RECLAIMING THE RHYTHM: UNDERSTANDING MENSTRUATION AND CHRONIC PAIN AS VITAL HEALTH SIGNS
Written for Creative Healing for Youth
Sylvia Orozco Silberman, DO MS /07 April 2025
The majority of patients with health concerns go through many years of appointments and approaches without being asked about how their menstrual cycle is.
Does it come every month?
Is it like clockwork?
Do you notice changes in your mood?
Is it brown? Is it bright red blood?
How long does it last?
Although menstruation is not often discussed, many times, it is a key link to understanding the disruptions that cause discomfort. For parents of daughters with chronic pain, asking about menstrual symptoms should be a part of the journey and a part of their child’s health.
Walking a healing journey is about being in alignment with the menstrual cycle to encourage girls to live in sync with their cyclical rhythmic physiology and not the “rhythm” of our structured society. Girls in our culture are shown that their pelvis is vital for birthing babies and sex. Little do they know that those are just bonuses. Adult women are being told that “uteruses are for babies and growing cancer”—to provide logical reasoning for having a hysterectomy. What an odd paradox. It doesn’t mean that interventions are the wrong decision, but dismissing the vitality of its actual function is harmful. The female body has wisdom and purpose in its menstrual cycle and serves a magnificent physiological function. A connection to this rhythm and cycle serves as a life skill to navigate the ebbs and flows of the menstrual tide.
As a young girl, I remember the message I received from tampon commercials that made me feel like “I can do anything a boy does, and a period won’t stop me.” I had Midol in my menstrual bag to “prevent” the negative symptoms, and I never acted like I was “PMS-ing.” The trend was to be on birth control pills to prevent the terrible symptoms of menstruation. I state this to illustrate the disconnect we have with our cycle. As today’s youth learn the misbelief and misunderstanding of their uterus, they later become adults, worry about getting pregnant, and inhibit their menstrual flow for years and years. Then they get older and beg only to get pregnant. What a rollercoaster of a ride. Where is the synchrony of the body? Where is the deep understanding?
How do we begin at a young age to check into our menstrual symptoms and, learn from them, listen to them? Know when we are ovulating and when we are not? Are the cramps unbearable? Do I feel very “off?” I only have brown-colored menses—what does that tell me? How do I prioritize an understanding rather than medicalizing and medicating?
The feminist movement felt that to hold a seat at the table, we needed to “be like men.” Don’t act hysterical. Don’t act like you’re on your period. Resting means you’re lazy. Shove a tampon in and get it done.
I look around and don’t see many fulfilled women these days. Most hold careers and have fertility challenges, un-empowered births, and/or mothering difficulties. Why didn’t that feminism work? Why didn’t they enter menopause with wisdom and strength?
What are we normalizing? What are we teaching the youth about themselves?
Did we not connect to the beauty of our physiology and with that space on how we “hold a seat at the table” as bleeding women—as women who flow with our menstrual cycle and honor our rest and so-called “crazy thoughts?” Could there possibly be wisdom for us in those thoughts? Maybe even truths for ourselves?
As a mother of daughters, I now recognize the harm the culture brought to my health and how it tainted my potential to connect within and truly understand something wiser and more profound.
I invite those with menstruating children not to normalize the “bad” symptoms. Allow it to be an invitation to seek the disruptions. Is it processed foods? Stress? Malnutrition? Emotional? How fantastic that every month is an opportunity to check in, flow through the seasons of the hormonal cycle, and better understand its purpose for physiology.
There is hope that as we integrate in synchrony and purpose to the bleeding, we can start to understand and respect the sacredness of the uterus—shifting our paradigm from the medicalized uterus to the sacred uterus.
This is where we guide their way and reframe the misbeliefs we have been showing them. Invite them into their magic and superpower.
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