Have you ever noticed there's a week in your cycle where you feel like a lion?
Where you're suddenly bold enough to say the thing, send the message, make the call, tell someone exactly what you want, or exactly what they're doing that isn't okay. The words that sat stuck in your throat all month just… arrive. And sometimes it's the truest, cleanest thing you've ever said.
And sometimes, a week later, you read it back and think: oh. Maybe I didn't need to send that one.
That's not you being too much, or too emotional, or dramatic. That's your body moving through its seasons, and learning to read them is one of the quietest superpowers a woman has. Because your voice isn't equally loud all month. And knowing when it roars changes everything about how, and to whom, you use it.
Hi lovely. Let's talk about the throat.
Because truth comes in two sizes, and this chapter is about both. There's the loud kind, the lion kind. And then there's the small kind, the one most of us get wrong for years: the "I'm fine" kind.
Because here's what I've come to understand: the biggest lies I've ever told weren't the bold things I fired off in my lion week. They were the little ones I whispered to keep the peace. I'm fine. It's fine. Whatever you want. No, honestly, it's okay. I've said those words with my whole body still holding something I hadn't let myself say. And every time I swallowed it, it didn't disappear. It just settled in my throat and stayed there.
The throat is the bridge between what you feel and what the world gets to know about you. When you keep swallowing your truth to be easy, to be liked, to not make a fuss, that bridge closes. And a woman with a closed throat isn't more agreeable. She's just more unheard, often by herself most of all.
This year, that started to change. And it didn't look the way I expected.
I thought finding my voice would be some grand, cinematic moment. It wasn't. It looked like sitting in a meeting full of senior people and saying, calmly, this isn't working, and here's why. It looked like telling colleagues far above me that the way something was being handled wasn't okay, and not softening it into nothing to make myself smaller. It looked like running a project that required me to say the hard thing, again and again, to people who weren't used to hearing it.
The old version of me would not have been comfortable with any of that. She would have hinted. She would have hoped someone else would say it. She would have gone home and replayed it and wished she'd spoken. This year, I just… spoke. And the room went quiet, and the world didn't end. It rarely does.
It also looked like no. No to events that didn't align with my values. No to plans that pulled me out of my own rhythm. No to rooms I didn't want to be in, even when saying yes would have been easier and kept everyone happy. I needed a lot of quiet this week, a lot of introvert time, precisely because I'd been using my voice so much out in the world. Speaking your truth costs something. You have to come home and refill.
But here's the part I didn't see coming. The most important thing I said this year, I didn't say to anyone else. I said it to myself.
It was the quiet, honest conversation about what I actually want. Not what I should want. Not what looks right, or what would be sensible, or what someone else would choose for me. What I want, and why I want it, and how I want to show up while I go and get it. Who I want to be. Who I actually want beside me. What I'm no longer willing to settle for.
That conversation was harder than any meeting. Because it's easy to speak truth to a boardroom. It's much harder to sit with yourself and admit what you really long for, especially when part of you has spent years pretending you don't need much at all.
And I'll be honest with you, because this newsletter has only ever worked when I am: this month my body has been loud. There's a phase in every cycle, I call it my inner summer, and it's ovulation, where you become your most visible, most expressive, most magnetic self. Your voice comes easily. You feel lit from the inside. My own app says it plainly: summer is your visible season. Say the thing, send the message, take up the room. And it's true. This is the phase where the words finally come.
But I know this season in myself, and I'll tell you what it's really taught me. This is exactly the time of the month when I have always felt bold enough to say my heart's deepest desire out loud, to finally tell someone what I actually wanted from them. Sometimes that boldness was a gift: the truth I'd been sitting on for months would just arrive, clean and clear. And sometimes it was the version where I'd want to march up to someone and say you're being a pain, and you won't even face what this actually is between us. The raw, unfiltered truth, fired off in the heat of it.
