Our friends at You Are Loved and Be Prepared Period are co-hosting their biggest Tweet Chat yet to celebrate one year of period talk!

We’re so excited to support these two great organizations, and will be giving away a GladRags Pad Sampler Kit to one lucky winner. Also up for grabs are a DivaCup and Diva Wash, prize pack from Instead SoftCup, and a Menstrual Empowerment Bracelet from Feby. Make sure you enter to win here!

These monthly Tweet Chats have been amazing opportunities to spread information and awareness about menstruation and health, and we hope you’ll join us for this First Annual Menstrual Party on July 13th at 2 pm EST.

In the meantime, follow @GladRags on Twitter and feel free to ask us your questions at any time!

26 young women and girls were completely attentive at a recent class at their rural school in Uganda. The topic was menstruation and the facilitator was Hussein, program manager for One School at a Time.There had never been a class like this one before and the subject was both interesting and relevant. Some of the girls were already menstruating and some were not. One girl commented “menstruation is a problem because it comes when we are not prepared.”

The discussion then became a brainstorming session on how the girls could be better prepared. Everyone agreed that it would be helpful to count the 28 days between cycles, (noting plenty of variation) and then acknowledged that sanitary pads and nickers (the Ugandan word for underwear) would be needed. Hussein asked, “who needs pads?” and every single girl raised her hand.
Menstruation is one of the reasons that girls drop out of school in Uganda. Parents often can not afford to provide sanitary pads and so, reluctant to be humiliated at school, girls choose to stay home. They miss valuable class time and some eventually just drop out of school completely.

One School at a Time is fundraising now to purchase 100 Empower Kits ($22 each) for each older girl at our two partner schools in Uganda. The kit contains 5 re-useable pads. These pads are culturally appropriate (Ugandan girls are familiar with washing their menstrual rags and re-using) and will provide enough sanitary supplies to last each girl for at least three to five years. By donating a kit, you provide these girls with security and confidence and most importantly, an opportunity to stay in school. Join with us in this beautiful endeavor!

The modern day woman has lost touch with her womb. She fills her body with toxins, has a poor diet, gets no rest, and is ashamed of her body. Growing up in a patriarchal society has taught us that we should be ashamed of our bodies, needs, and desires, but the truth is that women are strong and a dynamic force. Our womb is what makes us divinely feminine. When we re-awaken ourselves to our divine right, we empower ourselves as women. The evolved feminine walks the path of beauty. She regards herself and all life as sacred. She is sovereign unto herself and relies upon her intuition and wisdom.

As the daughter and priestess of Ix Chel, I felt that I had to include this for all the women who have forgotten the phrase “Thou art Goddess”. I know from experience what its like to suffer from a menses full of pain and my body behaving out of control.Until one day I said, “No more!” If I am a part of the Goddess, and the Goddess resides in me, then I should treat my body with love and respect. I should honor the vessel I have been given by the Goddess to walk around in this world. The womb is sacred, all powerful, and the seat of creativity to a woman.

Ix Chel is the great Mayan Goddess of the moon, water, healing, childbirth, fertility, creativity, and rebirth. She is known as the Great Mother to my people, but can be found in three aspects: Maiden, Mother, and Crone. It is She that causes the blood to gather so that it may flow with the passage of each month. She gave us the gifts of creativity, knowledge of healing, and the easing of childbirth. She takes care of the women of the Earth, especially those who are on their moon (menstruating), pregnant, or nursing. She is the type of Goddess who hears the pleas of her daughters and aids them when they are in need.

Ix Chel has much wisdom to teach us, but what we’ll be focusing on is loving your womb. Our womb is ruled by the sacral chakra. It is a place of sexuality and creativity. When it becomes unbalanced, you will start to notice that your emotions can run wild, inspiration will be blocked, fertility is impaired, and relationships will begin to form problems. Our womb is a holy container. It produces the moon blood that represents both life and death. Our blood can teach us a lot about our own health and warn you of illness. When was the last time you looked at your own blood? You should not shy away from it, or from looking at your own yoni; explore it.

It is our natural cycle that mimics the moon, which is why its known as a woman’s moon cycle in many native cultures. Ix Chel teaches us that our womb is sacred. Think about the immense power and strength that it holds, the potential for life that is strictly ours, the wonders of pleasure that we receive from it, and the fact that we can bleed for days and not die. Our body naturally cleanses itself and starts anew. You can use this period to cleanse yourself and your womb of any negativity.

