Women of Victoria, Australia,
"The Waratah Project"
exploring menstruation and menopause
in a positive and contemporary context
Let's change the pattern of shame and teach the next generations to be authentic, confident and unapologetic about their biology.
Fiorella Connie Carollo
Whaauu, kudos to this project and all the women behind it!
What a beauty, what a vision,
Thanks to you spunky Aussie women
Such timing in bringing the project to the attention of the whole world
I bet times are ripe for giving it a thorough welcoming
How did I get to know about the Waratah Project
being Italian and not Aussie and being in Bali?
I was introduced to the project by Belinda in
a swimming pool on a late Friday afternoon in June.
I was relaxing and she was taking a break from a
five-day workshop "Mother daughter coming of age" led by
Janoel Liddy which sound extremely interesting...
that's how our conversation started and then moved to
my current interest in Bali: interviewing midwife Ibu Robin, 2011 CNN Hero.
Belinda and me felt connected by our interests and concerns
and decided to take our conversation a bit further with a follow up next day "over a cuppa".
Janoel joined the conversation, too, that's how I've learnt about this wonderful thing "Celebration Day for Girls to prepare for and welcome them into their own cycle" ! Kudos!
[The curious thing about our coming together, is that both Belinda and Janoel had a connection with Italy and could speak Italian !! ]
The Waratah Project is going to be a worldwide groundbreaking leading project.
It aims to gather data on how menstruation and menopause are affecting women's life today.
I've been myself very much concerned about menstruation in witnessing how little women and girls welcomed their periods, on the contrary, most of them seemed unhappy feeling discomfort.
If we consider that menstruating is above everything else the monthly reminder of our womanhood, it is very telling that most of us welcome it with discomfort. That is, we welcome with discomfort our being woman.
Participate to the making of the project answering to the online Questionnaire at this website
The ongoing research will be comparable to the Hite Report on women sexuality in the 1970s.
to continue..
Further reading: The Waratah Project on FB
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| Waratah fiore del sud dell'Australia |
Fiorella Connie Carollo
It's my opinion that the lack of respect towards women is the main cause of discomfort during women's bleeding time. Considering that menstruation is the physical reminder of our womanhood, it comes with little surprise that most of us react to that with little joy.
Do we witness respect and consideration, to women in general and each of us in particular, in our daily lives? Or are we rather surrounded by commercial spots reminding us that we smell bad some days each month, others do remind us that in those same days we're unmanageable and few more are there to tell us that we need to hide what's going on inside us.
To feel good about menstruating, women have to go as far as pre-biblical times, when prophetesses foretold during their bleeding because they knew their power was at its most in those days.
In pre-agrarian societies no one doubted that women were more powerful then men. Their body was the one that changes with the moon cycle, exactly the same way as did the waters in the oceans, and plants of their crops. In those days women in the same village, most probably were menstruating more or less the same days of the month. On top of that, women's body gave birth allowing the group not to die out. All these facts to the eyes of our forebears were evidences of how women were attuned to the universal laws. The synchronisation woman-nature showed the real natural power that abode inside women and so very naturally women became the intermediate between their community and their gods.
The religious leadership of women lasted until the appearance of monotheism, agrarian society vs nomadic and what has become to be known as patriarchy. But how the change in leadership could take place? What was need to be destroyed ? There weren't any wars carried out against women.
The shift took place destroying the symbols of feminine power : menstruating was no more a powerful moment but on the contrary a loss of power. Women were forbidden to enter temples, participate to ceremonies, they were secluded in huts and made feel ashamed and so on. Giving birth was no more celebrated as a rite of passage in the life of a woman but became a painful and lonely event to be endured.
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| SOFIE BRABANT: OGLOO IN BALI |