Motherblood

A period piece

My period came back the day after Valor turned nine months old. The first nine months are sometimes referred to as a period of “exogestation,” meaning that the baby continues to gestate outside of the womb. During this time they rely on proximity to their mother’s body to regulate their temperature, nervous system, heartbeat. Still a fused system. And it felt that way. I recently saw a picture by the artist Robin Assner-Alvey from an exhibit entitled “Motherhood as Muse.”¹ It’s a mother breastfeeding her baby, but the photo edit merges their bodies into one indiscernible, dynamic mound— all blurred folds of flesh. I felt so seen and reflected in that image, my own experience of the motherbaby merge so tenderly and brutally depicted. Both the sweetness and the overwhelm, the perfect harmony and the chaos.

photo by Robin Assner-Alvey

When my menstrual blood came back, it felt like a marker of our bodies beginning to separate. A sign that my body was no longer sustaining his entirely.

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I’ve always had a fairly positive relationship with my period. I’ve never experienced much pain or discomfort, only mild cramping and a somewhat pleasant fatigue.

I’ve also grown up surrounded by women who have helped me embrace my monthly blood. Celebrate it, even. My mom honored my first period by taking me to get my ears pierced (!), making a contemporary rite of passage out of it. As an adolescent I looked forward to the day I’d bleed and was stoked when it came.

My sister-in-law Kindra introduced me to the Diva Cup (a silicon cup that collects menstrual blood, as an alternative to tampons) when I was nineteen, and she and my sister Margaux coached me through the bathroom door on our family vacation to Yosemite when I used it for the first time. I loved the cup immediately, how it helped me get to know the color, volume and viscosity of my blood, made me realize that the strong smell I’d come to associate with my period was actually a result of the bacteria collecting on the pad or tampon. My blood wasn’t gross. It was actually kind of cool. Beautiful, even.

When I took my mother-in-law Therese’s course “Women Awake,” the notion of honoring my blood was not entirely novel to me. Therese took it to another level though. Pour it on the earth, she told us. Treat it as a sacred offering. I began to do so that year, often with Andrew at my side.

What confused me, though, was her refrain that menstruation is a time when we get to go dark and deep, and become “she who meets her wisdom.” I didn’t understand what Therese meant by that. Sure, I had the occasional cramp here and there, but dark and deep was not something I experienced during my monthly bleeds.

When Andrew and I started our conception journey, my orientation towards my period shifted. Because I wanted my blood to stay inside me and grow into a baby, the sight of it flowing out of me each month brought grief. The blood offerings I poured onto the roots of the lilac bush behind our house became prayers of supplication.

When it finally didn’t come, I was overjoyed. Eighteen more months went by without menstruation. In the early months of life with a newborn, having one less bodily fluid to manage was a relief. But as we found our rhythms and I began to feel a little more stable, I wondered when my cycle would return. Even missed it a little.

The day it did come back felt like a celebration. And the blood was different from before: vibrant red, fluid, and abundant. I marveled at the color as I poured it into the river and watched it ripple away.

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I was excited this week when my blood arrived with the new moon. It felt particularly auspicious as it was also the first convening of a women’s new moon circle I’m co-leading.

The circle went beautifully. We sat before a roaring fire, sang and shared from our hearts as we passed chocolate and fruit around. Tears and laughter flowed. I felt so happy.

But by the time I got home, I had a raging headache. I felt cold to my bones and nauseous. Andrew came in and wanted to hear all about the circle, but even as I tried to relax into his embrace, I felt awful. When I woke up the next morning, it was worse. If I hadn’t been bleeding, I would have thought I was pregnant. Nausea and fatigue that knocked me out, had me calling Andrew to please come home from work early because I couldn’t keep up with Valor. I spent the day in bed, barely eating.

Ironically, I was supposed to attend the first night of my friend Andy’s Conscious Cycling course, a menstrual wisdom workshop she’s poured her heart into creating. I’d been so looking forward to it, and hoped all day that the nausea would let up so I could go.

When I told Andy I couldn’t come and my symptoms, she texted back, “Lean into the extreme discomfort and see what it shows you!” Only then did it dawn on me that the nausea and fatigue could have been connected to my bleeding. Suddenly, Therese’s words about going dark and deep, becoming “she who meets her wisdom” began to make sense.

I had a rough evening. Andrew gave me some feedback that brought me first to venom, then to tears. I felt low and completely dispirited. I moved slowly, giving Valor his bath. As I sat in the water with him, he looked up at me, his eyes huge and black in the dim light. I remembered how his eyes looked huge and black like that when he came out of the birth tub, a little over a year ago. But his body moves differently now. No longer a soft mound undifferentiated from mine. Now he sits up in the tub, speaks his own little babbling language, and is hardly ever unmoving, even in sleep. It hit me then how fast it’s all going, how fast it’s all going to keep going. None of it’s going to last. He won’t be a baby forever, he won’t even be a child forever. And we won’t be together forever. Then I really started to cry, my salt tears mixing with the bath water, and my heart felt soft and open to it all. I felt the softening power of the dark and the deep. The wisdom seeping in through the cracks.

This morning I woke up feeling better. The nausea was gone, and so was the despair. It’s amazing, the backwards gift of a hard day that makes normal feel euphoric. I walked out to the pond with Valor, towing him in his little red sled. I brought the jar of blood that I’ve collected over the past three days. He had watched me pour the blood into it this morning, curious about the red streaks on my fingers. “This is where you came from,” I heard myself telling him.

We parked at the pond’s edge and I poured the blood onto the snow and ice, drawing a concentric figure 8, a blooming infinity. The red blood sat brilliant on the white snow, my baby looked on in silent contentment. I said a little prayer. The simplest prayer I know, “Thank you.” And there we were. Fleeting and infinite, all at once.

1. Thank you, Jerielle and Wendy, for introducing us to this powerful show!