In this episode, I sit down with poet, essayist and academic Natalie Rose Dyer to explore the ideas behind her groundbreaking book The Menstrual Imaginary in Literature: Notes on a Wild Fluidity.

We begin with Natalie's own journey into this work - what drew her to menstruation as a site of philosophical, political, and creative inquiry, and how her doctoral research evolved into a call to reimagine menstrual experience beyond pathology, shame, and silence.

Together we explore the menstrual imaginary as a "wild zone of unacknowledged creativity," discussing menstrual knowledge, embodied knowing, feminist writing, and the cyclical body as a source of softly rebellious wisdom. We linger with writers such as Hélène Cixous and the tradition of women writing through and from the body, tracing how poetry, blood, creativity, and sexual difference intertwine.

The conversation then turns toward Natalie's more recent work and the posthuman horizons emerging from her thinking. We explore what becomes possible when menstruation is understood not only as a bodily process, but as a site of connection with matter, ecosystems, non-human life, and new forms of becoming.

A rich conversation on embodiment, creativity, feminist resistance, wildness, and the futures that become imaginable when we learn to listen to the wisdom of cyclical life.

More about Natalie: Natalie teaches into the Creative Writing Program at The University of Melbourne where she is Honorary Research Fellow. Natalie is the recipient of The Peter Steele Poetry Award 2021, and was highly commended for the 2024 Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize. She is presently completing work on her first collection towards publication this year. Natalie’s poetry is widely published in literary journals including Meanjin Quarterly, Australian Poetry and Cordite Poetry Review. Her book Notes on a Wild Fluidity was published with Palgrave (2020). Nothing But a Fine Nerve Meter; New Maps at the Planetary Turn was recently published (2025) with Revolutionaries Press. Natalie issues a call to re-write ourselves as planetary players, tethered to place yet attuned to fault lines of poetic rupture, care, and resistance.

Enjoy!

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🌟 Join my softly rebellious on Substack - subscribe here.

🌟 Sign up here to receive a copy of my free workshop about The wild and poetic anatomy of the female body.

🌟 Book a Holistic Pelvic Care session with me in person in London or online, find out more here.

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💛 The Soft Rebellion Podcast is created and hosted by Flurina Dominique Thali. I love hearing from you. To contact me, email softrebellion@flurinathali.com.

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Find out more about Natalia:

- Follow her on Instagram @natalierosedyer

- Visit her webpage here.

Credits:

- Intro/outro music – ‘Hymn for Jim’ by Aspyrian: Robin Porter –saxophone, Jack Gillen – guitar, Matt Parkinson – drums, composed by Robin Porter, listen to the full track here, graphic: Annina Thali, for more information click here

Have you ever wondered if your body is speaking a language you’ve just never been taught how to understand? And what if your hormonal or pelvic health challenges were actually an invitation into deeper alignment with yourself?

In today’s conversation - the final round of the Healthy Vagina Project - I am sitting down with Claire Dabreo. Claire is a Five Element acupuncturist and women’s health specialist with over 15 years of experience supporting fertility, hormonal balance, pregnancy, postpartum recovery, and intimate wellbeing. Through the lens of Chinese medicine, she helps women better understand the rhythms of their bodies and restore balance with practical, holistic care.

In this conversation we talked about:

💫 What led Claire to become the women’s health practitioner she is today; her first experience of Chinese Medicine when she experienced premenstrual tension as a teenager, and how acupuncture found her at a “transitioning threshold moment” in her life, supported her to “step out of the mess” and to unravel and find closer to her soul`s purpose and her creative flow.

💫 Chinese medicine and its map and principles “meridians”, what 5-Element Acupuncture is - which is Claire`s practice - and why it is such a potent holistic approach for vaginal and pelvic health.

💫 How physical symptoms are signals for something which is “disrupted” on deeper levels and how in acupuncture those symptoms can be seen as codes to find out where the energetic workings of the body need support - as ultimately this way of working is about creating conditions for the body to heal itself, not about fixing, it allows “everything to come into balance”, treating the whole person not just the symptoms.

