The Power of Menstruation

For many women, menstruation is a healing and creative influence in their lives. It has been described as a time of "new gifts and startling energies." (1) One woman says she dives deep within and resurfaces with a fuller knowledge and acceptance of herself. Others say that their menses provide access to their deepest emotions, that they experience a sense of power from the blood, and that they feel at one with the cycles of life.

The cyclical nature of menstruation has played a major role in the development of counting, mathematics, and the measuring of time. The word menstruation derives from the Latin mensis, meaning "month," which also forms the root of mensuration, dimension, inmensity, metric, and diameter. (2) Lunar markings found on prehistoric bone fragments show how early women marked their cycles and thus began to mark time. Women were possibly "the first observers of the basic periodicity of nature, the periodicity upon which all later scientific observations were made." (3)

Menarche

The word menarche (men-ar'-key) derives from the Greek words mene (moon) and arche (beginning). It marks the beginning moon, the first menstration. (4) This is an event so important in a woman's life that most of us never forget when it happened, how it felt, and who was there.

Menarche can be a dreamy time, a confusing time, a time when girls feel close to their mothers and, simultaneously, grow more independent. What happens during a girl's first menstruation can affect her for years to come, influencing how she feels about her periods, her sexuality, and her womanhood.

Menarcheal customs around the world vary greatly. Navajo and Apace menarche ceremonies are the most important of all their religious rites, involving elaborate celebrations in which the menarcheal girl assumes a position of great respect in society. (5) In India, menarche is a time for great rejoicing with gifts, new clothing, ceremonial baths, feasting, and shouts of joy. The Tiv of Negeria make razor cuts on the girl's body to produce elaborate scars depicting the history of her family. (6)

To the Pygmies in central Africa, menstrual blood is a gift, gratefully and joyously received by the entire community. The girl who has reached menarche goes into seclusion, taking with her all her young friends and an older female relative who will teach them the arts and crafts of motherhood. This period of seclusion is followed by a celebration lasting a month or two, with friends traveling from near and far to pay their respects. (7) Other cultures isolate the girl as a protective measure, believing her supernatural powers to be so great at this time that she may endanger the entire community as well as herself. Seclusion also provides an opportunity for the girl to meditate, dream, receive visions, and prepare for her new role in the group.

For may girls in our society, menarche can be an upsetting and frightening experience. While individual families may respond to a girl's first menses with joy, pride, and respect, our culture as a whole lacks ritual celebration to mark the beginning of a girl's fertility and to honor her emerging womanhood.

In the absence of traditional rites, some women are creating their own rituals for their daughters, granddaughers, and friends who reach menarche. These are often simple events, such as a special bath, new clothing, a celebratory meal, or a gift. Occasionally the celebration is more elaborate, involving ceremonies with groups of friends, words of welcome into womanhood, and festing. Whatever form the ritual takes, it will hopefully give the young woman a clear message that menstruation is natural and healthy, and that those present will provide her with love and support during this important passage.

In preparing young women for menarche, we can explain that some cultures consider the womb and blood as sacred, and that many cultures hold menarche celebrations. We can also encourage our young women to use their time of bleeding in a special, creative way--for meditating, writing, thinking, being alone, being with a special friend, painting, sleeping and dremaing, or simply "doing nothing."

Turning Inward for Menstruation

Many women experience a turning inward process before and during their bleeding. One important part of this process is dreaming. According to Ernest Hartmann, author of The Biology of Dreaming, women dream more frequently between days 25 and 30 of the menstrual cycle. (8) These dreams are often more sexual and striking than those occurring at other times of the month. One study found that menstruating women were apt to dream of speaking animals, animals with men's heads, sex, violence, and broken eggshells, whereas ovulating women dreamed of jewels, fragile things, babies, conflicts with their mothers, and eggs. (9)

Vivid dreams may play a important part in reducing premenstrual and menstrual distress. Hartmann found that premenstrual symptoms worsened when women were lacking in sleep and improved when they slept more than the usual number of hours. Perhaps, as Hartmann suggsts, "treament for premenstrual tension should include a prescription for more sleep." (10)

Women who keep dream journals might note when the are prementrual and menstruating, and compare the dreams arising at these times with those occurring at other times. Some women dream of bleeding just before the onset of their periods, and girls sometimes have dreams foretelling their menarche. Brooke Medicine Eagle, writing in Shaman's Drum, urges women to "keep a large and lovely book for recording ... visions, dreams, imaginings, and intuitive flashes." She explains that the most prophetic dreams and visions in some Native American cultures were brought to the people through the menstruating women in the moon lodge."

Turning inward can also mean seclusion. It has long been a custom of women in various cultures to seclude themselves--either singly or in groups--during menstruation. Most often, the purpose has been to rest, heal, receive visions, and gather ideas.

In some societies, however, menstruating women were (and still are) considered unclean, even dangerous, and were consequently separated from the community. Enforced isolation was society's way of preventing the menstrual blood from "contaminating" the plants, men, food, and tools. This belief in "bad blood" contrasts sharply with accounts of women actually increasing the productivity of the earth by fertilizing the soil and seeds with their menstrual blood. (12) Even today, some women use their menstrual blood in this way, either by bleeding directly onto the earth or by rinsing out menstrual sponges or cloths into a bucket of water and using the water to nourish their gardens.

Many women experience the need to be alone while bleeding. Some say they like to read, relax in bed, daydream, take walks, sit alone in a room and watch a glowing candle, or go to beach and sit quietly, perhaps bleeding into the sand. Others find that inflexible jobs or the constant responsibility for young children prevent them from seeking extended periods of seclusion. If we are unable to isolate ourselves every month, it may be possible to find seclusion some months. Or perhaps we can find part of a day to be alone while bleeding.

Menstrual Taboos

Fear and awe have been associated with bleeding--because of its cyclicity and relation to the moon, because women blled and do not die, because men do not have the experience of menstruation, and, perhaps most importantly, because of its association with birth and death. This fear of menstruation is reflected in many taboos. Bleeding women have been kept from handling religious paraphernalia at the altar; they have been hidden behind the walls and curtains in the synagogue; and they have been excluded from certain Native American rituals. Patriarchal societies have suppressed, isolated, controlleD, and even killed women who were bleeding.

Menstrual taboos may be carryovers from cultural myths and rituals that refer in some way to "magic blood. An old Australian story tells of men who, openly jealous of women's blood, steal it to use for their own magic. The men confess that they have "nothing to do, really, except copulate; it [the magic of birth] all belongs to the women." (13) Male bloodletting rites and sub-incision rituals practiced in New Guinea, Australia, the Philippines, and Africa are symbolic attempts to re-create the female genitalia and to cause blood to flow in what has been called "man's menstruation." (14)