The WHY behind She Energy: why I talk about She Energy and how you can also see the impact on your life.
I’ve spent time reflecting on my journey with SheEnergy™ while celebrating of the release of She Energy: A self-awareness guide to your natural energy cycle.
I enjoyed thinking about when it all started. Not my actual energy cycle - that has always been there, but my awareness of my energy cycle and then how I turned it into the concept of She Energy.
Now, I am certainly not the first to discuss the seasons of your menstrual cycle, or the phases, or how moods and energy change over the course of the month. There are already so many amazing women out there, who have spent time and energy spreading this information.
However, SheEnergy™ is my creative downloading of such beautiful wisdom. It is how I put it in place in my own life and it is how I want to make my impact in the world.
So now I would love to share with you a story – a story about how I discovered my She Energy, and how you can too…
Discovering our feminine energies
If I was to pinpoint the exact moment I became aware of how my energy changed from week to week and how it impacted on me personally, professionally and as a mum and homemaker, it was in 2017.
This was a transformational year for me. I had taken a year of maternity leave to enjoy Miss A’s last year at home before going to Kindy the following year. Mr R was born at the end of 2016, and I really wanted to enjoy the newborn time with him. I had planned to make it a powerful year and really ‘be a mum’ and ‘do all the mum things’ before returning to work the following year part-time. I had no idea of what I would create and achieve in that year. A major part of this journey revolved around exercising and a complete diet overhaul. After all, I wanted to be the healthiest version of myself so I could be the best for my family. I engaged in personal development activities and started to read for enjoyment again, all self-development books of course 😊.
Everything I was consuming was to be a better version of myself. A healthier person. A better mum. A better partner. I wanted to be and do all the things I wanted to do, that I put off before because I was working. Now that I wasn’t working, I had the time.
Doing the emotional work
Oh yes, I know! I can hear you - I know I had a newborn and young child and there were certainly days where not a lot got done and I was scrambling at the end of the day trying to list all the things I had done when my husband got home from work.
Why do we feel the need to do that? I would love to hear your thoughts on why as women who stay at home raising our families feel the need to justify everything that was achieved in the day if it ‘appears’ to look like we haven’t done a lot?
However, it was through this experience that I started to become aware of my patterns of behaviour. One week I would be smashing all the mum and house goals and then the next I was struggling to get lunch together and wanting to watch Bold and the Beautiful in the afternoon.
I have always liked to write down my thoughts and have always had beautifully lined books on hand. I started a regular journaling practice and began to write down how I was feeling, what I was achieving, my challenges, what I wanted to do and my dreams and visions for the future.
It is through this writing that I started to record the changes in mood, energy and even what I felt like doing. There was an obvious pattern, but at this point I still had not connected it to my menstrual cycle or the moon cycle.
I reflected on how this behaviour had been with me since high school. How one week I would be feeling good about myself and the next be involved in a lot of girl drama, often drama I had started.
Oh, there is so much I would have done differently, and I think this is why I am so passionate sharing the information about SheEnergy™ with pre-teen and teenage girls. The difference it is going to make to our young women’s mental health and general well-being is going to be incredible!
I also reflected on my time at university and as a young adult. I was well and truly out of alignment and always felt like I was running a race to achieve and get to the major life milestones. One week, I was super prepared and happy to get my assignments done and the next I was not even interested. I would start my assignment off strong and then it would sit for a week or two and then I would then get it finish but for the two weeks in between I stared at it with a whole lot of guilt and negative self-talk about how I should be doing it.
If I had known what I know now, I would have scheduled when my assignments were due according to my cycle, I would have allowed myself to enjoy those two weeks in between to socialise and rest without stressing and feeling guilty about not getting them done.
I really believe I would have enjoyed the whole process of university a lot more rather than wishing it to hurry up so I could just work.
My final weeks of University were spent away in Geraldton on the central coast of Western Australia. I was completing my ten weeks of final teaching practice before graduating.
It was during this time away at Uni that I reconnected with journaling – and then fast forward to 2017, and I read these journals again! Yes, I had kept them for 11 years. I cleaned them out in 2017 when I went through a major decluttering session, but I did flick through them, and I had noticed how my energy changed from week to week.
The magic is in the moment
So here we are in 2017- the year where I finally understood why I was unstoppable one week and then struggling the next.
One of the books I started reading was called Open Wide by Melissa Ambrosini. All it took was to get to Chapter Two and EVERYTHING just feel into place for me.
Oh my goodness, my period effects my energy. Look, even as I write this, I know it is obvious. And I am pretty sure I knew that to a certain extent it effected my energy, but I did not know to what extent it affected me.
So, I shifted my journaling practice towards tracking my menstrual cycle and my energy cycle. I started to notice that one week I could lift heavy weights and the next I had to drop down a few kilograms, sometimes I was doing repeatedly however this time, with this self-awareness, I did not mentally bash myself, I did not feel guilty, I did not feel like I should be doing more so I can lift those heavy weights all the time.
I started to notice that one week, I loved playing in the playroom, like absolutely loved it! And then the next, I just wanted to sit and watch her play while I watched TV and just stayed still. Instead of feeling like a bad mum because I hadn’t done the vast range of ‘mum activities’ I did the week before, I knew that it was okay to watch a movie occasionally. Remember, still at this time I did not know to apply this newly learnt knowledge to seasonal weeks or to organise my week according to my energy cycle so I could utilise it. I just knew that it was ok to not be feeling it!
