Raw Chat #1. Attitudes about menstruation.

I want to talk about menstruation... At least about our attitudes about it.

I am curious to learn a bit more about cultural and religious differences in relation to menstruation.

I myself am on a journey to change my attitude about this before I stop bleeding at menopause.

I have begun that slow jerky lunar tango that is the approach to the end of my fertile years.

Yesterday, I got my period. I noticed that the emotions I felt when I wiped and saw the blood were negative. I am on a quest to try to change this pattern before I quit menstruating.

I felt like a a failure.

I don't even have a partner in my life to be a disappointment to currently. Yet that sense of failing to be 'available' was strongly there.

I felt unclean, unworthy.

I began to dissect these thoughts.

I know that always keeping those around me "happy" is one of the survival mechanisms I learned growing up in an alcoholic home.
Being available to my partner sexually has been part of the recipe for happy in my relationships.

Being sexually unavailable for a week hits me in my emotional core as a panic signal... Oh! Trouble ahead! You may have to admit this failure. You may have to leave someone wanting.

Or could this be something more basic... More biological?

Could I be interpreting these negative feelings all wrong?

Could this be a feeling of failure due to the cycle not ending in pregnancy?

I taught my kids that when it comes to sex biology wins. The sex talk went something like this.

your body is designed to mate and reproduce...today we have ways of reducing that chance, but the bottom line is biology can win. If you engage in sexual acts you are accepting the consequences of those actions including pregnancy.

Could this sense of failure be from thousands of years and millions of women learning they are not pregnant by getting their period?

These are the attitudes I seek to foster within myself.

I do manage to feel them during most of my period. But I would Love to have them all or at least one of them be the emotion that greets the arrival of my bleeding.

This ends my morning musing on menstruation.

Anyone else struggle with this stuff?

Sometimes feeling like you are not alone is the greatest gift!