heard loads of sad stories and traumatic stories.

Kitty: It's not my story like it's come, I'm here.

Kitty: And I suppose for me, that's been a hard, a hard.

Kitty: Lesson to learn as well was how to navigate those hard stories and the big, big fields.

Kitty: But like I've said to you even before we were chatting, like I'm just learning to get meticulous with my energy and also if I'm working with people now I I'm I'm real big mammy energy, you know.

Kitty: So my I suppose my will I say a flaw?

Kitty: Probably not a flaw my don't even know idiosyncrasy.

Kitty: My.

Kitty: My I suppose my kink in the chain was I was ordering.

Kitty: At times I wanted to just go in and do everything for the person, whereas now I've had to really learn to pull back and just be like, no, you you do it.

Kitty: I'm providing a space, but you very much so you need to do the work because I suppose for me that was in I notice in this work.

Kitty: I don't know if you see this.

Kitty: But there's a lot of mother and sister wounds with the women.

Kitty: But across the board, like nobody is exempt from that I don't think I that hasn't been modeled in society that look at women, they're great.

Kitty: Let's look after them.

Kitty: Let's champion them.

Kitty: Like even little girls are kind of even, you know, it's, it's, it's it's just in our narrative and.

Kitty: Our healthcare for women isn't a hasn't been a priority stay in Ireland and and I'm sure in other countries you only have to look at America to like just touch your pearls.

Kitty: But yeah, I think for me that's that that's been a real big learner.

Kitty: And it was like, right, Well, look, I have to get very real in this, you know, I mean, I am meeting a lot of trauma and I am meeting a lot of wounds.

Kitty: And there's a big expectation of me here and I actually can't fix, I can't heal these people's wounds.

Kitty: And I think once I was able to just be really honest with that and be like, I'm not your healer.

Kitty: I'm your facilitator, I'm your mentor.

Kitty: And and and especially like if something comes up in a conversation, I'm like, that's beyond my capacity.

Kitty: I have a fantastic list of.

Kitty: Skilled practitioners that I'm going to refer you want to because that's just beyond my scope and and it means then I I I've been able to.

Kitty: I can work with.

Kitty: I can work deeply but I don't have to I don't have to put it all on myself to feel like I'm here to be this this person in front of me's savior.

Kitty: And because that doesn't work, that's then that's that's another form of patriarchy.

Sinead: If I'm like, exactly.

Sinead: You're the one with the answers and they have to look outside themselves and yeah.

Kitty: And that's because they get to hand the power, their power over to you.

Kitty: Whereas for me it's been really purposeful because I think the word power is quite loaded in.

Kitty: It can be quite triggering as well for a lot of people because their power has been taken away from them.

Kitty: Yeah, me, I think it's being able to just reframe it and be like well.

Kitty: How can we find our purpose amongst this and how can we do it with as much clarity and integrity so that we're bolstered?

Kitty: You and you and you're the person you're working with are both bolstered through it.

Kitty: So, I mean, that's been a long, a long journey and I'm nowhere near out there.

Kitty: I'm always very aware that there's no end to this.

Kitty: I'm sure I'm not in haven't hit my perimenopause stage yet.

Kitty: I'm 42.

Kitty: Crawling up to 43.

Kitty: So yeah, it's really interesting for me just to see.

Kitty: That's why it was important for me just to focus on these menstrual years because I was so in it and living it.

Kitty: So I was really, I'm really able to bring lived and learned experience and you're right in it.

Kitty: So I do a lot.

Kitty: I do have lots of spaces that I can bring in pregnancy because that's part of menstrual years.

Kitty: As for breastfeeding like that, pregnancy release, any, any kind of, um, I suppose traumatic release from the womb.

Kitty: And then I have the have different ways that I can support women through those menopause in menopause years, but through a different aspect because I don't have the lived and learned experience of somebody who's.

Kitty: Gone through menopause.

Kitty: So I I would offer a different type of space for that person.

Kitty: But this the option is there for somebody to have that the space that wants to work with me.

Kitty: Like, you know, say for example, I've worked with women who've had hysterectomies overnight or lost their cycle due to illness and so they're then just thrown into a post spontaneous menopause, perimenopause and.

Kitty: To work on to to go back and do the Menarch work with these women has been absolutely divine because they are going through second spring.

Kitty: So then to go back and revisit that stage of their life if they haven't gone there, because it is that new initiation into life.

Kitty: So for me like there's no end to the work and I and I do find that I have to diversify it there for a bit because it just got very.

Kitty: Heavy.

Kitty: No, I didn't mean that's.

Kitty: No pun intended.

Kitty: Yeah you like, but it's it is.

Kitty: I think it's such a huge spectrum and I I do think each each threshold does deserve it's time to shine you know and deserves to be witnessed and and especially the likes the likes of us that are the light in our bloodline that have come in rate this generational like to bring Jen instead of focusing on generational trauma like that we're the generational healer and we're no no it stops with us like I'm the last woman now in my bloodline or my generation that's going to be like carry on those limiting beliefs that may have come down through our family through our community through our religion and stuff like that.

Kitty: So like I that for me it's kind of it's been a real beautiful and hard and confronting journey of how to keep turning the hard sticky ugly bits that society you like the parts that are drenched and hardship and suffering and grief and shame and reframe it.

Kitty: So like yeah look at it as opposed to oh generational healing.

Kitty: No we're generation or generational trauma.

Kitty: We're generational and being the light in your bloodline and I suppose then the the beauty of that then is just you get you know this, the more you do this work the more you get to unveil your authentic self, amazingly difficult woman in society.

Sinead: Yeah, I know I'm like they silenced me for so long and now they don't.

Sinead: But I would agree about the the layers and how it's.

Sinead: I think from the outside in, you know, menstrual cycle awareness and learning about like even just tracking your cycle and kind of, you know, going through the process of learning to trust your body, whatever way that is and learning these tools.

Sinead: For me, I think what's blown my mind open is and I guess it's kind of like in yoga where you go through the different coaches in the different body where you kind of start with the physical body.

Sinead: You learn what's going on with your menstrual cycle, like your symptoms, all this kind of stuff.

Sinead: And you start going in and you're like, oh, actually my mood changes and then this.

Sinead: And then you kind of get to this core and it's.

Sinead: It's just like you just see that actually there's cycles everywhere and that all of this work is a tool to really get to know you and the world and your relationships.

Sinead: And, like, it's just incredibly powerful.

