We may think we live in modern, advanced times. On many accounts, including the fact that we still solve conflicts through wars on this planet, we are not.
Culturally, women have been led to be at war with their bodies, their sexuality and fertility for a long time. If peace inside of us is a necessity for us to be able to contribute to peace outside, starting with our own bodies and realities is an essential step.
Menstruation is still a taboo in many cultures around the world, being associated with impurity, shame, and guilt for being a woman.
Even though access to sanitary products has increased in many countries, education about menstruation as something to be embraced rather than ignored and medicalized is still lacking. The very ability to give life and reproduce the species that menstruation is a sign of becomes a sign of inferiority or, in other contexts, something to be completely ignored, as if we are functioning in neutral bodies. Putting up with decades of pain as normal is more of the norm. The woman’s “lot”, “curse”, “disease” has only been cosmeticized not fully transformed in mainstream cultures and mindsets.
In the absence of explicit education and empowerment, generation after generation of women pick up the millennia-old stigma that looks down on the natural processes happening in the body of women. Being at war inside with one’s own nature is a constant life experience for most women unless they challenge mainstream views of menstruation as taboo.
Many mystics from Krishnamurti to Dalai Lama state that there would be no bloodshed outside if there was not a bloody war inside of us. Indigenous Native American traditions, both from North and South America, speak of offering the menstrual blood to the earth as a peace offering that can stop the bloodshed outside.
What if this is a “wise wound” of women holds a key for peace? This is what pioneers in the 70s started speaking of, attempting to recover the meaning and sacredness of menstruation.
Worldwide, the number of women offering their menstrual blood to the earth is growing.
Could women be warriors of light, in spirit, instead of men shedding blood in wars outside? Together, recovering true meanings of partnership, we could co-create a world where peace was possible, from inside out.
Many countries have initiatives rallied to international movements like the Red Tent Movement that seek to restore menstruation to its rightful place as a natural physiological process that can be also honored as sacred for the mystery of life that it allows to perpetuate.
From menstrual art activism to recovering old rituals involving sacred blood and connection to the Earth, to menstrual cycle awareness and flexible menstrual policies in states and organizations – what started 40 years ago in different settings has come to draw more and more international attention.
Cultural change needs many agents of change and time. It also needs awareness, education, and resources to practice.
Luna Rossa Cycles Journal is such a resource for practice, bringing inspiration from the oldest great civilization of the Goddess in old Europe that managed to create an amazing culture where weapons were not present at all. It is an offering of peace for women to practice aligning with their own true nature.
25 international contributors have come together to create Luna Rossa, a Self Dated Moon Agenda for Menstrual Cycle Awareness.
It is an instrument to practice self-awareness, self-love, and connection to the rhythms of nature within and outside the body.
Luna Rossa is a 4 in 1 cycles art journal for embodied feminine wisdom and menstrual cycle awareness.
It is a peace manifesto starting within women’s bodies , with their own nature.
It is also a peace offering from the oldest civilization of the Goddess, the 7000 years Cucuteni Trypolie culture based in today’s Romania and Ukraine territories, which had no weapons present.
Luna Rossa is a 4 in 1 gift for connecting to your womb and the moon:
* art journal for mapping menstrual cycles
* self dated moon agenda
* feminine practice notebook
* colouring mandalas book
Get your own copy of Luna Rossa for a 2024 year of practicing cycle awareness and grounding into your own feminine power.
The pre-orders campaign is live here for September to October 15th 2023.
To highlight the themes included in the Luna Rossa Cycles Journal – An online Luna Rossa event takes place from 18th to 22nd of September, including marking 21st as International Peace Day with a hommage to the people suffering from war in Ukraine.
Several contributors and supporters of the project come together to share valuable info, practices, and inspiration related to feminine health, wisdom and power.
The online event is open for free registration here.
Join the dialogues, bring in on your perspectives and experiences.
There are only my types of local flavours that add into international movements and awareness growing in this field.