💫 The importance to name the emotional aspect of health challenges, especially pelvic health, as much as the physical. Claire calls the the pelvic bowl and womb our “sacred witchy space”, which I love :-), and we talked about how pelvicchealth is about stepping into our creativity and yes to ourself and our soul s alignment.

Enjoy!

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🌟 Join my softly rebellious on Substack - subscribe here.

🌟 Sign up here to receive a copy of my free workshop about The wild and poetic anatomy of the female body.

🌟 Book a Holistic Pelvic Care session with me in person in London or online, find out more here.

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💛 The Soft Rebellion Podcast is created and hosted by Flurina Dominique Thali. I love hearing from you. To contact me, email softrebellion@flurinathali.com.

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Links:

- Flurina Dominique Thali & The Soft Rebellion: @flurina.thali / www.flurinathali.com

- My guest, Claire Dabreo, you can find her webpage here and here, follow her on Instagram and Facebook @thelondonacupuncturist and @TheHarmonyPrinciple

Dear Listeners,

The Healthy Vagina Project is gradually cycling itself to an end … but not quite!

Today I have the great joy to introduce you to Natalie Meddings! She has been supporting women through birth for over twenty years as a mother, doula and active birth teacher. She is also the author of How to Have a Baby and Why Homebirth Matters. Natalie approaches birth with deep respect for the body’s innate intelligence and sees it as an ongoing journey of learning and trust.

In this episode, we explore why birth support matters so deeply - not only for how we give birth, but for how we come to trust ourselves in the process. We talk about birth as an initiation: not just into motherhood for our babies, but into a deeper relationship with ourselves. We also touch on the very physical reality that the way we birth, and how we experience our births, can influence the health and state of our vaginas and pelvic bowls.

In this conversation we explored:

💫 How modern life can leave us disconnected from our bodies - “heads on walking sticks”- and how this affects the way we approach birth.

💫 The tendency to theorise about birth while remaining disconnected from its true physicality and intensity.

💫 Natalie’s perspective that a healthy birth is in the mother’s gift, and that the mother’s body is designed to work on the baby’s behalf - giving women every reason to trust themselves completely.

💫 How to navigate the negative narratives surrounding childbirth today, and how understanding the anatomy and physiology of birth can help women and birthing people approach birth with confidence and common sense.

💫 A deeper (and delightfully geeky) dive into the science and mechanics of childbirth - from oxytocin and the brain–womb connection, to the importance of movement in labour, and how birth is a process of releasing tension so the baby can mould its way out of the mother’s body.

💫 The role of a doula, and how our respective work - doula support and holistic pelvic care- intersect and complement one another in supporting women through birth and beyond.

Enjoy!

BIG LOVE,

Flurina

If you’re curious to explore natural approaches to support menstrual health challenges today’s episode is for you. My guest, Melinda McDougall, is a registered Medical Herbalist specialising in women's health and runs a busy online clinic seeing patients across the UK and beyond. She combines the latest scientific research into botanical medicines with the traditional knowledge women have used for centuries to manage their health.

Melinda shares a treasure trove of herbal information about how to improve irregular periods, heavy and painful menstruation, endometriosis, as well as how to reduce stress, and help your body to feel better overall!

In this conversation we explored:

- Melinda`s story and what led her to become a medical herbalist and why she decided to specialise in the field of women’s health.

- The roots of medical herbalism in indigenous practices and knowledge and how plants have always been “the people’s medicine”.

- Why medical herbalism is such a profound and potent holistic model to understand health and support our female and menstruating bodies beyond symptom management.

- Various menstrual health challenges as well as endometriosis and how medical herbalism can be of support in these situations.

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🌟 Join my softly rebellious on Substack - subscribe here.

🌟 Sign up here to receive a copy of my free workshop about The wild and poetic anatomy of the female body.

🌟 Book a Holistic Pelvic Care session with me in person in London or online, find out more here.

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💛 The Soft Rebellion Podcast is created and hosted by Flurina Dominique Thali. I love hearing from you. To contact me, email softrebellion@flurinathali.com.

