Sacred Conversations

An interview by Taya Ma.

Intro: Rae Abileah is a Kohenet, social change strategist, author, editor, and advocate for collective liberation and economic justice. For over fifteen years she’s worked with nonprofits and social movements, from volunteer to executive director, and she now runs her own consultancy, Create Well (www.raeabileah.com). She is a trainer and contributing editor at Beautiful Trouble, and is the co-creator of the global Climate Ribbon storytelling art ritual project. Rae is a contributing author to numerous books including Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution and Beyond Tribal Loyalties: Personal Stories of Jewish Peace Activists. Rae is a first-generation American; her matrilineage is Dutch and Belgian and her patrilineage is Israeli and Eastern European / Ashkenazi Jewish. Her ancestry informs her relationship to war and oppression, and her actions toward dismantling white supremacy. She’s based in the Colorado Rockies, and frequently travels to California & New York. @raeabileah

How did you first enter into an awareness of, or an experience of, conscious menstruation?

I love that question because I thought the question was going to be, “How did you first enter into an experience of bleeding?” and I honestly don’t have that many memories of it. But it begs the question - What does conscious menstruation even mean?  For me it’s an awareness of my moon blood as connected to moon and ocean tide, an awareness as moonblood as connected to the poetry of living life, an awareness of moonblood as marking cycles of time, and a way of engaging with moonblood that’s not like “ew, disgusting” or using the word “period” as a finality or a grotesqueness associated with it.  I would say this awareness began for me during college, when I started using the Keeper/Diva Cup.

What did using the internal cups change for you?

All of a sudden instead of using these toxic disposable products that you have to pay money for every month, I was using a cup that fit inside that I could actually remove and see the blood in space and time in one place. I could ask myself, “How dark is it?” How light is it? How thick is it? How fluid is it? What’s the texture like?” I don’t have any awareness of that when I’m using a pad or a tampon.  It’s just a color stained on some weird fiber-glassy thing.

The other piece [that is important for me] is being able to take the blood from the cup and having a practice of reverence for the land and giving the blood back.  What that’s looked like for me since we moved to Colorado Rockies two years ago is that once a month on one morning of my cycle - whenever it’s most convenient - I’ll take it [the menstrual cup] out in the morning when it’s most full. I go to the same tree every month and put the blood onto the earth near that tree. For me it’s been a practice of getting those couple quiet moments by myself, outside in the cold, in the early sunrise moment and connecting with the same spot on earth near our house every month, like a sit spot.  And that tree, we build a relationship with each other.  Every time I would spill the moon blood on the same piece of earth or the same tree that I’m weaving a relationship with the roots of that tree.  [Note: After doing the interviews with other blood priestesses for this course, I’ve just in my last moon blood cycle started a practice of pouring blood from the Diva Cup over two days into a jar and adding water, and using this mixture to water the tree outside. So grateful for the inspiration and wisdom that has come from these interviews!]

I don’t know where they come from, but I’ve heard stories of some indigenous cultures who say that if women are spilling their blood on the earth, then there is less of a perceived need for men to go to war and to spill their blood on the earth. There is some kind of reverence for life that’s created by doing that.

I’m curious if there’s anything you might say about your experience of conscious bleeding and Judaism or Jewish practice - if there are ways for you that those strands intersect or don’t intersect.

Recently I’ve started watching The Red Tent on Amazon Prime.  Somehow, visually seeing it, this story that I already know, brought up all the feelings yet again about patriarchy and the smashing of women’s spaces. I imagine that there was a time that women had a red tent and gathered in it and shared stories, where history was passed down through oral tradition and through chanting and song and where young women were brought up in a culture, in a tribe, in a family, where women got to bleed on the earth and take time off, and got to have these sacred goddess sculptures that they would worship and pray to, and then imagine that that got squashed by, you know, Jacob, and his successors. It makes it hard for me to have the egalitarian approach toward naming both the patriarchs and matriarchs when we pray (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob… AND Sarah and Leah and Rachel and Zilpah and Bilhah). Sometimes, I don’t even want to say these men’s names.  I had this really fierce anger after watching that.

