We tend to shy away from "touchy" or "embarrassing" topics, as human beings. We generally don't talk about poop, boogers, menstruation -- in fact, most of the bodily liquids seem to be a no-go in polite society, which seems a shame to me. For one, because it reduces them greatly to these gross, incidental aspects of life that we must tolerate. Things to be embarrassed of, to hide from the light.
I'd hear women talking about being tired, wanting to sloth all day during those wonderful days of the month, and I'd think to myself pussies. It seemed, like so much, like bullshit to me. I thought surely, women in the olden days worked the fields, reared the children, and cared for the household while on their periods, right? And I dare say, they had far worse hygiene options than we do. Long story short, as I grow older, I change my mind about this, as so many things.
As ever, my own worst enemy
I realize now how much of a disservice I was doing myself by avoiding these topics, and by powering through. Thinking it's embarrassing or weak to make time for yourself, or just curl up and die for a bit. And weakness will not be tolerated on this front, you hear?
Silly me. Not only was I denying my body and psyche the rest and quiet it needed, but I was actually hounding myself, making myself feel like some kind of asshole for needing those in the first place. I was constructing a narrative that was so poisonous and toxic, in thinking I was weak, or defective, that went well beyond those four-five days, seeping into how I carried myself through the world, throughout the month.
A Time to Rest
Lately (a year or so) I've been on a bit of a transient kick. Changes accelerate, and speed me along, teaching me to slow down as I go about it. I've been trying out listening to my body. Just for size, just to see what it's like, and man, is it a change of pace.
I think we've become so obsessed with productivity that the concept of a few monthly days of rest and restoration are just anathema. Particularly as women, I think there's a lot of pressure to be tough, if anything, be more productive than our male counterparts. Those few days may be called "sensitive time" now, but they were considered a weakness for a very long time, and that sort of psychological imprint doesn't just erase itself.
So we mistakenly try, and push ourselves to do more, and be more during menstruation. To prove to ourselves and implicitly the world we're worth keeping around.
What a horrible way to think of oneself. For me as I am now, those days are a reprieve where anything goes. Well, almost anything. It's okay if I want to watch another episode of whatever I'm binging at the moment. It's okay if I don't wanna work out, or be with people.
It seems like nothing grand, but just that okay coming from self was a hard time coming for me. I'm a very laidback person in many regards, but I observe a fairly strict rigidity with myself. There's things I wanna do and be -- I sometimes think someone wrote me a map to them on the inside of my eyelids before I was born. And it's with that invisible hand that I guide myself, steer myself, and Lord help me if I step off the path.
A Time to Grieve
It took me an embarrassingly long time to recognize and accept that during that sensitive time, grief was normal. Before, I just used to think "silly old bipolar me". Another black mark against myself, another brass example of how I failed to conduct myself in polite society.
...sometimes, you need other people to tell you it's okay, too.
I like this channel a lot, actually. While I hear a lot of girls talking about taking this special time to rest, I hear a lot less about femininity, and viewing menstruation from that particular perspective.
And it's strange to me how quiet we can be about something that, for many women, can be so devastating. Like an actual flesh-and-bone loss. So I've come around to viewing it from a more permissive perspective, one that recognizes the loss, and the need for mourning that must inevitably close the circle for a new one to begin.
It feels to me we've grown incredibly disconnected from our own bodies, to the extent where the question "but what have you really lost" actually makes sense. Why shed a tear for some icky old blood? Gone is the very real meaning and weight behind that. Of the potential that does not come to fruition, of shedding something you've carried inside yourself and that you must now inevitably let go of. There's immense imagery in that, and once we acknowledge and embrace it, I feel, great power. I don't think you can really grieve when you're not allowing yourself to do it. But that's just the thing, the sadness and the complex emotions stay trapped in you, just like with any relationship, or other loss we refuse to validate.
So yes, it's a time for grieving for me.
A Time for Gratitude
Any woman out there knows that the last thing you're feeling during those lovely few days is grateful. That's another thing I think we're doing wrong. It's become so common to bemoan and decry our terrible luck that we see menstruation as solely a bad thing. You can't work out; you can't wear certain clothes; you feel like shit -- we capitalize on the negatives, and forget there's actually a lot of value there.
So first, gratitude to my body for working, for creating this possibility of children, at some point down the line. That's magic, and I think, worth all the nasty side effects that come with this cycle.
I'm grateful to this very primitive occurrence for reminding me, and reassuring me, that change is okay. That we're supposed to change, and transition through different phases, different moments, different lives. That you can lose something that at some point seemed essential and that, you later realize, you could go without. You might, without it, even prosper. Because there's this wonderful period of fecundity and desire and rebirth, immediately after menstruation. Naturally. After the end of a cycle comes a new beginning, no? Yet one must go through that ending first, before they can be reborn.
There's a tremendous lesson there, one that our body knows and carries inside since times out of mind. I try to keep it in mind whenever I start complaining or moaning about it.
Finally, I feel grateful because I know it's not a given. Hormonal difficulties have been a plague on my life as long as I've known myself, and only this year, I've managed alleviating them through diet and other lifestyle changes. So yeah, I often joke about wanting my old out of balance body back. But really, feeling like something's broken and may break even more further down the road is not fun at all.
Anyway, that's my two cents worth, rather philosophical, as ever, for this week's Ladies of Hive question,
We Women have multiple phases in our life where we go through hormonal imbalance, like monthly menstruation, pregnancy, menopause. Not only our physical but our mental health also gets impacted. Share with us, how do you take care of these sensitive times and take care of your physical and mental health?