Sinead: And I don't think you can really fully appreciate that until you start doing the work, until you start, you know, being like, oh wow.

Sinead: Even reframing menstrual cycles or something that's negative to something that's positive and it being a power rather than a hindrance, like that's huge psychologically.

Sinead: You know, to be like actually this thing that happens to me every month is is a benefit.

Kitty: It's not a negative and but that's if that's if we have the opportunity and the privilege to do it because you know, I also know women that I'm really mindful.

Kitty: You know I have lovely liar.

Kitty: I'd like to bring in the Irish language and I have be singing like Grandma Brin which is Grandma Brin and that's I love my womb.

Kitty: But like how do you love your womb if if you've got chronic endometriosis.

Kitty: So I know women that have to have hysterectomies because they're in they've had several laparoscopies.

Kitty: So I think the way I would look at that for people like this is to just say, well, what if you can look at it as if it stops with you here now and then you then you can be share with your children, your sons and your daughters, not just your daughters or people that menstruate that they that your womb story probably has been really stressful and upsetting and there has been this resentment there.

Kitty: But you want it, you want to do you want that to stop in this lifetime so that your children are growing up feeling they can honor and respect and feel connected to their side?

Kitty: Because that's the thing with something like endometriosis like that could be hereditary.

Kitty: So for me, that's what I'm really interested in is looking at how these things are passed down through through the bloodline.

Kitty: So you know, if if you think myself and yourself and all the other menstruality advocates and teachers and educators and stuff like that, some of us mightn't see the dramatic change that we are working towards.

Kitty: But it's like that saying like wise men plant trees they'll never climb.

Kitty: Sit on.

Kitty: Absolutely.

Kitty: We're absolutely those wise women that are you know we're we're planting seeds and and are the great grandchildren and the the youngsters that come after us.

Kitty: Because I see it in my own family.

Kitty: Like my family are incredibly supportive around this and there's I've never got any slagging off them.

Kitty: I mean, my brother-in-law laughed when he found out that I didn't like jam and I don't like ketchup.

Kitty: And my my mother was like, Oh no, she's like red things.

Kitty: And he was like, what?

Kitty: You mean Red.

Kitty: Everything in her, her whole business model.

Kitty: It's.

Sinead: Her whole brand is red.

Kitty: Know anyone who wears as much red or?

Kitty: And they all just felt like he hadn't even copped.

Kitty: And I said, yeah, but I don't have a problem with menstrual Red, menstrual blood.

Kitty: And I don't have, um, you know, I like fresh strawberries.

Kitty: I was like, I just don't like artificial, Yeah.

Kitty: Yeah, yeah you know but it was so funny that that's that's as close as the the slagging has come for me which is very I'm that's not always the way with people.

Kitty: They can be a bit kind of dismissive, you know, like same as like artist in the family or, you know, go and get a real job, you know, where's.

Sinead: Yeah, exactly.

Kitty: I mean, but I mean, my work is women's social justice, I suppose for women, but that's what my mother did.

Kitty: So it why wouldn't it be normal and it families?

Kitty: It might be abnormal, but I grew up watching somebody advocate for women her whole life, so.

Sinead: How amazing is that?

Sinead: Because I say a lot of people don't get that experience, you know, So as you're saying, it is such a privilege to see that or be at least in an environment where you can do your work in a way that but only is it not ridiculed but it's actually totally supported.

Kitty: Yeah it's it's lovely.

Kitty: And I suppose even safer even as that like when we were as a family safer repeal or any of the marches like we'd go as a family you know.

Kitty: Yeah.

Kitty: And there was like generations showing up forming on a hair and like, so I think that's that's where the healing comes.

Kitty: That's where the power of us.

Kitty: And and I am at that point now where I'm like I'm not here to convert it just I'm.

Kitty: I just want it to be easy.

Kitty: And I have enough courage and conviction in in what I'm doing.

Kitty: I've more than enough experience and I have enough trust in my ability to just say whoever needs to to get here, I'm here.

Kitty: And if I'm not available, well, I know a red clan that is.

Kitty: Yeah, exactly.

Kitty: It's amazing.

Sinead: It's great, you see?

Sinead: What's the dog's?

Sinead: What's the dog's name?

Kitty: That's Weeny Wagtail.

Kitty: I got her for my 4th birthday and.

Kitty: Oh lovely apricot Angel.

Kitty: And she's um, she's so special.

Kitty: She's actually the I have a kids workshop now for age 7.

Kitty: Plus it's kind of 6 to 9 year olds and it's called Magic Blood and inspired by a a little live that I've done with Sarah Sprell.

Kitty: Do you know her that?

Sinead: I love her.

Sinead: She's amazing.

Kitty: Yeah, so.

Sinead: Such a big fan.

Kitty: I just had a chat with her about age appropriate language with children, and then the following month myself and the boys at the time, 7:00 and 2:00 we went on holiday and Winnie got her first bleed.

Sinead: Hey, I actually think I saw this on your stories.

Kitty: Yeah, and we got to.

Sinead: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sinead: This recording.

Kitty: Yeah.

Kitty: And I ended up, that was how I started.

Kitty: I told our seven-year old about magic blood.

Kitty: And because there was spots of blood everywhere and I was like, she's not, this is blood.

Kitty: That means that when this happens, it means she she could get pregnant, she could make a baby and that magic blood will grow a baby.

Kitty: And he was like, oh wow.

Kitty: And then now he's older now so he start he's not as.

Sinead: Yeah, it's not as amazed.

Kitty: Well, no, I think he's really starting to kind of grasp that like, oh, okay, there's a bit more to this.

Kitty: So then there was a conversation of that led to then, but how does the baby get in there?

Kitty: But then I was able to turn that into, well, this is what happens to a doggie, but actually it happens to women as well.

Kitty: And but I also have magic blood every month.

Kitty: So.

Kitty: So now I've turned that a little story that this is how to talk.

Kitty: It's kind of age appropriate.

Kitty: So instead of like trying to do a workshop with children, it's like bringing Winnie into school with her period pants on.

Kitty: And she's such a cuddler.

Kitty: Like she's a really, really.

Kitty: She's so used to children.

Kitty: Sometimes our little man tries to straddler like a pony and like, but they're best friends, you know.

Kitty: So it's that's what I mean.

Kitty: It's it's in every aspect, like even the dog is part of it.

Sinead: Yeah, I love that though.

Sinead: And like I think as you were saying like about being the the seed planters, it's like these conversations it it passes down because it normalizes it.

