my (un)announcement

...or a note on the big thing that I'm not doing.

Hello dear reader, 

I come to you with a slightly upside down approach to this newsletter, in that I’m going to share with you something that I am not going to be doing.

An (un)announcement of sorts? 

In March this year I was accepted to study at The New School of the Anthropocene (NSOTA) to develop a body of work around the menstrual cycle as a tool in social change. But this July I’ve had to turn the offer down. 

In part, I’m sharing this because I’m absolutely gutted about this decision. But even though I’m not doing it, I could have done it, and I’m proud to have even been offered the opportunity at all. I feel like I’m both commiserating and celebrating myself in putting this (un)announcement out into the world. 

Right now - though it feels a little dramatic to admit this - I am definitely grieving this decision.

For the longest time, I’ve wanted to dig deeper into all my research around the menstrual cycle and I could never find an institution that matched my values (or would accept my lack of actual qualifications!) until I found NSOTA. 

NSOTA is part institution, part experiment. An anti-university driven by a desire to do academia differently. The emphasis is on trans-disciplinary, non-hierarchical education. You tell the school what you want to do and they match you with academics, artists, and other wild-minds who gently, but rigorously, supervise your work and support you to bring something to fruition. It might be a tapestry, a community radio show, a boat (someone really did build a coracle last year!) or just a plain old thesis. It’s been running for three years now and I have desperately wanted to go there ever since its inception. To my tentacular, giddy mind it sounded like heaven. 

I was hoping to expand my work on menstrual cycle awareness as embodied resistance to systems of harm, but also to go further; to spin out into Báyò Akómoláfé’s ideas on post-activism(s) and to continue to queer the cycle beyond the normative narratives… but, you know, potentially get maybe a little sci-fi-weird along the way. I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess, after all.¹

I wanted to continue to ask questions such as (but not limited to): beyond health, reproduction and gynocentricity, what powers might the menstrual cycle hold? How might the menstrual cycle queer our experience of time? What might the cycle teach us about mutual aid, interdependence and our connections to the earth and the more-than-human world? What are our menstrual futures? 

When I look out at all the activism taking place to create change in the world, I’m surprised that relatively few people are talking about the role of the menstrual cycle. I wanted to connect with other people from different disciplines and cross-pollinate, especially those engaged in ecological and climate justice. I thought that maybe NSOTA might be a good step towards this, given that the common thread between everyone who studies there is a curiosity about how we engage with the world’s social and ecological crises. 

I’ve been writing, running workshops and generally nerding out about this stuff since 2018 and practicing cycle awareness for 15 years, but I’ve always been on the periphery of this ‘movement’. On a thoroughly egoic tip I just wanted to get my ideas seen by more people! 

Some of you will know that there’s always been a little part of me that wondered whether I would like to write a book about reimagining the menstrual cycle. I kind of hoped that NSOTA might give me the right combination of accountability, confidence, challenge and nurture to start doing just that, even if it was just a rough draft that I could hone in the years to come. 

And I wanted to be challenged and have my ideas destabilised. One of the things that often frustrates me is that the menstrual cycle awareness movement mostly seems to talk to itself. It’s a bubble. I may be on the periphery of that bubble, but I know I am definitely under its protective veil too! 

So why did I decide to give up such an amazing opportunity? 

Frankly, the trinity of time, money and energy are all, at least for the moment,  in a period of decline.

Things are looking like they’re going to get a bit more precarious for us financially in the Autumn. My partner’s work is looking less stable and I may need to find another job on top of the work I’m already doing as a celebrant.  

Equally, I’ve been crafting funerals now for two and half years and I’m finally starting to gain some traction, but I really need to start putting in more time and energy to build this up (especially if I don’t want to have to find the aforementioned second job!). I’ve also been gathering a small crew of people around me who are thinking about death, dying and funerals in a similar way to me. After about a year of discussions, we’re at the stage where we are going to form a collective together - which is massively exciting for me - but this will also take some of that precious time and energy. Expect to hear more on this in the season to come.

Having been sick for most of the Winter and Spring with something that was maybe Covid, I am still navigating longer periods of low energy and fatigue. I’ve also got a shit-tonne of strange symptoms that I can only assume are the inklings of perimenopause beginning to rewire my systems.

