by Mara Altman
Then as we were wrapping up, she said she was sitting in her office, surrounded by PMS paraphernalia she’d collected over the years. “I’m looking at a sign that’s hanging off my file cabinet and it says, ‘My greatest fear is that there is no PMS and this is actually my personality.’”
“Funny,” I said. And I did think it was funny, even though it also really resonated. Those parts of me—getting misty-eyed at car commercials and being pissed off at something seemingly arbitrary—didn’t fit in with the perception I have of myself. “But sometimes,” I said, defending myself, “I really don’t feel like me.”
She reused what seemed like one of her favorite phrases: “Then isn’t it convenient to have something to blame that on?”
I wondered what Dave was going to think of Chrisler’s theory—that when I shit into his soul, I might actually mean everything I say.
* * *
I dug deeper and my mind kept getting blown as I discovered that there were as many theories about PMS as I have colors of underwear (and I have all the colors).
There are too many theories to relay, but a couple stood out. Susan Brown, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Hawai‘i, for example, came to believe that it is ovulation when our mood shifts—we are actually at peak happiness during that time—and that the time pre-period sucks only because we are coming down off a high.
But it was Alexandra Pope’s perspective that ended up really speaking to me. Pope is a psychotherapist who also runs an online group called the Red School, which offers courses about the menstrual cycle. She started researching the topic thirty years ago, when she experienced debilitating pain due to endometriosis. She didn’t want to take pain medication each month, so she began investigating the subtle psychological and energetic shifts during the cycle and then learned to live in harmony with those changes. Unlike Chrisler, who views PMS as a crutch, Pope sees it as a superpower.
“I reframe the cycle,” she told me. Pope, who is sixty-three years old, did not see mood shifts at all in the negative. “If you were the same all the time,” she said, “you might safely assume you’re dead, really.” PMS, to her, is actually an ephemeral moment of clarity. “Your polite socialized self bites the dust, because your energy levels are dropping and your tolerance levels are dropping.”
I’d heard a similar interpretation earlier from Ingrid Johnston-Robledo, a board member for the Society of Menstrual Cycle Research. “I think of it as a veil lifting,” she said of PMS. “Your need to self-silence is ruptured at that time and you can be more authentic about your anger or your frustration.”
I dug this outlook—it was much more liberating than thinking I was out of my mind—but it also brought up some concerns. “I don’t feel like it’s fair sometimes,” I told Pope. When I said that, I was thinking of the moments that I’ve been extra tough on people, especially Dave. “In a couple of days,” I explained. “I know I won’t feel the same way anymore.”
If all my feelings were going to blow over, what was the point of making it into a big deal?
“That’s the criminal thing,” Pope said. “You go back into la-la land again.” She said we don’t have outbursts premenstrually just for kicks. The feelings are real and we need to deal with them—not just pretend it’s an emotional blip. “If you come around to the premenstrual time again and you have the same reaction,” she said, “it means you haven’t dealt with the issue. You are going to sleep again.” She sees PMS as a built-in warning system. “We call it the feedback moment, and you don’t want to suppress that.” If you feel depressed or overwhelmed, that’s not just because of hormones—it is because you’ve actually been spreading yourself too thin. “If you have been putting yourself and your own needs second,” Pope said, “this is when you are going to hear about it.” She really wanted to drive home that point and spent quite a while berating me with it. “If you’re overtired, if you’ve been pushing it, if you’ve been eating a poor diet, you’re going to hear about it right before the period,” she said. “Isn’t that brilliant? Isn’t that wonderful? Your cycle is actually helping you to take care of yourself and not abandon yourself.”
In other words, Pope is saying that if a woman experiences severe PMS symptoms, she’s probably been shit at taking care of herself. She needs to lower her stress, sleep more, eat better food, and get a goddamn massage already.
By the end of our conversation, I was enchanted by Pope. I was delighted that she didn’t want to deny PMS nor use it to dismiss our feelings; instead, she wanted to highlight it in a positive way and urge women to embrace the shift. In Pope’s world, saying “I have PMS” would not mean that you felt crazy or out-of-control; it would actually be a warning to those around you that you meant business.
“You have a more critical eye and the ability to speak the truth,” she said. “That’s not a vulnerability. That’s a power.”
She gave me one warning: “It’s important to know yourself and your cycle or else during that time you can become quite abusive.” She said that it’s sometimes best to take note of the issues that arise during that time and then deal with them on a less sensitive day. “Ultimately, I’m saying the truth is a good thing—it’s a good thing and we women need to get on board with that!”
I felt like this information could turn the whole world upside down—in a good way.
* * *
Clearly, I had to share this information with someone. I called my mom. I didn’t relay the theory quite as eloquently as Pope herself did, but I got the point across: “We are not out of our minds when we are PMS’ing, we are speaking our truth.”
The change in my mom—the rethinking—happened so fast. Suddenly, she was looking back and rewriting her past. Everything that had happened during fights with my dad—the issues that arose while she’d had PMS—she saw in a different light.
“I did feel really strongly about those things,” she said, beginning to validate herself. “I felt like he bossed me around; I was trying to tell him that.”
