I knew before I knew.

Not because she said anything. Not because there were signs anyone else would notice. But somewhere in me, there was the same quiet instinct I’d had felt before birth. A gathering. A preparing. I found myself buying candles, choosing little gifts, preparing pads, non toxic period underwear, and collecting words I’d hoped she’d carry with her for the rest of her life. 

My own first period wasn’t something celebrated, all of my friends and I actually dreaded it and called it “the curse”. It wasn’t something women gathered around, it was dripping in shame. I didn’t know I’d even started my period, my mom found my underwear and asked why I hadn’t told her I started my period, why I was hiding it. I remember my dad asking me about it and just wishing he’d stop talking to me. 

Like so many women I’d learned that menstruation was something to hide and manage rather than something to honor.

I didn’t want my daughter to inherit that story.

What if her first blood could mean something different…

I wanted Lucca to know she belongs.

We wrapped ourselves together with one long red thread, each woman offering a blessing as it passed through her hands. Before cutting it, I asked Lucca to look around the circle. To see that she was literally woven into a web of women. Each of us wore a piece of that thread home. I wanted her first memory of womanhood to be this, you are never alone.

I wanted her body to feel like home.

We placed our hands on our heads, our hearts, our bodies, and finally our womb spaces. Not to make her body sacred for the first time, but to remind her that it always has been. I wanted her first experience of menstruation to begin with tenderness rather than criticism.

I wanted women to speak life into her.

One by one, women showered her with flower petals while whispering words they hoped she would carry for the rest of her life. It wasn’t advice. It wasn’t instruction. It was inheritance.

I wanted Lucca to cross into this chapter intentionally.

She walked through an archway of women’s arms, speaking aloud what she wanted to leave behind. She emerged draped in red and crowned with flowers, not because a period suddenly made her an adult, but because transitions deserve witnesses.

“My desire for you is that you always have the courage to love yourself and put yourself first… You are not to believe the shaming stories of others. They are lies.”

We ended the evening sharing a meal filled with red foods and tea. The ceremony had honored the sacredness of her first moon, but dinner honored something just as important, the ordinary life of a woman.
We shared stories of our own first periods, the awkward moments, the surprises, the things we wish someone had told us. We laughed until we cried about half inserted tampons, emergency bathroom runs, and of course, how every dog you meet suddenly become convinced your crotch is the most fascinating thing in the world when you’re on your period.

These stories mattered. They reminded Lucca that womanhood isn’t about getting everything right. It’s messy, funny, inconvenient, powerful, tender, and deeply human. She didn’t hear only wisdom that evening, she heard women telling the truth. And I hope those moments of laughter become just as much a part of her memory as the blessings and flower petals. Because I want her to know that there is nothing about her body that she has to whisper about. Not its power. Not its cycles. And certainly not the funny stories that remind us we’re all in this together.

I’ve found women don’t become more connected to their bodies only through ceremony or reverence. We also become connected by telling the honest, ordinary stories we’ve often kept to ourselves. Sometimes healing looks like tears, and sometimes it looks like women laughing together over things everyone thought they were the only one to experience.

Read Articles by Lakota