Blood Creativity
Our exploration for the month of December opens to the voices of blood priestesses weaving conscious menstrual practice and deep in relation with power, creativity and the sacred. These interviews were specifically for the One With A Flow course, and were shaped by Taya Mâ and conducted by Kohenet Rae Abileah.
First, a few words on Anointing & Painting
In an earlier lesson we talked about ways of engaging with blood - catching blood, using blood ritually, bleeding sabbath practice can be deeply enhanced by being willing to get blood on our hands. Some hold a practice of blood anointing, placing blood on our forehead between eyes, on wrists or behind ears. I sometimes paint with blood over my heart or chest. I prefer to paint with blood over my body than to paint with blood on paper or canvas. But using fingers or brushes can be such a powerful way to express Sometimes I like to paint abstract and other times I like to draw a scene and paint it in with blood. Macro Photography captures the myriad phenomenal dances that menstrual blood makes when it drops into water - the Beauty in Blood Project by artist Jen Lewis is a great example of menstrual macro photography.
Another amazing creative way of working with menstrual blood as art is the Bedika Project, a collaborative & reclamatory project focusing on making the invisible visible, creating art with menstrual blood on bedika clothes, the traditional cloths used to measure menstruation and states of tumah by rabbinic authority and those choosing to live under that system.
Reclaiming Bedika: An Interview with Kohenet Elsa Asher
One of our core texts for this lesson is an interview with Bedika Project creator Elsa Asher, is ordained Kohenet and a practitioner of somatics with a specialty in healing developmental and intergenerational trauma…
What is a bedika cloth?
‘A bedika cloth is an approx 4”x4” piece of white bleached muslin cloth that has a thin piece of fabric like a tail at one side. Bedika means “to check” in Hebrew. These are used in the practice of taharat ha’mishpacha, or purity of the family. These are the legal codes from the Talmud that include instructions on counting “seven clean days” beginning after bleeding has stopped. After seven “clean days” you can immerse in the mikveh and after that you’re allowed to have sex again.
Bedika cloths are used morning and night: You put one over your fingers and put your fingers inside your vagina and go in a circular motion around your cervix and when you pull the cloth out you look at it and if it’s clear or light color then it’s clean and you can keep counting that day as one of the seven clean days. If it’s not a light color, then you have to start over in the counting. If it’s unclear on what shade it is, you have to bring it to a rabbi to check it and determine if it’s clean or not.
I learned these laws in kallah - bridal - classes in the weeks before my wedding. And I practiced these laws for three and a half years while I was married.’
How did this emerge for you?
‘The Bedika Project started in 2013 when - I don’t remember how or why I strung a package of Bedika cloths - clean unused ones - on a string - but I liked how it looked and they looked like Tibetan prayer flags. There was something exciting to me about taking a material that’s used in contact with a secret part of the body inside and that there’s both a taboo to not talk about or show and a rabbinic legal demand that it be shown to rabbis under certain circumstances, and to unashamedly make those materials visible. I brought the Bedeikah “flags” to a Kohenet retreat and it sat on the altar. When someone asked about them and I showed them and talked about them there was an energy of excitement that I registered.’
What is the power in it?
‘I think it’s really empowering to know what your cervix feels like at different times of your cycle and it’s part of body awareness that supports reproductive health and positive sexual experience. Doing so in the context of having my own experience of bleeding time and of sex be regulated by men with religious authority granted to them by other men ruling from legal codes written by groups of men that explicitly excluded all other genders was disrespectful to say the least to my sense of autonomy. It was destructive to my sense of my own spiritual leadership of myself, my own discernment about rituals of bleeding and sex, and inherently problematic because there are innately not rules menstruating people made for themselves. I never felt like it was like “my period is dirty so I am dirty” - it wasn’t a “dirtyness” - but it was innately problematic because there was a power structure and it was deeply humiliating. I felt it in an emotional and viscerally physical way when I had to drop my underwear or bedika cloths off at the rabbi’s office and feel the shame of being sexual and being bleeding and being subject to a man telling me what to do with my body and touching something with my body fluids on it felt like a desecration.
