Eating in the Light of the Moon

Recovery from disordered eating calls for a new way of relating to our female bodies, one that honors and values what they have to offer us. It requires that we appreciate what it means to come into the body of a woman.

One of the aspects of being a woman that has been most hidden, denied, and devalued in our culture is the menstrual cycle. Since we live in a society that has suppressed the feminine in all of us, it is not surprising that a woman’s relationship to that part of herself that is the most profoundly feminine is so often associated with feelings of shame, loathing, or pain.

We need to embrace this aspect of our being so that we can reclaim the deep wisdom that it can bring, the inner knowing that helps to keep us connected to the rhythms and pulse of life. The following story is one I wrote for my daughters to provide them with a new way of understanding the menstrual process, one that is different from the current perspective our society offers us. It encourages celebration and appreciation of menstruation as a special link to emotions and the wisdom inherent in nature’s cycles.

Once upon a time when all people lived peacefully on the earth, there was a young girl named Tanya who lived in a small village at the edge of the woods. One day, Tanya was sitting on a mat weaving a new basket. She was becoming a very good basket weaver and had already woven quite a collection of harvest baskets for gathering the vegetables and flowers from her garden, When she stood up to reach for some grapevines to add to her basket, she noticed a little spot of blood on the mat where she had been sitting. This frightened her and she immediately ran to get her mother.

Tanya looked into her mother’s face and saw her eyes dancing with joy. Her mother smiled and whispered excitedly, “This means your moon power is coming! It is now time for you to go to Auntie’s and learn women’s earth magic.”

Taking Tanya by the hand, her mother led her to Auntie’s cottage at the far edge of the woods. No words were spoken when Auntie greeted them. The two women looked at each other knowingly and smiled at Tanya.

Tanya loved visiting Auntie. She had an enchanting, magical place, filled with wondrous treasures: silks and beautiful beads, exotic feathers, amazing seashells, and incredible crystals and stones of all shapes and colors.

Auntie gave Tanya a stack of bright red cloth pads and a bowl made out of red clay. “Take one of these,” she said. “As more blood flows, the pad will soak it up. When it is full, rinse it in this bowl with some water from the stream near your garden. Then take the water in the bowl and use it to water your plants.”

“Oh, no,” said Auntie, reassuring her. “All girls get this flow when it is time for them to become women. It is Mother Nature’s way of letting them know that they are ready to learn about the woman power that flows within them. And every month, the flow will return to remind them of their power, in case they forget.”

“We will talk more later,” said the older woman. “First, I want you to take one of these baskets and gather some herbs in the woods.” She instructed Tanya to collect some blessed thistle, chamomile, and lady’s slipper flowers, some blue cohosh, false unicorn, and marsh mallow roots, a bit of cramp bark, and some mountain raspberry leaves.

Tanya was pleased with the task and quickly forgot about her concerns. She loved wandering in the woods collecting roots and flowers, and she had learned what these plants looked like and where they lived when she was still quite little. She tucked one of the new pads in her pants, and with a moss basket in her hand, she headed out into the woods.

It was late in the afternoon when she returned. Auntie had a kettle of water heating in the kitchen. They prepared the herbs and put them in the hot water to steep. Auntie gave Tanya a cup of the hot herb tea and said, “Sit down and drink this. We have much to talk about.”

Auntie sat back in her wooden rocking chair and began to speak, “Mother Nature gives her children many gifts so that they may experience life fully. If you understand and care for these gifts, they will grow in power and your life will be filled with much beauty and happiness. These gifts can take many forms, just as people can take many forms. But there is one gift whose form is the same for all who are female. It is the gift of the Flow which comes every month. The Flow is a gateway for entering the great river of feelings that runs through all life. It will carry you into the deep waters of your emotions where you will receive the power that comes with trusting your heart, the power to know when you truly know something.

“When a woman is about to enter her moontime, she becomes very, very sensitive. It is the time when she feels things the most strongly; the time when her ability to see the invisible around her is the sharpest; the time when her dreams and visions are the most powerful. It is a sacred time.”

Auntie then leaned forward and looked at Tanya and spoke these words of caution, “As with any power, if it is not treated with care and honor it can become very destructive. Some women stop listening to their feelings. They throw away their ability to see the invisible and they quiet the voice that speaks to them from within.”

“Because,” replied Auntie, “sometimes they are afraid to speak their truth because others around them might not like what they have to say. So they act like things are all right with them when they are not. They say yes to things when they want to say no.”

“At their moontime, when they are most sensitive to their truth, they are unable to lie to themselves any longer and the river of feelings that had been dammed up throughout the month comes bursting forth in a torrent of hurt and anger.

“A woman in this situation can say and do some very hurtful things. Those around her cannot understand why she has such strong feelings about things that seem so small because they don’t know that she has held back her truth for so long. And the woman forgets about the power of being in her truth. She thinks something is wrong with her. And she calls her gift the curse.”

“Yes,” said Auntie, pleased that the young girl seemed to be understanding so quickly. “And that is why it is important to honor this gift from Mother Nature, to trust your feelings, to listen to that inner voice, to know that you truly can see the invisible.”

Auntie poured Tanya another cup of tea and continued. “When it is your moontime, your powertime, you need to spend much more time with yourself, your thoughts, and your feelings. It is a time to go within yourself. If you spend too much time with others and become too busy with the outside world, you will become resentful and grumpy. You may find that you get belly cramps or backaches.”

“Because Mother Nature is calling you to go within. There is a time for being busy outside yourself and a time to be still and go within. Whenever you fight the natural rhythms of the Moon and the Earth and your body, it can be very uncomfortable, even painful.

