Exploring Our Sacred Cycle with Mary McDonald, MA, LMFT

What Can you Do with an MA in Counseling Psychology? Mary McDonald, MA, LMFT, LCPC, an MA Counseling Psychology alumna, has her own psychotherapy practice and recently released her new book Our Sacred Cycle: A Workbook to Reclaim Your Period from PMS and PMDD.

Mary McDonald found Pacifica in a way that many of our students do: her therapist. She relates that “In 2019, when it hit me that my career as a teacher was not fulfilling me, I found a therapist who happened to be a Pacifica alumna. The relational experience she offered me was completely transformative. It empowered me to redesign my life and become the creative person I wanted to be.”

Mary pursued her MA in Counseling Psychology at Pacifica during the pandemic, an experience she describes as being “alone in my second story apartment, reflecting on profound theories and concepts, creating art, and learning about the unconscious. During every class, I would take notes and paint with watercolors and let my imagination run free. I love going back to my journals from that time and getting to feel the magic of Pacifica again.” After gaining her degree, she became a licensed private practice therapist in Montana, “a job that feels like a part of me and my natural way of being. All thanks to Pacifica!”

Mary’s book, Our Sacred Cycle, began with her thesis at Pacifica on Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder, and is “an interactive workbook that addresses how the body and mind respond to the hormonal fluctuations of a cycle and encourages women to see the immense value of living in a creative and resilient body.” She describes it as guiding “readers through six of their cycles, each period phase readers are prompted to sacrifice something along with the blood during their period. It might be a patriarchal value that is holding them back, maybe a habit that limits them, or anger that needs to come out. During ovulation, readers are prompted to create something. During each premenstrual phase, readers are prompted to sit with their emotions nonjudgmentally. Especially for those of us with PMS and PMDD, our body has a story begging to be told. The prompts facilitate the narration of that story.” With the help of active imagination activities, she guides the reader in finding “meaning within the uncomfortable sensations of the cycle, releasing “shame and anxiety” and nurturing “empowerment and self-care.”

One of the first things that struck me about Mary’s book is the name, Our Sacred Cycle. I know of few people who would characterize the menstrual cycle as sacred. Invective, jokes, stereotypes, and parodies about female hormones are prevalent in popular culture and in women’s own descriptions of themselves. When I asked Mary if this is what prompted her to look at our cycle as sacred, she says, “Absolutely. Our culture has neglected sacred feminine attributes for too long, we worship the masculine and are conditioned to shame ourselves for having feminine attributes, like being cyclical, unpredictable, fluctuating, creative beings. Our cycle give us access to creation, literally through our bodies, but also in our psyche. Research shows that different parts of the female brain are activated during each phase of our cycle that make us excellent at planning, creating, and reflecting depending on the time of month. The cycle deserves so much respect!”

If a woman displays anger or is visibly upset, it would be common for someone to say of her, “Oh, it must be that time of the month.” So how does Mary’s work approach female power and the right to express intense feelings, in the context of the menstrual cycle? She explains that “Being visibly upset is not the problem, the problem is how cultural conditioning makes us think we shouldn’t be upset. That creates shame, which is a central experience of PMDD and internalized in so many menstruating people. We’ve been called witches, hysterical, and crazy for our emotions. We all have that generational trauma stored in our psyche. My work encourages us to consider what the premenstrual phase would look like if we could accept our emotions and allow them tell a story of a gender that has been way too often oppressed, raped, and undervalued throughout most of history. We shouldn’t care what time of the month it is, feminine rage deserves nonjudgmental space to be expressed.”

It seems to me that there is some truth to the idea that emotions can be heightened during certain parts of a woman’s cycle. In a way, it seems an opportunity to be drawn into the within of feelings that have been simmering in the background but not brought to light. What depth psychology would call the unconscious. Mary works with this by looking “at the premenstrual phase as a descent inward that enables us to face our shadow. On a physiological level, the premenstrual phase is when an egg is possibly getting fertilized to start forming a baby. The uterine lining builds up to create a safe space for the fetus to grow. Our emotions also build up as hormones send the message, ‘Get us to safety right now, we need to protect the baby we might be growing’. Our body craves comfort and safety during this time.” She concludes that “If trauma, anger, or burnout is simmering in the background, that will seep out during the premenstrual phase. If we don’t take time to pay attention to it, the pain, anger, or sadness will stay locked up in our unconscious.”

For those curious about the MA in Counseling Psychology, more information can be found here.