The curse is not the menstruation but lies we have been told about it.
Blood thick and red dripped down my fingers in long winding patterns as I fumbled to fold the silicone and try again. Usually, this blood is super-absorbed into bleached white cotton, but I am done with the chemicals and the garbage heap; I’ve chosen a healthy body and a less littered earth. Take a deep breath and unclench muscles I didn’t know I had. Is it in place? Did it unfold? My inexperienced finger circles between menstrual cup and vaginal walls. Unfolded and in the correct place but to my surprise, I do not feel like warm apple pie (like the American Pie movies would have a generation believe). I am not mushy or compliant or incomplete. I am a powerful tube of muscles, strong, and lubricated; I am a snake.
I wash my hands and wipe my face. I look in the mirror at the little girl who had been told lies about what had to be protected between her thighs. And these lies have been woven into our sacred creation stories. Eve’s hero’s journey started with snake whose voice that called out the lies, ‘you will not die but be wise’. When men tell her story she flees the garden because she was tricked by the evil snake into a sinful act, but now I wonder if that is fake news. The snake did not lie, and Eve did not die. What knowledge Even gained; I do not know for certain. But the knowledge I found using a menstrual cup dispelled all the lies I’ve been told about my body. You see, in my hero’s journey, I found Eden when I felt the truth of my muscular core.
My Eden is a place where our naked truth is seen and loved. There is no shame and no need to hide in a garden that grows love. Like an old skin, I’m shedding the things that no longer serve me so that I can grow as I slither away from the shade of the apple tree. I’ve learned that the snake was once a symbol of feminine wisdom or a female god. But this idea is new to me because the christian tradition has told the story of the ideal perfect garden of creation in a way that smashes the serpent’s wisdom under the patriarchal foot of white male church leadership. My blood, the non-violent blood, is hidden by their violent ways. The blood I shed like a snake sheds her skin is for renewal and transformation, for new life and new growth. I am not a delicate apple blossom to wither and fade or even warm apple pie to be devoured. I am a wise, strong serpent; a snake ready to shed and renew. I long for a new story about menstruation, not one of punishment and pain but of creativity and transformation.
The “church” says, all women experience Eve’s “curse” of blood and pain. And because of this, a period for many of us is at first: stigma, shame, and disposable. But eventually we find the truth, that periods are powerful, valuable, and washable. And we begin to realize the curse is not the menstruation but lies we have been told about it. The world says, periods are offensive in red, but in blue they sell products; reminding girls to keep it neat, fold it, wrap it, hide it beneath the toilet seat in a basket that is more decorative than practical. We are taught that little girls are sugar and spice and everything nice, warm like apple pie, dressed in pink, pearls, and purity. Little girls are supposed to be afraid of snakes, or at least pretend to be. Certainly, little girls cannot find out that they are wise as serpents. Girls are taught to keep hidden all that is dark and strong and ‘wrong’. Cross your ankles, a lady never reveals anything.
It’s not easy becoming a woman of faith. There are lessons along the way that contradict. And at some point, we need to choose which stories will define us and develop our faith. The church I grew up in let me preach and encouraged me to go wherever the quiet inner voice of faith leads. This church also had the most awful sanitary pads in the women’s bathroom. I found out when I got my period during choir practice. The huge carboard box produced a single pad that smell like band aide adhesive and old lady perfume. It felt like a brick with a weird medical mesh on top that stuck to my skin and hair. I wondered how many years this pad was in the bathroom. Perhaps the ones with wings flew away and left this one behind to rot and die. I showered as soon as I got home. How can a place that made me feel loved an important in the sanctuary also make me feel disgusting in the bathroom just down that hall?
The memory makes me recoil a little. Many years later, I step in my shower and let the warm water embrace me. My experienced fingers find the menstrual cup, pinch it to break the seal, and pull it out of relaxed muscles. I take a deep breath as I watch the blood and water circle the drain. I am more comfortable with this shedding cycle. It is a reminder to take care of me, body and soul. To let go and create something new. Wrapped in a towel, I look in the mirror and remind that little girl it was the disposable pad that was gross, not her. And today, I am working to make sure other little girls don’t feel the way she did in the musty church powder room. That story gets to be shed like old skin to make room for a new story; an empowering story about periods I am called to create. I am preaching with a feminist lens to empower women; teaching menstrual health to educate communities; and advocating for period positive workplaces, schools, and sacred spaces. And I’m imagining a sacred story that is period friendly about empowered Eve and her friend, the wise snake.
Period Pastor Pad 