The Art of Shedding: Nature’s Cyclic transformation
Change and personal growth can feel uncomfortable, especially when old habits don’t fit the new you. During transitions we may feel vulnerable, unsettled, de-regulated, scared and less able to cope.
Nature’s creativity offers us models: Like us, many creatures shed what restricts them to grow … and as part of nature, we can learn from these processes to guide our own change.
Table of Contents
Shedding in Nature
In the natural world, we can find magnificent range of creative approaches to shedding the old, to make way for health, wellbeing, and new cycles ahead.
Let’s explore how and why different beings in nature shed, and perhaps notice which of these feel resonant with your own life experience.
Natural shedding examples:
Trees shedding their leaves in Autumn to conserve energy for the cold winter
Snakes shed their skin to grow and remove parasites. This process is called ecdysis.
Birds molt feathers to replace worn-out ones and maintain flight efficiency. This occurs annually or biannually.
Crabs shed their exoskeleton to grow and allow for a larger body size.
Many lizards shed their skin periodically to remove parasites and promote growth.
Frogs often shed their outer layer to keep skinmoist and healthy and maintain optimal respiration and hydration.
Insects like caterpillars shed/molt multiple times before becoming butterflies. Each stage allows for growth and development.
Male deer shed their antlers annually, which is influenced by hormonal changes and helps in regrowth.
Turtles slowly shed their scutes (shell plates) to maintain a healthy shell over time.
Rabbits shed fur seasonally to adapt to temperature changes and stay comfortable in varying climates.
INTUITIVE INSPIRATION:
The deer is an animal of grace, instinct and wisdom. She appears in this artwork to help impart these gifts, alongside the healing energy of simply loving ourselves, just as we are.
KEY WORDS:
Natural Instinct
Beautiful Universe
Grace
CHOOSE YOUR ART PRINT SIZE OPTION:
🎨 Art prints on luxurious, matte-textured Hahnemule Bamboo 290 GSM paper, using archival quality giclee printing techniques 🎨
💖 Professionally printed, packaged and posted by my trusted Australian supplier 💖
💌 Smaller prints will arrive packaged flat, larger prints may be rolled for postage. Frame not included 💌
SMALL Fine Art Print: 8” X 10” (approx 20 × 25 cm) = $55
MEDIUM Fine Art Print: 12” X 16” (approx 30 × 40 cms) = $95
LARGE Fine Art Print: 16” X 20” (approx 40 × 50 cms) = $150
What do we Shed As Humans?
As humans, we naturally shed to grow, heal and renew, sometimes without even knowing it, other times we’re highly aware of a challenging transformation occurring within us.
Over the span of 7-10 years, a large majority of the cells in our body are shed and replaced with new ones, including our skin and hair, the internal lining of our mouth, airways and digestive tract, and our womb lining, to name a few.
Menstrual Shedding & Perimenopause
For menstruating folx, we cyclically shed the lining of our wombs approximately every month, although timing can be very different between individuals and our life phases. For some, the menstrual cycle can bring significant emotional, cognitive shifts and capacity shifts and for others, shedding happens without much fuss.
Each month, we can track how our menstrual bleeds transform us emotionally, cognitively, creatively and spiritually, making a deeper connection with our recurring seasons, helping us predict and become aware of our shifting capacities across our cycle.
As we reach perimenopause, we meet a deeper layer of menstrual shedding, with an overall decline in our hormones; and cyclic tracking becomes more haphazard.
Non-linear shedding in Perimenopause
Before our natural cycles become rhythms, we may experience awkward stages of liminal, not-linear growth. These shifts impact each of us uniquely, spanning from mild curiosity in some, to outright savage life upheaval in others.
Puberty, Motherhood and Menopause are three okey hormonally led life stages that often bringing tumultuous upheaval, before the skies clear into a more settled rhythm.
While many know Menopause as the official ceasing of periods, Perimenopause is the 5-10 year-long lead up, involving the chaotic shedding (and sometimes spiking) of hormones that, for some folx who menstruate, can bring a huge amount of life upheaval across various health domains.
It’s a capacity shift of extraordinary depth, a literal rewiring of the brain and body systems, to make way for a new way of being as a post-menopausal person.
For neurodivergent folx this transition can be extra challenging, with new research finding that Autistics, ADHD’ers and trauma survivors can be more severely impacted by the shedding of key chemicals needed by their brains, to process effectively (myself included!)
