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Welcome back to The Leak for 2023, our first blog features a poem from Didi Ananda Rashmika, enjoy!

I know you don’t understand
and so didn’t I,
until I no longer could ignore
what my body was telling me.
I cannot be the same every day,
the same favourite version of me,
the one that helps, gives, serves and pleases,

the one that has no personal needs or desires,                                                             

that keeps everyone happy, smilingly.

Believe me, I have tried
and for a while it seemed to work.
As long as I ignored the soft voice within.
As long as I assumed the premenstrual emotions to be normal.

As long as my irritability was just a character flaw of mine.
As long as I could cry at night and not think more of it
than “something is wrong with ME”.
But “as long as” has limits too
and I reached there a few years ago.

I can no longer can avoid my inner voice.
I can no longer accept emotional suffering as normal.
I can no longer label my cyclical symptoms as personal weaknesses.
And I don’t want to any longer.
There’s nothing wrong with me.
Nor with the millions of women who share the same nature.
We are more-so much more-than the helpful hands
that keep the family, society and world running and functioning

We are the embodiment of the life force
Fluctuating, ever-changing … cyclical.

Now that I know, there’s no way back
and that doesn’t make it easier
since you and most others do not yet understand.
So I need to teach you
with all the patience I can muster
– even in my most sensitive times.
It is hard – being misunderstood
and yet being the key to the change that we need.
Yes WE, not I.
You too need the world to understand,
for until then our society is only limping ahead,
one leg weakened by shame and ignorance.

There’s nothing wrong with me
Nor with the millions of women who share the same nature

We are the embodiment of the life force
Fluctuating, ever-changing …
We are cyclical.

Didi Ananda Rashmika

Menstrual educator, Celebration Day for Girls facilitator

Shortly after Didi was introduced to Menstrual Cycle Awareness, inspired by all it had brought to her life and wellbeing, she started sharing this newly discovered wisdom with women around her and on the online community she guides as leader of the PanaceAM Foundation and its ‘Mujer Despierta’ (Awakened Woman) movement. The reaction was always the same: “Why did we not learn this before?”

After hosting the Celebration Day for Girls as Outreach programs – free of charge – to underserved communities, mainly in rural Colombia, Didi organized and hosted the first Facilitator training in South America in 2023 and is beyond pleased that the team of facilitators in Latin America is ever growing.

Because, although she loves hiking with her dogs, regular classes of Capoeira and every now and then training for a half marathon, there is nothing that fulfils Didi more than seeing girls and women grow and transform their lives, becoming their wonderfully feminine, strong and happy selves.

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