Hi, I’m Sam Galloway and I have been writing from the nuanced and complex intersection of neurodivergence and menopause for over a year now at The Autistic Perimenopause: A Temporary Regression. I am so glad you are here!
Content warning: ectopic pregnancy, abortion, miscarriage, blood, surgery, chronic pain.
Every week I forged a sick note for my high school physical education (PE) teacher that said I couldn’t do PE that week, because I was on my period. Every week my PE teacher told me that I needed to learn to get on with it, because I wouldn’t be able to get out of work as an adult just because of my periods. Looking back now I wonder why she didn’t question the frequency of my weekly periods, although we were discouraged from speaking about such matters in my Catholic girls school.
The PE communal changing rooms were catty, bitchy spaces, where other girls would eye my stretch marks and cellulite, deepening my disordered eating tendencies and low self-esteem. Puberty took me early on. By 11, I was already bleeding, and my weight was double that of my peers. Not curvy, just substantial.
Dealing with periods early on in an environment that hushed their presence was difficult. In primary school we received the cursory talk of sex and periods, but it was vague and scant, given the Catholic nature of my education. Emphasis within the curriculum was on theology, with morality based upon being a good girl.
In high school, when we were supposedly being taught about contraceptives and birth control, our religious education (RE) teacher played a video about the instruments used to perform an abortion, circa 1995. I don’t know how much detail the video went into the procedure, because one by one every girl ran out of the classroom upset.
Being highly sensitive, I was the first to leave, hysterically crying and feeling distraught at the images conjured by my own imagination.
Second to leave was my 14 year old classmate and close friend, who had confided in me that she had just had a miscarriage. Her boyfriend was 26.
What was their intention in showing us that video? To scare us into not having sex for fear of needing to terminate an unwanted pregnancy? Was it legitimately part of the Catholic RE syllabus, or just a misjudged error on the part of our teacher, a former convent nun?
The desired effect wasn’t achieved, as so many girls left school early to have babies. I still don’t understand why frightening girls off abortion was preferential to teaching us how to use contraceptives, and learning about our reproductive systems.
Luckily for me, my childhood house was opposite the local community clinic. On Thursday evenings they had the sexual health clinic, and my more cautious wise teenage friends and I would go regularly for check ups, the pill and free condoms. I was clearly unschooling myself from an early age to look beyond the narrow view presented by my so called education.
Even back in high school, my periods always came accompanied with extreme menstrual cramping and lower back pain. My bleeds are still debilitatingly painful. Sometimes I am responsive to pain medication, sometimes not.
Heat can help; diaphragmatic breathing; focused muscle relaxation.
Managing the pain is one thing. Coping with the bleeding is quite another.
Bleeding is not a neutral experience for me. I have tried all within my power to stop experiencing it, both consciously and unconsciously: not taking a “pill free week” when on the contraceptive pill, which elicits a withdrawal bleed (rather than a period resulting from ovulation and no subsequent pregnancy).
The contraceptive injection in my late teens; the contraceptive implant in my twenties. Pregnancy, long term breastfeeding in my early thirties. When perimenopause took me by surprise in my mid to late thirties, I tried the Mirena IUD, in response to an extensive bleed that lasted many months. Now, I am in a chemical menopause using hormone blockers.
In an effort to block out the sensation of bleeding, over the years I have used tampons to try and plug it up. Menstrual cups somehow alleviated associated period pains, although I never acted on the temptation to feed my collected menses to my rose bush. Now the rose bush is dead and gone, yet my bleeding remains.
These days I wear period underwear at all times, as much to deal with unpredictable urinary leaking as much as to manage the constant threat of a sudden flow.
Over the last week, old pain patterns have trotted out along with sudden, unexpected bleeding. Only this evening I could feel a trickle and couldn’t tell initially if it was a leak or a flow, although the accompanying severe pelvic pain unsubtly hinted at the prospect of yet another evening bleed, which I have had to face each night this past week.
Thick blood oozing out of me and collecting in an unwanted pool is beyond what I can tolerate. The sight of it, the smell, the way it streaks and drips and soaks onto other surfaces is all too much.