And then I achieved some pretty huge health and fitness goals. This not only unlocked part of me that had been hiding since high school, but it really showed me that I could achieve anything I put my mind to. I also had this clear thinking around what I wanted to achieve personally and professionally and decided to start my very own business.
This business was an opportunity to share what I had learnt, create a community where we were all working on being the best version of ourselves and most of all an opportunity for me to create the space and present to people where they could take a moment to think about themselves and their wellbeing. So, at the end of 2017, I launched Lead and Inspire. My focus was purely on Teacher Wellbeing.
In true ‘Jessica form’ I didn’t start slowly. I threw everything at it and invested way more money than I needed to. Everything looked amazing when it came to my branding and marketing, and I did feel like I had wonderful foundations for what I launched in 2018.
Thriving business, Thriving Jessica?
In 2018, I had 4 in person workshops, 3 online programs and completed my coaching qualification. I had schools reaching out to book me and worked with a number of teachers in my 1:1 coaching sessions. I had returned to teaching three days a week, Miss A started Kindy and Mr R was only just walking. I now admit I had bitten off way more than I realised at the time and when it hit October of 2018 my health was at the bottom of the priority list and our finances did not show the return for the effort I was putting in.
I was managing but I wasn’t thriving. And so, I promised myself and my family that in 2019 I would do better and be better, but not to the detriment of myself. I reprioritised and decided how I could make it happen. At this stage I was still not fully utilising my energy cycle. I was aware of the weeks of my cycle and how I felt during each week but I didn’t take it one step further and allocate the tasks that I preferred to do to the aligned seasonal week. So I thought it would be a great experiment to see what would happen if I changed the way I was doing things and allocated specific tasks to my seasonal weeks.
She Energy was coming to life
In 2019, I felt like I was invincible. I was happy with my priorities. I felt like I was doing really well juggling all the balls.
I had taken time off to go fully into my business and this gave me an opportunity to present more and coach women 1:1. I started to notice a pattern amongst all those I worked with.
We all have an energy cycle, and we all feel like doing different things during the different stages.
This is when I started to record my own experiences and I would say the very beginning of writing my book.
In the second half of 2019 I returned to teaching. My business wasn’t providing me a consistent wage and I was still working before and after school because that was when my clients would meet. I thought I may as well go to school where Miss A was going, teach and then come home and book my coaching clients after hours. I still found the best time to work on my business first thing in the morning or late at night when everyone was sleeping, it was my way to express myself, wind down and be creative.
Towards the end of 2019 I started to feel the pull to change and grow and take my business to the next level.
Although, I didn’t know this at the time, it felt like I was doing a lot of things but none of them well. Nothing was getting 100% of me. I opened my workshops for all women and created the space to speak about our energy cycles more often. Having these conversations regularly really made me realise that we needed to have more so when it came to my 2020 planning I knew I wanted to really step into sharing how we can utilise our feminine energy cycles.
In 2020, well we all know what happened, but this was a year that I grew personally and as a teacher. Business wise I was giving birth to a lot of creative projects; new website, new stationery line, recording podcast episodes and I was happy presenting in schools (because they had not shut down here in Perth) and building my membership programs.
By 2021 I had moved a lot of my business to online and officially started writing my book. I also returned to work full time teaching and really harnessed my energy cycle to do all the things. Teacher well-being became too much of a conflict of interest, so I decided to come back to that role once I officially decided to leave teaching. I wasn’t ready to leave the classroom as of yet. And then it was on. I was on a mission to really support mums who wanted more in life and busy women who wanted to be able to do it all without burning out. I hosted a variety of workshops and started sharing She Energy as a term and officially sent it off via my lawyers to get the term trademarked.
At the start of 2022 I was determined to finish my book.
At this stage I had a lot of information written down, I just needed to really create the space in written form so it could be easy to follow. I wanted this book to be useful and almost like a journey.
I wanted to integrate my presenting skills and put activities in there that would be super supportive and practical.
I finished on the 31st of March 2022. It was at this point I also realised that my class needed more from me. As I have shared before, I was happy to take a step back in my business and allow the book to come to life whilst I focused on other things that needed my attention. It was because of my awareness of my She Energy™ that I knew that I had to reprioritise again.
I thought once the book was completed that would have been it. But it was during the editing process that I fully embodying She Energy. It was almost like I fully understood the actual power of it all and most importantly, I understood how life changing this was going to be for all women, especially young women.
So, although I know that publishing this book is a huge achievement, this is only the beginning.
This is only the beginning of the sharing and the educating. This is only the beginning of the conversations and the newfound understanding. This is the beginning of the next level of me, my business and the Lead and Inspire community. And that is what gets me really excited. Because that means we are all founding members of She Energy. We are the women that learn about our cycle, how we can utilise it and then share our shine with the world. We are the women who teach this to our daughters, friends and family. So, they can learn, utilise and share their shine. What a huge difference and impact this is going to make!
A self-awareness guide to your natural energy cycle.
As a teacher and empowerment coach, Jessica Terlick knows that there are a lot of lessons girls and young women aren’t taught in their health and growth and development classes. As a consequence, most grown women don’t understand why they feel great one week and low on energy the next.
She Energy unpacks the lesser-explored information about our menstrual cycles and how our moods, energy and motivation levels significantly change over the course of each month.
Divided across four parts, ‘Align’, ‘Know Your Cycle’, ‘Utilise and Flow’ and ‘Share Your Shine’, She Energy takes this knowledge one step further, providing a series of tools to harness our feminine cycles and wield them like a superpower.