Our Wild Woman
Is there a voice inside of you that wants to stay up all night? Reading, creating, screaming, crying? We all have that calling and inner spirit that is trying to crawl out of the shell that we have so tightly placed her in to ensure that society perceives us as valuable, stable and worthy women. But like, excuse me?!
There was a time when woman were seen as the most spiritual beings, the female energy of all things was praised. The feminine energy brings the reminder that life is full of cycles, patterns, and creation. The female body has the ability to create and carry energy that others naturally don’t- and it is MAGICAL. Women would use their week of mensuration to rest, eat, freely bleed, and connect with other women while in such an emotional and transitional cycle. They didn’t force themselves to pretend like nothing was wrong and go to work with a smile on their faces.
RESTING offered the space to feel, express and release the energy that comes up when a woman is on her period. Something we have become accustomed to hiding, shaming, and suppressing so that we can go to school or work and act the same we did in our last cycle. There is not a separation in what each of the 12 cycles of a woman’s menstration offers throughout our lives. Where we can reset and reconsider what we desire in that next cycle.
EATING offered the body a chance to sustain the blood loss and assisted in balancing the hormones while they fluctuate. During this cycle, women need proteins, fats and carbs to feed the body while it cramps and bloats naturally (Gretchen, 2020). To be honest, depleting ourselves of these essentials can make periods irregular or more painful. Our bodies NEED the nutrition to naturally cycle each month until pregnancy (Gretchen, 2020).
FREE BLEEDING was a practice for women to let the natural flow of the cycle be released rather than contained or caught until a “better time” as tampons do. This is one of those things you just may hate or love but it can be liberating to ALLOW the body to do what the body needs. To trust the body on its timing and process. Furthermore, free bleeding practices involved the woman staying on “the” blanket or collecting it and using it to fertilize their gardens… maybe these aren’t the "liberating” practices that speak to you but women bleed and there is nothing unnatural about it. Society should not be shaming women for this cycle that brought all humans to this world.
CONNECTING WITH OTHER WOMEN was a ritual for older times. Not that we don’t have wine nights and moms-night-out kind of things now. But, women would gather together and share the experience of menstration cycles all in a shared space. Why do you think you and your roomie share the same week? We literally Bluetooth connect to the closest females in our life. In a space of other women, we can scream in pain, howl at the moon that signifies our cycles, cry in release, and freely be our changing selves.
To read more about this topic I HIGHLY recommend the following books.
