A Voice Becoming

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Beyond Periods and Purity

My first attempt at grace and whimsy was a royal failure. She was far too appreciative of my effort to say so at the time, but weeks later in a moment of exhaustion and sibling rivalry, the truth came out. She DID NOT want her “woman year thing” to look like THAT. Ahem.

I’ll be honest. It all seemed daunting. I did not feel nearly creative enough nor did I desire to reinvent wheels that already existed and had worked for some. I had found a series that would provide intentional time with me and Dad while covering some of the issues I believe girls face: beauty, modesty, boys, and friendships. These were topics I deemed appropriate for her eleventh-to-twelfth year, her first year in middle school, the year before the official launch of her rites of passage.

In the early stages of figuring this all out, I welcomed a plan. This offered one so specific I could memorize the script if I wanted! I knew it was girly and planned for it to be a mere launchpad, but I had no idea how badly I would miss my daughter’s heart by executing it.

Despite her warnings that she did not want to have a tea party, our inaugural date started at a Victorian teahouse. I was excited. I love tea and scones and all things British. The teahouse was supposed to serve as a live object lesson as we discussed the quality of our words, actions, dress, et cetera. We dressed up and found an adorable place, but there were all sorts of distractions that mirrored the ways in which I was missing her heart. For instance, she hated the tea, even with lots of sugar and cream. She kept fidgeting with her skirt (the only one she owned), uncomfortable in the forced attire. And we were the youngest and quietest patrons, eventually requesting to move into an empty alcove to hear ourselves above the loud ladies’ groups. She felt out of place—not special—on every level.

Had I really thought about my daughter, Ella, I would have known all this. We had never ever played tea party. She owned zero dolls that she dressed up and perched in little chairs around a pink tea set. The only Barbies in our home were mine from childhood. We did have one plastic dollhouse set, but my son played with it more than the girls, knocking dolls off the roof and running cars into the front door. Ella had stopped choosing to wear dresses at the age of three and even at age eleven was uninterested in makeup, hairstyles, and other bling. My daughter is not a girly-girl. Certainly not one to relish the finery of an English tearoom.

Of course, the failure of my first activity might very well be the success of another mom. But that is the point. Our daughters are different, yours and mine. Stereotypes have formed that say all girls should enjoy what I tried to create for mine: dress-up, pampering with special foods in special places, dainty china as a meaningful metaphor for godly speech and action. We are told all girls ask the fundamental questions: Am I lovely? and Do you see me?

Archetypes exist to categorize and explain behavior. Tests abound on Facebook these days, assigning just about anything to a personality. I suppose we have a need to feel like we belong to a group with a set of descriptions, something that justifies our feelings and excuses our actions. As parents, perhaps we long for these labels even more. I took comfort in my son throwing the dolls off the roof rather than dressing them or doing their hair. “Boys will be boys” assured me that my son was “normal.” But are my girls normal? And what does “normal” even mean?

I have two daughters and they are very, very similar. The youngest prefers to play spy over any other pretend play. She has bags, notebooks, crumpled newspapers full of possible codes, and old keyboards and cell phones, which aid in her spy world. She prefers to read animal mysteries over American Girl Doll, Anne of Green Gables, or Little House on the Prairie. While she loves stuffed animals, her favorites are endangered and wild species that become part of an elaborate fire, earth, water, and air duel.

While an archetype for girls might suggest they are asking, Am I worth fighting for? I believe my daughters are asking, Am I fierce enough? Instead of Am I lovely?, mine are also asking, Am I strong? So what do we do if the archetype doesn’t fit? How do we embrace the truth that God designed girls and boys differently and that male and female reflect Him uniquely while still validating each child’s complex design? Indeed, both sides of the spectrum reflect His image.

For as many parents who are raising girls like mine, there exists an equal amount raising girls who perfectly fit the typical example. The question is how to find the right language to ascribe meaning to our daughters. If the tearoom missed her heart, where would I find it?

Periods and Purity

When my first attempt at intentionality failed miserably, I sought the counsel of other women. I created a survey and heard from women with older daughters, younger girls, and no children at all.

Interestingly, in answers to questions regarding rites of passage, most women assumed I meant the onset of our period. And most could not recall their own mothers addressing this monumental change with them at all. It seems my mom was not alone in her embarrassment around intimate topics. Across the board, each woman thought of either puberty or purity when it came to “rites of passage” conversations. Of those who had celebrated this rite with their girls, all of them described an event or a gift: a weekend at a hotel, a dance, a special ring, et cetera. Only one woman mentioned she thought it was a multiyear process.

I find this interesting. It is true that rites are by nature, events. They signify a ceremonial act or ritual. Rites of passage are markers of before and after: marriage, baptism, graduation, et cetera. When talking about girls, the most natural marker in the transition to womanhood is indeed her period. And in the Christian culture, the most natural ceremonial act between a daughter and her parents has been a purity covenant. I get it. But I’m deeply dissatisfied with it.

Though our society may lack significant rites of passage for girls and boys, they are deeply imbedded in other cultures. The Luiseño Indians of Southern California used to publicly announce their daughters’ onset of menses through a ceremonial burial in heated sand. Several girls would go through it at once while the older women of the tribe taught them various things about being a good woman. At one point they ate tobacco as a test of their value: if they swallowed it they were good, if they vomited, they were bad. The sand ritual was followed by several months of various restrictions, the donning of a special headdress, and culminated in the girls painting on large granite boulders, some of which can still be seen today.