Sinead: Like I remember UM again did a kind of a women's circle was going back to your your first fleet and I remember showing the story where I was like.

Sinead: And it was funny because I don't really remember it that well.

Sinead: But Mum was like, do not remember that.

Sinead: She was like, dad brought you home flowers and you had it.

Sinead: And I've got a twin brother.

Sinead: And supposing Matthew was like, why does Schneid get flowers?

Sinead: And I'm not getting flowers.

Sinead: And, you know, they, they marked it And I was like, wait, that's actually for the time, you know, is so regressive.

Sinead: Yeah.

Sinead: So it was like, you know, it's probably unsurprising that I ended up in this work, but I was like that that that's such a that ritual, even though it's in the grand scheme of things, is such a small gesture, but like the fact that.

Sinead: So many people wouldn't have that And then I do think that that's at least fed into me.

Sinead: And I don't know if it's been your experience as well.

Sinead: But I do love the ritual of things.

Sinead: Like I do love marking as you said the thresholds because it's you know I guess especially in Ireland it's maybe we you know I know for myself I've.

Sinead: Was never really part of the Catholic Church.

Sinead: You know, we kind of for Chris and Bush kind of stepped away.

Sinead: So you're kind of looking for that sort of ritual or sense of community or sense of connection or that connection to something more than you.

Sinead: And for me that's definitely being cycles and kind of women's circles and that sort of the the different rituals that you hold.

Sinead: So I've loved being able to bring that into my own life to mark different sort of stages or or um maybe life stages that I'm moving through, which I think is.

Sinead: Such a nice tool to have in your toolbox, you know?

Kitty: Yeah, absolutely.

Sinead: Yeah, yeah.

Sinead: No, I feel very lucky.

Sinead: Like, God again.

Kitty: When I kind of mum reminded me of it, I was like, yeah, way like that's, yeah.

Sinead: So I feel progressive for the time, you know, Like, yeah, very special.

Sinead: So, Dad, if you're listening, thank you.

Sinead: I'd like to know.

Sinead: Yeah, literally.

Sinead: I'd love to know a little bit more about.

Sinead: I guess you're, I don't say you're studying this area because we don't know that it's more than study but I'm always curious to hear people's I guess progression true that's you know oftentimes people start to work in the area of Women's Health because it's as you mentioned it's something that's happened to them and then you know you kind of you you learn and I know that you studied with the the Red school as well and I would have been speaking in the previous episode about menstrual cycle awareness, but and you study with.

Sinead: Humor recently as well.

Sinead: So I'd love to hear a bit about that because I think there's some amazing teachers and mentors out there.

Kitty: I've had some great um, yeah, people like I'm working with.

Kitty: I'm doing a Mother Circle train at the moment with Kimberly Ann Johnson.

Kitty: Do you know her?

Sinead: Oh, lovely.

Sinead: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kitty: Do you actually anything Because you know I'm a bit like that that this course landed in my.

Kitty: And how Winnie she wants cuzzles.

Kitty: This course landed in my e-mail back in March.

Kitty: Now obviously not everyone will know this, you know this, but I only lost my mother on Christmas Eve, tragically in a car accident, and I've been trying to have a bit preparing.

Kitty: I don't like the word trying.

Kitty: I've been try preparing and hopeful, have my own baby get pregnant and give birth to a happy, healthy baby for a good while now and then.

Kitty: I'm also a foster mother, so for me this year I've been really looking at, um, how all roads for me are leading to mother, my mother dying, the being catapulted into foster, foster, parent role, foster mother, and then the journey to motherhood.

Kitty: Now any one of them on their own is massive.

Sinead: Exactly.

Kitty: So for me, I'm like, Flip's sake.

Kitty: I'm like, why do I have to go through?

Kitty: Yeah, all these big pigs.

Sinead: Like universe, do not just rip feed it to me.

Kitty: Like I saw that somebody saying there for the new year and I just was like, Oh my God, send the big memo for me.

Kitty: It was like on New Year's Eve and whoever has the the list for God, will you ask him to take, take me off his bravest soldier list.

Kitty: And I was like, yeah, I'm done.

Kitty: I'm like.

Sinead: I'm doing enough.

Kitty: I I, there's no more like can't take any more life lessons.

Kitty: So yeah, so the Kimberly Ann is is a really great teacher for me because she's very rooted in the nervousness, the female nervous, but just that real just being a woman in the work and and trauma in the work of women.

Kitty: So, like, I'm on her course with a lot, mostly American women, you know, who are very different to us.

Kitty: So it's very good for me because I love that, um, I'm not amongst a load of women that I know.

Kitty: Because it's really again, because then you have to put yourself out there and come out and do all these introductions and and so it's very powerful.

Kitty: So yeah, she's who I'm currently.

Kitty: I'm.

Kitty: I know, like people are like, how can you be doing that?

Kitty: And you're grieving such a an awful loss of your mother and I'm like because that's what I have that these are my survival skills because I need to you can squirm around I can squirm around us and numb out in the feeling for a while.

Kitty: But then I I do have to go right.

Kitty: How how do I make sense this in my body.

Kitty: And that's what happened Uma I am kept on hearing Uma's name and I was doing doing.

Kitty: I began my womb journey and Uma was popping up left right and center and she was coming here lows at the time.

Kitty: And then I just eventually made my way to Uma.

Kitty: And Uma have to say like when she heard mom had passed away was like she had broken her foot so she wasn't online and so but she when she soon as she found out towards the end of January, she just got on to me and she said come and see me and let me look after you.

Kitty: And I just lying because I did need to be mammied, you know.

Kitty: Yeah, I needed that mothering because, like when your mother that you're close with is whipped away from you.

Kitty: So try.

Kitty: You know me and my mom's only 62.

Kitty: I'm 42.

Kitty: You know, we're very close.

Kitty: So it was just so beautiful to have that, that sisterhood now Uma had.

Kitty: I'd held a big massive woman circle, a woman circle, a womanhood and we ran a huge big camp, a woman's camp there before the lockdown, Anuma was like, no, as a thank you, I want you, all of us that had organized it to come and you can have it, you can have a complimentary training.

Kitty: So I never got to go on that because I locked down and I was meant to go before Christmas and my mum was buying the children.

Kitty: But I was like, look, it's too chaotic.

Kitty: It's in London, you know, I just feel actually it seems a bit busy for me and then I.

