Episode Summary
Today we dive into the sacred blood rites of menarche and menopause in a conversation with Magician and Menstrual Educator Erica Sodos.
Episode Resources
→ Erica Sodos: http://ericasodos.com
→ Crimson Wisdom (Colleen's Moon Lodge Book): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07R1VJ8HQ
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About the Show
Shame Piñata is hosted by Ritual Artist Colleen Thomas, a Certified Meditation and Mindfulness teacher who helps people make sense of life through ceremony. Music by Terry Hughes.
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Before we start today’s episode, I’d like to place us in time for a moment. Today is March 3, 2022. It’s been seven days since Russia launched a full-scale assault on Ukraine. I just want to acknowledge that this is a lot. It’s a lot of heartbreak. It’s a lot of feeling helpless. And it’s a lot of fear. What you are feeling matters. So I invite you to pause for a second and notice what you are feeling. Notice your body, your breath, your heart. And I invite you to join me as I ring a bell for everything that is happening [RINGS BELL]. Thanks and now here’s today’s show.
The culture we are born into hands us a template for what it means to be human, what it means to progress through the various stages of life. This template may tell us that some transitions are good and some are bad, but what if everything is mutable? What happens when we feel empowered to name our own reality?
This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions.
When you hear the phrase “rites of passage” what do you picture? A bunch of people gathered together, maybe outdoors? Is there a fire? Is there a ceremonial feel? Is the concept of anthropology lurking around somewhere perhaps? This might be what you see and it also might totally NOT be what you see, but it’s interesting, isn’t it, that phrase rites of passage evokes a certain something.
Today we’re going talk about one of the things it most commonly evokes, the idea of coming of age. We’re also going to talk about another rite of passage that doesn’t always get spoken about about in a positive way, the time of menopause.
The coming-of-age time when we’re anywhere from 9-13 brings physical changes and hormonal changes and brings on the start of menstruation for some of us. And some number of years later that menstruation will stop. It might stop naturally or through surgery or illness. These are two points in life that we’re going to talk about today: the beginning of bleeding which is sometimes called menarche and the end of bleeding which is usually called menopause. These are potent times in our lives and they are worthy points to stop and reflect on the full-body changes they bring - and perhaps even identity changes they bring.
These are life changes that are often associated with women’s bodies and women’s experience. However, many people with menstrual cycles do not identify as women. They might identify as trans men, transgender masculine, gender fluid, or not identify with any gender at all. This arena of talking about the blood is one I have worked in for many years and I am constantly striving to open the circle and welcome more people into the rites of passage we can build around the blood. I think it’s really important as well to broaden the education of the non-bleeding people around us to what happens during the moontime, what happens during the bleeding part of the cycle both physiologically and energetically and all the ways we can celebrate and honor that.
The format of today’s episode is a conversation I had with Erica Sodos. Erica was on the show last season speaking about the magic of everyday life, which makes sense because Erica is a magician. Erica is also a menstrual educator. She published a zine for many years called Moonflow, which included thoughtful articles, tips, and even a comic strip about the power of the blood. I call Erica my blood sister because she’s been right there along my own journey to learn to love my menstrual cycle and to deepen into the power and mystery it afforded me.
These days we’re both nearing or in menopause, so our conversation about the blood was held within that context. It was also held within the framework of the NeoPagan tradition of honoring the Triple Goddess, commonly known as Maiden, Mother, Crone - each of which symbolizes a phase in the life cycle. If you’ve never understood what could be useful, important, or even good about the menstrual cycle, I invite you to give today’s episode a listen.
Thomas: I wanted to ask you what's a rite of passage you wish you’d had.
Sodos: So I wish I had a ton of rite of passages and I wish I learned that concept when I was younger. But as you could probably guess, the rite of passage I really wish I had was my first moontime! Definitely. I think it would have shaped me as a… almost like a different person. I mean, it would have taught me to love my body and my blood and I wouldn't have had to figure that out decades later. You know? So, I'd say it's my moontime. That's such a… that could be such a beautiful ritual.
Thomas: Have you gone back to do any kind of retroactive anything about that?
Sodos: I have done it on my own but not to the extent that I know you have because I love how you'll actually like, recreate it with your friends and community. You're amazing with your right of passages. But I think a number of years ago I did something. But now I'm in perimenopause and so at this point, I'm entering a whole new phase and my age. It's scary. It's different.
Thomas: I think it's never too late to go back and do the the first ones, the older ones.
Sodos: Say a woman is seventy so she hasn't bled for a while. She could still celebrate her first moon time?
Thomas: Yeah, sure…
Sodos: Really? Even though she's already been through all these different cycles in her life. And I guess, I guess you're saying you can do it, you feel that you can do a rite of passage whenever, like even if it was a while ago?