So! Doing what I wanted with the cloths - flagrantly displaying the cloths - using them for non-intended purposes - was part of a reclamation of my own spiritual leadership of my own practice. It was very interesting to go back to Crown Heights to the pharmacy on Kingston Avenue as a visibly not religious person, on Erev Rosh Hashanah, and buy them - buy many - buy maybe 20 bags - of bedika cloths. There’s a code word so they’re not on the aisles of the pharmacy. You go up to the counter. You don’t say bedika cloths because you don’t want to admit that you have sex or are menstruating because that’s embarrassing. The code word is “extra soft” You go up to the counter and say “I want four packs of ‘extra soft’” and you hope that it is a woman behind the counter. I always hoped it was a woman.
Did anything surprise you?
‘I sent an email about the project to a modern orthodox Jewish artist and asked her to share the call for submissions and I was surprised when she wrote back and told me that the project was “gross.” I was also surprised that when friends of friends sent me an entire bag of bedika cloths that they had bled onto.’
What themes do you see?
Reclamation.
Is there any invitation you would offer to people wanting to reclaim this practice?
‘One, learn how to do self-pelvic exams and if you partner with people with vaginas, see if those people would be open to doing them on each other to get comfortable and aware of and cozy up with your cervix. See this guide to learn how: www.beautifulcervix.com
Two, make something with your blood and make it visible. Cut out your own pieces of cloth and bleed onto them and string them up. Bleed into tissues or toilet paper and hang it on the wall.
Look at the Blood Blot Project on Instagram: www.instagram.com/bloodblot
Or, engage with any other materials that you associate with, or experienced, as part of an oppressive menstrual practice and use it in a reclamation and expression of your own values’.
More info on bedika cloths from the project website:
On The Rag
a collection of representations of blood mysteries and sexual/reproductive bodies consciously subverting the use of bedika cloths
Bedika cloths - which literally means "to check" - are 4 x 4 pieces of muslin used in the practice of taharat ha'mishpacha, a set of halacha, Rabbinic Jewish law, that outlines legal codes and customs for menstruation and sexual contact. One of the laws dictates that a woman put a bedika cloth inside her vagina and wipe the cloth around her cervix. The cloth is then examined in natural light to ensure that the menstruation phase of the cycle has completed. This is repeated for seven days following, to confirm readiness for immersion in a mikvah, ritual bath. There is a catalogue of colors, of yellows, browns, red, and black, that correspond with various actions to take, including when in doubt, to put the cloth in an envelope take it to a Rav, Rabbinic judge, who is almost always a man.
I learned this set of laws when I studied in a yeshiva for 1 year and practiced them for 4 years. In my scholarly and personal experience, the overall atmosphere in which these practices and laws were taught, spoken about, and legally ruled on was one of secrecy, shame, silence and invisibility. It was centered on Rabbinic legal authority and determination, which devalued and delegitimized personal and bodily autonomy and self-determination.
Nourish and Create // Blessings and Art: An interview with Kohenet Ilana Streit
Ilana Streit is a Kohenet (Gimel) who lives in Greater Boston. She first got her period at Hebrew School.
How did you first come to conscious menstruation?
Taya Shere! Well, was there anything before that? Oh! Here’s how! When I was in high school my sister spent year in Israel and volunteered at Haifa Women’s Center and told me about this book called Dragon Time, which had a subtitle something like “mystery and lore of menstruation”. Also, I got my first keeper cup in my senior year in high school.
Also, learning from Taya, since before she started Kohenet. I remember the handout/webpage she created and hearing her talk about taking time on the first day of bleeding to free bleed, bleed onto sheets and articles of clothing and onto the ground. She found that she would give herself time to rest while she was bleeding and it wound up that her cycle would naturally coincide with days she was able to rest. Honoring bleeding and taking time off. This was different from anything anyone ever said to me! I would do that — take rest and the day off — and my cycle would shift. I just bleed when it makes sense to.
I talk about “what’s your menstrual superpower?” I am able to bleed when it makes sense to. This just makes sense to me. Of course that’s how it works! Now that I’m working full time it’s harder, there’s not a good time, so it lands differently.
What’s in your conscious menstruation toolkit?
A lot of cloth pads, one menstrual cup, some handkerchiefs and old underpants, and three blessings.
Here are the blessings:
ברוכה את יה אלותינו רוח העולם שעשתני אישה
ברוכה את יה אלותינו רוח העולם המחדשת את האישה עם הלבנה
ברוכה את יה אלותינו רוח העולם המחדשת את החודשים בגופינו
Second blessing: Rav Kohenet Taya Shere, inspired by a blessing in Celebrating the New Moon: A Rosh Hodesh Anthology, edited by Susan Berrin
Third blessing: Nina Katz (member of Havurat Shalom)
Here is the transliteration and translation:
Brucha at ya elotainu ruach ha’olam sheastani isha. This is a take off on the traditional Orthodox morning blessings that include “who has made me not a woman” and means “who has made me a woman.” We often say “who has made me in your image” in Reconstructionist community.
