Top 5 things your daughter should know about periods (and you wish you knew)
The vast majority of women were taught and still know so little about the menstrual cycle; and we don’t even know what we don’t know.
For many women putting any time or effort into cultivating a relationship with their menstrual cycle isn’t something they think about and/or want to do. The cultural teaching around periods when most of us were coming of age was VERY basic and the narrative was more along the lines of “it happens” and “we all deal with it”.
The fact that the menstrual cycle impacts our health and wellness and yet few of us know much about it is something that we should seek to change!
The discussion and education around the menstrual cycle and even down to what products we use are cultural. This means that our culture often shapes the stories around our cycles. Let’s shift the story so that we can help them feel empowered with information and know respond to their bodies for our health and wellness. The biggest way to do that is for us to have the information so that we can give it to our kids.
Here are 5 things that girls should know (and that we all should have known) about the menstrual cycle to create a deeper connection, understanding and better relationship.
The Menstrual Cycle is one big conversation
This conversation takes place via a symphony of things inside and outside of us. Inside of us we have the much maligned hormones that we tend to blame for all the evil inside when things are going bad and ignore when they are working. These hormones are chemical messengers sending and receiving information causing reactions and cycles to take place as designed; however if given the “wrong” input they can get in a “stuck or imbalanced cycle”.
Our bodies are more like a community of cells. They are communicating all the time: via the food we eat, the light we get, how we handle the hard things coming at us on the regular (stress) and so much more. Our bodies RESPOND to this communication by altering processes which results in cycles that occur inside that “cope”. These stuck cycles allow us to hobble along as if things are “normal” at least for a while before we hear the “out of tune” impact more deeply.
The communication doesn’t end there outside of us we are in constant communication with our environment. For example early morning sunlight when seen through “naked eyes” triggers the production of progesterone, cortisol (our natural coffee) and asks the body to put away melatonin. When we find ourselves out of balance hormonally, leading to discomfort we have a bit more “control” than we realize and that is to change the input of communication to get a different output of hormonal notes.
Menstrual Cycles will be irregular at first and this is normal.
When our bodies are first starting this conversation there will be some “missed messages” leading to irregular cycles. It is normal to take 2-3 years to become more regular. There is a learning curve to communication, just like toddlers learning how to speak for the first time there will be times when the body “gets it wrong”. In fact in the first year of menstruating most girls will only ovulate 2-3 of their cycles. This means it would be normal for them to have cycles that are around 20-45 days. It is important to allow their communication system to practice and get stronger and to help support their bodies along the way.
Menstrual Cycles don’t have to suck
The first few years of the menstrual cycle maybe a bit harder for many girls, especially now a days with all of the disruptive outside input (endocrine disruptors, circadian rhythm disruption, harmful light, abundance of stress and anxiety, metabolic issues etc.) disrupting our communication and harming our hormonal balance more than ever before. However, menstrual cycles aren’t designed to come with harsh symptoms UNLESS there is something out of balance. Symptoms are alerting us that a part of the cycle has fallen out of balance. The menstrual system is obviously connected to so many of our bodies systems. Sometimes we see the imbalance in our digestive system first or our perhaps our skin. Once we understand this fact we can then search out what maybe out of balance and begin to shift into balance by giving it new input. This tends to be MUCH easier in the early years, especially after the 2nd year of the cycle.
Menstruating bodies operate off of both a daily rhythm AND also aN Infradian or monthly rhythm.
Why isn’t basic biology taught in schools and NO I am not talking about the cell wall and the golgi apparatus but the type of biology that we live and breathe in, like circadian and infradian rhythm! It is a basic biological fact that menstruating bodies operate differently than non menstruating bodies and that this impacts nearly everything. Our hormones fluctuate throughout the month and this impacts: food intake, energy levels, our skin, moods and nearly everything even down to how our brain works! Some people take this to mean that this makes us “weaker” or not as “productive” because we can’t be in summer all the time. In a society that loves to combat the 3 pm slump with a jolt of monster energy or coffee to get through the day, rather take a 15 minutes chill, it is no wonder that we don’t honor the actual cycle of life. At the end of the day we are still mammals and as such our bodies require homeostasis. When we are younger we can push those boundaries fairly easy but as we age it catches up with us. We are cyclical beings that operate in a cyclical world: summer, fall, winter, spring. As such all of these seasons are played out in our hormones and living in a winter hormonal state (the bleed part) yet operating on summer mode, well it creates imbalance in our hormonal world and in reality in our ecological world too. Telling the truth about the menstrual cycle being a cycle and how our energy levels may change and then how we can still live our lives and yet be aware of and help support that is one major way to live in greater alignment and also to not have a cycle that sucks!
Our periods tell us a lot about our health, both what’s going on now and also predicting the future.
Our menstrual cycles are REALLY important! The menstrual cycle is normally one of the first things that shifts when something is out of balance in our body, from something as simple as a long flight, to a lack of sleep or a stressful time in life. The menstrual cycle can even show us when we have eaten poorly the month before or simply undernourished ourselves. When we are able to understand our cycle and with so much more information now a days respond to imbalances and issues in ways that can solve root issues (and yes that may require a lot of time and energy for those of us that have more stuck cycles and just really rotten health care and education) then we enter into later stages of our lives stronger. Most of us also don’t know that our menstrual cycles are HUGE in showing us how healthy our later years will be in terms of our bone and heart health. Our menstrual cycle’s health correlates to our heart health, bone health and overall health as we age. It is important to know that this is our 5th vital sign.
We simply don’t know what we never learned and the story we were told didn’t even invite much curiosity about it!
If much of this is news to you I get it! I don’t know how many times over the years that I have heard really sad, embarrassing, shamefilled stories from mom’s around their first periods. For the larger culture the story we were told was minimal, it sucks, you deal with it and move on. There is rarely a joyful or reverent conversation around a process that literally is one of the driving forces for the creation of new life.
Another major reason that mom’s tell me they aren’t friendly with their period is due to all the pain/symptoms. In fact when I tell mom’s that periods aren’t meant to be painfilled, many don’t/can’t believe me. For one thing it isn’t their lived experience AND no one ever helped them understand their own bodies, bodies communication and that symptoms were cues to shift things. Most of us have never heard the fact that the color and consistency of the blood that we release can tell us a lot about our hormonal balance. Most of us also don’t know that our blood sugar, the light we “consume”, our stress levels etc. majority impact our hormones from month to month. Most of us don’t know that we can respond and communicate with our cycle or that we could even “be friendly” with it. The story around menstrual cycles wasn’t one of establishing a relationship, having communication but rather one of “grin and bear”, take this pill, it kinda sucks and gets in the way. The problem is this story leads to a disconnection from one of our very vital signs of health and wellness. The more we know the easier it can be to be in greater balance.
So….What if we changed the story for our kids and gave them real information?
What if we gave our girls real information that helps them understand this part of their lives? What if we show them that this is an important part of their health? What if we celebrate our first period, no need to have a big ole period party if your daughter isn’t into it but at least to honor her with a dinner, a gift or something lovely from all of her women family members.
In reality the menstrual cycle is here to stay. Most of us will live with it for decades of our lives and I don’t know about you but if I lived with someone/something for decades I would much rather not have an “it’s complicated and/or dislike” relationship status with it.
Here’s to changing the story, to empowering ourselves and our kids with more information!
Menstrual Cycle 101
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Menstrual Cycle 101 〰️
Would you like to give your daughter more information about her menstrual cycle?
Check out Menstrual Cycle 101-
The Basics and Beyond in Bite Sized Bits of Empowering Information
The Ultimate map for the menstrual cycle
(The class we all wish we would/should have had!)