Thomas: Yeah. I mean, it has a different effect, I think, than doing it at the moment. But I believe that ritual transcends space and time and I've been in a post… a retroactive menarche ceremony with one of my blood mothers who got a big room of 30 women together who were all, you know, in their 30s 40s 50s… I don't know how old everybody was… But we went and we did a meditation… we went back… we met somebody… I don't know, it was a long time ago, we just… it was like shamanic meditation when we went back and we got the teaching and we experienced sort of a, generic version of like, “This is how it could have been when you got your blood”. And we had this incredible teaching and learning and then we had… the woman who led it, her mother was… They did like a… what I've heard called an angel tunnel, where everybody one at a time walked down, a passageway made by the women. The women were standing in two lines and you walked through the two lines and it was kind of like being birthed and once you came out, you were… that was your transformation you came out in you were a woman and you were welcomed to womanhood by the Grandmother, who is the facilitator’s mother who was just amazing and she gave us like a red necklace and she gave us this incredible hug. And she was like, “Welcome to womanhood!” It was so… it was so amazing, because the way… It was Georgette Star who who did it, and the way that she held it all together, and it was… she made it such a sacred experience. And it was all for women who, you know, were not 12 or 13, it was all for grown women to go back and connect to the moment of the, you know, the Maiden. And it was, it was just transformational and so I know that it can transcend space and time. It helps if you have a really good ritual practitioner can who can run it for you.
Sodos: That sounds like magic, like talk about magic. Like I'm feeling that… that you… Well, that's the same idea like when I was in therapy and the therapist would have me go back to an experience from when I was little and say, you know, I was attacked, or my parents were out of control or whatever and then she would be like, “Who would protect you?” And then I did all these meditations where there was this bear… this mama bear would come and like took me away until all the fighting was still going on, but the mother was… And I think that that's that same idea. It's like almost like neural… changing the neuroplasticity in the brain, right?
Thomas: Right.
Sodos: I mean, you're going back. And you're reclaiming this experience, whether it's trauma, or a rite of passage, which couldn't be trauma if it's meant a certain way. [LAUGHS] And like getting your moontime and then you kind of recreated it and then in a way the timeline changes. Right? Did you feel for you and other women like the timeline changes?
Thomas: Yep. Exactly. Exactly. Like the historical events that happened in my life when I did really get my blood when I was 12 didn't change but yet the part of me… the 12 year-old who's always living in me now has had a very different experience… had like the original experience and then had this other amazing experience which kind of weaves together.
Sodos: So you became more whole, in a way.
Thomas: Exactly.
Sodos: Because that 12 year-old who grew up who was fractured or whatever you want to say never truly connected to her power or whatever it was. But now she's had a different timeline within you, so it makes you different now, is that kind of…
Thomas: Exactly. Yeah, that's a good way to put it.
Sodos: And that was the idea of what the therapist was doing with me.
Thomas: Right.
Sodos: Right? Taking me back to the wounding and then… God, it’d be kind of amazing, wouldn't it, to just do that…I mean, it takes a long time to just go through your life and try to reclaim all those bad experiences?
Thomas: Heal each thing…
Sodos: Be like, “Okay, this one was last week…” No, just kidding.
[MUSIC]
Thank you for spending a few minutes of your day with us! If you’d like to learn more about this whole blood as sacred thing, check out my book “Crimson Wisdom”. It’s available now on Kindle and tells the story of what a modern day Red Tent can look like. Check the show notes for a link.
Thomas: I'm in menopause… I’m postmenopausal now so it's like I'm in that phase and that's a whole other rite of passage that I'm… I don't know that I'm ready to honor that yet. [LAUGHS]
Sodos: How long has it been since you've bled?
Thomas: Almost two years.
Sodos: You haven't bled at all, not even spotting? And you're younger than me. How old are you?
Thomas: Yeah, I know I stopped when I was 48. And I'm almost 50.
Sodos: Wow. I was getting mine like every… constantly… like bleeding all the time like, like just tons of… like a lot of blood. But I think that's… they say you could either get non or get a lot and wow, two years… you, have you done a Crone ceremony yet?
Thomas: No, I just haven't felt ready. I haven't felt like I'm still grieving - and I'm not actively grieving, that's why it's taking so long - grieving that not having the blood time and not having the, you know, that deep pull, that richness. Even though a lot of times when it came when I had it, I was like, “Yeah, okay, I don't really want to go there.” And I was like, “It’s gonna go away, you're gonna really miss it, you're gonna be really sad, you better do it!” And so I would fight it, you know, a lot, then. And then it was like, okay, now it's gone and I'm in that bitter place where I don't want to hear people talking about how great it is, because I'm angry I don't have it.
Sodos: …how great menstruating is?
Thomas: Yeah, which a lot of people don't say that, but sometimes people do say that.
Sodos: Most people hate it. Yeah. As you know, hence the magazine.
Thomas: Or I’ll say, “I’m postmenopausal”, or, you know, and they'll be like, “Oh, thank God”. And I'm like, “No, actually, my story is really different and…” But so I'm still processing, I’m still processing it. But I'm going to have a Croning ceremony or something of that nature at some point.
