A Man's Perspective on a Woman's Issue

I have been reading a lot of women's blogs. Hell, most of the blogs I read are authored by women. I love to read them, to see the female perspective on life as a pagan, to read about their children, and basically how they feel about just about anything.


I wish I had the right words to explain my thoughts sometimes. I am physically a man, and much of my thought process is very "male", as one would imagine. But part of me, my inner workings, have a very "female" aspect to them, probably because I am a "triple water". You see, my Sun sign is Cancer, my moon sign is Scorpio, and my rising sign is Pisces. So, I am by nature a very "mothering" and nurturing person, when I'm not going to the opposite extreme and being a selfish egotistical maniac.


Having said that, I want to talk about something that no amount of "female" brain can help me to understand. I have seen quite a few posts about this subject, and the spiritual aspects of it, on several blogs I have read over the last few days, and I started wondering why I kept seeing it so often, so much so that I started thinking of writing this post about it.



It is known by many names: a cycle, a period, menstruation, and my personal favorite, moon time. Regardless of the name, to me, I just have no frame of reference to understand it. I don't have the hardware physically, and mentally, I just don't know how to describe how I feel about it.


Most of my life I never really thought about it, I knew women had it, but did I think that physically AND emotionally it's a really different time for them? No, of course not. How could I know? A period, being something spiritual, what?

Usually my spoken words and my mental dialogue would go something like this:



"Oh I see, it's that time of the month, I'll leave you alone". (Well, not necessarily, I've gotten my "red wings" before). "I feel for you, it's so unfair to women". ("Things like that make me GLAD I'm a man!") "Your stomach is hurting? Cramps, huh? I wish there was something I could do." (Man, I am SO glad I'm a man!)


Now don't get me wrong, I really do sympathize, but like I said before, without a common frame of reference, how can I or any other man really feel for a woman? What about women who can no longer have children, and still have moon time? How is that fair? What about our daughters, how does it make them feel when they first start, and are years away from even thinking about having children?



Reading all the blog entries I've seen about the spiritual aspects of menstruation has made me take a second look at how I see it, especially as a father of girls. Yesterday my eldest started, (in retrospect possibly the reason I've been seeing so much about it lately, a harbinger of things to come) a year and a half after her younger sister, and they both have had completely different mindsets about it. Liz (the eldest) didn't want to start, didn't want to have to deal with it. Alex, especially in the last 6 months or so, has been obsessed with everything about sex and childbearing, and in the beginning, accepted it as just another part of life. What's a father to do? I can't tell them how it feels, what emotional changes there may be, I mean, I can tell them the physical aspects of why it happens, but anything else, I'm clueless.


Sometimes I wish that for only one day, I don't know, maybe a month or two, I could BE a woman, if only to feel how it is to be one. To really FEEL the sensation of moon time, to feel what it's like to be pregnant, to have another life inside of me, but I doubt very seriously that will ever happen, so I guess I'll never know. But I do know this, I don't think I will ever see women the same again. To have a cradle of creation in your bodies, I envy you. I respect you. And I do feel for you, I feel your pain as much as I am able, and hope that those women that do read this know that this man is seeing you now for how sacred you really are.