All of this has forced me to get a lot more real with myself about how much juggling I can really, feasibly, do. The prospect of taking on something that was potentially the equivalent of a part time Masters on top of all of this uncertainty just seemed kind of daft, as much as I spent the previous half of this year pretending otherwise. 

One of my other reasons for sharing this all is that I want to model that sometimes we can’t Do It All.

Social media sees us sharing the big wins, but not the losses. Despite the messages that we’re so often fed, sometimes we can’t Live Our Best Lives or Smash All Our Goals or Live Our Dreams or whatever is late stage capitalism’s new mantra. 

I’ve been seeing so much coaching rhetoric about working with the menstrual cycle to achieve stuff. Coaches talking about how they manage to have a great business; spend time with their kids; be a brilliant partner and still have time for their hobbies all by working with their cycle….and I’m like: how the fuck do they do that?! Because it just doesn’t seem realistic to me.² And if I see another post on Instagram that is an extra long to-do list with a load of ticks next to it I will cry.

I’m obviously not the only one having to make hard decisions.

My chronically ill friends will know this stuff intimately: that sometimes we have to rigorously assess what’s possible and what’s not and that might mean giving up, either temporarily or permanently, on some of our hopes and plans. So will many mothers, single parents and all those simply working all the hours already to make things work.

Equally, across the world there are folks who will not get to reach their potential because of poverty, war, genocide and a myriad of flagrant injustices. (It makes my blood boil sometimes to think of all the brilliance we will never bear witness to while at the same time we have one middle aged white billionaire man who gets to indulge his fantasies of going to Mars. Fuck you, Elon Musk.)³

I also count myself as extremely privileged to be able to do something that I love, even if it’s not everything. It’s not as if I’m giving up on all my dreams, I still get to be a celebrant and that is some of the most beautiful, potent work that I’ve ever had the honour of doing. And is writing a book what I really want or is it just the neo-liberal dream I’ve been fed my entire life? (Absolutely no judgement if you’ve written a book or want to write one. Books are great and have a huge capacity to create change in the world, I’m just musing.) 

Cliché though it is these days, sometimes we really do have to surrender to an ending to allow something new to begin. My cycle has taught me over the years that there is grace in letting things go.

That’s not to say that I won’t pick this NSOTA offer up again. Maybe things will change? Maybe next year?

And I won’t be dropping these queer trails entirely. You’ll still find me musing (even more slowly) on this stuff  because that’s what I do and I don’t think I would ever fully be able to stop. 

But what I would like to continue doing in the meantime; what really brings me joy, is building affinities with other people interested in menstrual futures, menstrual justice and cycle awareness. Speaking on the Imagining Menstrual Futures panel last month made me realise how many of us are out there exploring these themes and I’m incredibly grateful for the web of connection that is building in these intersecting fields. I won’t be dropping my threads entirely, but I may have to cast off into the web’s further recesses at least over the next year or so while I reconfigure. Please drop us a line in the comments if you’re exploring these realms too - it would be great to see who else is out there. 

Right, I think I should send this before I change my mind and hit delete. 

Love, as ever,

Lottie X

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P.S. PALESTINE. Two important things.

I’ve been signed up to Toi Marie’s newsletter for a while and she shared this brilliant Google Drive of texts on and from Palestine. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zqyxFMrGP3fFifjAC75wk5QjMMYC96eo 

This is a vast archive! Enjoy. (I’ve been dipping into Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique and will definitely be coming back for more).

Finally, the genocide in Gaza continues to decimate Palestianian lives and livelihoods. I know you know this. And many of you are already very engaged and will be familiar with the ways in which families are reaching out to ask for funds. I promised Rima that I would share her Go Fund Me. If you’re stuck for what to do in the face of this devastation, please consider chipping in some cash. Thank you.

1. Yes, a bad Donna Haraway joke for the nerds. Although, honestly, I think I concluded before that I’d kind of like to be both. A Cybergoddess/goddexx. Sounds good to me.

2. I do have some thoughts about how this is possible for them, but I’m going to withhold these for another day!

3. And Jeff Bezos. And Bernard Arnault. And Mark Fuckerberg. And all the others. And fuck you, Forbes, for celebrating them.