Ahem. Let me step upon my soapbox and introduce you to today’s topic; Shark Week. Shark Week is that week where your wife or partner drills you so hard you sink into the mud along with your children as you all duck for cover and make jokes about PMS. It ends with blood and gore and all the men and children praying for mercy and waiting for it to pass. 

What if we didn’t just “ignore all the things and wait for it to pass”? 

Traditionally, menstruating women have been subject to all sorts of crazy rules and traditions. 

• keep the hags out of places of worship. 

• Stick all the bleeders in a hut together so the tigers don’t come hunting and kill the whole village. 

• Don’t let those bleeding hags touch your food. 

• Do not let those crazy females go to school. 

At first glance, I’m like, “Oh, hail naw! Hold my earrings…” and I’m poised with my trident for battle and then, when I really sit in the silence and ruminate, I know there is wisdom to be found in traditions and history. There is wisdom in the Earth and in our bodies and everywhere in Nature. 

When Shark Week approacheth, any man or child or partner or friend knows that suddenly, things which were not an issue yesterday, become paramount today. I think that a lot of people, including the participators in Week of the Shark dismiss these changes. These insights, which seem sudden are actually problems. These are complications which always exist in the life and the relationship, but women are just better at pushing the emotions and struggles down the other 2-3 weeks of the month. 

Alright. Let’s go on a little flight back in time when people lived primarily in the outdoor world without artificial lights and A/C and smartphones. Their bodies really did sync with the lunar cycles. Sleeping outside and being exposed to the gentle light of the moon produced chemical changes in the bodies of ancient women and their cycles were synced with the moon and with other members of their tribe. 

Fantastic. An entire tribe of women on the verge of aggravated assault. 

There are all of these fascinating stories which illustrate the ways different cultures approached menstruation and some even seem barbaric and down right rude. When we really read between the lines and consider ancient wisdom and intuition, we can see the insight and erudition behind these practices. 

On days 21-28 of a woman’s cycle, estrogen and testosterone are dropping while progesterone is increasing. These changes cause most women to go inward. We start to dig around in our hearts and brains and see what’s up. If we just look at all this dysbiosis and pack it back up and shove it on the shelf, it goes on unchecked. Around day 28, progesterone plummets and we sink into despair, if we haven’t adequately dealt with what’s imbalanced. 

Anciently, women would hole up together in “moon huts” because this was a time for needed rest and reflection. Also, no one wanted a bear or tiger to smell the blood and come eat the villagers, so having all the bleeding women in one spot to lure the blood-thirsty lion to one place was probably a good idea. 

Women stopped all the nurturing and working and “doing” and hung out together for repose and reset. In many cultures, women on their period were considered wise and powerful and decisions for the whole group would be considered and settled with input from the women who were extremely sensitive to intuition, needs of others and natural wisdom during this time. In some cultures, they were excluded from places of worship because it was felt they were so powerful spiritually that they would quite literally suck up all the Jesus or Allah or Spirit and leave nothing behind for the non-bleeders. 

Modern research actually shows a dramatic increase in right hemisphere activity AKA “intuitive knowing” during this part of a woman’s cycle. In other words, women become extremely aware of everything – especially emotions and vibes and needs under the surface of themselves and their people. Our empathic abilities and intuition ramp up to often uncomfortable levels. 

Those weird little hiccups and poignant quandaries of inner life expand and puff up and women feel the intense desire to labor over these things and solve those emotional, relationship and familial problems that the rest of the month are squashed and packed away tight while she’s worrying about other things like school and work and bills and clipping everyone’s toenails. 

If we deny the natural need women have to slow down and turn inward, feelings of resentment, frustration and anger find a way to surface and explode. Does this sound familiar? How many of us women say, “Yeah. Shark Week is coming. I’m feeling emotionally aware and my intuitive chords are humming and I should really go to the moon hut and take a couple of days off to rest and think about my marriage and the emotional needs of my tribe so I can help everyone be happier.” 

Not anyone I know. 

I’m usually screaming and gesticulating wildly, “Hand over the Excedrin and Coke and donuts so I can crack out and run to all the appointments and do all the things and maintain my break-neck pace even though the life is literally bleeding out of me…and why don’t you love me and how come everyone is so tortured and why are babies dying and how come I can’t save everyone?!”

