by AP, Sydney, Australia
I was really looking forward to hearing Natalie Benhayon talk about the new ‘Period and Full Moon Diary’ App she was launching. This is not just for women who are still menstruating, but is also just as applicable for menopausal women, like me, or even young women who haven’t started their periods yet. This new App will be a perfect way to record how I’m feeling from day to day so I can see when there’s a pattern emerging. Was I frustrated for just a few days, or was it actually a lot more than that?… and if so, I can then think about what caused that frustration. Did something happen at work, or with a friend? With this honesty and awareness, I have the opportunity to make different choices moving forward. Maybe I speak up more when I’m with my friends and say how I really feel about something, rather than just going along with the group. Or at home, I could explain to my teenage sons that I’m really tired and would love some help with dinner, rather than feeling frustrated and then snapping at everyone because I’m annoyed that I’m doing everything myself! As we can make notes on a daily basis with the period diary, I can see how the changes I make affect me, not just on a daily basis, but also with regard to my cycle. I know how I am feeling each day, but I can honestly say that I can’t remember, with clarity, how I felt yesterday, let alone the days before. I’m really looking forward to using the App, specifically as I’d like to look back over the days and weeks to see what I can learn from it.
Natalie shared that the ‘Period and Moon Diary’ came about through women sharing their experiences with their periods; it was clear that everyone’s experience is quite individual. There are similarities, but also nuances that make each person unique.
My periods stopped about 4 years ago and I really hadn’t considered that I still have a monthly cycle. I had noticed that I felt ‘different’ around the time of a full moon, but I have never really recorded how I feel during the month. When my periods first started, the bleeding was very heavy and it just continued for days. I lost so much blood that I ended up in hospital for a blood transfusion. After that I was put on the pill (which I hated) to regulate my periods, so after 8 months or so I just stopped taking it, but then I didn’t have a period for over a year. I remember feeling quite strongly that the pill was interfering with my body’s own rhythm and that I didn’t want to put any medication into my body unless I had to. After that introduction, there was an element of trepidation when it came to ‘that time of the month’ for me.
Just as we all have different period experiences, we will also have different ways of dealing with our periods during the month to ‘make ourselves feel better’. With the diary, we are able to see how different choices may change our period experience each month, or not. This in turn enables us all to have a deeper relationship with ourselves and take more care when we’re feeling fragile.
As a slight digression from the diary, Natalie asked us whether we find things that we ‘need to fit into’ with other people, rather than just being ‘who we are’. This was an extremely profound question and we were unanimous in our agreement that we do this, a lot. We shared our experiences of how we do this. There was quite a lot of discussion about how we look, shopping for clothes, the pressures we feel to look a certain way from the media, our family or our friends.
I know I ‘don’t like’ shopping for clothes and never have. I have told people it’s because I am not interested in the fashion, but it’s really because I never look like I think I’m supposed to look. So, I just avoid going there and tend to wear my clothes for a very long time! I suppose on some level I have given up and accepted that – that I’m not going to look like I ‘want to’, so a lot of what I wear is more for comfort. But maybe on some level I’m also hiding a bit as I don’t want to stand out. I would have to feel very confident and good about how I was looking to do that. Writing this makes me feel quite sad and a bit shocked that this is really how I feel. If someone else shared those thoughts with me, I would give them a big hug and reassure them of how ‘beautiful’ they are to me, and to have the confidence to wear whatever they want. So why don’t I do this for myself?
When I am out shopping, if I’m walking through a clothing area in DJ’s (a department store) I often get drawn to certain items, but I’ll say to myself “I’ll wait until it’s on sale”, or “I haven’t got time to do this right now”. This happened to me recently and I asked myself WHY NOT… when DO you have time to do this for yourself? Why don’t I show the same dedicated love that I have for my family, towards myself? It’s as though I allow every distraction under the sun to pull me away from doing this, as though I’m afraid of something. This is a pattern I want to change.
It seems that a lot of us have a fairly poor body image, and maybe it’s this combined with feelings that we’re not quite ‘good enough’ that allows us to be dominated by others around us, and we find ourselves ‘fitting in’. If I am honest, I DO KNOW deep down that I am beautiful, so why do I find it so hard to embrace that? To do that, for me, it feels a bit like swimming against the current, because it’s going against all the ideals and beliefs I have about myself; how I ‘look’, and not ticking all the boxes. Whilst writing this, I know it’s all completely ridiculous and yet it has such a hold over me and only I have the power to stop it, for myself.
What was quite bizarre was that I was in a group of women that I’d never met before and we were ALL saying that when we changed our behaviour to ‘fit in’ to whatever was going on around us, it didn’t feel good. It’s as though we leave ourselves and afterwards we wonder why we did it. So, if we’re all feeling that way, as ‘strangers’, surely this must also apply to hundreds and thousands of other women – and maybe not just women. So, what if we give ourselves the opportunity to stay with who we are and be true to ourselves the next time we feel ourselves starting to ‘fit in’: just doing that may in turn give others the chance to do the same thing and bit by bit, maybe we can start to love ourselves more and trust that it’s ok to be who we are all the time because we’re all beautiful, wonderful women with so much to offer ourselves and each other.
I can see that my period and moon diary will be a great opportunity to reflect over the months on how I have felt on many different levels, including when I have chosen not to ‘fit in’ and to love myself a bit more, each day!