Strength TogetHER 10- Session 9

 

May 15 2021

Strength togetHER is a safe virtual space where girls from different backgrounds come together and share their stories. We believe in rising ourselves by lifting up others. We walk with the motto of “girls supporting girl”. 

On 15th of May 2021, we talked about Mensuration in general and how has it been existing in our society under various topics, majorly focusing on health, sanitation and taboos. Our topic for the session was, “Mensuration and Taboos”. 

Our session was moderated by Sambriddhi Khanal who is currently working as a School Health Nurse under Ministry of Social Development- Bagmati Province. She is passionate about creating awareness on public health issues and adopting healthy lifestyle for better health outcome. She helps students before they know they need it. She is always striving towards being a better health educator, self-love and body positivity.  

We talked about how we have been restricted from so many opportunities just because we were menstruating and we are often made to believe in taboos since very young age rather than focusing on proper mensural health and hygiene. One of the major taboos being that it’s impure and not safe to be in public spaces. We talked about stereotyping prevalent in our communities regarding menstruation and sexual reproductive health. A girl child is merely aware of mensuration before she is cautious of taboos prevalent. So we think twice before breaking those stereotypes and taboos too. We talked about the pain and pleasure that goes through. The cramps, back pain, nausea and every other symptoms other than vaginal bleeding are equally contributing to mensuration cycle. We shared our experiences of using various types of period products. Eco friendly sustainable products such as mensural cup is widely in practice there last few years. A lot of us has concerns regarding its troublesome procedure of inserting and taking out. 

Our moderator gave us a very insightful feedbacks and we took a lot of learnings back from this session. She shared her share of experiences and gave us responses accordingly. We learned that our lifestyle and diet habit also affects in our cycle and we can definitely bring positive changes through change in our lifestyle making it healthier. This process of learning and unlearning helped us distinguish the right and wrong side of lifestyle, health, sanitation, cultural taboos and stereotyping. Talks are initiated and there are huge events being organized for awareness. As always change cannot be gained overnight but hopefully, we are leaning towards the better future. 

This session was a great opportunity to learn and unlearn taboos we have heard of or even been through. And most importantly a talk that came out loud and proud with zero shame and a learning that there is no shame in being a person who bleeds. 

This blog is written by Samikshya Aryal, an undergraduate student of Bachelors in Development Studies who identifies as a feminist. She has developed a keen interest in literature and is an aspiring poet. Besides an avid reader and enthusiastic learner, she wants to travel as much. 

-Samikshya Aryal, Cohort Coordinator (LOKOPAKAR)