The End of My Professional Womanhood
I had been expecting it for a while; alright I was waiting with baited breath for my last period. I’d gotten my first when I was twelve and my grandmother mistook my cramps for too much food at the labor day cookout. I had no idea they were menstrual cramps; I thought I was dying. As I’m chugging down probably my third dose of that thick gross pink stuff, my aunt moseyed down from the third floor and casually says “Go in the bathroom, if you see blood, then come back and let me know.”
Sure enough there she was and the only time she left my side was through seven pregnancies (one heaven baby.) I’m 50, so that’s alot of bleeding; needless to say I was pumped to be saying goodbye to pads, worrying about accidents, whether she would show up on the 8th grade class trip to Washington (which she did and I had on sky blue shorts, no less.), PMS etc. I just wanted her to pack her shit and go. I wasn’t prepared for the what I felt.
I don’t think I’m alone in what I was told what I should do with my life as a woman. Get married, have kids, take care of said kids, create home and hearth. Throw in Evangelicalism (a whole other essay)and I was essentially a hand crafted wife and mother. My life was about the ‘female arts’; having children and homemaking. This was ALL I did. My womanhood was my job and the currency I exchanged for that was my period. I exchanged my period for meaning, for purpose, for value because as long as I was having children, I was important and I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. I had a rough childhood and thought pouring myself into mothering as the sole expression of womanhood, would make up for my sad formative years and finally make me important to someone. I certainly thought I’d be important to God because I was ‘being fruitful and multiplying.’
Don’t get me wrong, I fucking love my children, and they adore me, but I didn’t realize who I was aside from them. Every time I didn’t get my period, I added to my womanhood account. See, I was a professional woman not professional woman. My period was the currency I paid in exchange for validation and meaning. Now, with its absence I was, am, forced to look at what else I have to offer besides my ovaries, Fallopian tubes and, yes, my period.
