Have a Merry Menstruation

For the past 3 weeks, Madison and I have been working on creating and hosting a workshop for Transitions, a homeless shelter for women.  Through our project, we hoped to empower women to respect their bodies by using this safe and sanitary alternative to the chemical filled store bought products. We wanted to create an environment where women don’t feel they have to hide this part of the women experience, and instead embrace it and take control of it through creating personalized pads and talking openly about it. Unfortunately, due to scheduling issues we were unable to host the workshop at Transitions. However, Madison and I opened the workshop to the Whitworth community, and were able to hold the workshop on Sunday, December 7^th.

As people trickled in to join our workshop, we began with the get to know you topics. What’s your name? What are you studying? How scary is your finals week? What’s a fun Christmas tradition you are looking forward to? These questions allowed us to get to know each other as individuals and help us feel more comfortable talking about other topics later.

We then explained the first couple of steps in making the project. Some people came in with tons of experience, and some people hadn’t picked up a sewing needle in years. Everyone was able to work at their own pace and their own level. Conversation flowed pretty natural as we switched from get to know you topics to social taboos surrounding women’s menstruation. Everyone came in with different comfort levels of talking about periods, but everyone contributed in some form or another to the dialogue. We shared our individual perspectives and frustrations with how the topic of menstruation is approached in our society-basically don’t talk about it with anyone but your mom and your closest friends.

As we continued creating our re-usable pad, we talked about other options for periods as well. Sure we all know the pad and tampon options, but some people brought up the diva cup and the many variations. Many people in the group hadn’t heard of it, and so people shared how it works and where to get it. We walked out not only with our own reusable pad but knowledge of even more alternatives to use that can be cheaper, more effective, and better for your body. The workshop allowed for not only the creation of our own personalized pads (ranging from hot pink to dark blue), but for open free flowing dialogue among a group of women who had never spent time together as a group before.

 

Have a Merry Menstruation!