Brucha at yah elotainu ruach haolam hamechadeshet et ha isha im halevana.
This one means: “who renews the woman with the moon.”
This one [I learned] from Taya, and is part of the song on her latest CD, “Renew the Women”.
[Listen to “Renew the Women” here.]
Brucha at yah elotainu ruach haolam hamechadeshet et ha hodeshim b’gufeynu.
This one is from my friend Nina and means “Who renews the months in our bodies.”
Part of what’s in my toolkit is the willingness to talk about menstruation to men, in front of men, and to people who might not be so comfortable about it. There’s a thing that, “You’re not supposed to talk to men (who are not your partner) about bleeding.” I have a male friend who just said he really appreciates when women talk about this stuff, and doesn’t want to be left out!
My calendar. I have been tracking my cycle in my paper calendar every single month since I started bleeding at twelve and a half. I circle the date when I get it and count days till it will come again.
Also in my toolbox are medicinal herbs including nettle, raspberry leaf, ginger and hibiscus.
A pail, a few glass jars (for soaking and collecting). {I realized, not everyone has those!}
A flowy red dress
A backup supply of disposable pads that are bleached without chlorine. (Even in the years when I never used them, I kept them in stock for visitors.)
And a willingness to use the “wrong language.” Period instead of bleeding. It’s okay!
What are your blood practices or rituals?
At a Kohenet retreat during Tisha b’Av I was inspired by Taya’s chant “We are a Spiral” to put blood onto the Eicha text. I was inspired by the misogyny in the text. It was about saying: “Listen! This is an important part of the Jewish tradition and I don’t know what to do about it, so I’m going to put women and creativity in the forefront in some way.” I don’t know that I thought about this then but when I don’t have words, I still have my blood. Trusting that that mode and language is valid. And enough. [To make this art,] I first wet the paper in the lake and then put it on a stone to dry. Then i poured the blood onto the Eicha text on the stone and let it dry. Then I took a photo. Ultimately it went into a ziplock and is in my files. It was less about putting it on display and more about the act of making.
Somewhere around Trump’s inauguration, I was in the snow pouring blood on the ground.
It was that I didn’t have words or a sense of anything I could do, but that was what I could do. I was so unhappy about what was going on, and in particular, I lived in this specific place that at the time was a Unitarian Universalist Theological Seminary, and I was bleeding where a lot of people had been doing a lot of holy work. This was my prayer for the earth and for us. This is what I’ve got.
[I have a] bleeding on tshirts practice. I wound up with a t-shirt that said “vulva” and I bled onto it.
I gave Taya a tshirt that was a pun about vegetarians hunting that I bled onto. I’ve bled on many tshirts and gifted them. I’m not currently making menstrual art but am in the mode of “I wonder what I’ll do next!”
I have soaked cloth pads in water and collected blood from menstrual cups over many years and used the water blood mixture to feed plants, to write things, to take the bucket and spin around and go in all directions. It’s not something I currently doing since I moved to my new apartment and have been simplifying, but I’ve enjoyed doing that. It can be self-conscious interacting with other people in the process but it’s been good to connect to earth and plants and choose which one to feed. But it can also feel like a chore.
How do you relate to making spoken blessings around menstruation?
When I start bleeding I will say all three blessings. I didn’t write any of them but did put one into feminine G-d language. I always say them in that order. [see above]
What rituals are most relevant to you in your creative practice right now?
Really where I have juice about this now is in menstrual mentoring. I met with my cousin who is a rabbi and her daughter who was 13. It was before she started menstruating, and we got together with the idea of offering her a menstrual cup, but it ended up being an hour and a half about opening up about menstruation, liturgy… mindset. It felt really good and I want to do more of that, particularly in Jewish community and starting with women I have relationships with and their daughters.
A lot is in the background as I adjust to having a fulltime job and take care of myself.
Do you relate to these practices as Jewish?
I feel very strongly about the blessings because there’s an idea in Judaism that there’s a blessing for everything. So in order for that to be true there has to be a blessing for menstruation.
I see everything in a Jewish lens so it’s hard to separate out. My language for it is Jewish. What makes it Jewish is that the wider white Christian/Protestant culture there is so much squeamishness about bodies that it makes sense for Jews to be leading here.
