Happy Blood Day by Mut Danu

In the Dianic Tradition, the season of Beltane honors young women who have experienced their first blood. These first Red Moons mark the ongoing transformation from girl to woman. Every woman remembers that moment when she discovered the first drops of moon blood. But How does she remember it? How was this moment marked? What color was her world AFTER the arrival of her First Blood?

What if our mothers and grandmothers had grown up with a different Norman Rockwell painting on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post? This image might have shown Mom sitting at the head of the table, Dad bringing a beautifully decorated cake with red roses to the table, Brother waiting to dig in with his fork, and that instant of pride (Mom), happiness (Dad) and yearning (Brother) on their faces as the whole family looks up at Sister proudly displaying her panties, and the first spots of blood that mark her special day. Happy Blood Day!

I could ask a zillion rhetorical "what ifs?" about how things could have been different in our HIStorical past if women had been honored for the past few thousand years instead of oppressed, but it is really more valuable and worth our time to look at what might be, the HERstory that is in front of us. By this I mean literally in front of us, in the form of our daughters and sons, in the faces of our friends and the faces of strangers, and the face we see when we look in the mirror every morning.

Let's start with a wide view and then work our way inwards... Strangers. That is a word that means "everybody who is not 'us'". In a broader sense, stranger is the "environment" representing our feeling of separation from the natural world. A "stranger" is the other, the one who is different somehow in the way they look, customs, foods, language. "strange", "foreign". Living in another country for over ten years now, I know firsthand about "stranger". I found that by learning the language, tasting the food, appreciating the culture,and living and loving a "stranger"-- what was once exotic, and sometimes even strange, became familiar. Familiar, "of my family". I'm no longer a "stranger" to them, either, despite the American accent that strongly flavors my speech.

Bringing these thoughts back to our future Herstory, a challenge is before us. When we are out and about, at work, running errands, participating in the culture of our daily lives, how do we honor the women we do not know? Do we treat them as "strangers" or as "family"? During this season of Beltane, try to live up to this challenge as you go about your daily life. Be conscious of your words, gestures and speech when you speak with the shop clerk, neighbors, your children's friends, co-workers, women whose life paths cross your own. Go beyond tolerance of differences and learn to love the diversity around you. Expand your idea of family, to people who are part of the wider circle of life around you, and even farther to the planetary bio-system of which you are a part.

Spiral in closer as we talk about friends. Many times we speak of our friends and those of our children as "part of the family". So let's include our children and partners in the discussion. Those who are closest to us, we sometimes treat with the least respect. Sad but true. How many times have you seen someone yelling and smacking at their own children, then look up and speak ever so politely to the clerk at the cash register? I have found that offering compassion to the overwhelmed parent and a tickle to the wailing child can often diffuse the tension and show respect for both parent and child. Perhaps it can also give the adult a new perspective on honoring their child and their role as guide. Honoring each other means that in daily life, we take advantage of opportunities to give a hug, or to say "it's wonderful to be together", and to be interested and eager to discover the people in our most intimate circle. This is our opportunity to be a role model for young and old alike, to support, to inspire, to weave relationships between people, between private life and the life of the larger community.

And now, come in even closer; get intimately acquainted with that woman in the mirror. You probably have not thought of it in the same terms, but deep inside, every woman is a priestess who cares for a very personal sanctuary. She knows how it feels to be in a woman's body. In every fiber of her being and for the as long as she lives, she feels the joy, sadness, freedom and tension of this gift. But knowing and feeling does not always imply understanding. Our Moon Blood is a wonderful illustration of this.

Go back in time and remember the first time you bled as a woman. Try to immerse yourself completely in that one moment. Feel yourself in your adolescent body. See and smell the blood as you saw it then. Who did you tell first? What did you do next? What did your friends say? What did your mother say and do? Was the experience good, bad, a little of both? In your mind, find a beautiful red box and put these memories inside.

For many girls, the first blood is met with the medically approved, scientifically tested and proven practicality of how to use tampons or pads, to not let anything show, to not let anyone know, to cover up, to hide the...shhh (bl---d). For many other girls, the first introduction to their moon blood cycle is still "the curse", the malediction of being a woman is squarely placed on her shoulders along with being solely responsible for protecting herself from sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy, the monthly disabling discomfort of abdominal and perineal cramps and the smelly, messy, scary fact that she has to put her fingers "down there" and touch her own blood. The scientific approach, though maybe not as harmful on the surface as believing she is "cursed", hurts on another level. For from this perspective, the body of woman is no more than the sum of her parts and she must remain sterilized, pure, uncontaminated, completely separated from her body as a creation of nature. Neither of these perspectives sees the girl-becoming-woman as a time of transformation or a sacred passage that should be celebrated and honored.

At the most inner point of the spiral, we can reclaim that moment of First Blood. It does not matter if we are 21 years old or 51 or if we even have a uterus any more. By priestessing a ritual in the womb of our own sanctuary, we can create movement that will ripple outwards. We create the sacred passage for the girl-we-remember-being. Remember the beautiful red box you created in your mind, filled with memories of your First Blood, for better or for worse? You can make a real box. Mine is rather small, handmade and decoupaged with images of red roses in the form of a yoni. Butterflies flit here and there and the box is lined with a bit of red satin from an old bit of lingerie that I could not part with. Inside are my memories of the scientific-practical nature, the "curse" not being part of my own family heritage. Inside is a handmade clay image of Venus of Lascaux, holding her carved moon shell and colored with my own moon blood from monthly rituals designed to honor my own creative power. There is also a mirror inside, so that I never forget that respect, movement, creativity, begins from within and moves outward, to touch everything around us. We create Herstory, one woman at a time.

Make a beautiful box for yourself. Remember that even if your memories of your first adolescent Moon times are not good ones, that they are still precious as part of the experiences that have created the person you are. There is plenty of room in the box for new ways of experiencing, for evolution and transformation. Be sure to put a mirror in the box and to love and honor the woman you see there.

Wish her a Happy Blood Day!

Happy Beltane 2009,

Mut Danu, HPS

Mut Danu is a High Priestess of the Apple Branch, a Dianic Tradition and founder of La Branche du Pommier in France where she is an active member of the pagan community.

mutdanu@ymail.com