Sacred SHE Reset
Reclaiming Your Radiant Power Through Midlife's Sacred Initiation
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A Letter to the Woman in Midlife Dear radiant one, If you're reading these words, something within you already knows. You are not who you used to be, nor yet who you are becoming. You stand at a threshold of sacred transformation. The world may have reduced this moment to a diagnosis—a set of symptoms or a crisis. Perhaps they've called it perimenopause, menopause, burnout, or just midlife. Pills are offered for your hot flashes, creams for your skin, platitudes for your questions. But know this: this is not your ending. It's your becoming. This is not a crisis; it is a call. This is a call to return to yourself. Shed the layers that no longer serve. Rise with wild grace and unapologetic presence. Live in rhythm, not resistance. I know this path. I walked through early menopause alone, my body a landscape of symptoms no doctor could address. I carried grief in my womb and fire in my voice, but didn't know how to use them. I gained more than weight; I gained the weight of forgetting myself. What I've learned, and now share: There is nothing wrong with you. You are not broken. You are awakening. This season of your life is sacred. You are allowed to rest, change, grieve, rage, rise, and radiate. This letter is your permission slip. Take up space. Tune into your body. Walk with the wisdom you've earned through every scar and every softness. You are not alone, and it is not too late. You are a woman in her becoming. The world needs you now. Welcome home to your sacred self. A note on Sacred Diversity Before you step into these pages, I want to honor something: your experience of midlife, menopause, or "the change" may look nothing like mine. Some women move through this passage with barely a ripple. Others experience it as a tsunami. Some feel liberated; others feel lost. Some sail through with grace. Others are brought to their knees before they rise. All these experiences are valid. This book is my lived experience—the wisdom I gathered from being dismantled and rebuilt, from losing myself and finding something truer. It's what I learned when my body spoke in symptoms, and my emotions demanded I listen. But I am not every woman. My truth is not universal. On Inclusivity and Honoring All Women I want to address something important as we move into this next section: this book focuses primarily on the biological experience of perimenopause and menopause—the hormonal, physical, and emotional journey many women navigate in midlife. I also recognize and honor that not all women will experience menopause in this biological sense. You may be: • A trans woman whose body won't undergo this specific hormonal transition • A woman who's had a hysterectomy or medical intervention that altered this passage • Someone who identifies with feminine wisdom and women's experiences but won't experience biological menopause • A woman whose body, for any number of reasons, moves through midlife differently I see you. I honor your journey. You belong here, too. Because here's what I've come to understand: while this book often speaks to the physical and hormonal aspects of menopause, at its heart it's about something larger. Midlife brings a spiritual and emotional transformation for us all, regardless of our biology. The dismantling of old identities. The reclaiming of authentic voice. The courage to live from your center rather than your edges. The invitation to shed what no longer serves and step into your power. The recognition that you are more than what you produce, more than who you've been to others. These initiations are not exclusive to biological menopause. They are the territory of midlife itself, the sacred passage all humans face when confronting the reality of our mortality and the question: Who am I, truly, beneath all I've become? If you’re thinking, “This book isn't for me because my body won't go through menopause,” I gently invite you to stay. The Four Pillars—Health, Healing, Happiness, Heart—are for everyone navigating midlife, regardless of hormonal status. The following practices and invitations to self-love transcend biology. You may just need to translate some terms. For example, when I say "hot flashes," read it as "the ways my body speaks discomfort or transformation." When I mention "hormonal fluctuations," I see it as "the ways my nervous system responds to change." And when I talk about menstrual cycles ending, I reflect on "other thresholds my body has crossed." The essence remains: midlife is initiation. Your body is wisdom. Your journey is sacred. You are welcome here, exactly as you are. A Gentle Invitation to All If you want to dismiss this—if you think, "menopause is nothing, women make too much of it, I'If you want to dismiss this—if you think, "menopause is nothing, women make too much of it, I'll breeze through"—pause and ask yourself: What am I protecting by dismissing this? What might I not be ready to feel? The world is a mirror. What we judge in others often reflects something in ourselves; our harshest judgments often show where our own healing waits. I’m not saying your experience is wrong, or you’re in denial—I'm inviting curiosity. Maybe you will have a gentle journey, or perhaps you’ve already done the inner work. Maybe your body is different. Or maybe, with tenderness, there is something beneath the dismissal worth your attention. Women in midlife who are experiencing transformation, regardless of hormonal status • Anyone