Sacred Retreat: Using Natural Cycles to Recharge Your Life

Orleane (Conversations with Laarkmaa), a former practicing psychologist, examines the spiritual meaning of menstruation and the way it’s been devalued within patriarchal cultures in this provocative but uneven book. She develops her analysis using original research that formed her dissertation, expanding the argument around menstruation’s devaluation anthropologically by reviewing the understanding of menstruation in other cultures. She shifts back and forth between a biological perspective and a broader one that considers religion, interpersonal relationships, and cultural critique (“The real curse in Western patriarchal society is the unrealistic valuing of linear progress and constancy”). As a result, she covers a lot of ground, some of it already well-plowed. Critiques of patriarchy and invocations of the divine feminine are well established, and her understanding of Christianity comes across as surface-level at times (as when she makes the unsubstantiated claim that Mary Magdalene is universally recognized as the wife and disciple of Jesus). Orleane’s overly broad generalizations on these topics obscure the value of her central intriguing argument about the organic and creative value of women’s natural cycles, a view that is worth talking more about. Though the book aims to recharge women’s interest in their natural cycles, there is too little prescriptive advice and too much theorizing for that goal to be met. [em](Sept.) [/em]