Before I became pregnant, I would partake in a woman’s moon cycle ritual every month on the first night of my menses. On those nights, I would call on the Goddess and thank her for my fertility. I would ask that she ease my pain and restore me in her healing waters, and in return I offered her the blood I shed. During this ritual, I would focus healing energy onto my womb and I would chant and meditate on the twenty-five womb chants. They are:

1. My womb is sacred, and so is my life.
2. My womb is precious, and so is my life.
3. My womb is divine, and so is my life.
4. My womb is love, and so is my life.
5. My womb is whole and so is my life.
6. My womb is free, and so is my life.
7. My womb is radiant, and so is my life.
8. My womb is light, and so is my life.
9. My womb is great, and so is my life.
10. My womb is celestial, and so is my life.
11. My womb is peace, and so is my life.
12. My womb is bliss, and so is my life.
13. My womb is bright, and so is my life.
14. My womb is natural, and so is my life.
15. My womb is liberated, and so is my life.
16. My womb is full of energy, and so is my life.
17. My womb is pure, and so is my life.
18. My womb is in tune, and so is my life.
19. My womb is all powerful, and so is my life.
20. My womb is the seat of my creativity, and so is my life.
21. My womb is full, and so is my life.
22. My womb is filled with prayer, and so is my life.
23. My womb is a dynamic force, and so is my life.
24. My womb is holy, and so is my life.
25. My womb is the gateway to heaven here on earth, and so is my life.

I would hold my hands over my womb and envision each line of the chant as if it was manifesting right before me. I honored my womb and all of its radiant energy. I would notice at once that any pains I had would subside and I would be filled with a sense of peace. My moontime was never a struggle when I did the ritual and took time to honor my womb and its natural ebb and flow. Sometimes we can become so busy with life and we don’t pay attention when our body says to slow down; then out of nowhere, we will crash, both emotionally and physically. The great thing is that our body naturally cleanses itself each month, giving us a chance to regenerate.

If you haven’t already done so, you should set up a sacred womb altar. It should contain images, symbols, and items that are spiritual to you and represents the womb and the divine feminine. It doesn’t have to be large or contain anything fancy. It can be as simple as a small statue and a few shells or crystals. It’s what holds the most importance to what you hope to achieve. Allow yourself to let go when you’re bleeding. Honor your emotions and express them. Create your own moon temple and put up a flag or wear a blessed piece of jewelry to let others know that you are on your moon and to respect it.

Next we must reconnect with our womb through meditation. We must listen closely to the voice of the womb. Your womb will tell you how she wants to be healed. She misses nothing, and knows all. Take a relaxing bath, eat chocolate, and do things that bring you sensual pleasure. When your womb is happy, you will be happy.
Another thing to consider is the use of sustainable menstrual products. While healing your womb, one important thing to change is your feminine products and the way you care for your yoni. First thing’s first: You do NOT need to wash out your vulva or vagina with anything other than some natural glycerin-free soap and water. Never douche because it will only end up killing off all the good bacteria and all you will have left is a killer yeast infection.

Secondly, you should really switch to cotton underwear, if you haven’t already. Sure lacey undies and thongs can make you feel sexy and all, but your vagina NEEDS to breath. So do it a favor and go commando when you can, like at home or in bed, and every other time use cotton.

Third, menstrual products play a big role in a woman’s life. There are tampons, pads, sponges, cups, and cloth pads. It’s all so confusing and overwhelming- what do you do? Well, you stop using tampons and disposable pads for one. They contain bleach and other chemicals that are shown to contribute to cervical cancer and other abnormalities. Bleach is made from chlorine and chlorine is super toxic! Not only that, tampons are known for causing Toxic Shock Syndrome. They also produce massive amounts of waste that takes hundreds of years to decompose. No good for you or the environment.

Now cloth pads and cups are where it’s at! Cloth pads are re-usable (no more running out to the store because you ran out), made in fun patterns, and easy to use and clean up. I find that I enjoy my moon a lot more when I use these body & earth friendly options.

The more you honor your womb, the easier your menses will be. The release of blood brings forth the opportunity to make a powerful offering to the divine feminine. Our womb will teach us many things, if we let it. We must promise to honor it and its wondrous and magical mystery. We cannot allow outside influences to stop the flow of divine femininity. The Great Goddess Ix Chel can and will help you heal your womb and if you choose to listen closely, she will help empower you.

Monica Divane currently lives in NYC and is happily married and expecting her first child. She is of Mayan descent and works as a Pagan Priestess.

Tell us a little about yourself! What do you want customers to know about you?