This calls for a multi-pronged approach to bolster our capacity and processing, in this time of great shedding.
It’s where spiritual, creative endeavours, community and rites of passage can becomes more important to help midwife us safely through our transformation.
Image: In my journal - A tranquil place to restore
Help in the chaos zone: Perimenopausal Shedding Allies
As an Autistic and ADHD artist, arts therapist, and soulful educator currently deep in the throes of experiencing (and researching) perimenopausal shedding myself, here are some of the ways I’ve found helpful to support big transitions, across various domains of life.
Shedding Allies in Perimenopause
Social Allies:
In times of transformation, many of us instinctually turn to others for help: Those who care, those who help, those who have similar lived experience, those who have come through the other side — these are the people who can remind us who we are and who we’re becoming.
Reaching out to safe family and friends, finding aligned professional expertise (read: non-gaslighty!), or joining a community group based on your interests and experiences (either in person or online), can all be much needed lifelines to be feeling supported during life transitions.
Cognitive Allies:
When I first hit perimenopause, I thought I might be in the early stages of dementia, with significant brain fog, working memory loss, inability to retrieve words and constantly losing things. Turns out, like many neurodivergent folx in perimenopause, my existing, overlapping ADHD executive functioning challenges became dialled up, due to the shedding of hormones needed for optimal cognitive function.
Some tips to help bolster cognitive challenges during perimenopause can be to use calendars, whiteboards, reminder apps and routines to reduce cognitive load. You can also ‘habit stack’ (add a new helpful habit to an existing one, like listening to calming meditation prior to bedtime) or ‘body double’ with a loved one to undertake tasks alongside one another, for company and accountability.
Body Allies:
Meaningful movement and playful exercise (something we enjoy doing, like yoga or bushwalking or swimming), can help reconnect us with our changing bodies, using gentleness, joy and curiosity, rather than punishment to build strength and resilience in perimenopause.
Somatic therapies can offer gentle, body‑led regulation of symptoms like anxiety, while HRT—when discussed with a trained clinician—can be an effective, evidence‑based option to support hormonal balance, alongside movement and therapeutic practices.
Creative Allies:
A return to creativity is a natural remedy people use in times of great transition, and perimenopause is no exception. Engaging in creative expression - from crocheting or doodling while watching tv, or attending a weekly clay class, is a way for our minds and hands to process in non-linear ways, and bring back a sense of agency and pleasure within the challenges of big transformations.
If you’re returning to creativity after years of decades of hiatus, you might like to re-engage in creative experiences you enjoyed as a child. Reigniting our lifelong passions can feel both cathartic and uplifting, whilst creating joyful, restorative pathways in our brains, and resource ourselves during change.
Spiritual Allies:
When shit hits the fan and we dive to the depths of ourselves, reigniting trust in a higher, benevolent force that created and holds us, can bring much needed trust and hope during tumultuous times.
Spirituality needn't be about religion — it can be a quiet leaning into being held by a universe with billions of years of cyclical, rhythmic up-levelling, alongside an awareness that our human and non-human ancestors, over generations and eons, have woven the world that sustains us now.
Writing a letter to your future self asking for guidance, or creating a simple, reverent offering to nature, can be ways we nourish ourselves through intimate connection with the creative force running through all being, uniting us as we rise, fall and transform anew, in our own unique timing.
Combining Your Helpful Allies:
Combining some of the allies I’ve shared, alongside any other healthy allies you identify with, can assist and bolster wellbeing during transformational times.
Enjoying yoga with a friend, practicing spiritual connection on a nature walk, joining a journaling group for creative expression, can all be ways to habit-stack nourishment and restoration, when we’re feeling overwhelmed and unsure who we are amongst change.
Image: In my journal - Peri Storm Front
Join me in a Creative Shedding Workshop 💫
This June in our online Peri-Women-Pause (PWP) workshop, we lean into the lived experience of Shedding via gentle education and a practical therapeutic arts guided session.
If you’d like to deepen your sense of self-understanding and shared awareness, join our PWP community for monthly restorative sessions to regularly bolster your wellbeing, or join us casually for just this workshop.
We’d love to invite you into our warm, caring, creative fold.
With care and creativity,
Chrissy 💖✨🎨