Sinead: Actually remember seeing seeing that one come in and the I was looking doing that.

Kitty: But yeah, sometimes you're like, and I didn't find accommodation and I actually, it was just so close to Christmas.

Kitty: So you know yourself, I was like, yeah, but also my mother would have spent literally one of her last weeks alive looking after and which would have been lovely for her and the boys.

Kitty: But she actually, everyone had come up to me and said, geez, I saw your, your mother was in Dublin and so on a, I suppose on a sole level I feel like, you know, it was her time.

Kitty: It was time to leave this world in physical form.

Kitty: But she got to see so many of her close friends and people that she'd grown up with.

Kitty: So the timing then, while Uma had got in touch and I just was like, Jesus, Uma, if you have anything coming up that I can just escape.

Kitty: And just be held in a yoga nidra cocoon a little womb cave.

Kitty: She was like, I have one in my garden at the end of February and I'm not joking, I cannot.

Kitty: I was completely in collapse.

Kitty: I was in a freeze response and I would might be like a the biggest traumatic thing in my life had happened and in agony and I I got to Uma and just slept and slept and slept but I The thing is and I could really feel Uma's care for me on that so I'd had that.

Kitty: I had had that.

Kitty: My body knows how knows Uma so long now.

Kitty: If you think I started doing work with Uma Jesus probably like, I don't know, seven years ago or something and had her book before and would have been going to other people teaching womb yoga or stuff like that.

Kitty: So yeah, I did it.

Kitty: I've done Uma's well, woman, I think it is or something.

Kitty: It used to be called the womb yoga and then she's changed it.

Kitty: But beautiful work.

Kitty: And then I've also done her pregnancy training which is like after I left that training I actually fell pregnant myself 10 days later.

Kitty: Yeah, I had a huge a catharticism when I got home from that.

Kitty: I woke up one night and I had a huge fear of of Labor.

Kitty: I think maybe in a past life I had a very traumatic laborer like this, like crazy.

Kitty: And my mother, my my mom always said her labor on me was the easiest.

Kitty: I was always her easiest child.

Kitty: That's not true.

Kitty: I was like an absolute lunatic.

Kitty: I was demanded but yeah, so I'd gone on that train and it was amazing.

Kitty: I think about 5 days.

Kitty: I came got up one night and I was like a cow.

Kitty: The sounds that were and I had to I was doing yoga cat cow at like 4 in the morning and it was almost like my body start purging without anything leaving either.

Kitty: In my body I just felt and I was like just mad sounds.

Kitty: It was like I was in labor.

Kitty: I actually love watching them, watching labors.

Kitty: I was like making all these mad sounds and then I conceived within about 10 days after.

Kitty: Now unfortunately, my body wasn't, so there was a lot of stress going on in my body at the time, so that the that little soul didn't stick around to be born.

Kitty: But yeah so that was a huge it was being a great a great teacher and and she's she's a hoot as well you know and then I've done the MLP with Red School the menstruality leadership program that was fantastic Like I think you know I'm definitely that wild chaotic highly creative ADHD yeah there's there's definitely lunacy like that Luna ener lunar lunar energy is in me like and I and I like I don't I don't say that with shame.

Kitty: It's like that what?

Kitty: So for me I found that's what was great that I feel like the the red school MLP was definitely like dotting the i's and crossing the t's and just putting some boundaries around my wild because I could see that then well hang on now I'm just a wild feminine and this too much wild power without the container to stop the the fire spreading too much it's it's it's it gets out of control so you know we need have a fire pit.

Sinead: Yeah, I was thinking of like, um, levees on a lake, like the feminines, the the, the river.

Sinead: And then, you know, you've got the mask and that's the, yeah, levees to try and direct it because otherwise you just spread it everywhere and you flood and you know, you're like ruining shops and actually being directed towards something like irrigation or whatever.

Kitty: Yeah.

Kitty: So that I felt that that death I was starting to feel like suppose as I was doing more healing with my nervous system and a lot of the trauma work I was doing.

Kitty: I just started to see the areas of my life that were craving and demanding this like just being like no, no, this is big girls stuff like this is part of the woman wound like you know we can't can't be running around like that.

Kitty: It's it's not.

Kitty: We're just going into constant cycles of burnout, the men's, the menstrual medicine and circle training and kind of work on one-on-one and that that that took its time to kind of integrate and develop.

Kitty: And I've loved that.

Kitty: I've loved I I love weaving that in because it is like getting into the psyche of the cycle and there's so much to offer there.

Kitty: And I think what's really powerful in my experience of working with with women at that is seeing where, like, yeah, where the traumas are coming up, where the pain is, where we're blocked, where the, you know, the fear of visibility, the fear of being seen, the the fear of, you know, your sexuality, your sensuality.

Kitty: That's for me, like on a human level, to witness that in somebody else through their menstrual cycle, like it's, it's gold.

Kitty: It really like it's if we knew this, if we were a couple of times a year, is adolescence like, wow.

Kitty: Like the women that we would just, like go into, would we even need to go to third level?

Kitty: You.

Sinead: Think about it.

Sinead: How many years?

Sinead: Yeah, exactly.

Kitty: But you just it's you know how many years do you spend rejecting?

Sinead: It literally, yeah, you're kind of, I was going to say like shy patriarchy.

Sinead: You're trying to play the game, you're playing the game and I'm actually listening to the the heroine's journey at the moment and you know, the talking about that whole experience and then you just, you know, obviously everyone's journey through that is.

Sinead: Where they've they've gone down the hero's path instead of the the and you, you know everyone's kind of realization maybe to sidestep that they're actually on that they're living someone else's life or life plan or life structure.

Sinead: It's different for everyone.

Sinead: Because imagine if you just didn't have to do that.

Sinead: You just kind of learned from when you were going through that process of becoming a woman that actually there is a different way of of living and being and that you can stand in your power and it might be a different power to what you you see around you.

Kitty: But that's the the model of the Eminem like that's.

Sinead: Exactly.

Kitty: We've been told that women aren't as funny or as clever or as able as men, whereas that's kind of like going, right?

Kitty: Let's say you're you're you're in the zoo and a female, like a lioness, gets out.

Kitty: Are you going to be any less afraid of her?

Sinead: Exactly.

Kitty: The ones that do all the work anyway or like or you know you're thrown to two lines whether they're male or female they're both going to make mints media.

Kitty: So so I do I can it's I think it's definitely been very interesting to observe that in Society of you know how women like us are up against.

