I'm 53 and I still remember my first period ~ not least because I was still at junior school and had only just turned 11.....and I was the only one who had started menstruating. I didn't have a negative experience at school, to be fair, and the teachers were very nice about it, but I felt different to my friends ~ and I cried. I really wasn't ready for such a life-changing event; I was still a child, not a woman. My friends and I still played with dolls and although we had had sex education lessons at school, none of us related what we were being taught to ourselves. It was something that grown-ups did and didn't interest us in the slightest.
And then my Mum gave me "the talk"......which consisted of these wise words: "you must be careful with boys now". That was the sum total of the sex education I received from either of my parents, so I guess it was just as well we had lessons at school!
Thankfully, my husband and I have always been able to be open with Sam and Beverly. I think it has probably done Sam good to have grown up with a sister, at least all the female hormonal stuff won't come as a shock when he eventually settles down with someone! But I am pretty sure that there are still plenty of young men and boys who haven't got the faintest idea of what goes on in a woman's body ~ nor even why, despite the sex education they will have had. And I suspect that there are also plenty of folk (men and women) who view menstruation as something to be feared, something "unclean", something gross.
But isn't it instead something that should be celebrated, something really rather wonderful? Oh you can trust me when I tell you that I know only too well how painful/heavy/debilitating periods can be.....but still, aren't our bodies the most amazing creations? Our wombs can prepare to grow and nurture a new life every single month! I think we should give ourselves a hug, gently caress our stomachs and say thank you to our gorgeous, beautiful bodies for what they are capable of doing!
And then my Mum gave me "the talk"......which consisted of these wise words: "you must be careful with boys now". That was the sum total of the sex education I received from either of my parents, so I guess it was just as well we had lessons at school!
Thankfully, my husband and I have always been able to be open with Sam and Beverly. I think it has probably done Sam good to have grown up with a sister, at least all the female hormonal stuff won't come as a shock when he eventually settles down with someone! But I am pretty sure that there are still plenty of young men and boys who haven't got the faintest idea of what goes on in a woman's body ~ nor even why, despite the sex education they will have had. And I suspect that there are also plenty of folk (men and women) who view menstruation as something to be feared, something "unclean", something gross.
But isn't it instead something that should be celebrated, something really rather wonderful? Oh you can trust me when I tell you that I know only too well how painful/heavy/debilitating periods can be.....but still, aren't our bodies the most amazing creations? Our wombs can prepare to grow and nurture a new life every single month! I think we should give ourselves a hug, gently caress our stomachs and say thank you to our gorgeous, beautiful bodies for what they are capable of doing!
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