When a woman bleeds it makes her a unique creature, apart from man. (Perhaps we are not the unique ones, but since they rule the world and set the standards for the time being, let us just say that we are unique rather than they are deficient.) * insert ‘Mona Lisa’ smile HERE *
But back to the point.
To bleed every month is to share the mystery of the Universe. To suffer a wound and not die, to heal and yet revisit the affliction every month without permanent damage. To hold Life and Death in the same hand, while using the other hand to hold everything else in between. Men may claim, "I brought you into this World and I can take you out!" but they can no more do either of those things than gasoline can fuel a vehicle while it is still in the can! But a woman can, and does, do both.
We ARE the vehicle, and we are capable of alternative fuel sources. And they need us, more than we need them. And when they bleed they die. And in their dying breath they come to us and see Her and they KNOW. Too bad they don’t know before death. But we KNOW. And lest we forget, we are reminded every month: because we bleed every month and yet do not die.
So every month we are reminded of our role, of our place in the Universe and in men’s lives. We are never alone. We always have the reminder.
Maybe this is the reason men accuse us of being bitchy or moody when we sense the approach of our reminder. Maybe it isn’t so much hormones that makes us (in their opinions) “unstable emotionally” as it is the knowledge that we, as unique and special creatures in this Scheme of Things, lose patience with the mundane drudgery that they seem to take so much pride in. Maybe we—for a few days a month—just don’t have the time to waste on such daily matters and masculine attitudes of superiority. Maybe we are free to be who we really are and to appreciate ourselves. Maybe we can see clearly and can cut through the crap. Maybe men are not the most important things in our lives for a few days. Maybe we’ve got better things to do. How insecure this must make them feel. To see our power and to see how untouched we can be by their demands! Their whole world falls apart. And ours opens up.
For about 40 years we learn to recognize our power and we are reminded of it every month. Every month it is underscored in red. It grips us by the bowel and the womb in a pain that is indescribable to anyone else but another woman, who needs no description to understand. We fight it every month—who likes to suffer? We take pills and drink teas and try to flush it all away with bits of bloody paper and cotton. We pack and bandage and try to change our scent to hide it as if it were a shame. And to men it is a shame. But what they do not tell our young girls is that it is THEIR shame, not ours. It is something they will never have nor experience the equal of. And they hate that. So we live with their undercurrents of shame and self-hate and adopt them and forget—for 3 weeks. Then we are reminded again, and no matter how much they have influenced us, even the most swayed among us knows, deep down, that it is special and it is ours alone. Only men have to ask why the Mona Lisa smiles. Women know why.
So how does it end for us? In a blaze of glory! When we become the wise woman, the Crone, the monthly blood stops. But not because we are empty. Because now we are full. Now it belongs to us. Now we are the ones who receive its magic. We keep our power and can spend it how we wish to. We do not need to be reminded. We lose nothing. We gain everything.
Only a Crone has the beauty of the Maiden and the power of the Mother, tempered by the wisdom of Age. When we become crones we have reached the checkpoint. We will not lose any more points for failures or incompletes. So maybe when we enter menopause it is not that we become unstable or bitchy or insane. Maybe we understand what we are here for. Maybe we understand what those 40 years of bleeding were all about. Maybe we have just had enough of being called a bitch, of having our most sacred and mysterious nature trivialized into some kind of hormonal roller-coaster to make men feel superior in their emotional “stabilities” (as if it is emotionally stable to wage wars with guns and footballs!)
“Mood swings” or “choosing not to fake malleability for the sake of domestic peace”? “Snappy” or “tired of putting up with nonsense for 40 years”? Maybe I am crying because I could not take the time to cry for the last 40 years. Maybe I am angry now because I was not allowed to be angry all that time. Maybe the only thing my moods and emotions have to do with menopause is the freedom it gives me to finally own them.
Young men fear the crone because they do not understand her; she is what their beloved Mothers will become. Old men fear the crone because she is what their Lovers are—and what they can never be themselves.
Crones remind men of their own mortality; as our monthly bleeding reminded us for so many years of our immortality through our mortality, now it is our mortality because of our immortality we face. Men did not have the lessons we had. And now we hold their hand—IF we want to—and they are afraid we won’t want to. Imagine the insecurity!
Now that the daily jobs are done, we have time for compassion. After the moods and hot flashes, now we feel the more subtle things like empathy and forgiveness and gratitude. We don’t need the violence of bleeding and cramps. We don’t need to be reminded anymore because now we can’t forget who we really are.
Men will question why the Mona Lisa smiles until their dying breath. They will question who they are, and they will ask us to tell them with their last living stare. And we will be there to answer them and to hold their hands and to put them on their paths, just as we did at the beginning. But in the beginning it was with blood from our wombs and in the end it will be with blood from our hearts.
Our blood will always flow in the service of Life and Love.
