Mothers Breaking The Menstrual Silence!

Four days ago I and some mothers got together to prepare lunch for our children who were having a convention at the church.

Our children both males and females within the range of 10 - 25 years of age insisted on having the mothers cook their meals because it was convenient, cheaper and would still be homely.

As we prepared the meals, it gave us mothers the opportunity to learn how to make new meals, catch up on how each of us was faring and to bond.

We shared updates on our work and progress we were making,how our families were faring, from a baby taking it's first steps to how one of us combated with her child having a fever.

You could see each mother light up when she shared how she was winning at the home front.

Eventually, the talk got to a mother telling us about how her daughter was handling her period. This brought a tsunami of experiences. It was like a dam busting and flooding everywhere.

One interesting story that a mother shared was how she never heard about menstruation until she went to boarding school.

At boarding school, seniors were always invited for a private talk and after thirty minutes they would come out holding something that looked like bread. She didn't know what it was, but she envied the seniors and wondered when she would get to taste the bread-like thing.

She inquired what the thing was and a senior told her it was a sacred bread and that she had no business with it. It was not yet time for her to know about it.

After two years in the school, it was decided that her set ( who were yet to be seniors) were asked to join in private talk) . This was going to be her opportunity to finally taste the bread -like thing. A female staff of the school said things the student couldn't make head of as she talked in codes. It was like a cult meeting. At the end of

Unfortunately for her, some seniors bullied her set girls to hand over the bread like thing .She felt bad about it. And it increased her curiosity the more. It had to be a special thing for the seniors to have snatched it from them. She promised herself to device a means to avoid the bullying seniors.

Alas, a girl from her set woke up one morning screaming that something bad had happened to her. When asked what it was she said she must have had a wound on her intestines or something because blood was coming out of her body. Other junior girls in her hostel joined her in wailing as she showed them she was bleeding. They thought she was dying. They gathered around her as she rolled on the floor. Someone said one of the girls might be a witch and had casted a spell on the student. The crying increased as fear gripped them all.

The prefects and matron came on hearing the wailings and where told that one of the junior girls was dying because she had a big wound somewhere in her stomach.

The matron took the girl aside and after questioning her ,told everyone that there was nothing wrong and that what was happening was a normal thing.

The mother who shared this said that event changed everything about how the school handled menstrual education. It changed their practice of teaching only older girls about menstruation. It made them realize that a girl didn't need to start menstruation before she would be taught. Early education was needed to get them prepared.

We laughed at the story, it had happened 35 years ago. We unanimously agreed that if those girls had been taught what menstruation was it would have been a different story .At least one of those girls would have known better. The trauma they had to go through! It was all so needless.

We also agreed that, it was easier as mothers to be the ones at the forefront breaking the menstrual silence.

We do so much for our children( like preparing the meals for them while they have their convention) getting them started about this vital part of their lives was crucial.

Mothers are better equipped because menstruation is our lived experience, so what better persons could lovingly prepare our daughters to experience their periods with dignity under hygienic conditions ?

We also talked about the need to teach our sons about menstruation. Their empathy and understanding enables shamefree periods for the girls. And menstruation is not just about the bleeding, it has the power to destroy a girls self esteem for life. A girl with low self esteem will always be a lesser version of herself. To end the shaming ,we committed to get our boys and men educated on how they can be helpful to their sisters and daughters.

Some of the mothers confessed to feeling awkward talking about periods to their daughters. It is a thing they dread. They were challenged though that if their daughters do not get the right knowledge from them, they would definitely get half truths,or wrong information from somewhere else.

Some of the mothers committed to signing up to be volunteers for commemoration of the Menstrual Hygiene Day 2024 which the nonprofit I run will be hosting so they could learn how to teach age appropriate information on menstruation to their daughters.

We ended up cooking a meal for our children and learning skills on how to break the cycle of silence on menstruation.

We are a generation of mothers who were parented on the culture of silence no doubt,but are finding our voices to break the culture and helping our daughters find their own voices.

We are doing better, because we know better.

So help us God!