Period

By Lisa Labita Woodson

I have spent most of my adolescent years dreading my period, and cursing myself for having been born a woman made to endure this monthly painful expulsion from my aching ovaries. I remember my first period and the brown streaks on my underwear. No one had really prepared me for it. I changed my underwear every few hours and then hid the dirty ones in the bathroom cabinet behind the toilet paper. I figured that if I were to hide it away and not tell anyone, let alone acknowledge it myself, then it would go away. However, it didn’t and in the days that followed, it became more painful and the brown streaks turned into a vibrant red. Finally, I secretly went into my parent’s bathroom and took a few pads from my mother’s stash. They were big and bulky and I soon chaffed from them rubbing against my inner thighs. When I ran out of pads, I had to confess to my father what had happened, crying to him that I was “no longer his little girl.”

As I grew older, I tolerated my periods. And until I had my first ovarian cyst rupture, I didn’t think too much of them. At this point, I was placed on Depo Provera to help manage the cysts and magically my periods disappeared. I spent the next ten years on this birth control and when I finally went off of Depo, it took me over 11 months to get my period and an additional 2 years to conceive. From baby to baby, from breastfeeding to breastfeeding, I didn’t have a “normal” period as they were sporadic and sometimes altogether absent. Now that my babies have grown and my breasts are void of milk, I am back to having my periods much like I remember them in my youth, but now with a greater sense of appreciation and acceptance.

Why this change? It didn’t happen overnight. I have had some time to really reflect on it.

Having two young daughters, I wanted to be a part of their journey into womanhood and to provide them a positive, reinforced perspective that will nurture them during this very confusing time. But how could I be a part of something that I hadn’t yet come to terms with. I despised having my period where I still felt as if it was some secretive dirty part of myself that happened to me every month. Thus began the soul searching.

Although I had been keenly aware of how women are treated around the world during menstruation, having both researched it and seeing it on my travels abroad, I hadn’t really made the connection to using this knowledge to embrace my own period. Let me explain by first highlighting some of the issues surrounding menstruation.

In Nepal, periods are considered taboo. Women are often banished from their homes every month to privately bleed because they are considered polluted or “impure”. This practice is referred to as “Chhaupadi”. During menses, women are sometimes confined in a separate hut or animal shelter where they are barred from eating certain foods and are restricted from going to school or taking part in daily activities. A menstruating woman is believed to bring bad luck. A older New York Times article details the struggle women have in this country and how this practice has led to deaths of young girls.

In other parts of the world (and also prevalent in Nepal), young girls who are menstruating often do not attend school during this time and some even drop out once they begin menarche or their first period. A UNESCO report, published in 2014, highlights the magnitude of this problem:

This accumulation of missed school days adds up over an academic year. If we do the math, suppose that a child attends school 10 months of a year, she is likely to miss at least 40 days. How are students expected to maintain their education when they have missed over a month of material?

Closer to home, we (the Westernized “we”) are still uncomfortable with this naturally occurring process. The now famous poet Rupi Kaur in 2015 posted a menstruation-themed photo series on Instagram which was repeatedly removed or censored. I find one of these images particularly powerful. It shows Kaur on her bed with a visible blood spot on her sheets and clothes. It went viral and although many praised her for the work, she also received death threats and criticism. This reinforces that we still have a long way to go in our acceptance of this “biological phenomenon”.

Huffington Post: “About That Period Photo that Broke the Internet”

Although I would be the first to denounce the stigmas and taboos associated with menstruation, I had still harbored my own feeling of shame and disdain for my own periods. When mulling over why I had such a disconnect, I began to wonder where these deep-rooted feelings originated. What I came to realize was that I had been bombarded with negative images of my period my entire life. The first experience I can recall is being told from my mother at a young age that this is something women must suffer. 

I also remember an incident in puberty that helped to cement this idea that my period was dirty. Because I didn’t want to stain my white underwear, I had resigned myself to wearing the only black underwear I owned for the entire week while menstruating with little knowledge of personal hygiene as a pubescent girl. When changing my clothes in gym class, a strong odor permeated from my supposedly “clean” underwear. Although I was wearing a new pad and had changed my pads regularly, the black underwear which appeared unmarred had masked the blood that had saturated and dried along the sides and back over the days and nights of prior wear.

I was embarrassed when one of the girls who was changing next to me commented that it smelled 'fishy' in the locker room – it was me. As I grew older, conversations around menstruation usually revolved around how inconvenient it was. Women would often lament that they needed to plan their weddings and vacations around their periods. In short, I had learned that my periods were unsanitary, shameful, insufferable, and inconvenient.

Now as a mother of two little girls, I wanted to change the dialogue into something positive. My younger daughter had once asked me about the “diapers” she had found in my bathroom cabinet. I took the opportunity to talk to her about menstruation. I told her how this is a common experience for all women to bleed every month and that it is a gift. I explained that one day she too will have a period and may need to wear these 'special' diapers. That answer seemed to suffice as she then began to rifle through my nail polish collection carefully selecting one for me to paint her fingernails.

It was at this moment it all changed for me and when my period came that month, I didn’t secretly curse it, but instead embraced it. I took the opportunity to marvel at the beauty of my own body, one that could and did bear children. It also helped to remind me of my own womanhood, one that is not solely based on this one aspect but that encompasses the entire journey where I have learned to embrace my own sexuality, learned to be comfortable in my own skin, and learned to appreciate that as a woman, I have unique strengths and capabilities.