Free Bleeding.

Apparently a woman free bled whilst running the London Marathon. That takes some balls! Good on her.

And here I sit on the beach bleeding into a horrible ‘sanitary’ pad – what the fuck is that about? Sanitary? Like it’s unsanitary to be bleeding every month, like there’s something unclean about it?

I keep telling myself there’s no point in investing in a moon cup now, at the age of 52. Over forty years of periods, I mean - minus the year that they stopped completely for some reason and two pregnancies – that’s approximately 444 bleeds and how many do I have left? Who knows. But lots more I hope. Unlike most western women, I want to bleed for as long as possible. It feels feminine, in fact it’s the most feminine aspect of being a woman I can think of.

And it feels sacred, so very sacred, and I’m only just starting to appreciate that as they are drawing to a close. I can sense their imminent departure and, like a dear love who is about to die, I want to cling on, to attach myself and beg them not to leave me. It’s like my menstrual cycle now has a terminal illness and been given and unspecified prognosis. “I’m sorry, I don’t know how long you’ve got left exactly, but it’s probably 1 to 5 years…6 possibly…but it’s fair to say you won’t reach 60.”

And die I know they must, “Doesn’t everything die at last and all too soon?” to quote Mary Oliver’s The Summers Day. Well, as I move through the autumn of my life into the winter, not bleeding anymore is all part of that great transition.

My mum was 59 before her periods made their final performance. That’s quite a long stage career. I’m hoping I’ve inherited that from her, along with a positive outlook and good skin. Apparently, the best pre-determiner for assuming your own menstrual prognosis, is by way of your mothers. In fact, I believe it’s the only even vaguely reliable data we have. I guess it helps if you knew your mother and had one that was able to tell you how old she was when her periods left the building. But so many of us – and so many of our mothers – just don’t want to talk about this ‘unsanitary’ stuff. No wonder women are so repressed and blocked about this. Why we’re so oblivious to the wonders and wisdom of our monthly cycles, how much truth and knowing there is, how much we are invited to let go of every month. Shedding the unwanted, the unused that is no longer helpful for us to cling on to.

But I can only imagine the heartache of witnessing the shedding of unrealised yearnings of motherhood as unwanted blood appears between your legs streaked with grief and a sadness beyond measure. There’s no sanitary pad that can absorb that.

So, like everything else in my life right now, I’m reclaiming my freedom – my right to bleed freely. Not to hide it. Not to not dare to talk about it. Not to collude with a cultural discourse that women’s periods should not be seen and not be heard. That we should just quietly ‘pop something up there’ without any fuss and carry on a normal, so that all that nasty mess stays inside, seeping back into our cells so that which was meant to be shed, remains, for God forbid someone else gets a whiff of it.

I have no plans to run the London Marathon and I have no plans to walk around Sainsburys with blood running down my legs as I stand and contemplate my shopping list. But I do intend to bleed more freely on the inside – to honour and embrace every last drop and clot that I have left in me, however long that might be for. I intend to make a ceremony of changing my pad each time I can feel it’s held enough released tensions, hopes and fears.

And maybe I will invest in that moon cup, by way of sending out an intention, a message to the Universe that I desire my periods to hang out with me for as long as possible. To not buy one feels like willing that prognosis along.

So, I invite you, if you are able, to bleed without shame, to bleed sacredly, to bleed for as long as we may, to bleed freely.