What Is The Essence Of Womanhood?

4 minute read

As I write this article I am day 45 of my menstrual cycle. The first day of my last period was 45 days ago. I’m five days out from my 49th birthday. I know I’m not pregnant, so I must be perimenopausal. Come to think of it, I’ve had night sweats more than a few times in the past year or so. But this is the first time I’ve skipped a period. I don’t want this and yet I know I can’t stop the tide.

Unlike lots of women I’ve spoken to, I never resented my period. To the contrary, I’ve always liked having my period, felt that it was inextricably linked to my essence as a woman. I’ve always felt that my menstrual cycle connected me to something bigger, to a line of women unbroken since our first ancestor Eve. My menstrual cycle, my uterus, has been central to my identity. What will happen when I’ve crossed the threshold into post menstruation?

I’ve always considered my period as a time of ritual, a time to honour my fertility and generative ability; a time to feel and see proof that I had ovulated, that my generative capacity was real, that I could have become pregnant.

For so long that red drop was a welcome relief, proof that I wasn’t pregnant. I never really minded the cramps, nothing a few Ibuprofen couldn’t fix.

I had an IUD fitted for five years in my thirties as my husband and I both felt that a little being was fluttering around us just waiting to become embodied. After I had it removed and we started trying to conceive, my period became a cruel rebuke, proof that we had failed. I would obsessively check for signs my period was coming and when it did, my heart would shatter into a thousand pieces. But I never wanted my menses to just go away.

That monthly cycle gave my life an innate rhythm and intrinsic meaning. Something physiological, primal. At times the onset of my period made me feel like a failure, but even after I accepted the fact that we weren’t going to become parents, I never wanted my period to just stop. I’ve always cherished that link to my primal creativity, the generative essence central to my being a woman.

Lately I’ve been asking other women how they feel about their periods. Some of them are post-menopausal, some perimenopausal. Many of them look forward to leaving their cycle behind, to no longer feeling constrained by the monthly inconvenience. Some of them are already there. No more PMS! No more sore boobs and cramps! No more risk of unwanted pregnancy! No more inconvenience! Freedom.

Some women don’t connect their female essence to their cycle at all. They connect it to traits like compassion and caring, empathy, intuition. I can relate to that and it does seem that these are qualities heavily associated with the feminine. Yet I can’t get around the fact that for me, having a menstrual cycle has been inseparable from my understanding and experience of myself as a woman.

My skipped period feels like a loss. For over 35 years my life has been circumscribed by my period. Not in a way that limited me, rather in a way that anchored me to a recurring cycle with regularity and predictability. Something intrinsic, constituent of my personhood, my being.

Who will I be when I no longer have a menstrual cycle? Will some essential part of me be gone?

Maybe it’s the philosopher in me, I’ve always been curious about questions of identity and meaning.

One of my closest friends who is three years post-menopause shared that she had dreaded going through the change, was afraid it would strip her of her womanhood, render her less ‘juicy’. She also loved having her period, the sense of ritual, the release and relief of the shedding of blood. She experienced her menses as a celebration of her womanhood, her fertility, and her belonging in the cyclical rhythm of life itself.

Her feelings perfectly describe my own and how I cherish and honour the power of the blood. And here I am staring down the barrel of barrenness. Despite our best efforts, my husband and I never did conceive, but somehow my cycle has tethered me to the potentiality of life-giving, to that latent power. But this limbo state, this feels completely unknown. And unwelcome.

Look, I know that I’m not exactly pioneering new territory here. Every woman who has lived long enough has gone through this transition. Or perhaps experienced early menopause for medical reasons. And about 5% of females worldwide are born without a uterus, although they may have breasts and external female genitalia. But this article is not meant to be exhaustive, I’m writing from a particular point of view. And the view from here is unclear.

The truth is I’ve been dreading perimenopause and the change of life because I don’t know what it means for me. What does it mean when a cycle that has defined your physical personhood for over three decades goes away? Are you the same person? Since I’ve always associated my female essence with my cycle, what of that essence when my cycle is no more?

I am a woman who has marked time for thirty-five years by the rhythms of her body, by the onset of bleeding, by the cycles of blood and by the hormonal fluctuations that are part and parcel of having a uterus. By a round belly and sore boobs, by chocolate cravings and feeling extra emotional in the days before menstruation. By bloating and the relief of peeing countless times in a day as my period kicks in. By the telltale signs of ovulation. I am this body, I am not in this body.

What does it mean to approach the transition to physical barrenness? How can I continue to inhabit my feminine essence as I move towards the reabsorption of the blood? Perhaps the somatic memory of the secrets of womanhood will continue to sustain me, integrated as they are into my very being.

In many traditions and cultures the post-menopausal woman is understood to be a locus of wisdom and empowerment.

She is the one who has integrated life’s travails and alchemized them into wisdom and discernment in action. She is the wise teacher, the one who has traversed shadow and light and learned from journeying into darkness. She is victorious, she has not just survived but thrived, turning failure into success, shadow into light. Her body itself is the source of wisdom and guidance.

She is the promise of the female soma, the gift of empowerment and integrated embodiment. I hope she will be me.