First, I have to say, thank you for asking! I would like customers to know that my product and the passion I have for it is thoroughly genuine and reflective of who I am. The message of self-acceptance and the joy of finding a product that actually works on blood stains and makes life easier is what I truly hope for women. I want women and girls to find Ruby’s Red Wash a practical, happy and encouraging part of their world, even though it may merely be a product they use once or twice a month. To me, Ruby’s Red Wash is a movement: an appreciation of female being and some liberation in a bottle. Anything I say and do regarding Ruby’s Red Wash is very personal to me and, frankly, just like something you’d find in my diary.

What inspired you to create Ruby’s Red Wash? What was the process like?

I was conducting research for my Ph.D. dissertation and it was on the phenomenology of Menstruation. I compared women’s concrete experiences of menstruation to an extensive analysis of the meanings of menstruation found in and produced by the culture. The title turned out to be ‘The Bloody Truth: A Psychological and Cultural Study of Menstruation as Lived and Experienced by Women.’ It took about six years to conduct and in the end it was long and really two dissertations.

The review of the cultural meanings of menstruation became very depressing to analyze and write about. It was essentially a review of the history of oppression of women– and, the most deflating part was that these oppressive, damning messages to women are still present in the culture, only they are still invisible to women.

Women have taken on or internalized the notions that they have a ‘dirty secret’ because of menstruation and this dirty secret makes them irrational compared to men and also inferior. Even women who grew up in a fairly progressive and accepting household demonstrated that they were not immune to the (patriarchal) messages about menstruation delivered by the culture. That was and still is depressing to me.

I started thinking about how to help the greatest number of women to address this basic misunderstanding about their being. It was my contention all along that the fact that menstruation is still a secret in the culture demonstrates that women are still second class citizens. As long as the topic remains taboo and ‘inappropriate,’ then women and girls still do not share the same status as men and boys, and female being remains not fully embraced by the culture.

What do you find most exciting about your career?

Every now and then I realize that this is thoroughly mine and I am, for once, fully in charge. I can say anything I want on my blog, I can run a special if I want, and I can work with the people with whom I want to collaborate. It’s also very scary for those same reasons. Sometimes it is terrifying because mistakes are completely my own, too.

But, the best part is imagining all those women and girls out there who already have their own bottle of Ruby’s. Every time they use it, and even when it is just sitting on their shelves, all of these people are holding my message of self-acceptance. Every one of them has accepted that it is possible to be honored with a product which respects the unique qualities and functions of their body.

On my website, I call Ruby’s Red Wash my ‘gift’ to women and girls, and I honestly feel that joy of gift-giving through the creation of this product. I am still hand-bottling and with every bottle I fill and label and ship, I actively imagine and hope for a certain kind of relief and peace for the recipient. Although I don’t want to curse myself, I have said that if the business crashes tomorrow, I will still consider it a success, given that I have already reached so many women and girls.

Your blog frequently discusses the messages women receive about menstruation and their bodies. What is your goal regarding the conversations we have with each other and in the media about women’s bodies?

My goal is to have women at least stop and question what is being fed to them by the media (and their friends, family and co-workers). One of my girlfriends recently told me about an exchange she witnessed between some of her friends, two of whom happened to be lesbian. There was some discussion going on about reproductive rights and one woman made a joke, ‘What do you care? It doesn’t apply to you.’ My friend made the point that just because you don’t plan on having children and that your sexual preference doesn’t create the circumstances for pregnancy and childbirth doesn’t mean that reproductive rights doesn’t apply to you. It is a human issue. The argument that lesbians “don’t use” their reproductive organs parallels the old, sexist idea that women are only as valuable as long as they can produce children. Countless hysterectomies have been performed over the years because women “aren’t using” their uteruses for childbearing anymore. Until my friend spoke up, her friend didn’t understand the invalidating idea which she was perpetuating. Those are the kinds of dialogs I hope to create.

Do you use reusable menstrual products? If so, what do you use and what prompted you to make the switch?

For the last 10 years, since my research and discovering dioxins, I have been using organic tampons and some pads. I order a year’s supply and stash them in every bathroom in the house and in my purses. That has been a luxury for me- to have an ample supply, something I didn’t know about or give myself as a teenager or when I was in my twenties. However, I have been planning on trying a menstrual cup, because I think that would be perfect alternative to tampons for me.

What do you wish you had known as a young woman experiencing menarche? How has your perspective on menstruation changed since then?

I had a mother who did her best but who was terrified about all kinds of things in life including sexuality and a father who was downright disgusted about all things related to menstruation and wasn’t afraid to show it. When I started my period, I called my mother to the bathroom. She came in and then went back out. When she came back in, she handed me a box of tampons with a smile, albeit a very forced smile, and said ‘good luck.’ Even though her smile was forced,she was trying to tell me that what was happening to me was okay and that life would be okay.