I’m also thinking about coming of age traditions and how now in egalitarian Judaism everyone can have a Bar/Bat Mitzvah, which was previously only a young man’s ritual. But is something lost when we define success as only being able to do the thing that men have done - i.e. wearing pants, fighting on the front lines of armies, and becoming CEOs or politicians in a misogynist system? Is success when a female soldier can commit the same crimes as a male soldier at Abu Ghraib? I am curious to expand ideas about Jewish coming of age ritual and learn how other Kohanot are raising young people whose bodies bleed in a way that honors that rite of passage uniquely.

Can you talk about how conscious bleeding comes into play in daily life and business?

For small businesses especially, to afford bleeding people time off, it may require more of a collective, a group of people who value body wellness and honor bleeding time, and are willing to go through extra scheduling hoops, or have extra staff “on call” to make it work. It creates alternate models of economy.  It is difficult to function in a capitalist system and have a bleeding body reverence culture.

We can also do better at creating spaces at retreats, conferences, events, to honor bleeding bodies. Kohenet does this well — we put a couch or a futon out and that’s a relaxing area. You could be a bleeding body or you could just be a person that needs to relax and rejuvenate.  It’s not like outing you as someone that’s bleeding, it’s just saying that our bodies are functioning at different levels and this is a space where you can still be present and part of what’s going on.

And, we can be more thoughtful around food preparation for events and for ourselves. We can provide menu options for people depending on where they’re at on their cycle. Woman Code is an amazing book about a woman who healed herself from a reproductive health issue that she was supposed to have major surgery for; she healed through food as medicine by tracking her cycle and eating different types of food throughout the month.  When might you be vegetarian, when might you be sugar-free, when might you be meat protein intensive, depending on the time of the month.

I have had the great blessing over some years now of receiving your “Bleeding at Sinai” poems, your bleeding at wherever you’re bleeding poems, and I wonder if you’ll share a little about that practice and what you’re up to and what has come from it for you.

I was inspired by your song, Bleeding at Sinai, to write maybe 4-16 lines of short rhyming insights into what I’m doing and how I’m feeling during my time of bleeding that month.  And it starts with the word “bleeding” and identifies where I am in the world, geographically speaking, which could be the Rocky Mountains {ie Bleeding in the Rockies}, it could be Morocco, it could be London, or it could be something like “Bleeding in the desert” or “Bleeding in the forest” or something more earth-based. Then it often has to do with the kind of either intense work project that I’m involved in or deep question about where I’m going in my intimate relationships or responding to the question, “What’s the transformation that’s happening this cycle?”

For me, hearing your song was really potent because it offers a structure that can be adaptable for every month. It is a kind of bardic way of storytelling or recounting what has been going on during this bleeding cycle or the whole past month since the last bleeding cycle. It’s a way of touching base. I love the idea of connecting with certain people in our lives depending on where the moon phase is at and so I think for my connection to you it’s been like, “Oh, I’m bleeding, I’ve gotta text Taya.” And then it’s like me checking in with you about what’s going on in my life. And not like, “Ok I’m gonna do a 2-3 page journal entry now on my moon cycle.” I would never do it.  It’s just a more concise thing.

What are other formats that would for that?  Is there a love letter to my falling egg, to my shedding egg?  Or an appraisal of the house in which this egg lives, which could be a checking in and a tending to the whole uterus, fallopian tubes, ovaries, but also could be the whole body. How is my body doing in holding and releasing this egg?

It could be an interesting practice for someone to think about: “What’s my primary medium of processing? Is it journaling, is it texting someone else, is it taking a photo, is it pottery, is it water color, and how would you apply that medium to, like, a monthly attunement to your cycle? And who would your partner in that be, who would you want to share that with? Like “here’s my water color for this month, or here’s my pot.”

How does conscious menstruation interweaves with climate justice?

My hunch is that the way in which women are taught to deal with their “periods” - using that word intentionally - is similar to the way in which we’re taught to deal with any number of bodily functions and necessary aspects of life, over the last 70 or so years, in an industrialized throw-away society. So what that means is the “optimal” way to eat food is prepackaged and prepared so you can eat it quickly, on the go, and then throw it away. And where is this mythical “away” if not a giant swilling mass of plastic contaminating our ocean and killing birds, dolphins, and other beautiful life? The “optimal” way to go to the toilet is to use fresh, potable, drinking water, clean good water, to put excrement in, and then add in all this paper product, and then flush it away.  The “optimal” way to deal with your period is to stuff something up you, capture all the stuff, and then throw it away. So it goes with that whole culture of consumerism.

