BLOAT

Reclaiming our bodies and the lives they carry ...

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I suppose I have to start this week’s post with a bit of a content warning, or maybe a disclaimer.

This week’s post is going to discuss MENSTRUAL CYCLES and PERIODS aka “that time of the month.”

Now, if you have body and reproductive-linked trauma, I invite you to consider skipping this read.

However, and this is especially dedicated to my dear male readers, if seeing the above words about women’s bodies merely makes you squeamish, or giggly, or vaguely uncomfortable - I am going to invite you to keep reading. I really think you might get something out of this. I’m so glad you’re here.

And also to my lovely female readers: so many of us were brought up that this cycle, this regular, normal thing that our bodies go through at varying times and rhythms - was something to be ashamed of. We sheepishly asked for bathroom passes and were sold tiny little *tampon holders* so that no one would know that we were bleeding profusely while our algebra teachers taught us all how to solve equations.

Image courtesy of Amazon.

What if we didn’t have to hide it?

Maybe, while she taught us geometry and how to use a protractor, our math teacher was actually bleeding, too.

But we weren’t supposed to talk about it. We were embarrassed. Ashamed. Taught from a very early age to mask and hide our pain and, perhaps, our power.

No more.

I wrote at least one other time about this forbidden topic, at least obliquely, in the context of abortion. That article was published four years ago, in the before-times when Roe v. Wade was still the law of the land, and women and pregnant people were at least tacitly trusted to manage our bodies and our lives.

When I wrote that article for the Washington Post, I was just beginning to explore what it might mean to trust and embrace my body, rather than hide and/or hate it - or see it merely as an instrument for gaining favor with influential people, mostly men.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this increasing awareness and understanding and respect for my body came after two pregnancies, an end to taking hormonal birth control (which, don’t get me wrong, is a great innovation for women!) and after changes in the way broader consumer culture talked about periods. Suddenly, at the same time as conservative legislators were scheming about how to end the right to abortion, global movements of caring for women during that time of the month were on the rise. Across the world, people were starting to speak out about the “pink tax” and the relatively high cost of sanitary supplies like tampons and pads. Girls around the world were missing school and days of work because of their menstrual cycles, leading to lack of academic progress and career opportunities.

Even in the U.S., schools have started to move toward making sure bathrooms always have supplies for girls and women who are on their periods (don’t you wish we had that in high school?). And companies started trying to come up with better options for women, options that were more cost-effective and better for the environment, like reusable menstrual cups and discs, or so-called “period underwear.”

I’m sure these corporate decisions were mostly made because executives saw the huge earning potential of marketing to now-adult millennial women, but nonetheless, these products improved the lives of menstruating girls and women, including me!

More importantly, talking about periods meant removing some of the requisite shame of womanhood that so many of us have been raised with, whether in the ‘90s purity culture or the buttoned-up pre-feminist ‘50s. As an ordained Christian pastor, I’m especially glad for these movements and changes, even within churches, which have too often been vehicles for shame and fear of women’s bodies, enabling sexual abuse and misconduct, in marriages and of young girls in the church.

Still, as I’ve come into my late 30s, and in conversation with similarly aged friends and fellow menstruating people - I’ve realized that we still have a long way to go when it comes to embracing and accepting women and their bodies. That’s why, even though it’s uncomfortable for many of us and not my normal topic here, I’ve decided to write more about menstrual cycles in this post today.

I promise you that it’s still connected to the overall theme of this newsletter - which is fighting back against the ongoing dehumanization and disempowerment of ordinary people in our world today, lifting up voices that are too often unheard, and reclaiming the singular truth that all that God has created is good, indeed, in and of itself.

Menstrual periods are rarely covered on TV, but, in the rare case that they are, it often reminds me of popular coverage of pregnancy and birth. Out of nowhere, someone is bleeding! Out of nowhere, woo-hoo here comes a baby sliding right out.

Many of us know better.

Especially after going through pregnancies and advancing in age, menstrual periods are not just limited to the free-flow of blood from your nether regions. No, if you take the time to pay attention - periods are truly a whole body experience. By your late 30s and/or in the delightful journey of “perimenopause,” — well, it’s more like a whole body rollercoaster.

It’s easy to get frustrated by this roller coaster of hormones, emotions, and physical changes that women go through every 25-30 days or so, noting that many women have irregular cycles or may not menstruate at all, and also that people who identify as men may also have periods. For the sake of this article, I will be focusing on regular cycles, while acknowledging that there are many exceptions to this pattern for people who menstruate.

For a few years now, menstruating people have been aided in identifying these cycle changes by so-called “period apps” available in your phone’s App Store, though with the fall of Roe v. Wade, there’s increasing fear that these apps might be used to track down and prosecute women who’ve had abortions.

However you might decide to track your cycle, if you do, you’ll notice that menstrual changes affect far more than just the five or so days of heavy bleeding. There are often mood and energy changes, bodily changes like bloating or muscle soreness or brain fog. Appetite and sleep changes. More or fewer dreams. Lack of patience. Excitement. Energy. Libido. Lack of libido.

Did I mention it’s kind of a rollercoaster?

Like I said, it’s easy to get frustrated by all of these changes, especially if some of the physical changes are painful, like those of us who experience cycle-related migraine headaches, which seem to only grow more frequent with age.

It’s also easy - because, I think, our culture has shamed and dismissed most conversation about periods - to forget that these periods or “cycles” experienced by women are in fact vitally necessary and responsible for THE ONGOING EXISTENCE OF THE HUMAN RACE.

