L-O-S-E-R-ana. This nickname we had for where I grew up showed my true feelings as a teenager for my childhood home state. The long, sweltering hot days in the swamps of Southwest Louisiana sun were spent hiking and blazing trails with ATV 4-wheelers through unmarked woods. At the age of thirteen, it was finally my turn to use the 22-rifle and kill my first alligator. After shooting it multiple times, my brother and I took the canoe in the lake and dragged out the 5 feet, 3-inch-long, scaly beast. My rite of passage was hardly done by killing the creature, it would be truly tested as I attempted to tie the nerve-flinching creature down to our picnic table, then proceed to skin and later tan the hide of this gator. My main task, above avoiding nicks in the skinning, was to batter and fry the alligator meat to perfection for my family’s dinner that night. Many people often ask what alligator meat tastes like, and truly if battered and fried well, it tastes like a perfect balance between fried fish and fried chicken. One never wants to end up with too chewy and rubbery overcooked, fried gator bites. 

This experience was one of elite rites of passage that took place over my life growing up as a Cajun girl in a town with a population of under 7,000 people. Most school holidays consisted of events such as the first day of squirrel hunting or quail hunting, and, if you were lucky, school let out early on the days we were going to a skeet shoot. There are rites of passage in everyone’s life, although they may vary based on your ethnicity, social status, religion, and other factors. Rites of passage, ceremonies, and rituals are all historical ways in which women and men have engaged with their bodies as they grow older. Rites of passage are ways of marking an important stage in one’s life or an event associated with crisis or change of status, especially birth, naming, puberty, marriage, illness, or death. Adulthood is a social construct, and sociologists emphasize that marker events are a criteria for adulthood. Celebration and rites of passage amongst the women of my family feel familiar in other areas, but very limited when it comes to sacred feminine matters, particularly puberty. My period and sex were not subjects the women in family participated in corporately. I did not think highly about the privilege of becoming a woman and the responsibility of bearing a womb. Our best attempt at building a theology around our bodies was having my momma come to help me for the two weeks after my kids were born and cook for me. Other than that, no one really ever helped me make meaning of what was happening in my developing reproductive system. No one ever tied together how my feminine body displayed the glory of God or the reflection of a Creator. I didn’t grow up spending my menstruation weeks in a tent or spa retreat somewhere in the woods with these women, but this image of a repetitious weekend with my mothers of old, cooking all day long, is the closest experience I have to what it might have looked like to be handed down a ritual, a collection of stories, recipes, and belongingness. What I learned is that at least life is hard and God never intended for us to do it alone. 

On a global level, we know the most basic practice of mothers teaching their daughters to wash and brush their hair is passed down from generation to generation. These practices illustrate sisterhood, women bathing in communal bath houses such as Turkish hammam or Finnish saunas. They transcend all cultures and become rituals particular to women and evidence that our ever-bearing, female bodies were made to live amongst tribes. Historical menstrual tents consisted of multiple generations of a selected tribe. Women who were already experiencing menopause would join the menstrual tents to help the younger generations. Women who were breastfeeding would bring their nursing babes along with their daughters. All females were welcome in the week of bleeding. The time was filled with spa-like and grooming activities such as bathing, massage, hairdressing, storytelling, and dream sharing. In days of old, this ritual journey was done with your great-grandmother, grandmother, mother, aunts, sisters, and daughters. The unknowns of a woman’s body were reflected in the vast differences and similarities of the bodies in your family and your community; each body reflecting back to you that you come from one another and are connected to each other in a mysterious way. We need our tribe; our tribe reflects and reminds our bodies both who we are and that we are not alone. Even today, we need to have consistent gatherings and reflections amongst women so that we can feel less alone in our own female bodies. This historical act of sharing in a communal initiation to a girl’s menstruation has long been practiced throughout the world. Global historic rituals of girls’ first blood are overall culturally seen as negative, except for places where the ritual is done in community. For instance, in India, Hindu women tend to view menstruation, especially first menstruation or menarche, as a positive aspect of a girl’s life. In South India, girls who experience their menstrual period for the first time are given presents and celebrations to mark this special occasion. Ancient Hebrew women took their girls out into the wilderness to dig a hole to bury their first blood and let replenish the earth, while young girls in Ghana sit under ceremonial umbrellas and people brings gifts and pay homage.[ii] There are even positive accounts from male religious leaders in the Ivory Coast, who describe menstruation as “the flower of a tree which needs to flower before it can bear fruit.”[iii] These other viewpoints contradict the imposed “ideology of sin, dirt, pollution” that has been given to menstruation.[2] Within the cultures which believed menstruation was a positive thing and something to be done in community, the women spoke of their time of menstruation, postpartum, nursing, and menopause in community as positive. The red tent concept a universal and important part of caring for a woman’s body through her womb’s entire life cycle. Lastly, it was a Ulithi woman of the South Pacific who explained her culture’s understanding of the red tent, where breastfeeding women join menstruating women in huts along with their children. Although it is stunning to me that this is happening present day, she explains that the tents have a “kind of a party atmosphere”.[iv] 

The day I started my first period, my nanny took me to get a Coke at Sonic. There was no party, no flowers, no umbrellas or dances, and definitely no digging holes in the ground. In fact, in Southern Louisiana,  my family was considered to be very progressive to be because we actually spoke about periods and sex. I came from a “good, Christian home” and went to private school, so there was no sex education for me. Luckily, one Sunday night after church my mom took my younger sister and me to Ryan’s Steakhouse Buffet and told us about sex. I will never forget how she illustrated sex with a green and red gummy bear from our dessert plate, and to this day I struggle to eat those colors. For Western Christian women, there are rituals and conversations not easily passed down, such as periods and sex, in many families even amongst the women there is silence, so we must learn about these subjects on our own, alone. 

Different cultures hold different events for their communities, but these rituals teach us the importance of marking our moments of celebration and grief. Martin Prechtel’s words beckon me to continue to mark my life events through ceremonies and rituals. He says, “Rites-of-passage ceremonies are not just for young people to pass into adulthood. Life change ritual
s should accompany every stage of life and anticipate the people’s full expression of grief.” The word grief stands out to me. Do rites of passage express grief? Nikki Giovanni’s interview rushes into my mind, her words echoed this thought, “For something to live, something must die”.[ii] When I began the study of a woman’s womb and the rites of passage engaged in the process of monthly menstruation and births, I never anticipated God’s invitation to the grief one must bear for something new to become alive. This is the emotional significance of living continuously through these rites of passage our bodies ask us to engage.[iii]