Passages Into Womanhood News A Regular Irregular Newsletter Welcome to the launch issue of Passages into Womanhood Newsletter! Passages into Womanhood News. This will be a regular irregular newsletter much like some menstrual cycles. I will regularly write it but I'm not sure exactly which day of the month. For now, you will receive Passages News every other month. I am excited about sharing my thoughts with you about empowering yourself and empowering girls! I welcome your feedback, comments and questions. Please do write me! I will incorporate answers to your questions in my future newsletters. I may respond directly if you send comments or your story to my Blog. Go to the website www.passagesintowomanhood.com . Thanks in advance for your interest in helping yourself and the girls you know be your most awesome selves! This week I received the following email from Judy at my Passages website. "Dear Dr Pam, I am ten years old and have breast buds and some pubic hair. My mom is not very helpful. She doesn't like to talk about body things. When do you think I will get my period? Thank you, Judy" "Dear Judy, Girls usually start their periods when they have attained their full bone growth. Meaning you will probably start your period when you are as tall as you will ever be. This is because your pelvic bones need to be adult size to cradle a baby and to give birth. Even if you are not going to have a baby now, for a long time, or maybe ever, Mother Nature still wants you to be able to give birth when she begins releasing eggs from your ovaries. Usually a girl begins the growth time called puberty quietly under the surface, two or three years before her whole body is ready for menstruation. Your body will appear more mature, like older girls you may notice. You will have more pubic hair and you will look curvier. Your pelvis will widen and breasts become larger than just buds. Today girls seem to be gaining maturity more quickly than 100, or even 50 years ago. Unfortunately that is partially due to hormones in our food supply. Please ask your parents if you could eat more organic foods, do not eat meat with hormone additives or drink milk from cows that have been fed hormones in their feed. And please try to stay away from plastic food containers and plastic wrap for food. Ask your mom to use glass instead. By eating healthy foods you will be more likely to become mature and start your period around the average time for girls which is 12 years and 8 months. Of course every girl is different. Ask your mother to read this and ask her to read more information with you. You can learn together! Blessings on your journey toward womanhood! With love, Pam" Is Menstrual Blood Sacred or Icky? Many people girls, women, and men, think of menstrual blood as gross, icky, yucky and worse. It is a natural bodily secretion and is part of the wonder of nature. Your body works in miraculous ways! Menstrual blood can be used in sacred ceremony and revered by men and women both. I read about an indigenous tribe where men cut their perineum once a month so they could appear to bleed "like women". They believe that bleeding is a sacred act and wish to be as spiritual as women, having an equal chance to reach and merge with God/dess. Menstrual blood is still a frightening mystery to some people. Especially men find it mysterious as they can't have the experience of producing it or feeling it in their own bodies. Some years ago I was present at a symposium, when a psychiatrist told his students that menstrual blood killed plants. He said, "When menstrual blood is put on the ground at the base of a plant, the plant dies." He believed that myth I'm sure because of where and how he was raised. Luckily in that instance I protested and was able to talk about that and other menstrual myths and shed some light of truth to the class. The truth in this case? Menstrual blood acts like fertilizer of course as it is organic matter. But that experience made me aware that even highly educated people, and physicians who study the body, may have strange ideas and misconceptions about menstruation. (This is a great book, Dragon Time: Magic and Mystery of Menstruation, by Luisa Francia)
Loving Your Period I was thrilled recently, when cleaning out my garage, to discover the box containing some of my past writing that had never been placed on a computer. I was afraid I'd lost it forever. In the box were a series of what I call Blood Poems. Here's one of my favorites, written for Laurel, a 19 year old American woman I met while on vacation in St Johns, Virgin Islands many years ago. Laurel talked to me about hating her period, even though her mother was open and encouraging, having taught her as well as she knew how and as well as Laurel would allow. We talked into the night and one experience I shared with Laurel was about my week of living naked in the deep woods by a lake on family land, with two close women sister-friends in the early 80's. During this time we all synchronistically had our periods. It was a freeing experience to allow our blood to flow unencumbered with no embarrassment. We allowed it to drip down our thighs and onto the earth. We washed off in the lake when it got too sticky. Later when I went to my tent, I wrote the following poem, and in the morning, I shared it with Laurel. Later Laurel wrote me from college saying it helped her. She was happier and more accepting of her body and it's Bleeding Time. If this talk and poem could change Laurel's sense of herself for the better, just think about how timely consistent teaching and sharing with girls, can empower them! "Don't ask yourself what the world needs.  Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive." ~ John Eldredge Sign up for our "Passages" Email Newsletter www.PassagesIntoWomanhood.com	BLOOD-TIME (For Laurel) Finally ... Squatting ... Hovering over the moss ... I watch my blood Slowly drip onto the earth ... Drip Drop A glob of red ... I watch as I have never watched before... My blood. I breathe ... Smell the smell of it ... Fresh ... Alive ... Different than on a pad, old and brown... Or held within me ... Plugged up Inside Never to be seen Felt Acknowledged Flowed Celebrated Or allowed to be my teacher ... I see the inner juices of my body There on the living moss ... Soft Green Spongy, as I step Or sit or lie upon it ... Like the inner Uterine tissue lining - bed Which creates The possibility Of Spirit ... To take hold And turn to flesh. Blood Trickles slowly down my inner thigh ... I watch ... Time stands still Marked only by Drops of crimson as they hit the earth ... I enter dream-time ... The altered state of Blood-time ... This blood ... My blood ... Speaks to me ... Come into me And dance the dance of life It beacons ... You are Dancer Woman Powerful ... Fresh ... Feathered Hawk Woman ... Bleeding Time Woman ... I have mysteries To tell ... And power to unfold ... Listen with your heart ... Your blood pump of life ... As it moves The saline mother of all fluid ... Blood of passion ... Through your womanly body ... Come into me ... My blood calls ... I hold all things ... Known and unknown ... Come! See, feel, taste, smell ... Rejoice in! The secrets of your woman blood ...
May your Journey Inward be blessed! Pam