Feb 2, 2020
30 Reflections for Turning 30 #1: The Beauty of the Blood, Women, and Solidarity
Woman. Women. Womxn. Transwomen. Females. Femmes. Mothers of all definitions. Grandmothers. Sisters. We are special.
In this lifetime, my path has been to be a white, cisgender*, heterocurious* woman and the last two years, especially, have been a time for me to reconnect with what it means, for me to be woman, and who are some of the women who have been there for me in this journey. Today is the second day of my cycle (sometimes I call it my moon) and I want to begin this Creative Challenge: 30 Learnings for my 30th Year with this essay because I have spent so much time in my years criticizing, containing, correcting, shifting, critiquing parts of this body that carries me through my days, and today, I want to honor it, and honor myself. I’m sluggish so I’m sitting inside, half naked, and writing rather than working out. YEAH! Onwards…
Thoughts on Ze Body
I’m learning to listen to my body, to love the parts of me I see and I hold and it feels like a remembering, a reacquaintance, a relief. I see my big heart, big hips, and big smile, a smile that shows equal parts gum and teeth and is a little crooked on the left side (lean in closely next time, you might see the perfectly imperfect balance of me). I love how I am a creation of freckle constellations like my dad, and how there are scars from falling, from trying, all up and down my legs. I love how my breasts are cuppable, perfectly, in my hands, and their own lopsidedness which somehow makes me feel more balanced, not less. Rather than feel shame, I’m embracing the tingles and shivers (fear not, masturbation/sex will be another topic of this month) and spontaneous shaking, dancing, moving I feel called to do in this world.
I spent years, subconsciously and consciously, believing that I was only seen as beautiful because my body was seen as “hot,” thinking that my greatest worth came from a body that was stereotypically deemed worthy. I wanted thinner legs, tighter abs, stronger muscles (some of these things are, for me, also good to strive for with health); meanwhile, I would go around my high school out-eating boys in burrito contests while flaunting a pretty flawless figure. I was probably quite annoying. Extending self-compassion though to that 16-year-old me, I was fit and active, felt fun and free, and still, suffered internally because of that sense of attaching my worth to a formulaic notion of beauty. That message is in EVERY LITTLE THING that is show: movies, TV, celebrities, ads, commercials. I feel kind of ashamed admitting it’s taking me until 30 to really be more cognizant in the ACTIVE UNLEARNING of how others see me and how I see myself, but you know what, at least the unlearning is happening, day by day! WaBAM!
Nowadays, I feel more earth, more air, more fire, more water than I do skin and bones, organs and muscles. I’ve finally let my hair grow out to its natural color, releasing the part of me that linked my beauty to blondness (and please, all folks, dye your hair any color you want! I found, for me, I used it more of a crutch than an expression of creativity). I’ve grown out my arm pit hair (seen as gross, unladylike, wrong, weird in my upbringing) and leg hair, then shaved it, then regrown it, then shaved. I’m exploring myself in ways that have felt a long time coming. Every day for the last six months, I’ve made time to put one hand on my heart, my other on my belly. I’m practicing giving thanks, quietly, for this body, for its imperfections, for the movements it makes, for however long my soul inhabits it.
Inside the Circle
I love how we women watch out for one another. We see how we have to teach each other how to be. A mother in Denver teaches her young daughters how to sand an old door out on the front lawn as I walk by. My herbalist friend helps me make a tincture for immune boosting and I dance with her, and her friends, all night for a summer solstice. I used to cook with my grandmother and all of her Danish friends; we wore red and white aprons and made frikadeller meatballs while they taught me how to not wash the counter with soapy water before rolling the balls.
Older women teach me to pay better attention to my hormones, to take better care of myself, to enjoy cinnamon rolls, to make tinctures, to get angry when I see people in homelessness, to question systems of power. Younger women invite me to swing with them, to dance without fear, to hold their hand, to run fast like the wind, to color for hours. In my life, I feel like I have a hundred mothers (but don’t worry mom, you’re number one) and I believe we’re also sharing this world with the greatest mother. I write to her too, sometimes, and sometimes I can feel her pain, her suffocation under concrete, her strength of holding up all civilizations on her shoulders. Other times, I feel her holding me up. I once heard her heartbeat in the soil while I was trekking in the Langtang National Park in Nepal. I wanted to stay there for hours, just to match up our beating hearts, so I could sing her songs of thanks. Thank you to all of my teachers.
What Solidarity Looks Like
I love the woman who protected me when that man wouldn’t listen to my “No.” She came up to me in the street and asked if she could help me get away. That was all it took. Enough time to pause. Just in her asking, I found myself stronger. It’s not that I needed her to physically protect myself; I needed her to emotionally validate myself, to remind myself that what was happening was not ok. When someone else sees something, and says it, it’s like a snap back to reality, a shot of adrenaline, enough perspective to be able to leave. It feels like being seen.
We women try, and often fail, but always try, to be there for one another. When there is wounding, we sit with some sort of ancient knowing, a knowledge of the collective memory of rape. When we change ourselves to accommodate a partner, we sit with one another and ask why, and remind ourselves how special we are, and support. Even when the friendship has faded in my life, I’ve had people come back and support me when I needed it, in times of grief, and in those moments, I reconnected with the deep need for belonging, and found I didn’t need to belong to a man, but needed to belong to them, to those who care.
