So I am currently writing an essay about Menstruation in the Media.. and I found this amazing quote! Anyone who knows me knows that this resonates up my spine and through my DNA... you will also trip out about the comment about having mouths.... we really are WOman!!!! Enjoy and Love yourself!
"We women….we must learn the sacredness of who we are. What do we do with the "Sangre de Madre" (menstrual blood)? We throw it away in a garbage can. I am not garbage! This sacred gift and responsibility I have been given, I do not disrespect it so that I would treat it as trash; a thing to be discarded with little thought. How can this be bad or dirty? Is this not the Creator's way? Is this not a part of the miracle of creation? Think of it! It is the Creation of LIFE. It is Sacred! Among my people, when a young woman comes to her first Moon Time she is given a pad, which catches the flow. When she changes this pad, she puts it into a container of water - the blood of Mother Earth - blood to blood - from which we all come. At the end of her time she takes that water and plants a tree, using that water to feed the tree. As she does this she prays for her family, and she prays for a mate that is whatever she desires (and she gets very specific..'I want him to be 6' tall and handsome and a good provider and not to be thus and so'). When she is married she again uses this Moon Time water to give the tree praying for children or for the children that she has been given, her husband and any others she chooses. In this way she nourishes not only the tree, but also her family and her community. Yet she also nourishes herself in acknowledging the sacredness of who she is and the gift and responsibility she has been given.
You women. Why do we wear skirts and dresses? Watch me as I walk (she says as she moves around in her white native dress). You see the shadow surrounding me? It is always a circle and it always surrounds me. Therefore I am always within a sacred circle. I am always protected. These things are our women taught. As women, we have two mouths. Yes, two. In the mouth with which we eat, we take in nourishment, we take in life. Yet in the mouth below we not only take in life…we also give forth life. We teach our young women that just as we must be careful what foods we eat so that we may be healthy and strong, so must we be careful what we put into our mouths below, so that our people may become strong and healthy. These things we teach."
By Anita Atsila Galisgisgia (atsila@aol.com), Bird Clan Mother, Southern Cherokee Tribe & Associated Bands in Texas http://www.blueskywaters.com/page_36.htm
"The honor of the people lies in the moccasin tracks of the women."
Village wise man / Sioux 1961
PMS = Power Made Sacred
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