How the Shift to Spring Affects Writing Habits (and Follicular Phase)

After winter’s contraction, spring arrives as a physiological uprising: light returns, sap rises, soil softens. The world moves from preservation to possibility.

The follicular phase mirrors this exactly. 

Biologically, the follicular phase begins on the first day of menstruation and lasts until ovulation. Estrogen rises. Energy builds. The brain becomes more verbal, more curious, more socially oriented. There is often increased motivation, clarity, and a desire to initiate.

If winter is restoration, follicular is ignition. Both signify renewal and transition. Both are about emergence after retreat.

How These Seasons Work Together

The external season and the internal cycle speak the same language.

In early spring, we feel the subtle urge to rearrange, reorganize, reimagine. That same instinct shows up in the follicular phase as idea generation, outlining, connecting dots that previously felt scattered.

There’s a particular kind of intelligence that lives here. It’s not the steady endurance of winter. It’s not the luminous magnetism of summer. It’s not the reflective discernment of autumn.

It’s curiosity.

Follicular energy asks:

• What if?

• What else?

• Why not now?

Spring does the same.

When the external season of spring overlaps with the internal follicular phase, the effect can feel amplified. Creative risk feels less risky. Ideas move faster than doubt. Language feels closer to the surface. It’s alignment.

Using the Year’s Seasons to Understand the Woman’s Cycle

The menstrual cycle has its own year inside it.

• Menstrual phase = WinterRest. Minimal output. Deep intuition. Energy pulled inward.

• Follicular phase = SpringBrainstorming. Planning. Curiosity. Momentum gathering.

• Ovulation = SummerVisibility. Communication. Collaboration. Publishing.

• Luteal phase = AutumnEditing. Refining. Critiquing. Discernment.

The body cycles monthly through what the earth cycles yearly.

When we understand this, productivity stops being a moral issue and becomes a seasonal one.

Instead of asking, “Why can’t I always produce at the same level?”, we ask, “What season am I in?”

How This Applies to Writing

Writing is seasonal by nature. Ideas germinate, grow, bloom, decay, and compost.

In the follicular phase, writing tends to feel expansive. This is your drafting season. Your brainstorming season. Your “start three essays at once and see what sparks” season.

Use this phase for:

• Outlining

• Research

• Pitching

• Starting new pieces

• Experimenting with voice

• Recording voice notes full of half-formed brilliance

Do not waste follicular energy on heavy editing. That is autumn work.

Let spring write messy.

Whether or Not We Are Women

Even if you do not menstruate, you live in a world structured around menstrual rhythms.

Most creative industries have adopted a linear, always-summer model. Constant visibility. Constant output. Constant performance.

But human creativity is cyclical.

Menstrual cycles influence households, workplaces, relationships, cultural pacing. If you live with, love, collaborate with, or were born from someone who menstruates, you are already moving in relationship to this rhythm.

And beyond biology, everyone has internal seasons.

We all experience:

• Creative winters

• Idea-springs

• Social summers

• Critical autumns

The menstrual cycle simply makes the pattern visible. Understanding it teaches us to honor cycles instead of resisting them.

Spring is not about becoming someone new. It’s about remembering what was dormant.

The follicular phase does the same. It reintroduces us to our forward-facing self. The one who wants to build, initiate, and try.

If we let our writing follow that rhythm, it stops feeling like extraction and starts feeling like participation.

We are not forcing words onto the page. We are planting.