My mother died the next year and I was pretty much left to my own devices regarding everything. I had to deal with periods in total secrecy and thought that’s just what being a woman means. I could have used all kinds of help then, but I would have given anything if someone had given me a period starter kit or a lovely period pack of sorts. The message that those send would have really helped me to counter all the crap I heard about female being. Something like that would have helped me feel better about being, in general.

Do you think it’s possible for women to celebrate their cycle rather than viewing it as a “curse”? How could this be accomplished?

I think it’s possible to view your menstrual cycle as any other part of yourself. Do I always love the way I react in the world? Do I always love the way I write? Do I always love my hair? The answer is ‘no’ to all of those questions. But I do, however, always try to be appreciative of my attempt to handle things, my attempt at writing, the mere presence of my hair. By the same token, I do not always love my period. I think the message that women need to always love and celebrate their menstruation is a terrible burden to place on women. Sometimes it’s just damn annoying to have cramps or to have flooded your pants or to have buy menstrual gear. I do not ‘celebrate’ my menstrual cycle by pretending that cramps are glorious and that the expense for menstrual supplies is a great and wonderful thing. I am, however, respectful of my body that it needs to cramp to menstruate. And I make sure I honor myself and my cycle by having enough supplies on hand or resting when I need to and recognizing that some of my emotionality during my period may be extreme but that it also provides me insight into aspects of my life that I might otherwise ignore. Like the women in my study, even the ones who declared that they hated their menstrual cycle, I have a relationship to my period, it is a part of me, and I will miss its presence when it is gone.

Society’s views toward women have become more open and less prudish in many ways in the centuries leading up to the present. Where women were once expected to wear long skirts and uncomfortable undergarments, it doesn’t take a master’s degree in history to see that many now elect to go braless, to wear pants, and sometimes to choose menswear over more feminine attire. Career opportunities continue to become more egalitarian, and women’s rights are constantly evolving.

But our views toward certain aspects of femininity have taken a step backward in recent years. Menstruation was once looked at as a rite of passage, a sacred time that represented fertility and a girl’s transition to womanhood.

Not all antiquated attitudes toward menstruation have been positive. Pliny the Elder and Isidore of Seville claimed that menstruating women were dangerous and that they polluted the Earth. Some early Christians believed that menstruating women and the men who slept with them were unclean. Ideas about the impurities of menstruation persisted throughout the Middle Ages, when women could not visit a church while on their period or after giving birth.

But even though menstrual blood was widely regarded as dangerous and magical for humans and the environment during the seventeenth century, it seems that negative attitudes toward the process of menstruation itself were often rejected—this is especially noteworthy because religion was a central part of life during this time period. Many societies viewed menstruation as a natural, beautiful part of being a woman.

Menstruation today is often considered one of women’s weaknesses, but this has not always been the case. In Elizabethan England, phlebotomy was an oft-performed remedy for a variety of ailments, since an excess of blood was seen as a detriment to the health of the body. Menstruation was viewed as a form of natural phlebotomy. Another belief during the Elizabethan period was that menstrual blood provided nutrition to the fetus and a heated environment for semen.

We think of menstruation as a monthly phenomenon, but periods are a more common occurrence for women now than they once were. Ovulation and menstruation make physical demands on a woman’s body. They require energy and health. In centuries past, many women suffered from malnutrition, exhaustion, and low body weight, none of which supported menstruation. And before a wide variety of contraceptives became available, women were either pregnant or breastfeeding for much of their reproductive life, which kept their periods at bay. Menstruation is much more commonplace now. It is less special and more of a hassle. Today’s woman simply looks for tools to live around her period instead of appreciating the significance of this physical process.

Perhaps the newfound control that women have taken over their bodies and their lives has caused society to lose appreciation for life’s natural processes. But even as technological offerings increase as we move into the second decade of the twenty-first century, many are beginning to favor more natural approaches to everyday life. Perhaps our attitudes toward menstruation will become more positive as well, just as they were for centuries.

Emily Matthews is currently applying to masters degree programs across the U.S., and loves to read about new research into health care, gender issues, and literature. She lives and writes in Seattle, Washington.

Leslie of Cycle Technologies joins us for a guest post with answers to some of the most commonly asked questions about CycleBeads. We love this all-natural family planning method, and hope you’ll consider giving CycleBeads a try!

What are CycleBeads? When were they invented?