Anything else you want to share?
Using non-disposable menstrual products leads to conscious menstruation because you notice how much is coming out. Definitely with a cup but with anything absorbent. I would say: Have fun! It’s a creative realm.
[Also,] I think in my 30s I was having more awareness that this blood means that I’m not pregnant, I’m not getting pregnant, I’m not trying to get pregnant, but my reproductive years are happening and I’m not reproducing or trying to. One of my practices has been making space for sadness and noticing that this isn’t just something happening, it’s also signifying that it’s not happening. There has been a regular opportunity to pay some attention to that. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to say this in context of ritual or practice but this is a part of what it is. My awareness is that this [blood] is nutrients intended to potentially nourish and create and that’s what I’m going to do with it. We could look at each of the Netivot in terms of bleeding. The mourning woman, the mother, together, for example. Shrinekeeper + wise woman and bleeding. What does the matriarch have to say? What does the fool have to say? You could do a scan!
Moon Cycles: An interview with Kohenet-in-Training Bekah Starr
Bekah Starr is a Sacred Artist (www.bekahstarrart.com) exploring connections to divine feminine mysticism through the lens of the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute. Her sacred arts explorations include fine art, illustrations, altar crafting, sacred weaving, participatory community installations, and more. Bekah is a weaver of communities, a songress and a ritualist creating magical mystical empowerment opportunities for womxn. She created an altar card deck inspired by the 13 Netivot called Hamsas for the Divine Feminine. She lives with her family in the beautiful Hudson Valley of New York.
How did you first come to conscious menstruation?
When I was 16 I was diagnosed with endometriosis. I had very challenging bleeding times until the diagnosis was made. I recognized through Louise Hay work — the You Can Heal Your Life book — that endometriosis was a sign with how unhappy you were in your life. I had had pretty angsty teenage years. I decided that I was going to be more aware of my bleeding and not have it hurt so much. My main goal was to not be in pain all the time.
It got really bad - I had to have surgery to deal with it. Then, I was on birth control for a few years because that was the thing to do after having the surgery, the treatment for it. After a while I realized I didn’t want to have hormones surging through my body all the time so I looked for other ways for dealing with the symptoms. While living at Omega Institute in 2002, I started doing inner child work and going back and having conversations with the little girl who was hurt. I learned that I could be more conscious about how I was taking care of my body and track my rhythms and cycles. That was the main thing: to make sure it wasn’t so painful.
After I was at the Omega Institute, I was visiting with a friend at a big gathering and she anointed me with her menstrual blood. It was the first time I had had an experience of that and realized it could be a thing. That took me in all sorts of different pathways around how using menstrual blood could be done. Over many years I realized that collecting my menstrual blood and giving it to the plants (when I was in my apartment) or in my backyard as I now offer to our ancestor bush, or using blood in art, and being aware of my cycle and tracking it for many years, and having moments of pregnancy in between those things, and seeing how pregnancy has shifted my perspectives of bleeding, that blood can be used for nourishing a baby. I think about how blood is nourishing for other aspects of life.
I was part of a group of people who created a lodge at Isabella Freedman that was a space for free bleeding in the woods there so people could take that on and have an experience of bleeding on the land.
What was your experience of menstruation pre/post pregnancy? What do you want to share about the connection between pregnancy and menstruation?
Having a child when you’re bleeding is so hard. I wanted to be so conscious of my cycle. I remember when my first little one was 3-4 months old and I realized that I wasn’t bleeding again yet. It takes some time for cycle to return, could be 4 months to 2 years for the regular cycle to return. Because I wasn’t bleeding, I hadn’t seen the moon in maybe 3-4 months since my child had been born. I was so consumed by him. It was one of the most saddest times of my life because he would go to bed early and I’d be inside with him. It jump-started my consciousness that I need to be conscious of the moon without my body being attuned to the moon rhythms.
I think there’s a lot of stigma in circles around nursing and bleeding. Most women who are still nursing don’t get their period for a while longer than women who are choosing to feed baby in other ways. I want to mention that it’s totally normal to get your period 6 months after you’ve had a baby and also 2 years after you’ve had a baby. It’s something that feels prickly to me in conversations with other women. If someone wants to have another baby and is upset about not getting their period... Our moontime does not attune to us, my moon cycle did not attune to me after giving birth.
After I had my second baby, I bled for almost 8 weeks straight because I had something called retained placenta and some tearing and different challenges with her birthing experience so trying to take care of a newborn baby while bleeding was also really hard.