Tanya nodded her head in understanding and Auntie continued, “When you are in your moontime you will need more sleep than usual. It is very important to know this. You will receive many very strong dreams from the Dream Maker. They will be dreams for healing and dreams for guidance. You need to pay attention to them.”

“And now,” said Auntie, noticing that Tanya had drained the last few drops of her tea, “would be a good time for you to enter that dreamspace. When you wake in the morning, I will fix you a nice breakfast and we can talk about your dreams.”

Take a moment to recall your earliest experiences with your menses. Were you caught by surprise, or did you know what to expect from your body? What were you taught and how? Were you taught that it was something troublesome, painful, disgusting, dangerous? Were you taught that you were better off ignoring it, as though it weren’t happening? How did you interpret what was said (or not said) to you? What implication did you get about what it means to “become a woman”?

What messages did you get from society at that time? How was “having your period” handled at school? What did it mean? How did the girls or women in your life respond to it? How did the boys or men react?

Think about the messages you still get from society today. Look at the messages the media give. Are women’s menses discussed openly, in a matter-of-fact way, or is there much vagueness and innuendo? Pay attention to advertisements of tampons, pads, douches, vaginal deodorants. What do they suggest?

It is not surprising to find that the onset of menstruation often coincides with the onset of disordered eating. Many girls first show signs of being preoccupied with fat and weight around the time of their first menses. That is the time when their bodies are beginning to change, to follow a deeper, more primitive set of guidelines that they cannot control. They may not realize that most girls experience a significant weight gain sometime during the year preceding their menarche. It is the body’s way of accumulating the fat necessary for processing progesterone, the hormone essential to menstruation. If these girls are already living lives where they feel as though they don’t have much power or control, they may start dieting in response to this weight gain to give them some sense of being in control.

Feelings about what it means to become a woman and issues of feminine sexuality begin to surface at the time of menarche. If a girl’s first palpable impressions of being a woman are not favorable, if she is afraid of her sexuality, she may try to suppress her fears by eating compulsively or she may turn to dieting to distract herself from her concerns. A desperate attempt to stop the tide of maturity can herald the beginning of an ongoing battle with her body, a seemingly endless cycle of weight gain and loss that she can only view as evidence of her flawed personality, her lack of “willpower”.

So we find that, just as ancient societies had special rituals for girls at the onset of menarche to celebrate this rite of passage into womanhood, our modern society also has a ritual for adolescent girls to mark their entrance into womanhood. It is called dieting.

Women who struggle with disordered eating often report that when they are premenstrual, they have the most trouble with compulsive eating. They complain that it is during this time of the month that they crave certain “bad” foods and are unable to control their behavior.

These women deplore the onset of their menses because of the extreme mood swings they experience at this time. They find themselves withdrawing from, or overreacting to certain situations. They are easily overcome with fits of rage and tears of frustration. They assume something is wrong with them.

Our society, which has long been out of touch with the deep rhythms of nature, supports this misperception. Certainly there must be something wrong with them if they can’t control their emotions or eating behavior when it is “that time of the month.” There must be something wrong with them if they act and feel differently when they are ovulating.

Because of these cultural attitudes, it doesn’t occur to these women to question their feelings and cravings to see what their bodies are trying to tell them. It doesn’t occur to them to look deep inside and ask what might be going on. Instead, they curse their menses for messing up their diet plans, for causing such erratic behavior.

Imagine if we women understood our bodies to be reflections of the cycles found in nature. We would recognize that the waters in our bodies follow a rhythm as sure as the change in seasons, the ebb and flow of the tides, the waning and waxing of the moon. If we honored the inherent wisdom of our bodies, we would learn to listen, to treat them with respect instead of judgment, and to experience them as sacred messengers that bring us information about our physical needs, our innermost feelings, and our individual internal rhythms.

PMS would come to mean “premenstrual sensitivity,” the time of the month when all veils of illusion would be lifted and the truth would be most accessible. All those lies we’d told ourselves and others throughout the month would be revealed so that we could no longer act in ways that were contrary to our deepest feelings. It would be an opportunity to do some emotional house-cleaning, restore our integrity, wipe our slates clean, and start anew, just as our bodies shed the linings of the uterus and start to prepare for new beginnings.

If you find yourself eating more when you are premenstrual, recognize it as a signal indicating that you need to listen carefully to your body so that you can determine whether you are eating in response to physical or emotional hunger. It is a time to pay particular attention to your physical sensations so that you don’t confuse the activity in your uterus with your physical hunger signal. Use your heightened sensitivity to lead you to the truth of what and how you are feeling.

It may be a natural part of your monthly rhythm to eat more just prior to your menses and less during your menstruation. If this is the case, you may experience a slight weight gain during your period which is lost once your period is over. It is not unusual for a woman’s weight to fluctuate throughout the month, just as the moon grows into fullness and then wanes into darkness.

If you are accustomed to eating compulsively when confronted with strong feelings, you may find yourself eating more when you are premenstrual because this is the time when emotional sensitivity is the greatest. Instead of fighting those emotions and stuffing them down with food, use this time as an opportunity to gain greater access to your feelings and to develop a deeper understanding of those feelings that might be triggering disordered eating behavior. Tendencies toward extreme mood swings or emotional overreaction are signals that there are feelings you have been suppressing throughout the month.

Once you learn to respond to your feelings by acknowledging, accepting, and expressing them assertively throughout the month, instead of by eating or dieting, the level of the intensity of your feelings when you are premenstrual will diminish. In time, you will come to welcome your menses and the gift of awareness that they bring.