In modern life, we override so many natural cues from life. We stay inside a majority of the time in artificially lit and oxygenated habitats. We take pills to ignore and suppress our body’s natural processes. We allow ourselves to labeled culturally as “crazy”. We rarely take time to rest and reflect and give in to what we really need. Sometimes we don’t even sleep. 

Dr. Christiane Northrop says it best;

“The premenstrual phase is therefore a time when we have greater access to our magic—our ability to recognize and transform the more difficult and painful areas of our lives. Premenstrually, we are quite naturally more in tune with what is most meaningful in our lives. We’re more apt to cry—but our tears are always related to something that holds meaning for us. Years of personal and clinical experience have taught me that the painful or uncomfortable issues that arise premenstrually are always real and must be addressed.” 

Read it again: “…painful or uncomfortable issues that arise premenstrually are always real and must be addressed.” MUST BE ADDRESSED. A doctor said it, so there. 

Husbands and partners who are trembling under the quilt in the corner – stand up and drop the shield. 

You have to address and work through these complications. Ignoring them is like covering up a big ole festering and infected wound with a bandaid. You may not see it or have to mess with the demon for a little while, but it will resurface time and again and cause sepsis in your entire life. 

As long as we label this time of frustrated wisdom as PMS, crazy, overly emotional, dysfunctional and insanity, nothing is accomplished. I believe if we shifted our thinking to aware, intuitive, sensitive, cognizant, empathic – the meaning of all of it would drastically change. 

Women traditionally keep the home and keep the peace. Literally and metaphorically. There has been research done which shows the unfortunate dissolution of family groups when a matriarch dies. She is accurately the “glue” that holds families together. She’s the one who senses needs and issues and fights for resolution. Part of being able to understand and resolve these needs are these ebbs and flows in our natural hormonal fluctuations and the ability to feel more acutely at certain times. 

Author Kristina Bos said, “The feminine (in everyone) takes care of the web that connects us all. She feels when there is friction – when things are not going right. She feels when people are hiding and burying their emotions. This is all felt in the web. Her job is to maintain this web. (We often see this in families where the mother has died. Something big is often lost. The connective web disappears. This can happen whether the children are young or grown up and living their own lives. The death of the matriarch makes the gathering of the clan much more difficult.)”

In other words, nobody is going bonkers once a month to maintain the web and worry about all the spawn so they disband. 

You can call it God, the Universe, Nature. Whatever. It is something. I know you feel it. We all try to laugh it off and make it a joke and ignore it and pass off “that time

of the month” as only a curse but it’s a double edged sword – two sides of the same coin. It is a curse and it is also the cure. 

Our culture fights for equality and so start to believe that men and women are the same. We are not the same. A woman’s chemical composition changes every single day of the month. Her focus is forced to change and she’s designed that way. There is a method to the madness. I think if we can alter the conversation to embrace the method, the wisdom, the intuition – we can accept the challenges to be solved that come with that acceptance. 

Let’s change the narrative from crazy biotch to wise and intuitive. 

These days, intuition has been effectively starved out. Our intuitive bone has shriveled up and snapped in half. But less so in women because no one has found a way to 100% escape or override the cycle. When women start listening to the wisdom and intuition and the rest of the village takes it all seriously, we can all grow our intuitive bones back again. 

So, my last little plug for “yay, period.” 

Humans who are male: imagine something is really bothering you. It feels wrong and you know you need to work on it and talk to your wife or partner about it. But, because you have the flu (something out of your control) this is what she says;

“Oh, honey. You’re sick. You’ve been sitting here feeling bad and thinking about things and really it’s just that you’re crazy. You’re feelings aren’t really valid because it’s the flu talking. Just hang on for a couple days. You’ll get better and feel better and we can ignore all this until you’re sick again. Mmkay? Here, take this medicine so you can go ahead and go to work even though you’re miserable and need to rest. Okay, great. Love you, Poopsie, and…maybe let’s have sex later?”

The end. 

Illustration: Uday Deb