Aquarius Interview

Interview: Aquarius Magazine and Pam Chubbuck 2002

Woman Spirit: Celebrating Menarche

Aquarius: I’ll never forget how I learned about menstruation. We’d gathered for our usual Girl Scout meeting, but our leaders seemed tense and stressed out. They whispered to each other and they looked very, very serious. And they’d brought a guest speaker who was unfamiliar to us. They shushed us and made us sit theatre style before a movie screen and showed us a dreadful little film full of diagrams of body parts we’d never before dreamed we possessed. And they told us that soon we’d start bleeding every month. Horrors!

My mother’s contribution was to prepare me by explaining how to use the (thankfully, mercifully) now out-dated supplies and her main focus seemed to be that I should hide any evidence from my father’s notice. I got the impression that this was all very shameful, just as I had when I sprouted breasts at eleven and Mother couldn’t buy my training bra fast enough to suit her.

Girls today may be lucky enough to have a much more positive experience. They may have enlightened parents who have learned how easily a girl’s self-esteem can be crushed around the time of puberty. Parents may have learned from feminism and goddess worship how to celebrate their daughter’s menarche. And now, Dr. Pamela Chubbuck has offered a wonderful new gift for mothers and grandmothers (AUNTS, FATHERS AND FRIENDS ) to share with young girls.

Woman Spirit: A Menarche Myth is a beautiful story, told in Chubbuck’s dulcet tones, of a young girl’s journey into womanhood. Accompanied by Native American style flute and drum –by Ellen Edwards and Bob Edwards—Chubbuck tells the story of Susan and her best friend, Margaret, and how they learned about menarche, the beginning of menstruation. Margaret and her grandmother were Native Americans, and Margaret’s grandmother teaches the girls about celebrating their womanhood.

Dr. Pamela Chubbuck’s name will be familiar to long-time Aquarius readers. She maintains a practice in Atlanta. She is uniquely qualified to share these teachings.

Aquarius: Pam, what was your own introduction to menarche like?

Pam: I was 14 when I got my first blood. I was eagerly awaiting the event since most of my friends already had gotten their periods. I remember telling my mother and father who both said, “oh, now you are a woman”. I was still 14! I didn’t feel any different than I had the day before and I was supposed to know how to be a woman now? I didn’t even like women since I did not want to be like my mother. I was confused. I was running and playing with our dog. My father commented, “Isn’t it wonderful you can just behave like it was any other day”. I got emotional reward for that attitude. Months later I began to have horrible cramps, dysmenorrheal. I discovered in my later studies that they were due to my zooming hormones and parallel intense repression of my sexual urges- which I had to pretend, even to myself, did not exist.

What happens to us at Menarche is not a solitary event but a culmination of all we have learned about being female. So some history is important to tell.

My father grew up on a dairy farm and I also grew up around animals where sex and bodily functions were part of life. That part of me thought birth and all life was natural. My mother, however, did not have that experience. Mom’s own mother was naive and shy about her body and my grandmother passed that attitude on to my mother. Mom would not talk about her body or her emotions. I am a product of the best and worst of both my parents, as are we all. My brother and I found and read my parents sex manual, but that said very little about menstruation. I learned about menstruation from my father who basically gave me some pamphlets written by Kotex Inc. Same folks that probably made that film you mentioned. We all saw that. It was so impersonal!

Aquarius: How did this affect your decision to write and record Woman Spirit?

Pam: I think that my experience affected choices I made my whole life. First, I had to heal from my lack of mothering. I taught myself and then began to help other women. I breastfed my sons and gave birth naturally. I became a childbirth educator, La Leche League Leader, taught Lamaze Instructors, and then became a Midwife. I studied Body Centered Psychology. I was blessed to be present at the birth of my first grand daughter, who turns 13 in May. This was one of the most profound and spiritual experiences of my life. My daughter-in-law gave birth at home. My grand daughter, Alanna, was birthed into my son’s loving, strong hands. Later when I held this beautiful child on my chest my heart burst with love and the deep knowing of our spiritual connection. What could I give this child, I thought through tears of joy? The answer came…Only the gift of myself. Only the gift of my own experience of being a woman would do. Woman Spirit was written for my grand daughter and for all grand daughters everywhere. For inspiration, I taped a picture of Alanna’s smiling face to my reading stand while I recorded Woman Spirit.

