The Womb is not a place of pain or fear. It’s a place to create life.
Just to expand it further, with something like bleeding, which more than half of the population does every month. How do our bodies communicate with us through bleeding or communicate anything through bleeding? We are going now towards a direction of the moon, time and periods, menstruation and the power of the feminine and wombs. And also, how this not necessarily the domain of woman only or the people who have physical bodies of woman.
And also marginalized discourse, like few things are written, it is a marginalized conversation, no one wants to talk about part of us, because of it got such mystery and power.
In the African culture and traditions, the womb center is so sacred. When you, as a woman come of age, your grandmothers for then, it becomes a priority to her to make sure their granddaughter or their daughter that their womb becomes a sacred space. A sacred place, and it is treated as a sacred space and it is loved, it is natured but most importantly that it is protected.
In the African tradition, particularly the Bakgatla Tradition, because that’s where my mother and my great grandmother are held from, when you conceive and when you are three months pregnant you are given a herb to drink. And, that herb is so important, because what it does is that it protects the mother, if the mother goes into shock or she encounters a serpent while fetching water and she is frightened, traumatized. This herb she had been given to drink ensures that no fear enters the uterus. So, regardless of the trauma, the shock, and the depression, and whatever it is that consciousness is not allowed to enter, the medicine literally diverts.
The womb is a sacred space, and they are many institutions that were put in place to support the woman and to support her womb and her relationship with the womb. Remember that as a woman, the womb itself it is like a continuity of a society, of a community; that’s a birthplace. If can even think of the Bakgatla Ba Ga Kgafela, where do they come from? That sacred womb center, so they were certain processes from the time you were born until the time you came of age, it is time for you to become a mother, there were many processes involved in naturing, caring, and protecting womb.
Number one, when you started your menstruation circle, often times your menstrual circle was something that … you grandmother will observe, in kind of way to check where my daughter is now. And sometimes they would even delay your menstrual circle. They will delay the process, the beginning of that circle, and reason being, is because, when you start your menstrual circle and all these hormones in your body and obvious in some point have to enact those hormones, that energy. If you are 13 years old, 14 years old then it brings a lot of confusion. So, your innocence was protected until you are ready to be a woman. So, they ensure that your menstrual circle would coincide with rite of passage.
So, there this tree called Marula tree, and the trunk of Marula tree excretes a resin and I remember I used to eat it as a child but the children in the community were guided by their grandmothers to eat that resin because it’s very sweet, tasty, and yummy. I used to stick my fingers in there all the time. The chemical compound in that resin actually helps to delay the menstrual circle. And some women are reported to have had their period at the age of 20.
The reason being, is that when go through your rites of passage that’s when you are taken into nature, into the mountains, you are in isolation. You are with elders of the community and for the first time you get to know who is it that you are and what star is connected to your menstrual circle. Whatever decease you carrying they get diagnosed and they get cured in that process.
The first thing when you start your menstrual circle is that …number one you are ill. You had taken to the side to receive healing and one of the things that happened is that your grandmother will take cow dung and that cow dung they will make a paste and would encircle your womb area all the way to your back.
The second thing they do is, they would take the cow dung and they would put a paste right at the top of your neck all the way down to your coccyx, down your spine. And, what the cow dung did, is that it strengthened the uterus. When it is placed down your spine, it strengthens your back because remember that your spine is link to your bones and your nervous system and everything. So, your body is already being prepared from your first period, from the first time you bleed; it is already being prepared, its already preparing a childbearing body, to carry the integrity to bear a child you have to have a strong body, strong uterus.
So, the role of naturing and caring for the womb and protecting the womb was prime, was vital because when the womb is being natured and care for, and protected, there is a very pure energy that circulate thought it. And, when there is a pure energy encircles your womb then you are much healthier. Your heart is warmer, your emotions are clearer, your mind is clearer. It influences your relationship between you and your daughter. The relationship between you and your husband because there is pure energy that is emanating from the womb, because it has been protected, purified, and cleansed.
A Womb is more than biology. Continuation of a society
The womb is not a place of fear or pain. It’s a place to crate life.
By Tsholefelo Monare (Gogo Sophia
