The Goddess of Blood and Thunder

The Goddess of Blood and Thunder

I awoke this morning to lightening and storm, practically on top of the house. I also woke to my moon bleed. It felt good. I don't know if I have a lack of shame because I refused to be shamed by such a vital, healthy part of my being. I don't know why my mother's shame and hatred, though confusing never stuck properly. Or if something happened at the farm in the middle of all those animals, birthing and nursing, living and dying, that shifted something in me. 

I was sure when my moon bleed began something vital, spiritual and important had happened, but my um-mothered mother greeted my bleed with rage and contempt. I was confused and I felt vulnerable. Yet when everyone around me "went on the pill" I refused (GP seemed to think at 15 years of age every girl should if only for her own benefit to keep her regular) I believed that this was a powerful force that should not be messed with lightly, if at all. I know women who have never had a natural cycle in their whole lives. Friends and girls and women got pregnant even if they were taking the pill. When (at 18, positively ancient where I am from) I did lose my virginity and from that point on I used condoms as my preferred contraceptive. I have had incidents and accidents and used the morning after pill twice. The pill changes women. As do implant coils. Something happens. While I understand and believe in birth control, sexual choice and the autonomy of the body, this sort of birth control often seems to have the opposite, or negative effect. Women tend to put on weight, carry extra water, feel depressed and strange. Their sexual appetites fall away into nothingness. Worse still it sets up this idea that the female body is "unhealthy" and "wrong" and needs "controlling". As someone who really never has"controlled" I tend to be regular as clockwork (or the moon) when I remember to mark it in my diary correctly! I have little to minimal pain. I am more sensitive (I am pretty sensitive the rest of the time) to smell, sound, light and touch. While usually I crave company when I bleed I crave silence, peaceful setting and rest. I take it slower. I have often thought that if I could re-order the world how I wished I would remove weekends. I would stack days off so we worked for three weeks and rested for a week. The way my body naturally seems to want to.

There is still a huge shame given to women and girls, still a huge discomfort about the fact that we bleed at all.

"Take a pill, stop bleeding, reproducing and being female."

This glaring bloody red SHAME that we are not men, that somehow being vulnerable, sensitive and female is still criminal, or threatening and must be erased. 

Make yourself so thin you won't bleed. Make yourself meditated so you won't bleed. If you do bleed, never speak of it. Never accept it. Never embrace your body. Wear shoes that cripple you and stop your feet touching the earth. Wear long nails so you can not touch others. Look like a prepubescent girl, one that doesn't bleed or have body hair.

Is this all fear of menses? Is how the Western culture tells women to live, look and be, part of that?

For me my moon is needed rain. The cleansing storm. Natural and healthy. Even beautiful. 

It isn't "a thing" that "gets rid" of waste. It is a process of renewal. Of awakening and dreaming. Of seeing the and feeling the world differently. That is why I loved the storm, and my womanly body, in all it's curvy bloody glory.