“Monica? Are you listening to me? Could you please repeat what I just said?”
– Yes, I do listen. You explained that the verb ‘to be’ and ‘to have’ are auxiliaries in French and…
“Ok, Monica, that will be all, thank you.”
– May I go to the bathroom, please?
‘Yes but make it quick.”
I managed to successfully rush out the door while hiding the pool of blood I was literally bathing into. I took a peak at my behind. “Oh, no! They’re spoiled now. It’s the last time I wear those ugly beige pants anyways”. I went down the stairs as quickly as possible. I felt dizzy. Was I going to die? Here? On the building’s cold hard floor? Between sad green walls? How strange.
Convinced the hemorrhage would never stop, I called home. When she picked me up at school, I painfully told my mother about my pants being ruined from too much bleeding. She brushed it off and announced I was now a Woman meaning I would bleed like this every month and concluded with a warning about pregnancy. I had to be careful and responsible. But how could it be? I was still playing Barbie dolls with my girlfriend France. She laughed. I felt humiliated and lonely. I was 10 years old.
“So, that’s it? That’s what it’s like to be a woman?,” I asked myself. “It doesn’t seem fun at all.” I didn’t want to be a woman. I didn’t want to wear pads like diapers. I didn’t want to carry the weight of not becoming pregnant. This malaise followed me through years of experiencing menstruations like a burden until my friends and I invented our own private language in High School. When one of us was menstruating, we launched a ‘Red Code’. We were guerrilleras on a mission. We were prompt, alert, highly reactive, highly sensible, highly sensitive, sexually enhanced. We didn’t talk about it though. We knew it. We felt it. We experienced it in our changing bodies. Our own crafted designation was empowering and positive. It gave a real content to our lives and made a final counterpoint to prejudices and ignorance. A ‘Red Code’ meant that we were aware of and supportive to each other; that we formed a sisterhood.
My menstruating journey transformed again at age 21 when my friend Geneviève showed me her menstrual cup and taught me how to use it. It was year 2001 before silicone cups were sold at most drugstores in Quebec. I bought my first natural brown latex cup at a hippy boutique located in ‘Le Plateau’ neighbourhood in Montreal right before heading a Sunday drums gathering on Mont Royal casually called ‘Tamtam’. Revolution! I was now free to dance, to play djembe, and to move around to release tension without any worries. My blood-filled cup invited itself to the ritual cheering up my new freedom. The cup shifted my experience from being a passive-aggressive bleeder struggling to avoid certain movements, resisting some sports or activities for fear of leakage to become responsible and caring for me bleeding. The cup allowed me to look closer at my own blood, notice its aspects, colors, cyclic variations and to exercise my vagina as a muscle while putting the device in or out. It was quite a step further towards self-care, knowledge, independence, embodiment, and health.
Last year, I chose to free bleed while assisting my colleague Morgan Borchardt’s coaching a Bodysex retreat in New York City. I couldn’t use my cup and pads were not at all convenient while going through the rituals naked. The warmth of the thick blood coming from my vagina down onto my thighs felt very arousing and slippery. It reminded me how fun it was to have sex while menstruating, a treat I did not indulge into anymore for reasons worth investigating. I also sensed a higher level of connexion with the women around me. For the first time ever, I felt respected and honored BECAUSE I was menstruating. Second revolution! I felt welcomed. I felt home. During Genital Show and Tell I took my seat and spread my legs announcing ‘This is my blood shed for you. Now you will see what a vulva looks like when menstruating.’ The women facing me were fascinated. All together we acknowledged our truth. The experience of menstruations is ours so the language to describe it shall be ours as well. We bleed and there is nothing to be afraid, disgust or ashamed of. Menstruating is life force at its best and we are billions on the planet to experience it. I will never forget how powerful this moment of embodied consciousness was for me! Thanks to Betty Dodson’s work, I am evolving towards self-love and therefore, universal love and peace.
Today, I celebrate my mooning as a celebrate the lunar cycle. What a transformation! I honor myself for being who I am, inhabiting this body and sharing this reality with others. So who is afraid of blood? Little Monica once was. I am not anymore since the day I have decided to free myself from intergenerational trauma, silence, ignorance, and shame.
Monica Emond
Monica is currently in training as a Bodysex Coach.
Read more posts by Monica
My First Bodysex Experience
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