Sodos: I think, like… I hear what you're saying, because for people like us who worked, would it be inaccurate… I mean I don’t want to like speak for you, but like, I'll just say we and tell me if I'm projecting. We worked to honor our blood. Like it was something that we wanted to be sacred. So when I say I'm scared, I'm scared to lose my blood. I think that's what you're saying. Like… Now did you have side effects and stuff? Did you have…
Thomas: Yeah, I've had a lot. I've had a really hard time with hot flashes. They're… I think they're getting better. They're getting better or I'm getting more used to them.
Sodos: Still?
Thomas: Yeah, I'm still getting them. And the worst part, gosh.. I would get these really bad ones for I'd be on transit because I used to commute an hour and a half to work and I would have, you know, my clothes, and then a sweater and then a jacket and then like a hat and whatever and then my bag and my you know, and I'm on BART or crammed in a bus or whatever, crammed on BART, whatever. Then I’d have a hot flash in the middle of all that and it was like…and sometimes I thought I was going to pass out or throw up or something.
Sodos: Have you read books about menopause like to help you?
Thomas: Yes, I… I… yes. Before I was postmenopausal, I read a lot of books and then when I was actually on my honeymoon, I was reading a book about menopause.
Sodos: So you were still bleeding.
Thomas: I was still bleeding then, yeah.
Sodos: It's funny that you read them so early and now you're in it and you're going, “No” The only one I have is about a year ago, I bought the Susun Weed book. Yeah, she's so cool, Susun Weed, and I like that book. She talks about the Croning. I wonder too… even for someone like you who works on this stuff, the word Crone is very loaded. Do you think… do you not …do you like the word Crone? Like, do you feel like a Crone? Because you don't look like a Crone… stereotypically.
Thomas: It’s interesting because… So when I was first into the blood mysteries, I started… I got really fascinated with the idea of the Crone and I started offering classes for women who were much older than me to tell them how much to love the Crone time.
Sodos: [LAUGHS]
Thomas: And I knew that I was like, really in a weird place teaching that, right? Because I was just like, “I can't tell you anything about it obviously, but I’m going to get you together, I'm going to tell you what I've read about how great it is and then you're going to, you know, tell me, you know, insane or whatever… And the women would get really inspired by what I would say. But what I realized was that, because I was in like my 30s, I thought that postmenopausal was like, “a group of women”. And so and as I worked with them, I had women of all ages coming to these workshops, and I realized I had women who are 50 or 40. Well, maybe 50, late 40s, early 50s… and I had women who were 80, and they were in a completely different phase of life and they were all in one bucket in my head because I was naive enough to not understand any nuance about this yet. So when I hear the word Crone I always think of it of course, as an old woman, and I don't feel like I'm there yet. But then it's like, there's lots of stages in life. Right? And there's the menopause and post menopause. But I don't know that it has to be the Crone right, then. I mean, it could be. I don't know that I'm ready. I think I will probably call it a Croning ceremony when I do it, but I don't feel like I'm worthy of being a Crone yet. I haven't earned that yet.
Sodos: I think yeah, I'm also afraid for my blood to stop. And it kind of reminds me of a relationship. Like, I used to do this thing where when I was in a relationship I would only focus on what was wrong… when I was younger… what was wrong with the person and then when I was out of it, I would focus on what was good. So it was like a way to be miserable as much as I could. You know what I’m saying? I don’t know if you ever did that, but… So, but like it's like with our menstruation… it's like… because we've worked hard to focus on what we love. Yeah, it's like, but now it might be a good time to focus on what you didn't like about it because then you can…you know what I mean? It's like a relationship like, “You're gone. I'm not getting you back in this life. So you were kind of annoying. Remember those cramps I used to have… and all the time?” and I don't know…
Thomas: Well, I am really grateful that I've had, I call them my blood sisters and my blood mothers and my blood grandmothers. You've been an incredible blood sister for me all this time and then I've had women who've been older than me who've been, you know, in more of the teacher role than like the companion role and, and their teachers have been my blood grandmothers . I've just been so blessed to have had this amazing group of women around me. So… and those are the women I will turn to as I go to celebrate my Croning whenever I do that.
Sodos: Yay!
Thomas: Oh, my goodness. It's been so amazing to talk to you. I'm so glad we got to do this. Thank you so much.
Whether the concept of the blood as sacred and important is part of your everyday life or something you hold a little ways away from yourself and look at with suspicion, I am so glad you joined us today. What’s a rite of passage you wish you’d had? What’s a hard experience you’d like to reclaim? As the author of your own story, you have the power to name, rename, and even reimagine the events of your past. Ritual, ceremony, and community are tools that can help you with this important work.
Erica Sodos is a magician, speaker, emcee, psychic entertainer, one of only a handful of female mentalists in the world. She is an avid lover of nature, a dedicated vegan, an environmentalist, and an activist and tour guide at an animal sanctuary. You can find out more about Erica and see examples of her magic at ericasodos.com. Our music is by Terry Hughes. You can follow us on IG and Twitter at shamepinata. You can reach us through the contact page at our website, shamepinata.com. And you can subscribe to the podcast on Radio Public, Apple Podcasts, or your favorite player. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.