CycleBeads (www.CycleBeads.com) is a visual tool that helps a woman plan or prevent pregnancy naturally. Specifically, CycleBeads is a color-coded string of beads that represents the days of a woman’s menstrual cycle. It helps a woman track her cycle and know if she is on a day when pregnancy is likely or not. CycleBeads and the family planning method on which it is based, the Standard Days Method , were invented by the Institute for Reproductive Health at Georgetown University (irh.org). The Institute tested the Standard Days Method using CycleBeads in large-scale clinical trials and found CycleBeads to be more than 95% effective at preventing pregnancy and very easy to use.

My company, Cycle Technologies, launched CycleBeads in late 2002 once the efficacy results were published.

How do you use CycleBeads?

A nice thing about CycleBeads is that it is very visual. In fact it might be easier to just show you a picture than to try and explain it in detail.

As you can see it’s a lot of information when you try to explain it someone. I think that’s one of the reasons why CycleBeads is such a cool tool – it provides a wealth of information in a very simple way so you don’t have to keep track of a lot of numbers or do any calculations.

I should note that to use CycleBeads a woman’s cycles must be between 26 and 32 days long. This is the one medical criteria for using this family planning option. Most women’s cycles are in this range, but it’s important to know this before using CycleBeads especially if you are using them to prevent pregnancy. Of course, if you are unsure if your cycles are in this range, CycleBeads can also be used to help you figure this out.

Why would someone choose to use CycleBeads?

Most women tell us that they choose to use CycleBeads because they don’t like the side effects of hormonal contraception. A lot of women just like the simplicity of it. It’s a very intuitive family planning tool. It’s also useful both to plan and prevent pregnancy so many women like to use it as birth control and then switch over to using it to help them get pregnant when the time comes. Most importantly is the fact that it’s a natural family planning method that is highly effective. CycleBeads is more than 95% effective at preventing pregnancy which puts it on par with or better than other user-directed family planning options such as condoms in terms of effectiveness.

What are the benefits of using CycleBeads?

Well the primary benefit is that it’s an easy way to use an effective natural family planning method. As a natural family planning method there are no side effects, it helps a woman get in touch with her body, and it’s inexpensive. And since it’s easy, it means a woman will actually use it correctly.

You recently launched iCycleBeads, a smartphone app. How does it differ from other fertility/period tracking apps on the market?

Right now iCycleBeads is available on iPhone and Android devices and we plan to make it available through other interactive technologies soon. iCycleBeads differs from other fertility/period tracking apps on the market in a number of ways.

While there are a number of fertility and period tracking apps on the market, there are only a handful of apps that help a woman plan AND prevent pregnancy by tracking her cycle. Most of the apps that claim to identify the fertile days based on just your period dates are unclear about their methodology and cannot be used to prevent pregnancy. iCycleBeads is the only app based on the Standard Days Method of family planning so it’s methodology is very clear and well researched; it has been designed to be used as birth control as well as to plan a pregnancy..

There are also apps that are based on FAM or the symptothermal method of family planning. These apps can be quite effective at planning and preventing pregnancy. However, they require a woman to track a lot of information about fertility signs such as cervical mucus and temperature. If a woman already knows how to use these methods and is comfortable doing so, these apps can be very useful. But for women not familiar with these methods, they can be challenging to use.

One feature of theiCycleBeads app that I also really like and differentiates it from a lot of apps is that it proactively sends you alerts when you are key days in your cycle. So even if a woman doesn’t open the app and check it every day, she’ll get a message letting her know when her fertile window starts, when it ends, and when a new cycle is likely to come. It also proactively alerts a woman if she has had a cycle out of range and reminds her to input her cycle data if she forgets.

Tell me about your efforts to make family planning tools accessible to women in developing countries.

We are really proud of the impact that CycleBeads has had in the developing world and we work hard to make this family planning tool available to all kinds of health programs in developing countries at an extremely low cost. CycleBeads is being used in many countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia and has been made available in over 50 countries total.

CycleBeads is a good fit for developing countries because it addresses a lot of issues. Issues that are particularly acute in developing countries which CycleBeads help address include:

1) concerns about side effects – many women in developing countries, like women in the US, are concerned about side effects and unwilling to use a family planning method that they perceive might cause health concerns,

2) costs – CycleBeads are low cost and can be used indefinitely – one study showed that CycleBeads is the most economical family planning option for programs to offer, and given that they are one time purchase, we know that they are extremely economical to the end user,

3 ) ease of use – because CycleBeads is visual and intuitive, it can be used by women who have very little education,

4) access – CycleBeads can be offered in a variety of settings such as retailers and through local programs; it doesn’t require a highly skilled health practitioner to offer it. Also, unlike most other family planning options, it doesn’t require re-supply, break down over time, or need special storage so it’s easy for a program to keep them in stock and make them available. And since a woman only needs to learn about it one time, she doesn’t need to constantly go back to her health provider for refills.

