Agee - The uterine health companion: a holistic guide to lifelong wellness

The drumbeat sent waves of pleasure to my heart as the air filled with the smell of fry bread cooking on an outdoor grill. The two young women dancing in front of me had not eaten since before sunrise, yet they moved with grace and ease. Sweat started to drip down their beautiful faces now that the luminous morning sun had finally emerged to begin shining on this ceremony.

In the vast field where the extraordinary rite occurred, the two teenage girls were the center of attention. They were surrounded by a crowd of friends, family, and other tribal members who would help them keep the beat of the drums for much of the next few days. They joyfully danced together on the hard Arizona ground for hours at a time.

It was 1999, and I had traveled to the White Mountain Apache tribal lands to witness the Sunrise Ceremony commemorating the beginning of two young womens menstrual cycles. An anthropologist colleague who knew of my work in womens health invited me to this age-old ritual that marks a girls passage into womanhood. It is the most celebrated event in Apache culture.

For five days, I was riveted as the reservation filled with dancers, drummers, and hundreds of men and women who came from throughout New Mexico and Arizona to pay tribute to these two teenagers, Nashota and Zaltana,During the ceremony, Zaltana and Nashota ascended to almost divine status as they embodied the Apache goddess, Changing Woman. The young women laid their hands on the other participants, bestowing curative energy to their tribe. The ritual culminated with the exchange of truckloads of gifts to inaugurate Nashotas and Zaltanas relationships with their new godmothers, who would help guide them into adulthood.

During my time there, Apache men and women spoke to me about the power of women and menstruation to transform, heal, and purify. They were perplexed by white peoples views of the menstrual cycle. Most Native Americans consider menstruation, pregnancy, and menopause as life-affirming processes that connect women to the earth, the moon, and the cycles of nature. I realized that this celebration was just the beginning of a beautiful relationship with menstruation for Nashota and Zaltana. They were poised to have a whole lifetime of feeling positive about their periods.

After I left the reservation, I couldnt help thinking what would it be like for the rest of us if our cultures congratulated us on menarche and believed that women became powerful by menstruatingrather than frequently disparaging women as emotionally unstable during our periods. On a deeper level, I wondered how it would affect our lives if we as women felt good about our menstrual cycles and menopause transitions and looked forward to the cyclical changes in our bodies. Would we still have such severe aches, pain, and mood swings, or would our discomfort and anger melt in the face of deep respect and awe of our uterine processes?

In contrast to the Apache custom of celebrating every girls menarche, Julia, a seventeen-year-old white American I interviewed a few years later, shared that she did not even tell her mother when she first begin menstruating at age twelve. In a hushed voice, she revealed to me that embarrassment compelled her to hide the fact from her mother. Julia smiled wryly as she told me that she figured out how to use tampons from the pamphlet in the box. Her mother found out what had happened only when she started her own period a little later that month and noticed that the tampons were nearly gone. Julia became slightly fidgety as she described her feelings when her mother confronted her. I felt ashamed when she came and asked me [if I had started]. She said it was no big deal, but I still dont like anyone else to know when it is going on.