Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Entering the Red Tent

Not too many women discover the Red Tent, especially young western women. Finding the Red Tent for myself has been quite a journey, a journey that began by wading through emotions, disposable winged pads, slim tampaons, hundreds of plastic wrappers, living with cramps that ran all the way from my lower back to knees, packets of panadine, and discovering that a taking too much panadine makes ones body un-responsive to the drug. Feeling drowned by it all I began sifting through women's stories and views on bleeding hoping to find something more. To my releif and surprise I stumbled into the beautiful place I now call the Red Tent.

So what is the Red Tent? The Red Tent is simply a place where one comes to a different understanding and awareness about what it means to bleed every month for, give or take, fourty years of ones life female life. What conclusion one comes to in the Red Tent is their's to make - it's the simple fact of exploring alternatives and refusing to be spoon fed what our culture tells us about bleeding and menstruation, which makes the Red Tent significant and a vital part of women's growth and understanding about their bodies.

.... I'll be writing about what I've discovered in the Red Tent over these next few days.

4 Comments:

At 12:08 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

A few comments/questions

Did you coin the term 'the Red tent' by yourself? Or did you find it elsewhere.

And you do know that plastic wrappers etc are all about convenience (time at all angles + seemingly most hygienic)? Which is WHY they are in modern terms 'the best alternative'

 
At 12:49 AM, Blogger Laura said...

Yes Rebecca, convenience is a modern virtue, so by modern terms disposible is the 'best alternative'. As you well know I don't subscrive to the modern virtue of convenience when it comes to my bleeding time : )

The Red Tent is a term that is not my own, it is a general term and is not soley used in the specific way I have decided to use it here. The Red Tent is used to describe menstruation. It's a name for a communal bleeding place used in early cultures.... women would bleed with the cycles of the moon and a red tent was set up in nomadic cultures for that purpose.

More in the next post...

 
At 11:40 AM, Blogger Meika said...

such a fascinating concept laura. :)

thank you for sharing... i feel i have learned something, and been educated on something i can to try to understand a while back. tis nice to know i am not alone...


(oh, and im mentioning this in Gush girls.. the red tent term)

 
At 4:03 PM, Blogger Laura said...

Sam, maybe you can mention it and link to the blog.... or I could just get on Gush and link to it myself....but the girls know you. I haven't been on there since the new site.

:)

 

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