This was a partial version of the museum newsletter (Catamenia means menstruation in medicalese), which is no longer produced. |
I was the youngest of three girls. My mother was sent a
letter from my school which said that they would be showing a movie on the
"birds and the bees." Maybe you remember it. I think it was the
usual movie shown to fifth graders in the 60's. I remember that the girl
in the movie got a new yellow sweater. Although everyone else in the room
was watching the film, I felt scared and alone, as if a spot light had just
gone on over my head
My mother must have been relieved that the school had offered this movie,
because she never mentioned menstruation to me again. On January 1st, the
year I turned 14, I stood at the top of the stairs and yelled, "I got
it!" Without turning off the dishwasher, she yelled back, "They
are in the back of the closet!"
And there they were, as big as canoes. I had no idea how to fasten them
to my clothing, and I had no napkin belt or safety pins, so I bunched the
napkin between my butt cheeks. I spent the next three years walking with
my legs pressed together, terrified that it would fall out of my underpants.
Mother was going through menopause at the time and when she stopped having
her periods, she stopped buying supplies. There I was, experimenting with
wadded-up tissues and such. I was 40 years old before I realized I was "allowed"
to have tampons and pads in each of my bathrooms and always be prepared.
To this day, when I get my period, I feel forlorn and neglected.
I never gave much thought to the whole thing until the experience came flooding
back as I lay on a table in the emergency room being catheterized 30 years
later.
Hours earlier I had allowed my doctor to convince me - over the phone, without
examining me - that I had pulled a muscle in my back. I ignored the inner
voice that told me I had some kind of "female" problem.
Sitting in just a robe in a lawn chair, tears streaking down my face, I
felt a high fever and I had spasmodic pain where I thought my ovaries were.
I could hardly stand up. Somehow I couldn't explain this to the doctor in
a way he could understand.
But it's too easy to blame this on a bad doctor.
I was intelligent, well educated, with years of experience breeding animals
- I wasn't prudish or shy. I was a mother and grandmother. How could I become
so detached from my body that I could let this happen?
Actually, it wasn't just that I was detached from my body - I had no trouble
getting dental treatment or a sprained ankle fixed. The problem seemed to
be with my "female" body. I began to string together, like pearls,
incidents during my pregnancies and birth control days when I had the same
feelings of speaking into a vacuum, of not being heard, of not being seen.
So, as the nurse nodded sympathetically, and treatment began, I thought
about my menarche. Actually, at that time I had not heard that word. I had
never thought in terms of rites of passage. Just puberty. Adolescence. Terms
that were used as excuses for weird behavior and pimples. When my own children
were pubescent - does that sound like insect larvae? - I prided myself on
being liberal and informative. I gave them books and said that after they
read them, if they had any questions, they could certainly ask me anything.
Then I closed the bedroom door, patted myself on the back for a job well
done, and avoided the subject ever after.
When I was feeling better, I started asking my girlfriends how they learned
about menstruation. One woman told me that her mother was just "not
the kind who would explain anything," so her older brother told her
how to put in a tampon by reading the little booklet that comes in the box
- through the bathroom door!
Another told me she got her period the first time the day of a very important
swim meet and that her mother spent two hours trying to get a tampon into
her so she "would not let the family down." Others remembered
that their mothers had left pamphlets lying around the house, or had their
older sisters explain "things." Many said they had never really
thought about it.
It was so sad.
A light dawned. How could I be attached to my female body when a major event
like my first period could be totally ignored? No one had ever shown me
it was as important as my arm or my heart. My experience was not unusual,
which made it even worse.
I decided to backtrack a bit. I went to the bookstore and bought Reviving
Ophelia, by Mary Piper, Ph.D. It said right on the cover that it was "an
eye-opening look at the everyday dangers of being young and female, and
how adults can help." It was subtitled, "Saving the Selves of
Adolescent Girls." It was a "Provocative Best Seller." Mary
Piper was a clinical psychologist who had studied teenage girls for more
than twenty years. The book had 293 pages. It mentioned menstruation once.
I became convinced that menstruation is the problem with no name.
I believe that our cultural attitudes toward menarche and menstruation are
responsible in part for our high teenage pregnancy rates. I think that more
reverence for the life-giving force that we inherit from our mothers would
result in fewer abortions. Maybe fewer women would stay in abusive relationships.
And would would we sicken ourselves as much with diets and drugs, or gut
ourselves on taking so much responsibility for others?
If you have a daughter, tell her when she is very little about the great
mysteries involved in being a woman. Tell her when she is older that she
must cherish those things that make her female. Tell her to make every decision
about what goes on in her body or mind based on the love she has for it.
Encourage her to explore her body and make it her own first, before she
shares it with someone else.
When she gets her first period, tell her about yours. Tell her you and she
are part of the tides of the earth. Tell her that menstrual blood is perfect
and not to be afraid or ashamed of it. Tell her pain is sometimes a part
of it, but it doesn't mean she is sick or weak. And teach her to know herself.