Kitty: We're a minority you know because we are with this work is going to bring a lot of self inquiry and if people aren't ready or able for that for that but or have the practices to to stay embodied through those experiences.

Kitty: So that's where I loved that work with the menstrual medicine circles and that's been very powerful for me to work with people through that.

Kitty: I'm like not even having to have a menstrual cycle.

Kitty: I've worked with a lot of pregnant women.

Kitty: And menopausal women and stuff like that.

Kitty: So it's just amazing what the psyche will surface because you can literally see people dissolving years of a story that just keeps recycling itself with every cycle, you know?

Kitty: Yeah, so that's that piece of work.

Kitty: And then Samantha Zapora for the pregnancy release work, she came over specifically to do this.

Kitty: I'm pregnant is means abortion, miscarriage, stillbirth or any kind of hormone any kind of traumatic or stressful pregnant labor or pregnant because you know you could have people that maybe they planned on having a home birth or and then all of a sudden they've they they now have had to be rushed to hospital and they have a prolapse or they had to have a C-section again.

Kitty: It's like for me in that pregnancy release work it's holding space for women to befriend their body and befriend their womb and their their their sensuality sexuality menstruality again or or just make peace with the vision that they had you know that they'd they'd held onto or maybe dreamed about their whole life you know and then the opportunity the situation came and it it went for them horribly wrong obviously like the everyone was was happy that mother and the baby are safe by the end but then there's still this experience that you get voice so that's been really powerful work as well and then what are teach great teachers actually that I would really really recommend a tiratan.

Kitty: I've done her women's trauma and training she's and she does a lot of work around young girls and sex trafficking.

Kitty: Yeah, yeah, I really, really recommend.

Kitty: And she had Lorraine.

Kitty: God, my kids got into my mind.

Kitty: But that was a brilliant training that I did that I think sometimes I just go for myself just to see just because I want during lockdown and stuff.

Kitty: I wanted containers for me to be held and as I I love going um.

Sinead: I know I'm the same.

Kitty: And like, is this for my profession, For my personal?

Kitty: Maybe it's, but it has to be.

Kitty: And I think for me, I'm like, it's it has to be embodied in us first and then.

Sinead: I 100% agree.

Sinead: Yeah.

Kitty: Then another woman I trained was um.

Kitty: I went to Portugal last year.

Kitty: Again, Sophia, a journal.

Kitty: A woman's health Change cycle.

Kitty: A woman's health training, but so rooted with TCM, traditional Chinese medicine.

Kitty: I mean yoga teacher.

Kitty: So it just made total sense.

Kitty: And that was in a make because I went to that and then came home and the boys were placed with me.

Kitty: So that was very, that was a great space for me to just be totally supported and just get my get my my nervous system and rest in place, but also have a lovely little holiday to myself.

Kitty: And so yeah, there there's some big teachers.

Kitty: And then obviously, like Marie Kennedy has been like, she's a good friend of mine, but I would have started out with Marie as if she would have been a yoga teacher and then add about how Marie wove in the Celtic wheel.

Kitty: So I probably would be working with the Celtic will and myself now a good, I don't know, like could be the guts at 10 years or something.

Kitty: Yeah.

Kitty: So I think for me, Mary's just somebody as a friend I'll always come back to, you know, she's been incredible to me through this last.

Kitty: Like she'll just turn up some days with a bag of dinners.

Kitty: Oh, and just rock up and be like the lads love lasagna, don't they?

Kitty: And I'm just like, oh, I really don't want to cook today.

Kitty: I'm so tired.

Kitty: I'm actually, I'm on her Celtic field at the moment and brilliant.

Sinead: Yeah, because Gonna would have been doing it myself.

Sinead: Like you could have picked it up through bits and bobs or reading books and stuff like that.

Sinead: But like everyone who would have been speaking about, they're all like Mary Kennedy, Mary Kennedy also doing it this year, and she's just the energy.

Sinead: Oh, she's just great.

Kitty: Every year she does it like it's because I've done the work with Mary from in her in the yoga studio and then just how Mary has developed her for her put her own a stamp on the framework of the the Celtic.

Kitty: You know, because obviously she would have been heavily influenced by Dolores's Glores Wheeler, the Range Endeavor knew Celtic and she married brings the Loris on.

Sinead: All the Poles.

Sinead: So great.

Kitty: Yeah.

Sinead: To see it like each almost each generation, you know, like it like, I mean that in a in a respectful way where it's like, you know, these people, like, my God, I can't even imagine the environment when Dolores was doing this work, how it would be received and then you know.

Sinead: I know.

Kitty: It's so smooth everywhere, you know, it's a digestible cycle.

Kitty: The the Celtic Wheel will ask of you like, I mean anyone who does it will know that if you try and skim past the Kaliak or sound without and you know if you're actually sitting with your sound, you know all about it.

Kitty: So if you try to skim past it you're going to get a sound at it's kind of oh, and grab you on the **** at some point.

Kitty: And so I think that's I, I, I love that about Marie.

Kitty: You know, like you know she's so honest and authentic and she just live in the work, you know.

Kitty: And that's like Marie, somebody that I will consistently come back to and pop in because she's evolving all the time.

Kitty: And I and there's real sisterhood in in.

Kitty: I love that.

Kitty: And Marie as well, you know, she's a great woman for you, for the sisterhood, you know?

Sinead: Which is very important because.

Sinead: Yeah, well, it's just, it's one of, I guess it's one of the reasons that I wanted to do this podcast to make sure it's getting people on because I was like, it's so great to, there's so many amazing people, particularly women, doing so many amazing pains.

Sinead: And I'm like, it's just, you know, there's no need to be like and I know you're not like this, but like competing, competing with one another, you know, it's actually like, it's like rising water lifts all boats.

Sinead: Or, you know, I always use the analogy of like coffee shops where.

Sinead: Gyms, but I think coffee shops, if you're living in in Ireland, particularly in Dublin, makes a lot more sense from like how many coffee shops are there in Dublin, You know, and I'm like they all do the same thing.

Sinead: It's all, it's all coffee.

Sinead: There's so many different flavors.

Sinead: And actually, you know there's people might go to a particular coffee shops that's close or they like the coffee or they like the style, they like the environment, you know, this particular breast that they like or, you know, whatever it is.

Sinead: And I'm like when everyone goes because they find a flavor or a space that.

Sinead: For them and everyone, buying coffee is good for all the coffee people.

