I had my first period in elementary school.

It’s a couple of weeks before my 10th birthday and the girls in my class are whispering about one of our friends starting her cycle. I join in. They tell me that I probably don’t even know what a period is. They’re right. At my aunt’s house the next day, I ask my mother. She’s dismissive. My aunt tells me it’s when a girl grows up, and I feel as though I’ve unlocked some sacred piece of knowledge. So I insist to the girls the next school day that I was in the know. I tell them: it’s when a girl grows up. They laugh.

Around that time, I started bleeding. Sporadically but it still frightened me. When it grew more consistent, I decided to investigate, finally determining that I was dying of a terminal illness at the ripe age of 10 years old. I couldn’t confess to my parents what was happening to their only daughter. So I hid it. And carried the burden alone for an entire year.

My ailment progressed and I confided in my best friend. How do you know? I told her and she paused. Oh. She said that I’d been having my period.

It’s funny how quickly shame can settle in. And all the more how stubbornly it lingers. See, it’s different for a girl. Even in childhood, I had a sense of responsibility over my body as an inconvenience. March’s themes, Taboos, calls us to step into that shame and to do it boldly. To reclaim the dirtied parts of ourselves as holy. It’s an invitation to acknowledge that the darkness of our guilt, desires, discomforts, and pleasures are just as much a part of us as the light and adulterated self we present.

Welcome to Taboos. No reservations. No apologies.