Lunar Love Making
I’m learning to love the cycles of my flow. After twelve years of birth control pills, started because of a heavy period, cramps, and the tiniest speckling of acne, I became part of one of the greatest feminist revolutions- I could control my ovulation, so therefore, I could control pregnancy, motherhood, sexual safety. From a feminist perspective, this choice is paramount. And yet, for me, I did not realize how much birth control pills affected me: they altered my mood, emphasized the ups and downs, messed with my intestinal lining, made me feel disconnected from a menstrual cycle that feels, and is, ancient. Many doctors would say it was “just in the mind,” and that birth control pills wouldn’t do that. I am grateful for the midwife friend of mine who opened up this path, and helped me see what it meant to celebrate my cycle, rather than control it.
Menstruation, the source of human life, has been stigmatized, on purpose, by patriarchal minds for millennia. Why should women celebrate their power to make life? It angers me to see how much this stigma has become part of how we in the United States, and so many other women around the world, view our cycles: dirty, wrong, something to hide. While in Kathamndu, Nepal, last fall for work, I was talking to a local female politician and learned that there still are “tents,” in some villages, not so much the cities, for women to go to when they are bleeding. But these secluded dwellings are not the Red Tent as celebrated in Anita Diamant’s novel. Instead, in Nepal, the tents are more like shacks, and they aren’t properly cleaned because they are vulnerable to the elements. Also, their seclusion can make the women who go their for safety, for sanctity, victims of sexual violence. When the sanctimonious becomes the reason for one’s rape, where can a woman go for protection?
In parts of India, I learned through conversation and film (Padman!) how the menstrual cycle brings with it shame. In some towns that do not have as much access to gender equality movements and equal education, women are still expected to sit outside, sleep outside, eat outside from their family because bleeding is seen as unholy. A pad used to cost a sum that was not feasible to imagine paying for working class women. I did not find tampons in pharmacies, even in a big city like Varanasi. When I bought pads at a local shop, all of the men wouldn’t meet my gaze. I know that I grew up in the States, and so my mindset around menstruation is different, but I also felt this collective weight of women needing to hide themselves away when they’re bleeding– perhaps no school, no work, no family time, no touch.
While living and traveling in Mexico and Ecuador, I heard menstruation referred to as “mi pequeño problema,” my little problem, by some friends. I talk to students of mine, some Mexican-American, some Mexican, some El Salvadoran, some Ecuadorian, about bleeding, and how its ok, and I ask if they want to learn about tampons, but I also do not force it. Menstruation is intimate, and universal. Amazing researchers asked women all over to share how they refer to their cycles. While it may be easier to point out extremes I heard about or witnessed in other countries, the stigma exists in U.S. in big, little ways all the time, even more so depending on your ethnicity or religion. Growing up, white and Presbyterian, there was an underlying discomfort in how I learned about the flow. Don’t talk about your period. Make sure to cover up your pads well in the trash. Stealthily slide a tampon from purse to fist when going into the bathroom. These messages are not lost; they have to be, I believe, unlearned.
The Sum of All Parts
I write all of this, as I said, on this beautiful second day of my own flow. Currently bleeding, breathing and living in Tucson, AZ. Home. In the last year, I’ve stopped bc pills, and removed an IUD. I’ve started taking cherry bark tinctures for hormone regulation. I’ve dealt with pretty miserable adult acne that comes and goes. I’m learning about my adult body, unregulated. And though it’s not perfect, all of this is me- my messiness and mood swings, my cramps and pimples. I’m learning to accept them as part of this coursing of life blood in me. In writing about my cycle so much, I want to say I still don’t know 100% for sure I want to be a mother, or will be. I certainly believe cisgender women do not have to be mothers. For me, however, this reconnection with my cycle has been a reconnection to myself, to my body, to a body I didn’t really know how to listen to for years, and that, in and of itself, has been transformational.
In the last few years, I’ve been learning from, unlearning from, admiring, and connecting with women, with people, with females who have helped me to see how much strength, softness, steadiness, gumption, beauty, and celebration there is in me, and in everyone else. Again, thank you, for all that has been given, and all that I will pass forward.
Notes on Audience, Inclusivity, and Language
*A note on terms and audience: Assuming the roughly 13 people who will read this are in my closer group of friends/family, I believe I’m writing to a mostly white, heterosexual, cisgender audience, and yet, I continue to try to see my own lens, and to consider others’. I felt my lens a lot while I was writing this piece. What about my two friends who are gender non-binary, who are biological woman but don’t identify as female? Or what about my new friend who is a transwoman and therefore doesn’t have the biological, menstrual cycle that some view as definitively “womanly” and is, still completely, a woman and female? How do I feel about ascribing all these characteristics to females and women in general? In talking about my body, am I also objectifying it and creating more of a cycle of women being seen as their bodies, rather than hearts, souls, minds? I write this paragraph to show I am still learning, and these words come from my own lens, and yet, though the intention is always to be inclusive, equitable, and truthful, I always make mistakes (this will be a theme of this month’s posts). So please, if you feel I could have been better in any wording, phrasing, inclusivity, and you feel willing to share a comment, let me know!
Cisgender: One whose biological parts align with the gender they identify as. I was born with a vagina, vulva, uterus, and all other “female organs” and I also identify as female. This term is important to me because it acknowledges there are many people who identify as female but do not have biological female parts, and they, too, 100%, fully, completely are women.
Heterocurious: In writing this, I suppose it is me not wanting to identify as bisexual or queer (as its an identity I feel I don’t fully belong to, nor have claimed). Heterocurious is my just my own word, though I’m sure it’s been used a hundred times before, and a way of saying that I’m attracted to many: men, women, and people, yet I’ve only ever been in heterosexual relationships. I could say pansexual, I suppose, but personally, I don’t feel like I need to identify, or claim, my sexuality in any particular way right now. Hence, heterocurious.