who senses there's more to this threshold than medicine acknowledges • Souls who want to meet this passage consciously rather than reactively • Women who are curious and want to understand what's happening in their bodies, hearts, and spirits This book may not be for you if: • You're genuinely sailing through midlife with ease and have no questions (and I celebrate that for you) • You're not ready to look more deeply into what your body and soul might be asking of you. • You prefer purely medical approaches without spiritual or emotional dimensions. What I ask of you: Read with an open heart but a critical mind. Take what resonates. Leave what doesn't. Don't force yourself into my experience or anyone else's. Honor your unique journey. Stay curious (Blackson et al., 2024) about what your body is truly telling you. If you find yourself judging women whose experiences differ from yours (whether they're struggling more or less), pause and ask why. What does their experience trigger in you? What are you protecting against? We all navigate this threshold differently. Some need books like this to survive it; some do not. Both are okay. I wrote this for those searching for context, permission, or company on a confusing and isolating journey. If that's you, welcome home. If not, I wish you well and hope you share these pages with someone who will benefit. The Four Gateways Home Through my journey from breakdown to breakthrough, four sacred gateways revealed themselves to me, not as destinations to arrive at, but as spiraling pathways home to myself. Health. Healing. Happiness. Heart. Each one returns. First to the body, then to emotion, then to joy, and finally to love. Together they form what I now call the Radiance Pathway, a map that has guided my own transformation from depletion back to divine radiance. While I have shared pieces of this work with women over the years, I am inviting you now into its wholeness. Into the complete framework that emerged from my own unraveling and reweaving. This is the map I wish someone had placed in my hands when I stood where you stand now. Let me share with you how these pillars emerged from my own unraveling. In the depths of early menopause, when my body felt like foreign territory and conventional medicine offered only management of symptoms, I found myself desperate for a different kind of wisdom.
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About the Book
What if the unraveling you fear is actually your becoming? You wake at three AM, your body a stranger. Hormones rage like weather systems you cannot predict. The woman you thought you were seems to be dissolving, and no one prepared you for this passage. You search for answers in doctors’ offices and Google searches, but what you find feels clinical, distant, and insufficient. You are in the midst of a sacred transition that patriarchal medicine has pathologized and modern culture has rendered invisible. Sacred SHE Reset is the companion you’ve been seeking. Part memoir, part research-based guide, and part love letter to women navigating midlife’s tumultuous terrain, this book weaves personal vulnerability with indigenous wisdom traditions that have honored this passage for millennia. Here, perimenopause and menopause are not endings to be endured but initiations into deeper power. Through the Four Pillars of Radiance—Health, Healing, Happiness, and Heart—you’ll discover how to work with your changing body rather than against it. You’ll learn why your symptoms are messengers, not enemies. This is not a book of easy answers or quick fixes. It is an invitation to walk through the fire of your own becoming with radical honesty, professional support, and the knowledge that you are part of an unbroken lineage of women who have transformed through this passage. Your midlife crisis is actually your midlife chrysalis. Are you ready to emerge?
About the Author
Cherie Ashana is a women’s transformation guide, bodyworker, and practitioner whose work sits at the intersection of somatic healing, sacred feminine wisdom, and the science of midlife reinvention. Originally from Melbourne, Victoria, Cherie has spent decades working with women—first as a bodyworker and practitioner running multiple businesses across Australia, and later as a guide supporting women through the terrain of midlife and menopause. Her training spans Iridology, flower essence therapy, sound healing, breathwork, and her signature modality Elemental Voice Alchemy™. She draws on this breadth of study alongside the hard-won wisdom of her own journey through early menopause to offer women something rare: a guide who has genuinely walked the path she describes. The Sacred SHE Reset is her debut book, and it is the foundation of a growing legacy—a body of work she is building not for herself alone, but for humanity to thrive. Her vision is not simply a book or a programme, but a living ecosystem of tools, teachings, and community that supports women in reclaiming their power at every stage of the journey. Cherie is the creator of the AwakenedSHE Circle and is currently building the community and offerings that will carry this work forward. She currently resides in Panama, where she continues to walk the path she writes about—not as someone who has arrived, but as a woman devoted to the sacred unfolding. When Women Started Appearing As Cherie’s own healing deepened, women began appearing in her life, asking questions she recognised from her own journey. At first, she resisted. Who am I to guide anyone? I’m still figuring this out