Deconstrucing the menstrual phase
We live how we bleed.
This is where it all began. Living in modern day North America, we are bombarded with advertisements that everything men can do, we can do bleeding. Our work days are set up to mirror a man’s 24 hour cycle, rather than the female 30 day menstrual cycle. The period knowledge I was given started and ended here, with the actual menstruation, the bleeding part of the cycle. Periods were mentioned in the same breath as Eve’s curse, heart attack level severity in cramps and throw a tampon in, pop an advil and move on with your day.
When immediately post transplant my doctor told me I couldn’t take ibuprofin based pain medications, my first thought wasn’t headache advil. It was cramps and midol. Post bile duct surgery last year, I was immobilized in the hours post surgery and just so happened to start bleeding. My (male) nurse’s solution? Just hold it in until the 6 hour mark had passed and I could move to go put in a tampon. I have been in the hospital having very real heart arythmias and was told it was because I was hysterical due to being on my period. If you want to keep going, I have an entire list of bleed stories and how systems have failed bleeding individuals.
I’ve written and rewritten this next part multiple times, never quite sure how to say what i want to say. Our internet is slow, but that’s ok because that’s how my thoughts are coming out too. Slow like honey. I’ve been writing these posts to keep pace with my own body cycles, since writing from experience is how I write best, and as I write this one the fiery passion from the ovulation stage is gone, and what’s present right now is the desire to be still and small. This phase of the cycle isn’t called the inner winter for nothing.
I’ve been thinking a lot about birth. About death. I read a quote that said birth and death are so closely linked no one tells you the truth about being a mother. I also know what I know to be true of death is also true of birth. The pain associated with the bleeding phase of the cycle, a pain I now know to be sacred and holy, reminds me of every motherhood initiation I’ve ever been a part of. Even if pregnancy is not intended, the very act of menstruating is the deepest physical, primal grief flow of not being pregnant. My brain can be relieved I’m not pregnant, and my body holds the memory, the imprint of emptiness. What I know of death I also know of birth and I know we must die to become.
The blood is sometimes referred to as the fifth vital sign. Anything happening inside the body is going to be expressed through the blood. In my dive into eastern medicine traditions, I discovered the link between Qi and the liver (we talked about this in deconstructing ovulation), and qi. Qi and Blood have a close relationship. Qi can also be defined as life force energy, and in ancient traditions qi infuses life into the blood. When we think of blood, even in just a blood in the body sense, the blood nourishes the body. It flows to support healing, a lack of blood to an area or too much bleeding and we have a medical emergency. The body was made to lose a certain amount of blood and still recover. In medicine if there is an issue with losing too much blood or needing specific blood nutrients and antibodies, a blood transfusion can be performed. (I’ve had many in my life, and I am so thankful for blood donors). Certain relgions still believe strongly in the life force energy connected to blood and members will refuse blood transfusions even in situations of medical necessity for this reason. See where I’m going? Blood is life force energy, organs such as the liver help maintain the proper flow of qi, enter something like an organ transplant and every other part of the body is affected.
Post transplant my liver had (rightfully so) sustained a lot of trauma. That trauma then began showing up in my menstrual cycle. I’d been advised to skip the pain meds for the sake of my liver, so what choice did I have than to be in it? (the link again came up here. Birthing naturally has become more of a conversation starter in my world lately. If we birth naturally, why don’t we die naturally? bleed naturally? I am grateful to medicine and yet is has numbed us out of some of the most natural experiences. We numb everything from being born to a headache and then what happens when we hit an emotional pain we can’t numb? Addiction and abuse is born. But that’s a story for another time)
The natural container around menstruation, before we decided everything men can do we can do bleeding, was not that different from the innate conditions for birth. Quiet, dim lighting, rest, being nourished and cared for. Things came up to be released (the woman often released on her bleed on behalf of her community in matriarchal traditions) and this act was as emotional and spiritual as it was physical. And when I stopped numbing out, it was if my body remembered on its own this ancestral, maternal condition.
During the active bleeding part of my cycle is when I feel the closest to death. Not in a I’m going to die right now way but in a sacred relationship way. And when I emerge into the inner spring, or the follicular phase, it often feels like I’ve done war. I go into a hibernation - it gets dark, I get quiet, I eat less and rest more. I have constructed my life now so I don’t work much or do things that require my full attention during the time when I’ll be bleeding. And I go in.
My son died, and I remember him. I feel the strong pull of connection to my donor, who died and I carry a part of them in me. The ache of infertility and disease, the deaths of those I am close to, I breathe it all in. When I breathe in the pain instead of numbing it, I allow myself the alchemic gift of transmuting it into sacred fire.
What died doesn’t stay dead. It never does. If I want to go high, I must go deep. The extent of beauty and joy in my life is measured by the extent I allow myelf to embrace my pain and grief. What I know of birth I also know of death.
I will hold myself in the sacred darkness of the womb, surrendering to it, knowing this is how birth happens. This is how seeds grow