To step away from that and  to start using something like the Diva Cup or a Glad Rag or to just able to track when [your] body is going to bleed and bleed on the earth at that time … is to step outside of a consumerist culture.  How does that relate to climate? That consumerist culture of more and more cars and more and more products and more and more consumption of waste that is driving us to our own extinction. When we take ourselves out of that cycle of using toxic products, we get to be powered by renewable, beautiful systems.

But while individual choice is important, we know that climate change is fueled by large-scaled industries - coal, oil, fracking… - and that we need a systems-level change, not just individuals driving less, or using less tampons. My prayer is that engaging in blood ritual connected to the earth can help us be woke to the earth’s call for urgent action, that we not only change our individual practices, but also join larger movements for green jobs and justice.

It would be interesting to see the carbon footprint of Tampax.  It’s plastic applicators, which are oil, and it’s coming from China, or somewhere Southeast Asia, and then probably going back in landfill barges. It’s a totally unsustainable way of doing things and it’s amazing that we call that progress, and that the modern woman should have access to that. And some liberal Western folks say,  “Oh! How terrible that these rural villagers don’t have access to proper Tampons.”

You wanted to speak to blood and sex?

Well I think for me in general I would say my most activated time of erotic arousal is when I’m bleeding and it’s some of the most juiciest best lovemaking ever and it’s been really interesting to navigate with men and male-bodied people that space. And I feel like I’ve been very blessed and fortunate to be with a lot of lovers who are totally game on and totally not weirded out by moon blood and so I had this assumption that everyone is like a big yes to moon blood and that everyone understands that moon blood is healthy and good. So when I’ve had to encounter a partner who maybe was raised let’s say in a more religious way either because they grew up in Jerusalem or they grew up Orthodox Jewish it’s been challenging and triggering and actually created a lot of shame for me around bleeding and being sexual. And that’s been really strange to navigate, and painful. I had a partner who was so game-on that he was like, “I know how to remove your mooncup!” It was amazing.

In 5th grade we got divided up into two classes for our “sex ed”.  The boys learned how to put on condoms and what erections were about and a bit about channeling sexual energy. And the girls learned about how to put on pads and what to do when you get your period. The boys were being educated around how to have sex while the girls were being educated around how to keep themselves clean. Very different. There’s a lot to unpack there!

What’s in your menstrual toolkit?

That’s a fun question.  It’s kind of like when Vogue asks celebs, “What’s in your purse?”

red turkish towel for sensual play during moon time

the Diva Cup

if possible a hot spring to do mikvah in

a book of poetry.  I don’t know why but I always feel more like poetry and candlelight when bleeding.

What else would you like to share?

I want to speak about ancestral healing through the matrilinear line, because it’s my understanding that epigenetically I was inside of my grandmother, so right, cause my mom was a fetus inside of her mom and her as a fetus had all the eggs she would ever have for her whole lifetime.  So that means that the trauma that my grandmother experienced while being in hiding in a basement for two years while the Nazis occupied her house was like in me, in the egg that created me. And so what does it mean that I am carrying all these eggs, and if one of these eggs were to make a child, then growing a baby, and just that whole area of the body, centering that awareness off instead of thinking like “How can I live a happy and joyous life?” it’s like “How can my body be so well and so vibrant that it can transform these narratives of trauma backward and forward?” You know?

How do you live into that or how do you attend in that way?

A lot of it is what I’m already doing - living in the mountains, going on long hikes with our husky Wolfie, working through the hard bits so that there can be goodness. And the other aspects are still big question marks: How do have the right dance between the change-making, outward work and the nourishing work? You know what feels more true to say is that the biggest work that I’ve been doing in the last two years is healing relationships with my family. And that’s what that’s about, actually, is being able to honor my ancestors in their fullness — they created beauty and were war resisters and they also fought and harmed. May my life be a tikkun (repair) and an honoring of their dignity and love.