Because she and my dad had been so focused on her behavior, the content of what she’d said was often lost. The same thing was happening to me, but I’d put the blame on myself. I felt guilty about getting upset, so instead of dealing with the issues that emerged, I was left apologizing for being overreactive. “Must be my period, babe,” was my tired refrain.
I thought about my anger at the toilet seat being up. I wasn’t just being overly critical; I’m a night pee-er. Having the seat up is dangerous. Four separate times, in the middle of the night, my bottom has splashed into the toilet bowl. My annoyance was legitimate.
“I love that so much,” my mom said of this new twist on PMS. “It can be like a headlight, showing us how we feel.”
* * *
By this point, I’d gathered massive amounts of menstrual information. Some of the perspectives I learned about spoke to me more than others, but I still wasn’t sure of the reality—was PMS a superpower, a truth serum, a scapegoat, a disorder, or a figment of our imagination?
To find the answer, I decided to immerse myself within a group of hormonal women who were highly attuned to their cycles. By watching, experiencing, and listening to these ladies, I would be able to come to a conclusion. After searching online and reaching out to my period-savvy contacts for such a place, I found Sacred Groves, a retreat for women in the middle of Bainbridge Island, Washington, and signed up for their quarterly Red Tent event.
Red Tents are held in locations all over the world. The purpose is to bring women together to celebrate their cycles. This little island getaway couldn’t have sounded more perfect. There would be tons of women under one roof, all focused on shedding their uterine lining. Or so I thought.
While at Sacred Groves, I also planned to try a holistic pelvic session, which is less mundane than it sounds. “It involves putting a finger into the vagina for about forty minutes,” Thérèse Charvet, the owner and pelvic practitioner of Sacred Groves, told me over the phone.
&
nbsp; I had never—that I could recall, at least—had a singular finger inside my vagina for that long. I grossed myself out by accidentally envisioning a waterlogged finger.
Thérèse explained that by massaging the pelvis (from the inside), she could help release trauma. The trauma could be from something as catastrophic as incest or rape.
“I haven’t experienced either,” I said.
“We all have trauma,” she assured me. “We are living in a male world where the female body is seen as inferior.”
The timbre of her voice wavered as if she were speaking into a whirling fan—it made her sound wizard-y. She explained that, as women, whether we are aware of it or not, we’ve been shamed throughout our lives. “We’ve been told it’s icky, gross, and dirty,” she said of our periods. Just by living in a patriarchy, she said, women accumulate trauma inside the body. Because she knew about the nature of my visit—that I was looking into PMS—she assured me that the subject would also be addressed. “We have to learn to honor the rhythms,” she said.
Sounded good enough.
I invited my friend Maggie to come along. She’d be a great wingwoman; she’s totally go-with-the-flow. A couple of years ago, she even kept her cool when we totaled our rental car in a deserted Mexican swamp. When I told her what I was doing—that Thérèse was going to exorcise the patriarchy from my vagina—she didn’t seem surprised.
“Oh,” she said, “so she’s a pussy reverend.”
“Yeah,” I said, “I guess.”
* * *
Two weeks later, we took a plane to a ferry and then drove to the retreat, which was down a dirt road, and then even farther down another dirt road. Cedars and firs, thick with green needles, towered over three circular wooden yurts—two small and one large. They had names like Sun and Moon. Other structures, some haphazardly built with wood and nails, were scattered around the ten-acre property. As we entered, chickens clucked and ran around a small garden. Little altars made up of sticks, shells, statues, moss-covered pebbles, and broken pieces of ceramic were placed at sporadic intervals.
The retreat was run not only by Thérèse but also by her wife, Tere. They were both in their sixties and had a penchant for wearing crushed-velvet shawls in the evening. At first, I was concerned about the New Age vibe. I have a deep and abiding resistance toward the woo-woo, and even though over the next two days they smudged sage constantly, spoke of the Earth Mother, and once blessed me by waving a taxidermy bird wing over my body, I found them both to be smart, surprisingly grounded, and appealingly gritty. I’m not sure I’m ready to admit it yet, but by the end, I may have even come to enjoy beating the “grandmother drum” and talking about my “root chakra.”
When we arrived, Maggie put our stuff in the Moon Yurt and I went straight to my pelvic session, which was held across the yard inside the Castle. The Castle, despite its name, was actually an unassuming, tiny two-story structure that was built by Tere.
Later, Tere would tell me that when she used to work in construction, she loved leaving her used tampon in the Porta Potti at the building site. “All the men could see that women worked there, too,” she said, laughing, “and even when they’re bleeding!”
Maybe I had more patriarchy in my vagina than I’d suspected, because I thought that was clever, yet also gross.
* * *
As I walked toward the Castle, I had no idea what was waiting for me. So far in my life, when someone touched my vagina, it was either for sexual pleasure or to open wide for a speculum and a smear. This, from what I could gather, was going to be neither: more like a backrub, but for the inside of my genitalia.