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Links:

- Flurina Dominique Thali & The Soft Rebellion: @flurina.thali / www.flurinathali.com

- My guest, Melinda McDougall: You can find her webpage here

Credits:

Intro/outro music – ‘Hymn for Jim’ by Aspyrian: Robin Porter – saxophone, Jack Gillen – guitar, Matt Parkinson – drums, composed by Robin Porter, listen to the full track here, graphic: Annina Thali, for more information click here

Yes, how do rites of passage shape women’s lives?

In this episode, former homebirth midwife, teacher, writer, and menstrual, childbirth, and menopause educator Jane Hardwicke Collings joins me to explore how menstrual shame, birth trauma, and menopause have shaped women’s identities for generations — and how we can reclaim these rites of passage as sources of power rather than pain.

Together we explored and talked about …

💫 Jane’s journey — the breadcrumbs she followed that led her to become the woman and leader she is today, and how “suddenly everything made sense” when her midwifery practice met the art of shamanism.

💫 A powerful teaching Jane shares: “How we move through our rites of passage directly influences how we live our lives.” She speaks in depth about the blood rites and the women’s mysteries, guiding us into a deeper understanding of these sacred transitions.

💫 We also explore the negative cultural narratives surrounding menstruation, childbirth, and menopause — the medicalisation and pathologising of the female body and its life phases. Jane shares what happens when we do not consciously honour our transitions — from menarche (our first bleed) to motherhood and menopause — and how these experiences silently teach us what our culture believes about women’s value and worth.

💫 As Jane says, “The menstrual cycle is running your life, whether you pay attention to it or not.” So we might as well turn toward it. We might as well listen. We might as well learn to move with it instead of against it — allowing it to guide us into deeper self-trust and embodied wisdom.

Enjoy this episode. If you have ever felt disconnected from your cycle, confused about your transitions, or longing to reclaim the sacredness of your body, this conversation is for you.

BIG LOVE and happy Sunday!

Flurina

In this grounded and liberating conversation, we speak about birth work, abortion, and reproductive justice through the lens of doula work, activism, inclusivity, and embodied experience. My guest, Sara Bakr invites us to rethink who birth support is for, what care can look like, and why bodily autonomy must be at the center of it all and a free Palestine.

Sara is a Black, mixed, pro-abortion full spectrum doula. She created Ancestral Birth out of pure necessity as people need and deserve better support through all pregnancy outcomes. In short, she radically supports and gently nurtures individuals and families through life transition. Her personal mission is to improve sexual and reproductive health services as she believes in reproductive justice and bodily autonomy for all.

In this conversation we talked about:

💫 Sara’s multicultural upbringing between Egypt, Norway, Sudan and now North London — and how learning to embrace change from a young age shaped her path into birth work.

💫 Living in a fat, mixed-ethnicity body and what it means resisting the somatic norms that teach us which bodies are acceptable and which are not.

💫 What a doula is, what full-spectrum support means, and why care must include all pregnancy outcomes.

💫 How continuous support and advocacy can impact safety, communication, pelvic health, and overall birth experiences.

💫 The financial privilege of accessing doula care and the systemic inequalities within maternity services.

💫 Abortion doula work, supporting loss without shame, and why reproductive justice and bodily autonomy are at the heart of Sara’s activism.

I hope you enjoy this conversation!

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🌟 Join my softly rebellious on Substack - subscribe here.

🌟 Sign up here to receive a copy of my free workshop about The wild and poetic anatomy of the female body.

🌟 Book a Holistic Pelvic Care session with me in person in London or online, find out more here.

---

💛 The Soft Rebellion Podcast is created and hosted by Flurina Dominique Thali. I love hearing from you. To contact me, email softrebellion@flurinathali.com.

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Links:

- Flurina Dominique Thali & The Soft Rebellion: @flurina.thali / www.flurinathali.com

- My guest, Sara Bakr: You can find her webpage here, follow Samara on Instagram here.

Credits:

Intro/outro music – ‘Hymn for Jim’ by Aspyrian: Robin Porter – saxophone, Jack Gillen – guitar, Matt Parkinson – drums, composed by Robin Porter, listen to the full track here, graphic: Annina Thali, for more information click here