Several topics are taboo in our culture, and many revolve around undeniably feminine topics, like menstruation, birth and menopause.  If you are a woman, though, the chances are at least one of these topics confronts you every month.

For a young woman, there might be anxiety over the first menses, the roller coaster of puberty.  For a woman trying to conceive, every period feels like a miscarriage, a death.  For many, birth can be as exciting as their wedding (if not more so!).  For an older woman, I imagine that menopause brings a plethora of emotions that I won’t even pretend to understand.  Yet through all of this, no matter where we are personally, we’re not supposed to talk about it?  Are we to deny this grand force of nature?  Say it ain’t so.

It ain’t so.

Read Anita Diamont’s The Red Tent.  Women are supposed to band together, learn and share from and with each other.  None of us are alone.  That’s why you seek out at least a few friends to hold near and dear, women you can share your cycle with, perhaps even synchronize with.  You can share your hopes and dreams, your fears and angst . . . a box of chocolates.  (Visit the Birth On Labor Day website and listen to the experience of women sharing their stories in modern-day “red tents.”  Then look for events happening near you.)

For me, I feel my cycles these days in a way I never did before I had children.  I’ve been blessed with a rather predictable cylce, and like the moon, I can feel myself waxing and waning, can sense when the storm is coming.  While I don’t experience excruciating, debilitating cramps, I have the emotional upheaval of a hurricane or volcano.  The week before menses, I feel apologetic toward my family, like I should carry a sign around my neck that says, “Please don’t take what I say personally.”  It seems that I am incapable of controlling my anger, my emotions, though I must admit that sense I’ve brought more attention to it, I am more aware and can at least stop some of the venom from spewing forth.

At times like this, it’s best to love yourself first, give yourself the extra space you need, and go forth gently.  That seems to work best for me, anyway.  Hopefully you’ve already figured out your coping or celebratory mechanisms.  Hopefully you have others with whom to share them.  If you haven’t given it much thought, then do.  Our lives, our bodies, are full of little miracles, and I believe that everything happens for a reason.  So whether you think your body is perfect or flawed, efficient or defective, this is the body you were given for this life. 

May we treat ourselves well, inside and out.