myself. But they kept coming—women navigating early menopause like hers; women whose bodies had been medicalised and pathologised; women starving for someone to tell them they weren’t broken, weren’t crazy, weren’t invisible. So, she began sharing what had saved her. The practises. The practitioners. The hard-won wisdom about listening to your body when everyone else is telling you to override it. And something extraordinary happened. These women transformed—not because she had all the answers but because she had walked the territory and could witness them walking it too. The Sacred SHE Reset was born from the interactions in Cherie’s one-on-one sessions and from conversations with women who felt called to speak what they’d been holding in silence. She discovered that her private struggle was their collective initiation. What she had experienced and walked mostly alone needed to be shared: wisdom both lived and learned, earned through years of healing and training. Training and Background Formal Studies Master NLP and Timeline Therapy Practitioner Spiral Practitioner Transpersonal Art Therapy +Heart Facilitator Advanced Physical Iridologist Herbalist Australian Bush Flower Essence Practitioner (Levels 1 and 2) Energy Healing Practitioner (Ashati 1-2, Alsemia 1-2, Higher Senses, Reiki 1-2) lomilomi, Swedish, and remedial massage Bali School of Yoga (Sound Healing levels 1, 2 and 3) Certified Sing to Thrive Teacher Training The Training Life Gave Me: I have thirty-six years of journalling practise (since age fourteen); spent decades navigating complex medical systems across continents; and spent hundreds of hours in post-surgical recovery, learning the body’s language and building resilience through repeated physical trauma and healing. My early menopause began at thirty-eight. I have travelled and done healing work across multiple countries—the lived experience of transforming medical trauma into medicine for others. Approach I believe that women’s bodies are not problems to be fixed but wisdom to be honoured. I know that menopause is not a disease but an initiation, a profound threshold that, when navigated consciously, becomes a doorway to the most powerful chapter of a woman’s life. I understand that transformation requires both science and soul. We need medical support and spiritual practise. Hormone levels matter, and so does ritual. Those symptoms are real, and so is the meaning beneath them. I stand for an integrated approach that refuses to choose between Western medicine and ancient wisdom, between bodywork and energy work, between the practical and the sacred. Most importantly, I believe in you. In your capacity to navigate this threshold with grace. In your body’s inherent wisdom, even when it feels like betrayal. In the essential medicine only you can offer the world. Why I Do This Work Every morning, I wake with purpose and joy, grateful that I get to share my heart, my love, my passion with the world. This isn’t a job for me. It’s a lifestyle choice. I live my passion projects daily. I follow my heart and the guidance of the spirit in everything I create. I wrote this book for the woman I was at thirty-eight, bleeding for the last time, terrified and relieved and grieving all at once, with no guide to help her understand that this ending was also a beginning. I wrote it for every woman who has been told her body is the problem when her body is actually the teacher. I wrote it for the women drowning in medical terminology but starving for spiritual meaning—those who have tried everything but haven’t yet tried trusting their own wisdom. I wrote it because no woman should navigate this threshold alone, without witnessing, without the recognition that what she’s experiencing is not pathology but sacred transformation. And I wrote it because the world needs the medicine that emerges from women who cross this threshold consciously: the clarity, the power, the freedom, the legacy of wisdom passed from woman to woman, like roots of trees, reaching far beyond what we can see. Walking Together I don’t write from a place of having arrived. I write from the middle of my own continuing becoming. At fifty, I still navigate the spiral. Still forget and remember. Still discover new depths of grief and new heights of joy. Still meet my changing body with tenderness some days and with resistance on others. But I meet myself differently now. With more compassion. More trust. More celebration of subtle shifts rather than only dramatic transformations. And I know, in my bones, that this work matters—yours and mine. The babies I didn’t birth made space for this. The surgeries I survived taught me this. The hospitals across continents prepared me for this. The legacy I’m building through the women I walk beside—that’s the maternal love I was always meant to share. Though we may never meet in person, please know that I walk this path with you. On your difficult days and your radiant ones, in your forgetting and your remembering, and through your dissolution and your emergence, you are not alone. Thousands of women walk with you. Your ancestors walk with you. The woman you’re becoming walks with you. And I walk with you, carrying the wisdom earned through every surgery, every loss, every moment of choosing to see my body not as broken but as a teacher, not as an enemy but as a guide. With profound reverence for your journey, Cherie Ashana Author of The Sacred SHE Reset Connect with me: Website: awakenedshe.com Instagram: @cherieashana Email: connect@awakenedshe.com I’d love to hear your story.