About the blood

"If we are not gentle with life, the garden within us dies" Song of the Waitaha

excerpts from
Honoring Menstruation: A Time of Self Renewal, by Lara Owen, 1998
This book has been a work-in-progress for the last decade. My first paper on menstruation, The Sabbath of Women, was published in Whole Earth Review in 1991, and two years later a book entitled Her Blood Is Gold was published. Both of these works have been incorporated into the book you are reading now.

...The essential message of this book is this: If you take some time out to center yourself during your period, you will meet the genuine core of your being. From that authenticity you will naturally make choices in life that strengthen your spirit, heal your body, and honor the needs of your soul.

INTRODUCTION
The assumption that lies behind this book is that life is, on balance, a Good Thing, and that the processes of being female are likewise essentially a Good Thing. For the past few thousand years, certainly in Judeo-Christian culture (and in many others), being female has been seen as a Bad Thing. We have had a lineage of descent that honors the male over the female, and a preference for giving birth to sons. Consequently that which is special to the female has tended to be denigrated, whereas that which pertains to the male has been prized and respected...

...Some years ago I began to understand the relationship between my thoughts and my physical health, and I realized that my sense of myself as a woman was warped and distressed by my thoughts, many of which were so automatic as to be unconscious...

...Recognizing the value and pleasure of my periods has been a real opening for me into a deep appreciation of being a woman. The whole process has shifted from being something that I found mildly disgusting and certainly inconvenient, to being an natural time for assessment, clearing, and preparation. It has become a time when I process the last month and prepare for the one coming. I look forward to my period as a time when I am most likely to be able to seek creative solutions to difficulties in my life--provided I make the space for it. This process has been so transformative for me that I am excited by its potential for the healing of other women.
http://www.laraowen.com/menstruex.html
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According to herbalist Susun Weed, the vast majority of women who have simple menstrual cramps and PMS "reduce or eliminate those discomforts when they honor their moontime." Christiane Northrup, a gynecologist in Yarmouth, Maine, confirms this assessment and expands on it, tracing a host of female troubles, from ovarian cysts to uterine fibroids, back to shame at menarche--the time of a young woman's first menses. "The seeds of menstrual distress, which 60 to 70 percent of women suffer, are sown in that whole introduction to the menstrual cycle."
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Tamara Slayton passed away recently. She was based in Sebastopol, California. She was a cherished pioneer who helped to bring menstruation out of the closet in kind and beautiful ways. Several times parts of my menstrual log were published in her Cycles newsletter. I established the ritual "This month as I Bled...." insights and inspiration and quiet new knowings, and I loved it. It healed something very deep for me.

Tamara facilitated rites of passage, made available fine china bowls for soaking menstrual pads and in every way encouraged a new flowering of joy in our menses.

"...Tamara would explain to girls beginning their cycles, during the first half of the cycle estrogen circulates through the system, leading to ovulation around day fourteen. At this point, we may be at her most extroverted and open to others. "I show them how the little fingers on the ends of the fallopian tubes are waving to the ovaries, beckoning the egg to come in," she says. "And then I tell them, that's what we're like when we're in this phase--we're waving to our friends to come play with us."

As progesterone is released, building up the uterine lining in the second half of the cycle, a woman's energy turns inward, she continues. At this phase, many women find themselves wearing darker colors or spontaneously cleaning house to prepare a place in which to settle for their menses. The tension builds as menstruation approaches, as does the ability to cut to the heart of things and tell the truth. "I tend to pull apart and question everything in my life during this phase," says Slayton, who cautions that such doubts should not be acted on rashly, but posed as questions, in hopes of "conceiving" answers at ovulation.

Many women find that at this time and once they start bleeding, their intuitive wisdom is strongest and their dreams most revealing. A woman needs privacy during this phase, Slayton says, so she can slough off old ideas and self-concepts and await the birth of new ones.

"We women want to hold it all together all the time, to take care of everything," Slayton says. "But it's a lie. We need to know when it's time to let something go. We need to be open to a sense that 'this is not where I need to be anymore..."