That’s right. Feeling grumpy today? Unusually snappish with your family? No worries, your body is just nurturing a potential life, and then mourning its death. For many of us: every single 25-30 days or so.

That’s why I find so much of the current debate around abortion and “unborn babies” to be so utterly untethered from reality. Surely these politicians realize that each month (many) women’s bodies release a potential life, an unfertilized egg. And each month, this “unborn baby” most likely dies. Each month, (many) women have to experience the carnage of that loss firsthand, in the visceral and painful experience of seeing blood and clots released from their bodies.

It is a holy and imperfect and often wrenching process, one made worse by its unfairness, while many women who would like to become parents experience infertility, and others fall pregnant as a result of abuse or rape or poverty and an inability to access contraception and/or abortion medical care.

Still, as I wrote about in the Washington Post, this is the way that (I believe) God has designed for human life to continue in this world. It’s fraught, and painful, and reliant upon flawed human beings and bodies that have been too often scorned and objectified in the world.

Nonetheless, we carry on. Babies are born each and every day. Women and mothers live through birth, death, and potential life and loss of life. We clean up the blood. We wipe our eyes. We carry on.

For too long I never considered that it could be otherwise. That instead of shame or covering up I might just simply exist, cycle and carnage and life and death and body and bloat and all.

Which brings me to the whole reason I decided to write on this topic today.

About 12 years ago now, I was serving as a chaplain intern at the Veterans Hospital. They had a strict dress code for chaplains, and it was really the first time I’d had to dress professionally each day.

(I know. I was really lucky. Working as a sportswriter allowed me lots of leeway prior to this career change.)

I asked a friend of mine for advice, and she directed me to a style blog called Kendi Everyday, from a young woman in Texas approximately my age and my size. Remarkably, I’ve continued to read Kendi’s style blog for much of the past 12 years, faithfully keeping up on every post. Like most of us, Kendi’s body has fluctuated and changed over the years, with age and pregnancy and just life. She mostly just posts outfit ideas, but occasionally she has written about life changes, about becoming a mom, and even about anxiety and/or depression in the midst of career changes, life changes, and disappointments/perceived failures.

Today, her post reminded me of what might be possible when it comes to seeing and respecting women’s bodies and cycles in a whole new way.

Image Credit: Kendi Everyday style blog

Now, this post from was ostensibly about “Gingham for Summer,” and like in most of her posts, she links to a dress (this time from J. Crew), and if you click on her link and buy the dress, she’ll make a commission.

It’s what Kendi said in her writeup about the post, though, that I think was so subtly important:

I do think that I”ll shoot this dress in our neighborhood at home too, just to show you it can be modern day as well. It’s an adorable dress and the fit is spot on. (Now my tummy is a bit bloated here from a very specific thing that happens to women once a month, so don’t judge that fit in that area there.) Not on my period, it fits like a glove. On my period, it fits like a glove with an air bubble in it that won’t die. So you know it’s versatile at least.

Sometimes it’s truths stated most matter-of-fact-ly that carry the most weight. And she simply says it. Hey, I’m bloated here because I have my period! And when I wear this dress on my period, it looks like this. Good times.

Now, reading this, I had to stop. Because maybe like some of you, I guess I’ve been socialized to be self-conscious about fabric that pulls tightly across my mid-section, maybe especially in <ahem> certain times of the month.

And when I first looked at these pictures, I admittedly kind of inwardly cringed. Internalized shame. Oppression? Discomfort? Ways the retail-industrial-complex has socialized me to buy stuff in order to fit an ever-changing bodily ideal that’s never quite possible for any among us.

And I think before I read Kendi’s words I was thinking - ooh that dress looks little tight.

But she just removed that twinge of shame right off the page. Yes, it’s tight. So what? Guess what? Female bodies change. They change because they’re constantly preparing and releasing potential life. All the time. They’re doing all this behind the scenes while they’re driving the carpool and running the meeting and shaving their armpits for yet another externally societally imposed unrealistic beauty standard.

And it’s fine. It’s just fine. I’m just fine.

You’re just fine.

We’re alive.

We hold life. We hold death. We breathe it in. We let it go.

We forge on, together.

A Few Notes …

First, a huge THANK YOU to all subscribers. I get a little email notification every time someone signs up, and every time I get one, I feel joyful and honored that you want to spend part of your day with this community. I mean it when I say: “I’m listening,” to you as well, and please don’t hesitate to share with me your thoughts + ideas for what you’d like to read in this space.

To PAID SUBSCRIBERS: I am humbled and honored that you’ve chosen to spend part of your limited budget on this newsletter. To borrow words from another newsletter I love, you are directly funding freelance journalism with your subscription, and I have to thank you more than ever for your continued support. Our world’s media and journalism is in a state of crisis, with fewer and fewer billionaires in control of global news outlets, and journalists being either laid off or threatened with violence for their work every single day; with fewer and fewer newsroom positions paying a living wage. I pledge to you to steward your paid subscription faithfully + use it to support honest, hard-working, and LOCAL journalism. One of my goals in this first year is to open this newsletter to other journalists, and pay them a fair wage for their work.

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On free vs. paid-subscriber posts only: My plan right now is that the Friday + Sunday posts, focusing on news + spirituality, in that order, are available for paid subscribers only (after this first week). My plan is that the Tuesday blog-style posts will always be free, to enable as much access as possible, while creating a smaller and more intimate experience for paid subscribers, who are also able to comment and share in community in fuller ways.

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