Sinead: And then it's good for people because they only go to a coffee shop.

Sinead: So remember for me, when I started working for myself, you know you're dealing with that sister wound up being like, Oh my God, am I good enough?

Sinead: And sure, why would I bother if someone else is doing the work and everything.

Kitty: But I'm like, no, just think of coffee shops, you know, I'm like, if you're lived and learned experience.

Kitty: Exactly.

Kitty: And I'm like, I work with women now.

Kitty: Coaching.

Kitty: Not really.

Kitty: But on I'd say like facilitating or mentoring, you know, and I suppose like that's what I'm saying to them.

Kitty: I am not trying to empty what's in my brain and hand it to you like you're coming to me with your craft and we're we're like weaving that into like that.

Kitty: Like basically just fine TuneIn your niche so that it's your own.

Sinead: Language or you know, it's finding your your dialect of the same language.

Sinead: It might just be giving people the structures like the way you mentioned.

Kitty: In the menstruality and MLP, the leadership program where it's like the maps give you a structure to work with where you know a language maybe that makes it exactly that makes you be able to embody it, to then bring it out to other people, which I think is so important, especially for me now looking like I'm into the 4th or 5th.

Kitty: Actually I think it's the fifth cycle of Red Alchemy.

Kitty: It's probably they're going into the 4th year, but we I've done 5.

Kitty: This is the fifth cycle starting because one year I did 2.

Kitty: I was very ambitious.

Kitty: It was during lockdown with them.

Kitty: But now I have those women on this cycle, six of them from previews, who started with me with very basic understanding of menstrual cycle awareness.

Kitty: And now here they are like where peers where allies.

Kitty: And I hold an inner circle with them and we show up together and we bring all those sticky bits of of the what, like what's what's scary in showing up in the work.

Kitty: And yeah, because they're the bits that we don't learn when we go on trainings.

Kitty: We don't learn how to lead this work.

Kitty: And for me, that's where I kind of saw, because I know true to witnessing women in their droves in the lockdown coming to me to do this work, running out, setting up their Instagram page, going berserk and giving it like two to four months, maybe six months.

Kitty: And then the Instagram page just goes dormant and they go back to their yoga or something.

Kitty: And and I'm like, no, it's you're not going to come and do this and turn into like have my community that, you know what I mean?

Kitty: It takes, it takes years to build it.

Kitty: I said, you're asking people to come to you with their womb and trust to look after the most sacred part of their body.

Kitty: And it's so deep.

Kitty: And I said people mightn't even think of it that deep.

Kitty: And I said, but you're asking people to come to you and pay you so that they can talk about something really vulnerable as their menstrual cycle and the fluids that leave their vagina every every day or what, you know, so like, it's a huge, big deal.

Kitty: So that's where I've kind of been going and it's been really interesting to me seeing Okay the There's a big fear of judgment in the work.

Kitty: How do you show up with this work in your workplace?

Kitty: Let's say you're a corporate person and like it's it's very white collar and all of a sudden you're like, oh, I'm working with periods, you know, that mightn't be as acceptable in some workplace.

Kitty: There could be a lot of or families, there could be a lot of people making a fool of people for trying to take them down, you know.

Kitty: So for me that's been really interesting is to work with women and the work with the visibility around the work.

Kitty: Because it's one thing you declaring yourself to the world as I am here now, I am a voice for women.

Kitty: But then how do you get the the work?

Kitty: How do you get the world to listen?

Kitty: Because just because you've decided to step into those shoes and what why all of a sudden would people just trust and come to you?

Kitty: So that's what like, yeah, I, I, I, I say like it's a yoga team.

Kitty: I've been a yoga teacher for years.

Kitty: Yoga, teaching yoga is so easy now because it's not to do to teach yoga.

Kitty: But 20 years ago it was like, oh, you're one.

Kitty: She does yoga.

Kitty: Yeah.

Sinead: Well I may be like so based 20 years ago would have been when I was remember like.

Sinead: Trying to get the yoga books like A to the library because there was nothing.

Sinead: The only place I remember, like then as a teenager would be like the yoga class and the local guy club.

Sinead: And really it was like, you know, it's like, I don't know, going up or whatever.

Sinead: Like it wasn't, it wasn't yoga.

Sinead: It was but it wasn't, you know, not on the spiritual, energetic level.

Sinead: And yeah, so even that, like, you know, it's such a different need for it.

Sinead: I think the work comes out when it's needed.

Kitty: You know if you're a yoga teacher and you're this is what I'd be saying to like some of the women mentoring, I'm going keep the yoga going and then just start in your in because that's what I did.

Kitty: I obviously transition and then start bringing in this this posture is really supportive for this pose.

Kitty: And then people all of a sudden going, that's me today.

Kitty: Or if anyone's ovulating and they're having ovulation pain or you feel like maybe you've got cysts or you know, you want to conceive, like here's the great pose to clear out your tubes, you know, or like bring more chi into your tubes, All of a sudden people are going, that's lifestyle, this is helping my lifestyle.

Kitty: Or like, here's a yoga pose that's going to really help with your bowel movements.

Kitty: Like, people love that, but they're like, yeah, who doesn't want healthy digestion?

Kitty: So it's much easier to come out and hide behind a few yoga poses and this the language of of yoga.

Kitty: But to for you to go out and be saying here I am on day seven of my menstrual cycle that's you like it's very very different.

Kitty: So it's for me to have been able to really articulate that to.

Kitty: I'm saying this is a really different beast that we're working with and it's it's very interesting when I do see like that declaration of self to the world as yeah, I'm going to advocate and I'm really passionate about this work and then the heartache of when the world does, they're not witnessed by the world and I'm like it's going to take a long.

Sinead: Time.

Sinead: It's going to take a good while because even like, even when, like, I can only imagine how it's been, you know, you've obviously been in the space space a lot longer.

Sinead: But like, I even remember when I started talking about like.

Sinead: Training for women because I would have come from the sports side, you know, and eh, even in the gym I was working in, you know, they're all super sport above us.

Sinead: But one of the lads, he's a bit younger.

Sinead: He'd be like, ah, here we go.

Sinead: It's periods again and he was only messing, but like.

Sinead: You know, even like the mades here with the.

Kitty: Because The thing is, he's not only messing, it's like it's a slight.

Kitty: If there's a, there's an element of.

Kitty: They don't realize when they do that they're exposing their own discomfort, but in that they're still, it's still, um, gaslight is the wrong word, but the you're you, uh, in that situation, you want to go to that person.

