10 Ways Moms and Mentors can help Girls Honor Menstruation

By Yomi Matthew

1. Share your menarche story.

Share your experience whether it was joyful or heart wrenching. Doing this will strengthen your bond and will solidify the fibers of trust. She wants to know that she is not in this alone and she wants every bit of info and wisdom she can get.

2. Model authentic womanhood.

Keep it 100! Avoid being fake with your daughter. Be honest with her. Don’t sugar coat or downplay important issues or topics. Let her see you. Let her see your struggles, your pain, your ability to fall down and get up again or not. Celebrate your victories and accomplishments. Model the things that you aspire for your daughter. If you get on her case for an inability to constantly keep her room neat and you have an inability to keep your room neat then how does she learn to keep her room neat? As moms and mentors doing an assessment of our lives and identifying our areas of mastery and our areas that need additional energy and effort can be extremely beneficial and progressive.

3. Earn her trust.

Respect what she shares with you in confidence. Don’t go blabbing off at the mouth everything she shares with you to your sister, her grandmother, or your best friend. The goal here is to establish trust. Trust is the glue of the relationship.

4. Give your daughter her space.

Allow your daughter to express her full range of emotions. Women are cyclical. In one cycle we may experience a range of feelings and sensations. Don’t down her for what she is feeling. Help her work through her feelings. Refrain from saying “you need to.” Allow her to experience so she can find her balance.

5. Choose a way to celebrate her coming of age.

She wants something simple you want an elaborate ceremony. Meet each other in the hallway of compromise where the two of you can find the middle ground in celebrating this important step in her life.

6. Educate her on sustainable products.

Let her know her options in natural menstrual care, cloth pads, sea sponges, diva cups, period panties. We have choices! Let’s help the Earth and not contribute to growing the landfills. Sustainable menstrual products can help your daughter learn her body and save the planet at the same time.

7. Shine the light on Sacred Sexuality.

Honoring menstruation means honoring healthy fertility and sacred sexuality. Honestly talking with your daughter about the miracle of fertility and the importance of the feminine to carry, nurture and sustain life can empower her and create a strong bond between both mother and daughter. Age appropriate sexuality education will give her a solid start in developing a healthy relationship with herself, and will open the way to healthy relationships and meaningful connections.

8. Enroll her in a girl’s mentorship program.

Enrolling your daughter in a girl’s mentorship, coming of age or rite of passage program will provide her with a solid foundation into womanhood. It can encourage healthy bonding with other girls her age, strengthen the sisterhood through solidarity and support her emerging woman self. A few areas a good program will cover are the female reproductive system, physical, emotional, social and spiritual wellness, basic life skills and nature skills.

 9. Show examples and discuss elevated masculinity.

Girls need the presence and support of both the feminine and the masculine. Talk to her about men who respect, honor, and protect women and girls. Point out examples of what elevated masculinity looks like in herself, her family, and her community.  

 10. Encourage her to honor the Earth.

We are all children of the Earth. Each of us needs to do our part in being stewards of the Earth. There is a direct correlation between how we treat the Earth and how we treat women. Teaching your daughter to honor and respect the Earth is a powerful act of revolution.

Welcome!

Daughters of the Earth,

I greet you in peace, and stand with you in solidarity as we collectively celebrate our feminine power. I thank each one of you for your presence here today.

 The truth is that there is a significant amount girls and women that do not have basic knowledge about the art of being a woman. Lack of knowledge of self has led to the usurping of feminine power and the prevalence of women and girls the world over being stereotyped, abused, and marginalized.

The wisdom teachings of girlhood, womanhood, and elder womanhood have laid dormant on this planet for quite some time. The link of grandmother to mother, mother to daughter wisdom has been severed in many of our families. Through adversity and hardship we have forged on and presently there is a flowering of, and a release of elevated, rooted, and universal feminine energy on this planet. Women and men are using it to create the new and release the old. We want every girl, woman and elder woman to learn, claim and defend their feminine birthright, and to restore the link of this forgotten wisdom.

I am here today to remind you to shine bright in your beauty, full of value.  Do not allow society to diminish you. Stand in your full light. It is an honor to be a woman something that we should not take lightly or misuse in anyway.

Every day you have to fight.  You have to fight to live in your authentic self. For some of us, we fight to discover who we are and fight to live as who we are. One of my favorite quotes from Maya Angelou goes like this. “A woman in harmony with her spirit is like a river flowing. She goes where she will without pretense and arrives at her destination prepared to be herself and only herself”.

Mother Maya broke it down for us right there.  The average North American girl will watch 5,000 hours of television, including 80,000 ads, before she starts kindergarten’’, and we wonder why our children are confused. She is being bombarded with messages that say what you have is not enough, you need this, there is something wrong with you get that, you are at your best when you doubt yourself. But even though our children receive so many messages that tell them they are not good enough the truth always remains that we are united in our uniqueness. There is no one else on the planet exactly like you. Therefore you are literally a living miracle. I would like to invite you to take advantage of all the wonderful resources here at Sanctum.

Authentically,

Shanarae