As a wise, kind friend told me a few days ago, “Your body is doing its best, even though you don’t like what it is doing.” She is right. Something is amiss, and I can only assume this hormonal blip is caused by my adding in an extra pump of oestrogen gel last week to my already high dose, in a bid to stop the hip and shoulder pain that has limited my movement recently.
But my body is also exquisitely responsive to my mood, perhaps more so than is my mind at times. Tomorrow will be the first anniversary of my dear old Dad’s death, and it has been playing on my mind. I had a random bleed in the UK a year ago as I sat beside him on his deathbed, and another bleed in March this year when my Mum’s visit to us in Aotearoa New Zealand ended.
Upon discussion with my GP, I was advised to anticipate further bleeding episodes should any more emotional events occur. Given the random nature of my bleeds, the intense pain, and my hatred of both random events and pain, I am especially glad to be awaiting a hysterectomy in the not too distant future…
I cannot wait to no longer bleed.
Anaemia is common for women who bleed heavily, and our iron levels need careful monitoring. The patriarchy likes its women too fatigued to put up a fight, so please do us all a favour and keep your iron levels within the normal ranges. Weakness from blood and subsequent iron loss makes me feel dizzy and dissociative, so I tend to eat a steak when I have bled to replace lost iron stores.
I also conserve my energy by having a warm Epsom salts bath, then wrapping up in my dressing gown in order to complain endlessly about how much I detest bleeding.
Pregnancy losses have been a feature of my adult life, having experienced an ectopic pregnancy and two miscarriages. Our bleeding patterns can communicate to us, if we are receptive to them. Which I am not; I am just reactive to and avoidant of them.
Fortunately, when I was bleeding a long streaky prune juice coloured flow, another friend who had experienced an ectopic pregnancy advised me to do a pregnancy test. I was pregnant, but not for much longer, since the ectopic pregnancy was in danger of rupturing and within days I was in emergency surgery.
Bleeding in pregnancy was my norm, even with my two out of five successful pregnancies. With my first pregnancy resulting in surgery, I was in constant panic at any sight of blood in my subsequent pregnancies. This week I found out that hypermobility can make bleeding in pregnancy more likely due to tissue fragility and potential clotting problems. Perhaps it is just as well I didn’t have that on the brain at the time.
If only we were all prepared for menstruation, and allowed to feel empowered by our bleeds, not shamed for them.
Red School is an organisation I wish I had known about decades ago. It feels too late now, my bleeds instill me with a sense of fear, not a sense of power…
Imagine that knowledge of the full spectrum and power of the menstrual cycle is commonplace, and we all feel the utter rightness of having this experience within us. Imagine a world in which the menstrual cycle is respected as our spiritual practice. Imagine young people growing up in this menstrual-affirming world.
Imagine a world in which menopause is recognized as a healthy, organic step in one's evolutionary journey stepping into the vital and powerful role of serving your community and the world. Imagine knowing that you’ll be profoundly met in the dignity and power of this new place you stand in post menopause.
May we all trust our menstrual cycle and reclaim the spiritual significance of Menopause as the path to instate our full sovereignty. May we all recognise and relish our entitlement, dignity and authority to be channels for Menstruality and the Divine Feminine on the planet.
I hope that, if are still cycling, you perceive your bleeds from a more holistic perspective than I have ever managed to muster.
Looking back, had I learned from Red School, or any indigenous matriarchal culture, that my periods are sacred and healthful, not dirty and shameful, perhaps my pain perception would not be so debilitating. Maybe I wouldn’t actively want them to stop permanently and prematurely, had they not been something to be hushed and hidden in my Catholic school years and beyond.
Perhaps I should soak my menses into the garden while I still can, and stand in my power in a bid to relish my entitlement, dignity and authority to be a channel for Menstruality and the Divine Feminine on the planet.
Not long after the end of my high school years, my PE teacher was rumoured to have eloped with my Maths teacher, both of them married with families of their own. This was at a time when Catholicism and lesbianism were mutually exclusive. So I am glad that they managed to buck the good girl Catholic trend by midlife. I hope in doing so they reclaimed the spiritual significance of Menopause as the path to instate their full sovereignty.
They are certainly better role models, acting on their previously covert love, than our RE teacher was in her overt abortion class.
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