So here's the double edge, and it's the real throat lesson buried inside the summer: your voice is loudest exactly when your discernment is quietest. The gift is that you can finally speak. The work is knowing which truths to send, and which to simply let yourself feel. An open heart and a lit-up body will reach for connection, but not always the right connection. And so, in that heat, speaking your truth sometimes means saying the honest thing to yourself instead of firing the easy thing at someone else. I want to be held, and not by just anyone. I can want, and still wait. My longing is real, and it's not an emergency. That's a no, too. Maybe the most important no there is, the one you say to yourself, in your own defence, right when everything in you wants to hit send.
Shine while you're lit, the app tells me. And then, in the same breath: rest before the turn. Say the thing, take up the room, and know which things are yours to keep.
So that's what the throat has been teaching me this year: that my voice isn't just for meetings and boundaries and the word no. It's for the truth I've been too polite, too tired, or too scared to say, out loud, or even just to myself.
The Throat · Vishuddha
💙 shadow: the swallowed truth, "I'm fine," people-pleasing, the yes your mouth says while your body says no. 💙 gift: your true voice. Clear, kind, unafraid. The yes you mean and the no you can finally speak.
Your throat centre sits at the base of your neck, the narrow gate between the heart and the head, between what you feel and what you say. It's where feeling becomes voice.
When it's blocked, you keep the peace at your own expense. You say whatever you want and resent it later. You swallow the hard truth to avoid the hard conversation. You go quiet in the meeting, agreeable at the dinner, fine at every check-in, and slowly you stop being able to hear your own knowing under all the accommodating.
When it's free, you can say the true thing and stay kind. You can disagree without shrinking. You can name what isn't working. You can say no without a paragraph of apology. And, this is the tender one, you can tell yourself the truth about what you actually want.
The Throat, in detail
💙 Goddess · Saraswati, she of speech, music, wisdom; the sacred voice 💙 Seed sound · HAM, the bīja that opens the throat 💙 Element · ether, space, spaciousness, the room a truth needs to be spoken 💙 Breath · ujjayi (ocean breath), the breath you can hear, made in the throat itself 💙 Pose · matsyasana (fish), the throat lifted and opened to the sky 💙 Oil · blue chamomile, for the truth that needs to be spoken gently 💙 Herb · licorice root, the old remedy for a tired, over-held voice 💙 Yama · satya, truthfulness; the vow to stop lying, first of all to yourself 💙 Affirmation · It is safe for me to speak. My voice matters, and so does my no.
The season it pairs with: your inner summer, ovulation. The most expressive, magnetic, confident phase, when your voice comes easily and you feel most seen. Say the thing, send the message, take up the room, and shine while you're lit. Just remember to keep speaking truth to yourself underneath all that heat, and to rest before the turn.
A small practice, if you'd like one.
Tonight, put a hand gently at the base of your throat. Take one slow ujjayi breath, the kind you can hear, like a soft ocean. Then ask yourself one question and answer it out loud, even in a whisper: What have I been saying I'm fine about, that I'm not? You don't have to fix it. You don't have to tell anyone yet. You just have to let yourself hear you say it. That's where the voice comes back, not in the boardroom, but in the moment you stop lying to yourself.
A few questions to sit with this week.
💙 Where are you saying yes with your mouth and no with your body? 💙 What truth have you been swallowing to keep the peace, and what is it costing you? 💙 If you weren't afraid of the reaction, what would you finally say? 💙 And the deepest one: what do you actually want, and have you ever said it out loud, even just to yourself?
She's here
Coming home to yourself, chakra by chakra, is exactly why In Her Rhythm exists, and she's live. 💙 At the throat you'll meet Lark, the part of you who remembers how to sing her own truth, clearly and without apology. Twenty-eight days, at your own pace. Come and find your voice with her.
And from August, the podcast and a collection of meditations arrive, made to help you get still enough to finally hear what you've been trying to say.
An invitation
I'll leave you with this: your voice was never too much. The truth in your throat isn't a burden to manage. It's you, waiting to be heard. And you're allowed to say it slowly, kindly, imperfectly. Start with the smallest true thing. Start by telling yourself.
The world can handle your honesty far better than you've been led to believe. And the people who can't, well, that's information too.
So, what would it look like to stop saying I'm fine this week, and say the true thing instead? Even if the only one listening is you.
See you on the flip side.
With love, grace & gratitude, Aradhana x