I love the period.
There is something about it that is truthful, or rather, brings the truth out of me. Emotional truth. Places where I have suppressed, neglected, overlooked in the lure of expediency and urgency.
The experience of the period is one of transformation and internal alchemy.
When the first hints of pink appears, there is relief, and also a certain resistance to impending death, the death of who I think I am. There is an inherent understanding of a need to purge and release.
As the flow grows red and heavy, my body begins to tenderize, and I am made soft and aware of vulnerabilities replacing the search for invincibility. My senses are heightened, and the hypersensitivity forces my sensory inward. Emotions seem to ooze from my aching joints and muscles. There is nowhere to hide, and there is a knowing that I don't have to.
There are times in the cycle when I feel I am at the mercy of sadness and anger when I would rather be stoic. There are also times when I feel waves of grace for finally touching that part of me so delicate and ephemeral. Of all the expressions of the universe, it opens me to a beauty that is primal.
Then the trail turns dark like the waning crescent and the hypersensitivity recedes into the unconscious. It now feels like a clean slate, like emotional rebirth. It feels like the clarity of the night sky with a few scattered stars and all its mysteries.
And the cycles begins again.