Inside there was a desk, two beds, some astrological-inspired artwork, and a tapestry tacked to the wall. Thérèse sat at the desk near the window; her short gray hair was unconstrained by gels or barrettes. Her outfit was just as casual: jeans and a T-shirt. She had the look of a good neighbor—not the kind who would bring over a casserole, but the kind who’d bring over a handmade herbal poultice from her garden to help draw out puss from a pimple.
She lit a bundle of sage and dabbed the smoke around my body as she told me what to expect. “Some women have memories, emotions, and even colors come up,” she said. “Some will get angry, scream, or cry.” She also said there are women who don’t feel much at all, a vast swath of their pelvic area turns out to be numb inside. “There is something so painful,” she explained, “that they just shut it down.”
She handed me a 3-D model of the pelvis—without all the organs inside, it looked like a bowl—and told me that’s where she’d be poking around. She would massage my muscles not only to relax them, but with the hope of unlocking the underlying emotion that she suspected lay within.
By this point, bony pelvis in hand, I was pretty sure that I no longer had to worry about getting turned on.
“So what’s the goal, exactly?” I asked.
She showed me her finger, which would be her tool. “I’m going to sweep away any remnant of shame, fear, and disconnect,” she said. Then she stood up and led me to the smaller of the two beds. “In our society, we live from here up,” she said, holding her hand to her neck, “we want you to drop in there”—she now was pointing to my crotch—“and let her give you guidance and inspiration.”
When I got the cue, I took off my pants and lay down. Thérèse sat beside me in a chair, pulled on a blue latex glove, and placed her hand in a loose fist between my legs. Despite my being on an island in the middle of a forest down a dirt road and on top of a flower-patterned bedspread inside a structure named the Castle, the whole thing felt surprisingly legitimate.
“Visualize dropping a root from that part of your body, through the mattress, through the floor, into Mother Earth, and into the ground,” she said. “Any releasing we do today will travel the path from your vagina through the root, and Mother Earth will compost it for her growth and for your growth.”
I played along. I envisioned a thick root shooting outward from my privates, one strong enough to hold Tarzan.
“I’m at your gate,” she said. “Do you feel safe?”
I nodded and then she slipped her finger inside. Her finger was in there for the full forty minutes. During that time, she kneaded my fascia, tested my pelvic strength, and explored the more abstract sides of my vaginal health. Because she believes that we carry the scars and traumas from our family—that they are passed down and stay rooted inside us—she started by calling on my ancestors to help in the process. She prodded my left anterior wall as she said, “Your grandmothers, great-grandmothers, great-great-grandmothers, come help in this multigenerational healing.”
I usually try not to think about family while someone probes my genitalia, but I gave it a go.
Then Thérèse began touching different parts—I could feel her up under my sacrum and rapping against the underside of my hipbone. These were places so far up I thought only a surgeon could reach them. I was also surprised, considering she was inside my sex place, about how uncomfortable it was—some spots she pressed made me feel nauseated. There was something deeply perplexing about the fact that I was spending $125 for a vaginal massage that wasn’t even 1 percent orgasmic.
“You’d think this would feel better?” I said.
“It’s a shame that women think if someone touches their vagina it should be for sex or nothing at all,” she said.
I suddenly felt so closed-minded. I was that tourist in Mexico who was upset and surprised that not every meal was made up of tacos and a margarita.
After more time passed, she asked, “What are you feeling now—any emotions or images?”
“Not really,” I said, feeling slightly concerned.
“Am I one of those numb people?”
“I don’t think you’re totally numb,” she said.
I didn’t scream or shout or writhe, and I feared that my calm and lack of color associations were disappointing Thérèse. I wanted to come up with something we could work with. I closed my eyes and tried to associa
te. Unfortunately the first thing that came to mind was ridiculous. “I feel like your finger is skiing inside of me,” I said.
I mean, it did; she was moving the digit along my fascia like it was a snowy black diamond. “Your finger is downhill skiing,” I said again with more conviction.
She didn’t say anything, so I got self-conscious.
“Am I doing this right?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said, “tell me anything you’re thinking, because it might be clues about what you’re holding in here. Ever had a skiing accident where you landed on your bowl?”
I didn’t expect the translation to be quite so literal.
“No,” I sighed. If these vaginal walls could talk, they would apparently bore people to tears. But then, I suddenly remembered something. I never could have imagined I’d be so excited to reveal this little factoid. “I did land vulva-first on the high beam before!”
When I was a gymnast, it was unfortunately one of my most popular moves.
“Oh good, that might be part of the tension,” she said. “Light early injuries can make a mark.” She began swishing her finger back and forth around the circumference of my bowl. “Think about banging your crotch,” she said, “and send that down your grounding port.”
After I sent all my vulva thumps down the “grounding port,” we worked on sweeping the shame and fear away—all the stuff that we as women accumulate up there. “All the fear is going down through your root,” she said, as she mimed pulling something down and out through my canal, “and into the ground.”
We spent the rest of the time trying to facilitate a release of tension because we found out that I’m vaginally retentive—my muscles are tightened almost all the time. “Relax here,” she said, wiggling her finger. I felt vague pressure near my rectum. “Breath into it so we can soften it up.”
