My First Period Story and How I'm Healing It Now

Today I'm sharing some hard things, and I'm giving you permission to click away from this blog if it becomes too much for you. 

This month I started my training to become a First Moon Circle facilitator--where I'll lead circles for 9-12 year olds who will soon get their first period and witness and guide them at this vital rite of passage. 

I am so incredibly excited and honored to do this work!

Part of this certification program includes doing your own healing work around your menarche (first period) experience, which is what we've been journeying the past week.

It has been bumpy for me. 

I would sit down to complete the deeply reflective exercises and find myself very distracted, only able to answer a few questions in my journal before clicking away to something else. 

I also have been extra tired, sensitive, and had stomach pains. I'm coming down with a cold. 

This is not surprising to me because I know my body is an expression of what's going on for me internally, spiritually, emotionally. 

And the years prior to my first bleed were marked by trauma, so it's no surprise to me that mentally reinhabiting that time of my life is accompanied with physical echoes of what I experienced at that time of my life and just the physical manifestation that I'm revisiting a challenging time. 

So I've been able to give myself grace. 

I'm sharing this today because I want you to know that our bodies are always relevant, always an external mirror to our internal experience, and an avenue for vital self-awareness.

I'm also sharing because it is incredibly important to witness others and be witnessed yourself.

I want to share a little bit about my first period experience:

I do not remember my first bleed. 

I think I was about twelve, I'm pretty sure I was in sixth grade. I told no one, and I didn't even acknowledge it to myself. 

I free-bled for the first handful of periods, letting my blood release into my Limited Too underwear because I just couldn't acknowledge this change in my body, the need to care for myself in this way. I couldn't go get a pad because it felt like acknowledgement that I would now have to care for my body, and at that time I could not do that. 

I carried way too much shame. Too much repulsion, too much fear. I did not like being in my body; it was a dangerous place. And puberty felt even more dangerous. 

So I abandoned myself and my body.

I denied this change, I hid it, I refused to acknowledge it. 

I didn't want this. I didn't want many of the things that my body had experienced, but nothing ever felt like my choice. 

I've since recognized that this deep self-abandonment at menarche set a pattern of self-abandonment for years. 

In this First Moon Circle Facilitator training program, and other menstruality work I've done, I've learned that how something starts is a pretty clear indication of how it will continue. 

Until something changes.

And that change usually comes through very mindful effort.

There is so much hope in that! So much possibility, so much beauty. 

I am proof that things can change. That we can heal. That we have power and choice and potential to experience things differently, to re-write our story. 

This is exactly why I am so passionate, so honored to work in this space helping others do this same work. 

Part of our module this week included an invitation to write a letter to your menarcheal self, including any wisdom, guidance, or words you needed to hear at that time but did not receive.

I want to share an excerpt from the letter I wrote to my 12-year-old self. 

And please, if any of this message holds words you also need to hear, know that I am speaking them to you, too: