It’s time for another Behind The Scenes for paid subscribers! In these posts I share my perspective on some of the topics I chose to cover in my latest book, Feminist Prayers for My Daughter, unpack what they mean to me, and opine about why they are necessary prayers for the world we are living in. Today we’ll tackle the prayer “for menarche (first menstruation).”
I have been drawn to the mystery of women’s blood for a few years now: the magic in its cyclical nature; the discernible connection to the essence of life itself; the untapped power pulsing under the surface of our collective consciousness; the ancient sense that somewhere, sometime, somehow, women once knew this blood was sacred.
The grief in seeing how that has been killed off.
The shame in knowing we’ve been complicit in the burial.
The way our daughters blush when it introduces itself to them. The way our mothers blush when it bids them goodbye. And in the time in between, the way we scurry to make it as tidy, as hidden, as possible; an inconvenience to be artfully directed toward the least possible social disruption.
As though the divinity in a woman could ever be tidy, hidden, convenient. As though it could ever not lead to social disruption.
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