After that first experience with tampons, I began exclusively using pads unless my period coincided with a swimming trip. Then I would change into and out of a tampon in the same way I changed into and out of my togs*.
Listen to this article in audio form at [Audio] When Our Bodies Speak.
There was a noticeable sense of relief and relaxation that happened when I would pull my tampon out by its string. A string I sometimes worried would get lost in my vagina or get washed to trail outside of my togs when swimming.
I didn’t think it was the cool or mature thing to wear pads. I felt that tampons should be our preference for the discretion they offered and the range of activities they allowed for without having to think about the logistics of bleeding. Interestingly, I now see how they also keep us at a distance from our blood and our period, despite bringing us in closer contact with our vagina.
Once they’re in you’re not supposed to feel them, or think about them, and you can carry on with anything your active, ambitious girl lifestyle demands of you. When you take them out, it can be a quick (don’t look) wrap in toilet paper and into the sanitary bin.
I was always more curious than that, peering at the way the cotton had expanded with my period blood. I often wondered when I should change my tampon, unable to see or tell how full it was getting. That’s something I liked about pads. I could see each time I went to the toilet how full the pad was getting. It felt easier to decide when to change it.
I would have been embarrassed to admit that I didn’t wear tampons and really didn’t like to. I don’t remember ever having the frantic panic or struggle inserting a tampon like I did that first time, but the memory of how my body felt having a foreign object poked and pushed into it remained with me.
I wonder how my experience with tampons may have been different if I was already familiar with my vagina.
If I was already familiar from the gentle, caring, and curious touch of my own hand. If I knew how to ask my body what it wanted. And to hear the answer. If I knew how to ask permission to enter my vagina, to ask my body’s permission for a tampon to enter. And to honour the answer. To not let the answer mean anything about my teenage self, other than that I was honouring my body.
I’m grateful that somehow, I received the message that tampons weren’t for me and managed quite peacefully with pads until I embraced period undies when my period returned after birthing and breastfeeding my second child.
I don’t have any lasting memories of being worried about leaks once I had a pad in place. Always the ones with wings. I do remember the concerned flights to the bathroom after feeling a little more wet Down There than usual, worried I’d find a bright red gush of blood on my undies.
Even now as my period approaches the same concern creeps into my mind. Whenever it does, I begin to wear my period undies “early”, so I don’t have to be hyper-vigilant about every extra rush of moisture.
Now that I use period undies, I don’t always have period products on me when I’m out. I prefer to avoid a bloody smear on my adult lace underwear. And I highly resent the panicked rush to the bathroom caused by a false alarm reminiscent of my pre-teen self, new to periods, and not a woman practiced over 30 years of bleeding.
None of us should feel so worried or distracted from our lives by a natural process of our own body. A process of sacred creation. A process that creates life. A process from which we have all been born.
Now, I dream of a time when I might free bleed directly onto the earth.
For this period blood that we bleed each month does not bring death or disease.
This blood grows and nourishes life.
Just like the earth.
In the meantime, I will continue to rinse my blood from my period undies and offer it back to the earth in my favourite spots around my garden.
The spring bulbs I received from my maternal grandmother who has long passed and yet bloom abundantly every Spring after the daffodils.
My newly planted garden of lavender, rosemary, and sage.
The single deciduous tree that reflects the change of seasons from its branches: blooming with beautiful cherry blossoms in Spring, hanging heavy with lush green leaves in Summer, dropping its golden-brown leaves in Autumn, and standing strong with branches bare in Winter.
Preparing for the cycle to begin again.
[ORIGINAL ARTICLE: Purpose on the Wings of Regret, by Kerryn Hewson. 2023.]
If you liked this article, you might like to read It's Like A Little Birth.
* Togs, New Zealand colloquialism for swimsuit.