Aquarius: You use a Native American framework for teaching about the moontime (menstrual cycle). Are you aware of other positive cultural teachings about menarche? Why did you decide to use Native American teachings?

Pam: I am very connected to Native American spirituality. Native American traditional spirituality holds all of life as sacred. Women need to know that their bodies are sacred and menstruation is natural. Bleeding Time is a good thing. In Native tradition, bleeding- time- women are seers, wise women, for their people. They are honored. In the Passamaquoddy culture that I have studied intimately, girls begin to do ritual a full year before they bleed. Most indigenous cultures hold Menarche to be of great importance. Girls go through ritual ceremony and then move into the role of woman. The Jewish tradition has Bot Mitzvah for it’s coming of age girls. We live in a culture that generally does not know how to support girls (and boys) in becoming adults. Ceremony and ritual helps greatly.

Aquarius: Tell us about "pleasure" and how it figures in the story.

Pam: In Woman Spirit, Susan and Margaret are preteens waiting for their first blood. They are taught by Margaret’s Native American, wise–woman grandmother. Pleasure is a gift from Great Spirit that makes life fun and is part of the connection with All of Life, grandmother teaches. Sexuality is part of Great Spirit’s gift to us. Feeling the wind in your hair, the taste of red raspberries on your tongue and your breasts as they grow from tiny buds into their fullness, are all pleasurable parts of being human. Blood flowing from the womb can be pleasurable. Our culture brainwashes us against the pleasure of menstruation. In fact our culture thinks of it as almost pathological. We give girls double messages: “Periods are natural… Take Midol.” PMS abounds. PMS is unheard of in cultures that celebrate the life cycle as normal. We need to give our girls more positive information about menstruation, their bodies, and themselves as women.

Aquarius: Could you explain why this time in a young girl’s life is a time for celebration?

Pam: In preparing to write my Doctoral dissertation, I interviewed hundreds of women about menarche. All of them remember their first blood. It is a momentous occasion. The oldest woman I spoke to was 90. She recounted her experience as though it was yesterday. Because it is so important, it is an event that shapes a woman’s total life. Potentially this is a time when we adults can particularly influence our girls. I want that influence to be the best, most loving support for their entire lives. Celebrating coming of age and particularly First Blood, is one of the most helpful things we can do to support girl’s health.

Aquarius: What would a moontime celebration include?

Pam: I’d want the girl to help create her own unique ceremony. Girls are individuals and we must honor that. One girl may want a small private ceremony with just her special girl friends. Another girl may want to invite her whole extended family. My eldest granddaughter had a ceremony with many women with dancing and gifts. Her younger sister was so shy (and only 11) that she allowed me to give her a special gift but did not want a ceremony. She may change her mind when she is older. If a girl is into it, I’d help her design what she wanted. A friends’ daughter performed on the trampoline for her family at her ceremony. Doing ceremony at full moon may be meaningful. Periods are cyclical, similar to the moon’s cycle and Native people call their periods their Moon Time. It would be good to somehow ritually welcome the girl into the circle of women. In Woman Spirit, Susan’s mother gave her a ring that had belonged to her grandmother and Margaret’s grandmother said an ancient prayer which evoked all her female ancestors. Later their friends told their own stories. I like participants to share stories of their first blood and talk about their own experiences of being women. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO SOMEHOW HELP THE YOUNG WOMAN FEEL THE POWER AND SACREDNESS INSIDE HERSELF. Meaningful music, dancing, special clothing, flowers, food, blessings and gifts from the participants are all ways to support and celebrate a girl’s growth along her way to becoming a woman.

Aquarius: How do you think it would change girls’ lives if they were taught about menarche and their bodies in this positive, loving way?

Pam: For the better… there is no doubt about that. Learning to love themselves and their bodies more fully will have profound affect throughout their whole lives. My doctoral research showed that women who were celebrated at menarche, are physically healthier, like themselves better, have a better more intimate sex life with their partners, are more open and spontaneous, and generally more fully alive. This is powerful indeed! To assist girls become healthy adults we must use a whole new paradigm for menstrual education. One which teaches them on all levels of their being: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.