I used to think creativity was something I had to force.
I had a content calendar. I had scheduled writing blocks. I had accountability partners and timers and all the productivity tools a woman who wants to stay consistent is supposed to have. And still, there were weeks when I sat down to create and nothing came. I felt dry, uninspired, like I was wringing water from a stone.
Then I started paying attention to my cycle.
What I discovered changed everything. And it's something women have known for thousands of years, long before we started scheduling ourselves into exhaustion.
Your creativity has a rhythm. And it follows the moon.
The New Moon and the Menstrual Phase: The Same Energy
In my program Her Blood is Gold, one of the first things I teach is that the menstrual cycle and the lunar cycle mirror each other. The new moon holds the same energy as the menstrual phase: inward, quiet, fertile with unseen possibility.
This is not a coincidence. This is design.
Indigenous traditions across cultures recognized this. Women's bleeding time was not something to hide or push through. It was sacred time. It was the time of dreaming, of receiving, of planting seeds in the dark.
When we started treating our cycles as inconveniences instead of invitations, we lost something profound. We lost access to one of our most powerful creative portals.
The menstrual and new moon phase is the beginning, not the absence, of creativity.
Why Women Create Differently Than the World Expects
We live in a culture that rewards linear, consistent output. The same energy every day. The same productivity every week. But women's bodies don't work that way, and neither do our creative wells.
We cycle. We expand and contract. We have seasons.
When I'm in my follicular or ovulatory phase, I can write fast, ideate freely, and feel the electricity of new ideas. When I'm in my luteal or menstrual phase, that same approach leaves me depleted and creatively blocked.
For years, I thought something was wrong with me. I thought I lacked discipline.
I didn't lack discipline. I lacked cycle literacy.
Three Creative Invitations for Your New Moon Window
If you're in your menstrual or new moon phase right now, here is what I invite you to try instead of pushing for output.
1. Dream on paper without editing.
During the new moon and menstrual phase, your access to your subconscious is heightened. Ideas that feel too big, too strange, or too tender in other phases are closer to the surface now. Let them come without judgment. Write without editing. Draw without erasing. This is not the time to produce. It is the time to receive.
2. Rest as a creative act.
Rest is not the opposite of creativity. Rest is where creativity is born. When you allow your body to slow down during this phase, you are giving your nervous system the space it needs to synthesize everything you've been learning and experiencing. The ideas that come after a period of true rest are often your most original.
3. Tend to what already exists.
The new moon is a wonderful time to return to creative projects that feel incomplete, to edit what you've already made, to organize your ideas. Instead of starting something new, tend to what is already growing. Water the seeds already planted.
The 1% Principle
One of the things I share most often with my clients is what I call the 1% principle.
You do not need a complete creative overhaul. You do not need to revolutionize your entire relationship with your cycle in one cycle. You need to shift 1%.
This week, rest 1% more than you think you should. This moon, honor your bleeding time 1% more intentionally. This creative season, give yourself 1% more permission to receive instead of produce.
Small shifts, sustained over time, create the biggest transformations.
I have watched women go from feeling creatively bankrupt to overflowing, not because they added more to their plates, but because they finally started working with their bodies instead of against them.
This Is What Your Body Already Knows
You don't have to learn something new. You have to remember something ancient.
Your body knows how to be creative. Your body knows how to rest. Your body knows how to dream.
The new moon is an invitation. Your cycle is an invitation. And every time you answer it, you come home to yourself a little more.
I made this for you, and I believe your healing is possible.
Ready to start creating with your cycle instead of against it? Learn more about menstrual cycle coaching and how we work together: windsofchangesac.com/synchronize
And if this episode landed for you, I'd love to hear about it. Share it with a woman in your life who needs this reminder.