Our blood is trying to do something. I don’t know what it is. But I believe fully that our blood — whether releasing built up tissue that is not nourishing a baby during moon cycle or nourishing a growing baby — it can speak to us about what we need. Do we need to rest or do more? It’s something that’s really awesome to pay attention to. I pay attention to my energy levels: Do I need to lay down and rest? Can I be more active?
The consistency and color of the blood says something. When I have clotting, I have stagnation and need to be moving more. Or maybe there’s stagnation in other ways. While I was in the post-partum period after my second child, Aria, I had an experience of being reminded of sexual trauma that had happened during my teenage years, and I realized this was something I had to deal with. I’ve seen this documented in different places that birthing experiences can sometimes mimic sexual trauma experiences. After I had Aria I experienced clotting in a new way and I was losing a lot of blood. I believe my body was trying to protect my womb space and that there was damage I hadn’t consciously dealt with that I needed to deal with and an opportunity to acknowledge the healing that my body needed to do.
There are natural birth control methods and ideas about looking at consistency of discharge (not just blood) and knowing the different ways your body is producing other fluids and mucus to know when you’re ovulating or where you’re at in your cycle based on what your vagina is producing. Conscious bleeding is much more of a full circle for me, especially becoming aware of it while in the place of being in a family-conscious way. Do I want another baby or not? My birth control methods influence that happening or not happening.
Wow, I didn’t realize that there was so much here!
What is your relationship with the moon?
Prior to giving birth and getting married and thinking about starting a family, I was living in NYC and led the Red Tent circle at Romemu [Synagogue] for three years and was really conscious of Rosh Chodesh. When I left New York City, and lived with my husband upstate, I was still leading new moon circles, less with Jewish community. When I had a baby I just stopped doing that — he was all consuming — as I said earlier. I was attuned to what my baby needed, not what I needed. I wish I had known more about this as a new mom. I wasn’t close with other people who had a baby so I was very uninformed about the intenseness of having a baby. It wasn’t that I couldn’t go outside and look at the moon; it was that I had forgotten about it.
I have a daughter who just turned 4 years old and I realized that there isn’t a lot of information for little ones on Rosh Chodesh. When I leave to join women for Rosh Chodesh she gets sad. I wanted to write a book to explain to her why I was leaving her. It is a book for her. As I was writing it, I realized that it would be really good to share with the world because there isn’t a lot written for young people about Rosh Chodesh and in general our society is not supportive of women gathering in sacred ways and spaces.
I realized the book was missing something and that it needs to cycle through the moons of the year. I’ve recently decided that those sections need to be written in the cycles of the moon, not all at once. This is the first month, tomorrow being Rosh Chodesh [this interview was conducted on December 6, 2018], that will be the first time I write the blessing or ritual. I don’t know what it will be yet. The book will hopefully be written in the wheel of the year. Hopefully it will be done next year at this time!
How do moon cycles influence you as an artist?
Because I’m so aware of my own cycle and the ways my energy ebbs and flows with the rhythm of the moon and cycle, I have recently become aware that I would like to be making art within that cycle. In New Moon time when I’m bleeding, and in the few days leading up to bleeding, I tend to move at a slower pace and be more needing dream time and not wanting to be as active or do as much. Within that space of the dark of the moon and bleeding I’m clearing my mind. In the full moon time of ovulation, when I’m releasing creative energy, I want to be creating pieces of art. I’ve come to the idea recently of creating art that spans the whole year. Perhaps creating one large weaving and doing a little weaving of it on full moon each month, or creating a small weaving specific to the month, such as for Kislev, and putting them together. I also have an idea for a wheel of the year style painting, having pieces that I’m working on for the entire year and setting intentions during the new moon time. This is a new journey that I’m starting to allow my creative work to flow with my cycle more. It’s a new experiment!
Tell us about your upcoming show, Cycles. What inspired you to curate this show? What of your art will be featured?
I’m part of a large group in Beacon, NY, where I live, of over 100 women artists. Someone on our facebook group was commenting how her moon cycle is so hard and she's moving into her menopause time and having a hard time relating to her cycle. Someone in the long thread of comments said we should make an art show about this! Someone pulled me into the conversation knowing that I priestess in this way and have led womb circles. I was so excited and over a few months time it became myself and another women co-creating and co-curating this show that will be in February, 2019. We [scheduled the show] in February to coincide with Vagina Monologues and V-Day. Yes, I’ll have a piece of art in the show.
