So what if Valentine’s Day falls on your red days!

Today at 2 PM Eastern Time, #PeriodTalk TweetChat Learning to Love Yourself & Your Period

Guests are Nicole Jardim, Founder of The Healthy Elements & Alison Leipzig, Body Confidence Coach

If that’s not enough to interest you – here are some excerpts from Nicole’s February 4, 2013 blog post Period Love = Self Love.

If you haven’t read John Corrigan’s piece, Time of the Month a Time of Care, in The Temple News (December 4, 2012), I hope you will take a few minutes and do so.

Not sure you want to?  Here’s a sampling.

The calendar failed me once again, refusing to mention it’s that time of the month. No one prepares guys for how to handle their ladies’ menstrual cycle.

Since you can’t prevent the pain, you have to remain cautious around your agonizing girlfriend.

Conversing with your girlfriend while Aunt Flo is visiting is like navigating through a minefield — anything can set her off.

They call it a period, but an exclamation point is more appropriate.

 …a good reason to switch to…

There is a part of me that yearns to share my story – my experience as I go through it now – to tell what it’s like to talk with others about it and no longer be able to experience it myself.

There is a part of me that is angry – angry that age has robbed me, that hormones have betrayed me.

I feel like a girl entering puberty – only in reverse.  A girl becomes a woman.  What does a woman become? Old? Shrived? Dried up?

Some say that with menopause comes freedom and a carefree attitude like girls experience before puberty burdens them with moodiness and steals their innocent laughter.

But, girls do not know of life, have not lived it apart from as a child.  Women have lived and loved and experienced life on a level far above that which any girl can experience it.

Puberty is an awakening to possibilities.

Menopause appears to close more doors than it opens.

And, one of those doors is menstruation and not just menstruation, but ovulation and natural cycles of my moon.

I miss that.  I won’t lie.

I miss my hormonal cycles.  I watch the moon in the night skies and I know where I should be in my own moon.  I know what I should be feeling and experiencing, both physically and emotionally.  And, I know that I’m not.  And that I never will again.

My mind forgets and believes my body is responding to hormonal cycling, when in reality it’s just hormonal fluctuations that cause confusing physical manifestations and mental distress.

Lost, oh, so lost.  I feel as though the me that was is no more. And, I’m left with someone I do not know – cannot relate to, nor understand.  And, in truth, do not want to know, relate to or understand.

Women tell me that life begins at menopause.  I understand what they mean – no more fears of pregnancy, no messy periods, no cyclic hormonal upheavals, no PMS, no need to purchase products, no longer a slave to emotions or the body.

I know.  And, I know I should be experiencing joy at moving into this stage of my life.

As a girl moving into puberty, I find that my thoughts and desires, hopes and dreams are changing.  My likes and dislikes, my joys and that which I find important – all changing as I change.

As a girl changes into a woman – I am changing inside.

Deep where no one sees…no one knows.  No one but me.  I know.  I see.  I feel.  I am aware.

I cannot stop it.  I cannot change it.  I am powerless, caught up in the flow of what is to be…in the reality of what is.

That which was important to me….  I shake my head as I look around me and wonder why I have all of this…stuff, this accumulation of things and why they were ever important to me.  I find a desire to live simply, to let go of, to give up what I’ve held onto for so long.

I am afraid.  Afraid to let go of menstruation…to set my thoughts and focus on things other than cycling…to see my days as something other than CD something and see it as CD nothing.  To lose the strengths I found in each day – the strengths unique to each and every day of my cycle – gone, all of it.

I’m lost.  I don’t know how to function – or how to find myself and my strengths.  I hope as my hormones settle and the raging ends I will find a pattern that I recognize as normal once again.

Oh, I know – it will be far different and unlike anything I’ve ever known before, but perhaps it will be better, if that is possible.

Yes, perhaps better.

I say that as I look down at my wrinkled hands and forearms.  My skin in the past 3 months has changed and looks like that of an old woman.  I have aged surprisingly fast as my hormones have slowed to a trickle.  It’s amazing what estrogen does for a woman.

No, I’m not doing hormone replacement therapy.  I decided to go the natural route. And, I’ll be honest, there are days when I wonder if I made the right decision.

In writing these words and giving expression to these thoughts, I feel relieved of some of the burden.  Where I go from here, I’ve no idea.  But, I do know that I will return here from time to time and unload my heart and my mind, expressing here what I am unable to express elsewhere.

I need this outlet.  I need this opportunity.  I need to share this, even if only with myself.