This latest blog for The Leak is very in line with the name, Danella Connors writes about her experience of leaking as someone with a heavy flow, enjoy Danella’s journey from shame to embracing her flow. 

My first bleed happened when I was nearly 14 and the whole time I cycled, I was a heavy bleeder.  And I lived with a constant and often debilitating anxiety about period leakage.

In the early days, I wore thick pads and a menstrual belt, and by the time I was in my later teenage years, I was wearing super plus tampons and stick on super pads.  Often two at a time of each. Always feeling like there was never enough I could do to hold my blood.

Doonas, blankets, all manner of soft cloth and fabric in great swathes is often what I felt I needed to, ‘pack myself in’.

I’d often sit on my hands while I had my period so that I’d be able to feel any leak as it happened: in cars, at dinner tables, in university lecture halls. Acting like all was well, and, internally, in an acute state of anxiety.  I look back and really feel for that young woman. 

There were times during my bleed, that I’d stop mid-sentence with a sense of, ‘Oh no’ dread, as I’d feel rushes, or heavy clots come away. Would this be the one to leak through?

Indeed leaking happened fairly often. At work, during the day, while I slept, out socially. Everywhere. All the time. I lived with this, and the foreboding sense of something embarrassing and deeply shameful happening, along with feeling something was really, wrong with me.

By the time I was approaching 30, something else was stirring in me. A more instinctual sense of how things could be.  It was pre-internet days, and I didn’t have the sort of relationship, or support in my family, where I could talk openly and seek comfort and understanding. Though I look back and see my intuition was trying to nudge a new awareness in me.

I started feeling like I wanted to sit on the earth to bleed, though I felt scared at even the thought of this. I was afraid that anyone who encountered me, especially if they were family, would think I was crazy. I didn’t know anyone who did this, nor who I felt I could talk to about my longing for such a thing.

Around this time, I visited Indonesia with friends, and in one small village where we stayed, we went with the women down to the river where we could bathe and swim. I was at the tail end of my period, and as I sat, naked in the water, a small clot came away and floated between my legs. A small fish appeared and swam up between my legs to nibble at the clot.  Soon, it was joined by another and then a third.

Time slowed and I was filled with a profound sense of awe as I watched. It was as if the web of life was showing itself to me and, in this moment, I could see my own integral place in it. I later reflected, that I really was connected to the cycles of life through my own blood. This was a deeply moving, almost mystical moment of realisation, through my own experience of my own body and  cycle of bleeding.

I felt a quiet joy, and a lot of shame, pain and confusion dissolved through this experience.

This, for me, was a turning point. Something was more alive in me now, about the beauty and naturalness of my cycle. It kept nudging away at my psyche, encouraging me to find another way, impossible to ignore.

I ditched tampons (they were always uncomfortable and I felt a kind of gag reflex in my vagina when using them). I started charting my cycle, finding my own style of doing things. I drew large mandalas to keep track of the moon phases, and what day of my cycle I was up to. I made notes of my moods, amount of blood loss, it’s colour and texture. Also, the quality and type of my cervical mucus in between periods. I began wearing cloth pads, soaking them, and feeding my blood to the garden. I learnt much about my own unique rhythm, and how much it had to teach me.  

I really fell in love with my cycle, though it never lightened, through the information it gave me. It became like a lens for me to view my own well-being, through which I connected to a feeling of wholeness. I got to understand the cyclic nature of my body more, how the physical symptoms were indicators of cyclic changes. How my moods were not symptoms of something wrong. They were signs, pointing me towards what I needed at a particular time, e.g. more rest, lighter food, time to reflect and be more inward. That sort of thing.

The more intimately I got to know my cycle, the more things like anxiety about leaking, pain, pre-menstrual moodiness all changed.  I’d take time for more quietness or rest if needed, rather than push against this. I found when pain would happen, or moods would swing, it was simply showing I needed to tune in more and perhaps make some changes to how I was doing things. I learnt to nourish myself with art, music and written word, anything that affirmed the power of our menstrual cycles, for individual and collective well-being.  

Through soaking and collecting my blood, I got to know the colour. So many magnificent hues of one blood! Burgundy to magenta, strawberry red to brown, layered and swirling, viscous to fine and thin, so very beautiful. This was most intense during menopause and at that time I felt inspired to make art, with my own blood as the paint.

As a consequence of my choices and experiences, I raised my daughter differently. She was given honest conversation and information about periods, and a different kind of care to what I’d known. This allowed her greater freedom of choice, and more opportunity to find her own menstrual well-being. A new legacy passed on changed between us. 

With education, encouragement, nourishment; and support, we can all learn to see our cycle as friend and teacher, not foe. I look back upstream and see how each one of us can be part of a tide of change, bringing back honour and celebration of women’s bodies and cycles, restoring respect for the great teacher and harbinger of inner wisdom that each of our menstrual rhythms really are.

Let this be our downstream flow.