I want to preface this post by saying that I do not think the subject of feminine health and hygiene should or needs to be embarrassing or awkward. That being said, I realize that it is for some people for varying reasons. However, there is important information regarding feminine health/hygiene and education should not be avoided because of embarrassment. Women’s health is very important and awareness cannot be raised in an environment of shame. With that in mind I would like to encourage both men and women alike to read this post and/or find other ways of learning more about this subject matter.

Since puberty I have dreaded anything that has to do with my reproductive organs. I didn’t want to learn anything about the female body. Since the age of 12 when I first got my period I have hated it. There were a lot of reasons; the main one being that I quickly discovered that it was always going to be a significant source of problems for me. My way of dealing with this fact was to ignore it. I wouldn’t go to the doctor, I wouldn’t talk about it, I wouldn’t learn the correct terms that relate to this subject matter, I even refused to study the female body in my AP Anatomy/Physiology class. I still get really nervous about whether I am using the term “menstruation” correctly (To be totally honest I just looked it up again to make sure.). This has become a major problem in my life and a difficult one for me to fix mainly because it is an enigma. It is not like me to run away from a problem or pretend like it is not there. Living in reality is very important to me, even when it is difficult to do so.

However, yesterday at the grocery store I made a very significant change. I made a change in my usual feminine hygiene purchase. It began as an accident when the term “organic cotton” caught my eye. I was already holding my regular products when I saw natracare’s chlorine free, perfume free, plastic free, biodegradable, organic tampons, pads, and panty liners. Years ago I heard about the health problems caused by chlorine bleaching in the production of tampons, pads, and panty liners (most mainstream brands do this), but chose to ignore it.

Dioxin, among other toxins, is a by-product of chlorine bleaches (organochlorines); making even its production harmful to the environment. Dioxin is a carcinogen (cancer causing substance) that builds up over time in the environment, animals, and human beings (As a result of the food chain we receive dioxins not only from what we are immediately exposed to, but also the dioxins from that which we eat.). The more exposure you have to dioxins, the more you are going to accumulate this toxin in your body over your lifetime.

Dioxins, furans and PCB’s, which are generally referred to as dioxin-like compounds, are highly toxic organochlorines. These compounds are extremely fat seeking. There are some natural organochlorines in the atmosphere, but considerably greater amounts of artificially produced ones. Minute traces of dioxins may have existed before industrialization, but a huge rise occurred in the late 1940’s along with the expansion of organochlorine manufacture, which started at this time, and the extensive use of pesticides in agriculture worldwide.

The production of dioxins in the manufacture of paper pulp products such as tampons and sanitary pads, are not only harmful to the environment, but also unnecessarily expose women to low levels of dioxins every time they use these products. Dioxin settles in the fat cells of our bodies and stay there for the rest of our lives, building up cumulatively over time from birth, so increased exposure means increased risk.

The use of organochlorines and the resulting dioxins is not limited to feminine hygiene products, but can also found in cleaning products/sanitizers, cosmetics, pesticides, and chlorine bleached pulp and paper products (paper towels, toilet paper, paper, etc.) just to name a few. Natracare has a great Health and Environment section with a lot of important information if you are interested in learning more. Since I am new to this myself I don’t have a lot of resources to pass on to you at this point. However, if you do have any helpful information to pass along I would love it if you would do so in the comment section.

Today, I celebrate being a woman and all complexities that come with this body of mine.

Since moving to Seattle I have really been struggling with one/change. The ideas for posts don’t come as readily as they did before or with as much energy and excitement behind them. When I do have an idea that I like I constantly find myself stumbling over my words as I try to get my thoughts and information out. This is not something that I have only recently become aware of, but it is something that I haven’t felt was pertinent as a one/change post until recently.

As much as I felt like I didn’t belong in the west suburbs of Chicago, I had been there for long enough to find a few people and places that in various ways and levels I could be in community with. Those people and places fed me and I fed them. I tend to be friends with various types of people, each of whom bring out a different part of me. I would go places, do things, and talk to people and many times those interactions would support, encourage, and challenge who I am and the way I chose to live my life. Without that support and foundation I have experienced a lot of difficulty. Many times inspiration, ideas, passion, and ultimately posts are born out of sharing in community and turning ideas over with other people. Being able to cultivate those relationships and experiences fosters growth and progress in my worldview.

Right now I am in the process of carving out a life for myself in Seattle and I am already excited about the direction it is heading. One of the things this move has really made me aware of is the importance of being involved in communities and having those be places where I am part of something important. Places where I let myself be needed and need others. Places that bring awareness. Places where I share something that allows me to connect with other people, and some of the most beautiful times in my life have been where I have done this with people who are very different from myself. In the past I have found these things in the form of The Yoga Place, Erehwon Farm, and regular time together with close friends. I am not sure what it will look like, but I know that finding new places like this will help bring alive my connection to this community, to various parts of myself, and how interconnected we all really are in this life. Already I found a place to belong in our new church and am in the process of getting to know a wonderful group of people. Eventually I am sure I will find a yoga studio and an organic farm that good fits as well.

When you become a part of something; when you become part of a community and get to connected to the people within it, a natural desire arises to take care of it and to make changes to your lifestyle to make sure that is happening. Hopefully, there will be others within that community that you can learn from and that can learn from you.

For those of you who might of been worried that I have slacked in my passion for the environment and human rights issues, I want to put your minds and hearts at ease and let you know that I am as devoted as ever.

Lately, my life has been full of conversations revolving around the topic of relationships. Being connected to other people is something that has always been very important to my husband and me. I believe that human beings were created to be in relationships with other human beings and the conversations as of late have consisted in figuring out what that practically looks like. We all need to be known and deeply cared for, as well as, to know and deeply care for someone else. However, it is not unusual for people to go most of their lives without being known or knowing someone else. There are some who say that this is a consequence of technology. While I agree that technology in some ways contributes to the problem (last night a friend of mine said that it gives us a false sense of connection to others); I believe our relational inhibitors run more deeply than this throughout our history as human beings.

Human beings in all societies have both spoken and unspoken social etiquette. Before I go any further I want to make clear that I don’t believe that social etiquette is bad, in fact, I think in many ways it serves a very positive function. However, there are ways that I feel we have become relationally hindered them; especially with respect to that which is unspoken. Unspoken social etiquettes are full of problems: they are vague, change from person to person, and are usually only verbalized after we have broken one (or more) of them. This isn’t too big of a deal until we are in a relationship, want to deepen it, and we don’t know the rules. The truth is that relationships can get very messy. People are going to let us down and not everyone we are in relationship with is going to be as willing or able to work on it as we would like. There are going to be those who do though. When approaching relationships and life in general, we have to think with more longevity and with less of a demand for immediate satisfaction.

I have very few close relationships. Maintaining close relationships takes a lot of love, work, energy, and time. However, those relationships teach me everyday how it is that I am supposed to treat other human beings and to be aware of what it is that people need. As a result of those relationships I am better able to care about those I don’t know as well or at all. I believe that without intimate relational connections of our own, it is very hard to connect or care about those we don’t know around the world. When we hold everyone at arms length, it is much easier to hold the world’s problems at arms length as well.