5) couple communication – in many developing countries, couples may not be able to talk openly with each other about family planning or a woman’s cycle. CycleBeads have been shown to be a great tool for helping couples communicate.

We also donate a portion of proceeds to programs that help expand women’s family planning options and to empowerment programs for women.

We love seeing videos from GladRags fans, and getting a glimpse of the diverse types of women who swear by reusables. In this post you’ll find a few of our favorite YouTube videos sharing information about GladRags products.

We hope you enjoy watching, and encourage you to leave comments for the awesome women who made them!

In this super informative video, Dalene from The Natural Fertility Shop explains how to use GladRags Day Pads and the Moon Cup. We love how professional her video is!

In this video, the Patriot Nurse explains why reusables are a necessary preparation for when “the poop hits the fan.” Whether or not you’re part of the preparationist movement, you’ll learn a lot from the Patriot Nurse!

Tarot Lady Lissa shares her review of GladRags pads in this video. Best part? Her young daughter helps out, too! Way to start promoting period positivity early!

Taylor may be young, but she knows her stuff! She’s part of The Girl Gurus channel on YouTube that provides info on important topics like how to deal with your period at school or how to tell your parents that you’ve started. In this video, Taylor reviews the Day Pad and Pantyliner and gives you a peek at our zine, Menstruation Sensation.

Have you made a video about GladRags? Send us a link!

This story of Saera Burns, Hawaiian “artist-seamstress-goddess,” comes to you from writer Ashlee Green. Ashlee contacted us about writing a guest post to share Saera’s story and empower women to celebrate their cycle. We hope you enjoy the post and share your thoughts in the comments!

“Pain, shame, blame, fear, ‘Yuck!’, ‘Hide me!’, ugly, stinky”: In the words of multidimensional seamstress Saera Burns, these are the ways that girls in our North American culture are taught to feel about puberty and menstruation.

“Except for us old souls,” Saera continues with bright laughter, her skin glowing from her second trimester of pregnancy. “Nothing gets past us.”

Nothing: That is to say, not even preconceived notions of how a woman should feel about her period. So, when Saera was first taught to use disposable tampons and pads for what she refers to as her “moon cycle,” she had second thoughts.

For her, accepting her moon cycle was all a part of her journey of self-love, a concept that has taken Saera 22 years to virtually perfect:

“My whole life has been the journey of not hiding things. Unfortunately, in the past and in the present, I have to admit, there are a lot of women who have had to hide and feel repression of the blood.”

While she confesses to having to do some reprogramming of her own, Saera says that as she ages, she remains resolute on creating her own reality based on self-love and acceptance, and is a “stubborn,” in a sense, opponent of society’s mainstream ways.

“As I grow older,” she says, “I find more people that are stubborn enough and our stubbornness is prevailing and now we have a new paradigm forming.”

Saera started tracking her cycle and realizing the correspondence it had to her emotional state: Challenging months full of obstacles or injuries that she hadn’t yet accepted and released caused painful cycles, whereas clear months in which she moved fluidly through problems and lessons made for clear, mild ones.

During this time, tampons also became an issue for her.

“It was me showing my body, ‘I’m not ready to fully let this flow out of me. I want this to slowly condense and I want to absorb this,’” Saera explains.

It was not long before Saera asked herself, “What if I just removed the pad too?” No one ever suggested that.

“That was this whole groundbreaking lesson I started teaching myself,” she says. “I’m going to remove the pad. And what am I going to do instead? I’m going to wear all black; I’m going to wear many layers of black. I’m going to wear skirts, long skirts: Long, black, multilayered skirts.” After a few trials and errors, Saera eventually perfected her blood skirt prototype.

Once she started adapting the blood skirt into her life, Saera stopped wearing black throughout the whole rest of her cycle. To her, black meant a time for her moon—a time for bleeding.

“I started associating black with so much power that I couldn’t just wear black in the middle of the cycle,” she says.

“It made my blood far more accessible to the earth. If I was walking, and all of a sudden I really felt like I wanted to offer it to this tree, even if there was a bunch of people around, I could just sit, move the skirt a little bit, and offer my blood and have people not even notice that is what’s going on, because it is so past peoples’ comprehensions.”

For Saera, wearing a blood skirt during her moon cycle serves to defy the oftentimes restrictive laws of womanhood that she had been taught and to reclaim her connection to the natural cycle that all women are experiencing.