In Africa, rites of passage are considered “critical in nation building and identity formation.”¹ It is the transition from child to adult that inculcates them to group norms and expectations. For the Twa tribe, girls celebrate their menses (which is considered a blessing) by spending an entire month in a house with elder women instructing them on their history and future roles as a woman, namely being a good wife and mother. When the girl emerges from the home, she is deemed a woman and eligible for marriage.

Though spanning continents and history, most rites of passage have a lot in common. The girl’s physical change is celebrated in the community of other women. She is welcomed into the greater company of women, past, present, and future. And she is deemed ready and worthy of her future calling at the passage’s conclusion. While they might commence at the onset of menses, they encompass far more personal formation than body change. And yet this is all that we have distilled from these ancient rites of passage traditions: periods and purity.

In our current culture, girls experience a variety of “rites.” At some point, younger and younger, they receive a smartphone, opening them to the world of social media pressure and instant online access to videos, photographs, and strangers. Here begins the confirmation of what Disney XD has already taught them: their value is commensurate with trendy fashion, knowing how to dupe parents, and toying with a boy’s emotions to get what they want. Inundated with unmitigated advertising “promoting the idea that certain products—not family, community, personal goals, or achievements—will lead to being cool,”² our kids’ self-worth is wrongly shaped. If our girls do not receive a counter-story, they will be led to believe they need what culture tells them they need to have any worth at all.

Soon after the rite of the coveted smartphone, she attends her first school dance. With lights off, slow music and awkward coupling encourage her to “date” for the first time, lasting a few days and mostly via social media. As she grows, the expectation to have a more serious boyfriend increases as well as social pressure to lose her virginity. By the time she gets her driver’s license and graduates high school, two major rites of passage for modern American teens, most girls will have already come to believe that their value and self-worth come from being a sex object. This is what music lyrics and videos, teen fiction, movies, and commercials have been telling them for years. It is what they saw played out on their phone, in Snapchat and on Instagram, at the school dances, and in the hallways.

In fact, by the time she puts on her cap and gown, 8 percent³ of her friends have harmed themselves, 9 percent have attempted suicide⁴, 64 percent have had sex⁵, 7 percent have gotten pregnant⁶, and 40 percent of sexually active girls have had an STD⁷. If she’s not confused about who she is as a woman, many of her peers certainly are. They are careening into college and marriage unclear as to where their value derives, looking to men to affirm them, and deeply insecure. Eventually, married for ten hard years and mothering a few toddlers, they limp into my husband’s counseling office unsure how they got there and with little idea how their story has impacted their present reality.

We owe our daughters more than this. And the cure is our intentionality.

Conversations around periods and purity may be a portion of what we impart to our girls, but it cannot be all. They need us to cast a vision of who they are becoming. Why have they been created? What story is being told through their lives? If we succeed at lifting their eyes out of the teen drama of bodies, boys, and besties then we have painted a picture of womanhood that captures them: they know they are needed and valued in God’s kingdom, starting right now. They know they are being invited to join a global sisterhood that reflects the image of God.

We need to build a framework of womanhood upon which they can hang all future doubts, experiences, and questions. They need a framework to reference when culture tells them otherwise. Our daughters need a rite of passage that invites them to join the company of women and prepares them to join us. If this sounds at all intimidating, you are in good hands. If you’re overwhelmed, you’re in good company. So am I. I’m a fellow sojourner, stumbling through this with you out of deep longing for something more. I believe this is so vital that with God’s help and one another, we can change the trajectory of our daughters’ lives. Will you join me? I think it’s worth it.

I call it Becoming.

On Periods

I was twelve and something was happening.

We were a full day’s car ride from home and surrounded by all the relatives. My grandparents’ house was nestled in a wood with cornfields behind and a mortician living down the lane. The small town felt isolated, stalled, and like their home, frozen in time. The baby-blue toilet with the padded seat cover was my hiding place.

In the kitchen, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and the mortician neighbor enjoyed happy hour. It was Christmas and we were all together. There was no privacy, though I pulled my mother down the hall to the baby-blue bathroom next to the thirteen-inch TV with Miss Piggy sitting atop. I was horrified. My underpants were brown and sticky and I had absolutely no category for this. My mother paused. An embarrassed smile was gone as quickly as I detected it and she brushed it off. “Too much chocolate” she said.

Six months later it was spring and the sticky returned red. Now, from health class I presume, I knew what this was. I knew what to ask for. I knew what was happening. Years later, on the eve of my wedding, when the same smile returned to her face, I recalled the baby-blue toilet. I remembered that at age ten, I had asked what French kissing was and she said she had no idea. I remembered another toilet at age fourteen, from which I received coaching from a friend. She handed me a tampon and mirror and closed the door, not letting me out till I was successful.

And though I managed despite my mother’s embarrassment around intimate and feminine topics, what I recall her telling me that Christmas at my grandparents’ has framed the bulk of my parenting: There will be no topic too intimate to discuss candidly (and age appropriately) with my kids.

I tried this philosophy out when my son was five. I found him in the bathroom with the contents of the vanity all over the floor. Two-year-old Ella was on the tile floor with eye shadow and lipstick above her eyes, around her lips, and near her ears. Half of her foot was covered in nail polish. Next to her on the floor were several tampons, unwrapped and unrolled. Of course, “What are these, Mommy?” followed.