Words and Photography: Florence Balderson
This month, I had the pleasure of interviewing Bonnie McAteer from Medicine Woman Movement. I was welcomed into her home; it was a technicolour dreamscape of peace, visions, and wonder. Plants gathered at every window, sacred artefacts from her travels adorned every surface, and I was in awe of the pocket of stillness she had so carefully cultivated.
It was an unusual start to an interview: seated on the floor, sipping Mother Cacao, breathing deeply into our bellies. We meditated together in silence, whispering intentions into the space. Bonnie’s passion lies in helping women come home to themselves and their bodies, and in this conversation, we dive deep into just that. We spoke of birth, life, death, and everything in between. It was a joy to witness and be part of. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did experiencing it.
Can you explain what your current work is?
The Medicine Woman Movement is a body of work that I have birthed after many years, travelling vast inner and outer realms. This includes a thirteen year deep shamanic apprenticeship with the founders of movement medicine, which is a powerful conscious dance practice. After the birth of my second child, Luca, I began weaving together my own path. It’s an embodied journey of transformation that draws from ancient lineages, such as the Q’ero tradition. For many people in the West, there’s a disconnect, we’re often invited to “pray to the mountain” or give thanks to the land, but we don’t really know what that means in our bones.
This work helps women come back into an embodied sense of connection – to the land, their body, the cosmos, their spirit, and their own inner cycles. We use highly curated shamanic journeys, somatic practice, and sacred dance ritual practices. There’s something profound about ritual in community; humanity has engaged in this since the dawn of creation – being witnessed, grieving what has been lost, and rediscovering joy. It’s not just personal – the grief and the remembering are ancestral. And it’s powerful. Through embodiment, we remember that we’re not separate from this Earth. The work is deep, rooted, and transformative. These sacred dance ceremonies hold the power of alchemy helping people come home to their indigenous soul & life’s purpose.
I think for a lot of people, if they don’t have religion as a route into the spiritual, they feel a bit lost. This seems like a way to move energy and find meaning again.
Absolutely. We are spirit trying to be human, not the other way around. In earth-based traditions, everything is animate. The winds, trees, oceans, they all carry spirit. But dogmatic religion has tried to name, label, and control that connection. It severed us from something vital. What I love about the deeper shamanic work is its simplicity. It’s not new, it’s original. These are the ways of all our ancestors. Somewhere in our bones, blood, and hearts, we remember them. This work is about rooting us back into the great web of life. Not plugging in artificially, but actually rooting. That’s where the shift begins. A central part is also working with Cacao which is a powerful, heart-opening plant medicine. It gently brings us into our heart space, softens resistance, and allows us to connect more deeply with ourselves and one another.
What do you believe women are yearning for most today?
To be in rhythm with their true rhythm. When the doors of ceremony open, often the women are in tears within moments. They’re stepping into slowness, into presence. And it’s such a contrast to the chaos of everyday life. Many women have children, partners, jobs and they’re pulled in so many directions, often at a speed that’s unnatural for the body and the womb. It severs us from our intuition, peace, sense of ground and power. This is where womb work comes in. It’s about reconnecting with our cyclical nature. Resting during bleeding, recognising our inner seasons and listening to our body. Even if a woman is past menopause, pregnant, or on contraceptives, she can still attune to the moon. But it’s more than just cycle awareness. It’s slowing down. It’s allowing the grief for all the things we’ve lost connection to. And it’s about sisterhood. In the year-long journey I run, there are 21 women. Over the course of the year, they come into deep connection, rooted in embodied presence saying yes to who they truly are. It’s about deep presence, deep witnessing and from that space, creativity naturally blooms. Gifts emerge. Women remember why they’re here and what really matters to them.
So many people don’t know anything about the menstrual cycle beyond “you bleed once a month” Can you expand on what you are teaching within this space?
There’s so much grief, especially for women who are realising the power of their cycles only later in life. It’s a deep loss but it can also be felt, honoured, and transformed. When we align with our cycles, we come into attunement with life. Our inner winter (bleeding) is a time to rest and dream. Inner spring is a time of gentle emergence and creative dreaming. Inner summer, around ovulation is when we shine and share. But the world wants us in summer mode all the time, which is totally unsustainable. Then there’s inner autumn, the premenstrual time, often demonised. But it’s powerful. It’s when truth comes through. It might be raw, but it’s real. We need to know where we are in our cycle to meet ourselves with compassion. When we understand our patterns, we can make space, slow down, and take care of ourselves. It’s incredibly empowering. Just knowing “I’m in my autumn” shifts everything.
I’ve started tracking my cycle in the last few months and it’s changed how I relate to myself completely.
It’s that sense of reclaiming. And many women tell me: this work feels
completely new, but I also know it. It’s a remembering of what we would have learned from our mothers and grandmothers. In many cultures, there were red tents where women would gather to bleed together, rest, tell stories. We’ve lost that.
What made you get into this work in the first place?
Honestly, I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t on this path. I was always
a bit of a wild rebel. I started meditating at 16, went to North India at 17, and that opened something huge in me. I needed something deeper than what I was being shown in the West. In my early twenties I spent years in South America, many months living in the jungle, working with shaman and plant medicines, dancing around fires at epic rainbow gatherings. It was a massive awakening. I spent most of the next 10 years travelling – always when I returned, I felt a real severing. The modern world didn’t make sense; it was void of life, magic and spirit. That’s when I found movement medicine.
I apprenticed for 13 years, travelling the world teaching embodiment work. It helped me integrate everything I’d experienced. Because it’s one thing to have powerful spiritual experiences. It’s another to bring them home to the body. Embodiment is the key. It’s what makes it real. There have been many other threads too: womb work, menstrual cycle education, I feel deeply blessed to be initiated into an ancient lineage of the Q’ero. And in ongoing work with them, grateful to have learned from indigenous elders from the Andes and the Amazon and the plant teachers. Yet really, I’ve always been on this path. Even as a child, I’d spend hours in the woods wondering at the moon and the stars. The world I was told about never quite matched what I felt to be true.
Can you tell me more about your Initiation Ground in Portugal?
I’m so excited for this one. It’s a 10-day deep dive into this body of work: a strong, embodied, ceremonial journey held in the wild lands of Portugal. There’ll be dance, ritual, sweat lodges, prayer, and work with the womb. We’ll be by rivers and waterfalls, completely offline, really dropping into presence. We’ll also be doing embodied soul retrieval work, ancestral work, and exploring creative cycles through menstrual and moon-based awareness. The sweat lodge, or Temazcal, is an ancient rebirthing ceremony, like returning to the womb of the Earth. We’ll be held by both feminine and masculine energy, and there’ll also be an evening of Sufi whirling. It’s going to be beautiful.
And for people wanting something more long term?
That’s the year-long journey. It runs over 12 months and allows deep
integration with ceremonies, recorded journeys, sacred tasks, and monthly themes based around the Celtic wheel of the year. We walk through the heart-womb connection, the Earth and sky, grief, ritual, menstrual awareness, and so much dance. Transformation is inevitable. Every woman changes.
Will you offer more of these in Jersey?
Jersey is my homeland, and it feels right to offer this work here. There’s a real thirst for it. I might do the occasional one-off ceremony, but my heart is in the deep dives. That’s where real transformation happens. The next year-long will begin in September 2026. I also have plans for further pathways, ways for people to stay connected, to apprentice and train in the work and share it with others in time. There’s a whole community growing around this. There’s something powerful about that commitment too, saying yes to something for a year. That energy of commitment initiates the process before the work even begins. As soon as women say yes, things start to shift. That’s the magic of it.
bonniemcateer.com
