In a 28-day menstrual cycle, the luteal phase is the longest—the time of the infamous “two-week wait.” If you’re trying to get pregnant, everything is now out of your hands. All there is to do is count down the days.
This phase most draws my attention to the cyclical nature of our bodies and our stories. The body is either experiencing implantation of an embryo into the thick lining of the uterus that was built up in the follicular phase, or it’s signaling that no implantation has taken place and it will soon be time to shed that lining. Either way, hormonal changes (especially toward the end of this phase) begin to invite us to slow down and claim some space, either for a fetus or for ourselves.
It’s similar to this final week of the calendar year—the ambiguity of it, the sense that something is drawing to a close, the turn toward the depths of winter. Sometimes we find it so unfamiliar we think we’d rather just skip this part. But to embrace it, rather than to resist, might be to fin…
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Creaturely to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.