Kitty: What do you think that comment does?

Sinead: Yeah, what's true, actually?

Kitty: Because what that comment does is it's like, um, say people go, oh, hi, they meet you as a couple.

Kitty: Hi, Sam.

Kitty: What do you do?

Kitty: I work in TV.

Kitty: Kitty, what do you do?

Kitty: Oh, I'm immense.

Kitty: I work with women and their menstrual cycles.

Kitty: Oh Jesus.

Sinead: So God, when we talk about that, and I'm like, oh, OK if, yeah, if you don't want to, that's fine.

Kitty: But I'm just like, that's fine.

Kitty: I can just say there's a lot of discomfort.

Kitty: I'm not going to push it, absolutely not push that station with you, because I'm actually when I'm out.

Kitty: But and like that, why do I want to try and convince you that what I do is?

Kitty: ******* amazing.

Sinead: Yeah, I know.

Sinead: But like even even at that stage, like it's it is it is funny where now it's totally talked about like so much more now it's still got a long way to go.

Sinead: But like, it's a lot more spoken about in in the sports world.

Sinead: It's not more spoken about in in gyms.

Sinead: Even on Instagram you can see it.

Sinead: On a biology, yeah.

Kitty: Despair.

Sinead: You got it?

Sinead: Yeah, you need to grip feed in the energetics and.

Kitty: For me, that's where I'm like this is where a lot of.

Kitty: Blocks are happening because a lot of people are living in the world, either so in the spirit world or so in the the the natural world, the material world, just and so then there is this body and spirit disconnection.

Kitty: So you know you like, I say, say Red Alchemy.

Kitty: My course.

Kitty: Around the menstrual cycle is the spirit, the science and the sacredness.

Sinead: It's interesting that you they love that.

Sinead: Yeah, because I'm like she's speaking.

Sinead: That was my experience when I was started getting into it.

Sinead: I was like, I feel like the elite athlete, like hate to perform with your cycle or there's like super, you know, very.

Kitty: People take their face blood.

Sinead: Yeah.

Sinead: Literally.

Sinead: Like, you know, very.

Sinead: Yeah, Exactly.

Sinead: Which for everything.

Sinead: Yeah, exactly.

Sinead: But there was I was like there's nowhere for I guess the people like me who I'm like I'm interested in both and I want to do both or even and you might be somewhere along that spectrum both like I think it's that's what I mean I was like I actually think where the the beauty and where the medicine really comes from is being able to integrate the two and that's I think it's happening more and more.

Sinead: You know, the fact that you're doing it in red alchemy for your kind of mentor mentorship, and you know, even the fact that I'm doing, you can see it come out in other places where I think people are starting to recognize there's a need for both and still might come about it exactly.

Sinead: And you know, I know that where it gets bandied around so much, but I do think it's really important.

Sinead: There's a time and place for everything you know.

Kitty: You think it gets bashed around?

Sinead: I think.

Sinead: I think maybe on a consumer level the importance of the word is misconstrued.

Sinead: So it's you.

Sinead: Do you know what I mean?

Sinead: Where like it's used by people in an in an.

Sinead: You're thrown in holistic for and it's stuffy you know or maybe or maybe people like oh so holistic means woo woo are kind of like not medical do you know we're actually holistic is like no it's whole body like it's it's exactly it's the you know So I think maybe there's maybe that's me projecting my own biases on it but I do feel like maybe there is a.

Kitty: I would agree with that because, look, I'm.

Kitty: Like I said on this fertility journey and I, you know I've been doing a fertility protocol there that's very science based.

Kitty: And you know I've had to take different injections and different medications and stuff which was hard for me initially because I really, I can hellis, I can spiritualize myself into pregnancy and and I by goddess did I try.

Kitty: But it turns out I really my hormones.

Kitty: There was so much cortisol in my body.

Sinead: That help and and and also just like that's what I was saying to you like say that for women who don't have this dream like exactly.

Kitty: Relationship with their with their cycle or their body and it's kind of just going well if I can bring some level of healing and ease easier make.

Kitty: I I suffered chronic pain.

Kitty: I had, I was bed bound every month and even the the painkillers and just mental health was really challenged.

Kitty: And I felt bad about the void, like when Alexandra open when I was on my training in Spain or in Italy, and she just said to me, Kitty, darling, you're an ecstatic, the void is gone, she goes.

Kitty: Being an ecstatic, it's going to be your greatest gift, but it's also your greatest curse.

Kitty: Because feel like you know, things can be orgasmic and then things can be hell, you know?

Kitty: Yeah.

Sinead: So it's just this thing of feeling so magnificently that you can't feel of you just a good all the time.

Kitty: And then not feel for me.

Kitty: I couldn't have the brunt of my menstrual cycle, whereas now like.

Kitty: I don't take I, I maybe every 1416 cycles I might get an absolute banger and I have to take small book.

Kitty: Then I just lash on a few cast royal packs to support the liver.

Sinead: You know if I exactly.

Kitty: After my bleed or whatever.

Kitty: But yeah, I think, I think that's the thing.

Kitty: It's it's it's informed choice.

Kitty: That's what this work is to me.

Kitty: Choice.

Kitty: Now that's why I say if knowledge is power, wisdom is informed choice because of that knowledge.

Kitty: If you have that the power and knowledge, then you're able to go into your healthcare provider and say that's why in Z.

Kitty: And I even see it with my own fertility protocol, I've said to him, now you you have me down as if I'm ovulating on day 12 or 13.

Kitty: Like I don't I'm ovulating on day 10.

Kitty: So I'm taking my trigger shot 8 and he's like.

Kitty: Okay.

Kitty: Let's try it the next month.

Sinead: You know like whereas he's not just going shut up you what would you know like he he here, like I said from recently, brilliant.

Kitty: Yeah, because he knows that I'm really interested in my body and I'm really invested in it.

Kitty: Like I said from recently, I have a bit of pain in my left fallopian tube.

Kitty: I wonder could there be a cyst there?

Kitty: And he's like, we'll come in and we'll give it a scan like.

Kitty: So to be list, listen to now that's it.

Kitty: Somebody specialized in Women's Health and fertility and and that's what I've paid for.

Kitty: But it's so that's so lovely for me to have that, that that invalidated by a professional that in the field that you know, now the rare other things, when I said from, oh, I went to a kinesiologist, he said my pituitary gland is completely shot and that's why my insomnia is so bad And he just went, oh, did he?