My hope [for this gallery show] is that people can appreciate the myriad experiences that women who bleed have. It’s not talked about in our society that women bleed. Women spend a ¼ of our lives bleeding. We bleed 4-8 days a month. That’s a lot of time. If you add in all the days leading up to moon and afterward when you’re recovering or whatever the experience is, it’s a lot of time. I want to acknowledge that and I hope that people can appreciate it and that it doesn’t have to be a secret, or be shameful. With the show I want to put a spotlight on it and celebrate blood and blood art and through the creation of the show when we were trying to figure out if it’s a one off thing we created this idea of the Blood Art Archives. I don’t know what it will become but my imagining/hope/desire is that it will become a database/place where blood art can be photographed and archived in a database on a website. If people have ideas about this, let me know! [Note: You can contact Bekah at bekahstarr@gmail.com and on Instagram at @bekahstarrart.]
What are your personal practices and rituals around menstruation?
I stopped using tampons many many many moons ago and I bought myself a diva cup like a good eco-conscious person. I used that for a while. After I was pregnant and had a child, I realized that I didn’t want anything inserted in my vaginal canal; it hurt and felt really uncomfortable. I started catching my blood in different ways, mostly with strips of towels I cut up. I have a little bucket of water in the bathroom and I put the towels in there and it sits there while I’m bleeding, and then I offer that to the plants in my house. I do have an ancestor bush in the back corner of our yard and not every month but a few times a year I go outside and spend time there offering blood and other offerings. My kids bring rocks and candles, and things they find when we go on nature walks, and offer them there at the ancestor bush. The ancestor bush was planted in Brooklyn by my husband’s grandfather in the 1940s and when the house was sold we dug it up and planted it in our backyard in Beacon and it is our ancestor bush now.
What’s in your conscious menstruation toolkit?
Currently, I see a Chinese medicine practitioner who has been helping me balance… everything… with herbs and acupuncture. I started seeing her last spring for a lot of challenges with sexual trauma and working through those things. After my daughter was born my pubic bone split so I had a lot of physical problems, sore back, weak core. Through this process of working with her, I’ve really noticed an improvement in my PMS symptoms: I don’t get as irritable or short with the people around me who I love. She makes incredible tinctures for that which have been really supportive for me.
My conscious menstruation toolkit from when I was a little girl I remember my mom using sponges to collect her menstrual blood. I always saw her practices around it and her thoughtfulness of being kind to the earth so I always had a knowledge around different ways of being with bleeding.
There are some really good products out there like Vitex and homeopathics like Oona.
Heating pads.
A period tracker app - I use PTracker. There’s also one called Clue that I know some people really love. Learning about my symptoms and tracking my moods and my body reacting to cycles over the months and days was a really powerful experience for me to take control and feel empowered by my cycle rather than feeling like it was cycling me. Knowledge is the biggest part for me.
What will you want to tell your daughter about menstruation?
My daughter and my son for that matter are pretty aware that women bleed. There’s not a lot of privacy in our house. I don’t know many people with young children with a lot of bathroom privacy. They see me with blood on towels or whatever I’m using to catch the blood that moment. My daughter is very cute when she will say, “Mama, you have blood?” And we talk about how I’m not choosing to have a baby right now and my body is letting go of the nourishing tissues that would be for a baby. My husband is amazing. He brings me flowers when I start my moon often. He wishes me a Happy Moon Day! And my kids hear him saying this. We have a very positive relationship with moon cycles and bleeding. My kids know that I host moon cycles and have experiences with bleeding. When my daughter starts bleeding I hope it will be a very comfortable experience for her because we’ve been so honest and share about it a lot. But I don’t know. I’ll let you know when we get there in 10ish years! What I will say is that i’m very excited to share about it with her!
Anything else you want to share?
I bled with the new moon for many years and then got pregnant and my cycle totally changed. I really want to bleed in the dark of the moon. A teacher told me once that you can just ask the universe about when you want to bleed. I made a conscious request. Over time I bled with the dark of the moon again and that really matters to me. Connect to my desires with bleeding time and help shape it rather than let it create my life.
Questions for Reflection
What most inspires you in the stories / practices / creations / teachings from Elsa, Ilana & Bekah? What are points of resonance? What is new and inspiring? What could you embrace or explore in relation to their offerings? What are edges regarding their shares? What menstrual art or menstrually-inspired art might you create?