Why don’t we celebrate the start of girls’ periods?

There are all sorts of rituals to celebrate rites of passage in our lives: births, weddings, deaths, birthdays etc. However, when my 11-year-old daughter whispered to me one Sunday evening that she thought she might have “started” I wanted to celebrate. But, as far as I was aware, there was no ritual to go with this monumental moment in a girl’s life. Or was there?

I grew up in a large Irish family of three boys and six girls all crammed into a tiny three-bedroomed house. Up to the age of 10, I shared a bed with two sisters. Our long-suffering mother was the ultimate matriarch who, with a feckless, drunk and largely absent husband, brought us up alone. Putting food on the table and wondering where the next penny was coming from was a daily worry for her, so I don’t intend to criticise when I say I wasn’t prepared for my first period.

I was seventh youngest and four sisters had already started to menstruate when I started to show signs. Yet I felt unprepared. It just wasn’t something that was talked about. I was embarrassed and made even more so when Mum laughed as I whispered the calamity that was happening to me. With washing and ironing piled to the ceilings, and scrapping siblings, she thrust a pad at me followed by a strap-like contraption to hold it in place. This was one of two shared by all the women in the family. No, my mother had no time for ritual – just survival. But when my daughter was born, 18 months after my son, I swore I would prepare her for her first period.

She had begun to display signs of puberty a year or so before that Sunday evening revelation and we chatted about what was happening to her body: her growing breasts, the appearance of pubic hair and, finally, her first period. I wanted her to understand that this was not a moment of dread but celebration. We’re all so familiar with the many negative connotations attached to menstruation (we used to call it the curse) that it’s easy to forget exactly what it is – the body preparing to bear children.

I went out and bought her own special pack of sanitary towels, which she put in her desk. Time went on until that evening when, after bath time, she whispered, “I think I’ve started.”

I was delighted for her and told her so, that this was the most natural thing in the world and how wonderful it was. Surely, I thought, there must be some ritual or celebration to mark this event in a girl’s life.

After quick search on the internet, I discovered a whole nether world of the “menarche”, a ritual that celebrates a girl’s journey into womanhood. Aha, this was just the sort of ritual I felt was missing for my daughter. Racheal Hertogs runs Menarche workshops from her west Wales’ home (www.rachaelhertogs.co.uk ). “It’s an opportunity for mums and daughters (aged eight to 13) to spend some special time together as they experience this rite of passage together,” she says.

At one of Rachael’s menarche parties, girls are encouraged to embrace their monthlies or, as Rachael calls them, “moon time”, to share stories, play, create and celebrate together. “Collectively, we will discover what has affected our attitudes towards our moon time and our bodies and we will remember and recreate our own menarche celebration,” says Rachael.

“Our mother-and-daughter workshops are a lovely experience for friends to share, arrange a day with your daughter, her friends and their mothers to honour and celebrate their rite of passage.”

Hmmm. Some friends thought the whole notion wildly over the top, while others expressed some kind of interest.

In retrospect, I wish I had planned a menarche ritual, gathering together all the women who love my daughter and together initiated her into womanhood. Wacky? Nuts? I don’t think so. We still have a long way to go before we can escape all those negative connotations and epithets that, infuriatingly, seem to persist when menstruation is discussed.

When I talk to my daughter about it today, some three years later, her response is one of typical teenage contempt – “Oh please, Mother” – with a roll of the eyes. None the less, I am glad that I did mark her first bleed – our micro menarche if you like, and gave her a necklace of moonstone. Which, I can report, she still wears.