Girls everywhere should craft blood skirts, Saera says, to “extend their own personal boundaries,” and ideally, to gain absolute comfort with all of their bodily functions.

Like smell, for example:

“Yeah, stinky! Part of our smell is how we figure out if we’re healthy or not,” Saera says with a smile. “If you don’t like your smell, then you’ve got to examine what you’re ingesting and where you’re at emotionally, because our emotions connect with which pheromones come off of us.”

According to Saera, once you are ultimately comfortable with your smells and sounds and cycle, a whole new world will open to you.

“That time of the month doesn’t have to be a dread. It can be a fun exploration,” she says.

Saera lives at PeleAina Peaceful Arts Farm in Kurtistown, HI. View and shop her creations at whymz.net.

Okay, so maybe we’re not dummies. After all, how many of us remember what we learned in 6th grade health class. Sure, they separated the boys from the girls (was that really such a great idea?) but there was still all that giggling. And the embarrassment! And that sweating, droning health teacher who acted as though she held all the secrets to the mysteries of our bodies. As if we could let on that she really did know more than us…

At any rate, now we are all adults, and this calls for a refresher. Some of you are old pros. Some have just learned that the vagina (where menstrual flow and babies come from, also the organ/muscle that is utilized in sexual intercourse) is different from the urethra (the hole between the vagina and the clitoris, where urine exits the body). That’s all okay. After all, this doesn’t often come up in polite conversation. Especially the part about how the clitoris is analogous to the head of a man’s penis and is responsible for 70% of women’s orgasms. But moving right along…
One of my services is to explain to young women about their bodies and how they grow and change as we get older. It’s a heavy subject, so I try to make it fun and lively, which is why I bring the pear…and the walnuts.

Picture an upside-down pear. That little, green fruit filled with succulent juices. Yum. This is your uterus. Or at least the approximate size and shape of your uterus. Now the uterus is rounded on the top and narrow on the bottom, just like the pear. That narrow part of the pear is much like your cervix. About where the stem on the pear would be is where one would find the cervical os. It’s pronounced “ahsss,” which is sort of how a British English speaker might pronounce “ass” if they weren’t so busy saying “arse” all the time. Ug, I’m reverting to 6th grade humor again.

To continue, at the “top” of the upside-down pear (or the widest part of the pear) we would find the fallopian tubes. One on each side and both completely connected to the uterus. The fallopian tubes, by the way, are about the width of a strand of hair. So now you’ve got your upside-down pear with two strands of hair sticking out of it. Good. We’re making progress.

Now here is where the walnuts come in. You see, the walnuts are the ovaries. Well at least they are about the same size and shape as your ovaries. And you have two of those also. One on each side, slightly below where the hair ends. Yes, unlike what most textbooks seem to demonstrate, the fallopian tubes are NOT also connected to your ovaries. Only the uterus. Those ovaries are filled with millions of tiny eggs. These eggs were in your body before you were even born. All little baby girls (barring unusual circumstance) are born with all of their eggs already inside their ovaries. Each egg is about the size of a grain of sand.

So now that we’ve got the reproductive system down, how do we end up with a period?

Since women’s body rhythm’s are cycular, it’s impossible to have a beginning and end, since the cycle continually perpetuates itself, but for our purposes (and because we need to start the explanation) let’s begin with day 1 of the cycle, which is the first day of bright, red menstrual flow. Notice I am not using the term “bleeding.” Bleeding is just a part of the menstrual flow, which also involves tissue and other components of the endometrium. So we begin bleeding with a bright, red menstrual flow (not spotting). A woman might even notice feeling a bit colder around this time. This is because her temperature is dropping. It’s a slight drop, but a drop nonetheless. And it will not come back up into the same higher range until after the woman has ovulated. This is very important when trying to understand our fertility and why you may have heard about women taking their temperatures when trying to conceive (TTC).

Once the menstrual flow begins (and even in the few days leading up to this event), the pituitary gland (located in the base of the brain…that’s quite a distance from the vagina!) has begun secreting a hormone called FSH (follicle stimulating hormone). This hormone is…you guessed it…causing the eggs in your ovaries to become mature. This process of maturity actually causes a cyst to form within the ovary and then a race begins. The many cysts, or follicles, begin to grow until at least one begins to actually press out of the ovary, so that, in western medicine, it is visible on an ultrasound. This is usually the point where a doctor trained in the western medical model will begin to speak about “cysts on the ovaries” or “poly cystic ovarian syndrome/disease” (PCOS). But, having follicles on the ovaries is the keynote sign of a normal, healthy, functioning reproductive system. At least at this point in the cycle. At any rate, as these cyst/follicles are growing right up and out of the ovary, the body is also releasing another hormone called LH (luteinizing hormone) which further assists in “ripening” the follicles.