Kitty: And I was like, if my flipping pituitary gland is out, I'm not going to sleep.

Kitty: And if I'm not sleeping, like what?

Kitty: Like?

Kitty: And that's the thing.

Kitty: Like I was at a point where my insomnia was so chronic that if you've got seriously bad insomnia and this might be helpful for people that are trying for on the path to motherhood or parenthood.

Kitty: Your circadian rhythm is in a really bad way and it's just gets very confused.

Kitty: So it won't send the correct messages to your ovaries to release the egg and tell your body to to get pregnant and stay pregnant.

Kitty: Because there's one thing releasing an egg and creating an embryo, Well, if your body's like, oh, hang on this, this place is a mess.

Kitty: You know, like so for me, knowing this about my my body.

Kitty: It meant I was going right.

Kitty: Well if he's not going to listen to me on that I have this kinesiologist but that's the doctor then from the medical background who doesn't.

Kitty: He's like I don't care what someone from alternative Med like alternative medicine has to say because I trump what he has to say.

Kitty: But for me, I'm actually because what I did was work also with him and his.

Kitty: Holistic approach and my was gone with within 6-7 weeks and like the he he said he muscle tested and he said my pituitary gland I'm trying.

Kitty: This is Stephen Rohan.

Kitty: I'm probably saying it name and he's in Dunleary so definitely he's he's in.

Kitty: I'm back with him now because with the bereavement, I wanted some support, you know, and he's been.

Kitty: Definitely Stephen or OUGHAN or something like that but he's a kinesiologist in Dunleary so anyone who can get to Dunleary get to that man because he's just incredible.

Kitty: But he when last year he said to me there is no way you can conceive if your pituitary gland is is out like that because he's it's it's the communicator for sleep and.

Kitty: So then he said we need to get you to about 70% your pituitary gland to function at about 70%.

Kitty: So after I had my laparoscopy, I my left tube was blocked and I just went deep into like really caring for myself and I was meticulous with my sleep hygiene and and I went back to him and he said I can't believe it, it's at 100% and didn't think we'd get you there.

Kitty: I thought we'd plateau at maybe 70 or 80.

Kitty: And it would be a real slow climb now I still can't that.

Kitty: That's something that in my cycle around ovulation, I can have a little bit of insomnia issues.

Kitty: But I know now I have to get out and exercise.

Kitty: And by that I just mean an evening walk with the doggie down is wonderful because it just gets me away from the laptop, the phone.

Kitty: And especially now, after last night was holding space.

Sinead: I just get myself walk to the canal, yeah.

Sinead: With my feet on the land and I'm sleeping great now whereas I can go and it's it's the worst like you're so able you're able for so much more when your sleep is there but like so yeah so for people who are you know who maybe are having that challenge like I I have been definitely have a look at exploring your your circadian rhythm and.

Sinead: Here's my lads have just burst in the door, yeah, I I was wondering if you had time just before we jump off, because I'd love, and I'm sure everyone who's listening would love to hear more about Red Alchemy and kind of where they can find more information about that.

Kitty: Yeah and so my website kittymaguire.com and or my Instagram page is Kitty Maguire menstrual mentor.

Sinead: And just for anyone who's who's listening, I guess a quick one line is about alchemy is A a school to teach facilitators about how to facilitate around menstrual cycle awareness and a.

Kitty: Couple of different layers to it.

Sinead: So there's people like Okay.

Kitty: Teach primary school.

Kitty: Teach anyone.

Kitty: And that's like an an MCA informed self embodiment.

Kitty: It's about 30 hours, but it's done.

Kitty: You can do it on a self learning.

Kitty: Case or you can do it through the live calls and and that's done slowly over.

Kitty: You can do it as quick or as slow as you want and slow because you have a listening partner and you have a community and and then I have the facilitator training which is about a 6070 hour and there's an immersion in that.

Sinead: We come together this year, we're down in Bally De Hob and we're just.

Kitty: 4th of September, something like that for five days and then the mentorship is a year long.

Kitty: So what that means is difference of that is it's the facilitator program plus UM, the facilitator program plus UM.

Kitty: There's like 6 coach like one-on-one mentor sessions.

Kitty: There's UM.

Kitty: Explorations of your cycle and then there's guest teachers on that as well.

Kitty: So you're working on on your woman wound on your mother wound if that's a part of your work and and you're also working with the the big deep imposter syndrome that comes with the fear of getting yourself out into the community.

Kitty: So it's quite, it's quite rich and quite rounded and there's some business kind of aspects to it as well and so that.

Kitty: You feel equipped and able.

Kitty: So the thing about it is it's like I don't do this work for you.

Kitty: I provide the space and we work like as I say, make it clear to people, a mentor isn't there to do the work.

Kitty: It's a relationship that.

Kitty: Myself and the person has, and I just provide a space for that person to explore their creativity, to make safe mistakes and learn from them.

Kitty: Um, because sometimes I think people think, oh, I'll go and she's going to make this happen for me.

Kitty: But it's like it's very, I have to be clear that if if you show up and do the work, that's when the results happen, it's it's, you know what this work you what you get out, what you put in, you get back.

Sinead: Absolutely.

Sinead: Yeah.

Kitty: Reward you, I feel in tenfold, you give it 1% and you'll get 10 times that back, you know?

Kitty: Yeah, percent.

Kitty: It just comes back in in in gold folds.

Kitty: So yeah, yeah, stalling.

Sinead: Well, it seems absolutely incredible, So I'll make sure now in the show notes that I'll have the link and where people can find out about it.

Sinead: But look, Kitty, obviously the seagulls are kicking in now.

Sinead: Really.

Sinead: I just wanted to say thanks so much for coming on.

Sinead: You were absolutely amazing.

Sinead: Gave loads of your time there, just talking all about the work that you do and why it's my.

Kitty: Pleasure.

Sinead: I love it.

Sinead: Yeah.

Sinead: You love it.

Sinead: Me too.

Sinead: I'm like, yeah, we could talk for areas.

Sinead: But no, it's great.

Sinead: It's.

Sinead: And this is exactly why I wanted to create this podcast is to kind of have these discussions.

Sinead: And thanks.

Kitty: Huge.

Kitty: It's a huge accomplishment and it's huge work and like, it's lovely.

Kitty: It's lovely to have though.

Kitty: Thanks to you, and thanks for having.

Sinead: Yeah, I'm so glad.

Sinead: Thank you.