Now this is the cool part that I never really “got” until I had deeply studied the reproductive system, but both the estrogen and, later, the progesterone in a woman’s cycle actually comes from these follicles, albeit at different stages of their “lifetime.”

It is when these follicles are maturing that they begin secreting estrogen into the woman’s body. At this point, a whole host of biofeedback occurrences take place, which are not completely understood by modern science, but basically, one follicle begins to become dominate while the other ripening follicles begin to recede and deteriorate back within the ovary. Sometimes more than one follicle continues to develop and this would cause the ovulation of multiple eggs, potentially leading to fraternal twins, triplets, or more, should the woman become pregnant. Of course, this is also what is being done to the body when Clomid and injectibles are being used to hyper-stimulate the ovaries.

The estrogen released by these follicles are causing our fertility signs to materialize. (These are the signs I will teach you how to read at our first appointment, or you can get a head start by reading Taking Charge of Your Fertility, 10th Anniversary Edition: The Definitive Guide to Natural Birth Control, Pregnancy Achievement, and Reproductive Health ) It is also causing the lining of the inside of the uterus to grow, so that it is blood rich and ready to support and nourish a forthcoming embryo.

Eventually, a follicle becomes fully grown and the body reaches an “estrogen threshold.” At this point the pituitary gland signals a surge of first LH and then FSH, which causes the body to ovulate.
Now what is ovulation? Well, picture a volcano erupting. That is exactly what it looks like. The egg just shoots right out of the ovarian wall right out of it’s fluid filled cyst/follicle. This fluid now becomes the corpus luteum and begins producing progesterone! It is here that the temperatures of the woman rise. Some actually noticeably feel warmer at this time in their cycle.

But wait! We now have an egg floating around freely in the pelvic cavity. Thankfully the hairs on the end of the fallopian tubes are doing their job of drawing the egg into the tubes where it must already have a sperm waiting in the outer 1/3rd of the tube to fertilize it, if we are to have a live, healthy baby. (I, personally, think this is the biggest miracle of the entire process.)

Sperm, meet egg. Egg, meet sperm. Sperm penetrates the egg, and the resulting embryo begins to divide as it continues in it’s travels down the fallopian tube and into the uterus where the cushy, plush uterine lining (aka, the endometrium) is waiting to provide it’s home. Embryo enters uterus and burrows itself into the endometrium and begins to secrete HCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) causing the corpus luteum to extend their lives of progesterone production. Or there is no growing baby. In which case the natural life of the corpus luteum comes to an end, signaling the all time cycular low of both estrogen and progesterone and causing the woman to have a “period.”

This is where the endometrium sheds off of the walls of the interior uterus and slides down into the cervix and through the cervical os, which is the little hole leading from the cervix into the vagina. Down the endometrium goes, through the vagina and exiting the body in the form of a menstrual flow.

Menstruation for Dummies was originally published on the Wise Woman Fertility blog.

Connect with J. Rivkah Asoulin at the Wise Woman Fertility website or Facebook page.

Welcome to your one stop shop for menstrual art, news, science, and more!

• All you hip ladies out there should check out these super cool 2011 Menstrual Lunar Calendar by Etsy crafter vivalacraft.
• Blogger Life as a Reader responds thoughtfully and personally to our post The Curse? Cultural Celebration of Menarche in her post Huge Myths About Women’s Bodies.
• See the commercial that started it all!  The word “period” said on air in this commercial for the first time by our friend, Courtney Cox.  Did anyone see this when it first aired?  Did you notice it was the first time you heard the word “period” on television?
• Read this sassy British review of the MoonCup, Investigative Journalism from the Fringes of Girl Culture #9827: Over the MoonCup, complete with awesome graphic (shown on right).
• Check out this awesome, unintentionally menstrual positive tattoo Norwegian footballer John Carew got on his neck.  This might have to be my next tattoo.
• Blogger Context and Variation posted a very interesting academic (but totally readable!) article titled Iron-deficiency is not something you get just for being a lady, which explores the relationship between anemia and menstruation.  Surprise!  They may not be as linked as you think.
• Look for the new Moon Cup packaging at your local store! It uses fewer materials and takes up even less space in shipping, reducing the cup’s eco-footprint even more.
• There are great tips in Social Media for the 28th Day: 9 Tech Tips for Easier Periods, but as you know DivaCup is not the only option. What is your favorite cup?  In your tweet, use the hashtag #28thday to voice your opinion and add your tips!