This was the year 1988 when I was in 8th grade. I have a vivid memory of that day. All the girls in our class were asked to take permission from their parents for an extra hour, after school, for the health counselor's visit. I, along with all my friends, was very puzzled at the reason for the health counselor's visit. We thought we were perfectly fine and in good health. Moreover, why would the health counselor come to school? Why not our parents can take care if something is wrong? This did not sound normal to me. Lots of questions like this were floating around in the classroom with all kinds of ridiculous answers. Those days communication was not so clear and open. The next day was not a normal school day; it was more like going to school, to the most inquisitive group of class with the hope that someone must have figured out the answer by now. Sadly no one did! So we waited till the school was over. Once the last class was over, and the teacher left, we took a sigh of relief with a palpitating heart, arms locked behind. We were ready to get the answer to our question. And we did! The Health Counselor came and talked about the phase of our life which was almost there, knocking at the door; the menstrual cycle. She told us about the phenomenon of monthly blood discharge, also known as “PERIOD”. She went on explaining to us the know-hows of the bodily changes that we would go through around that time, and how to prepare ourselves for that. The most dreadful information was, when she told us that it was going to happen to all girls, every single month. She also explained to us that it was not a sin or a bad thing, but it was the way our body notifies us of the next level of our growth and prepares us for other challenges. She explained to us that all this information was not supposed to overwhelm us, instead to get us prepared for the coming situation. Then finally there was the big revelation that we were going to bleed for 4 days every month. And with that, she handed each one of us a packet of sanitary napkins. Now my jaw dropped. The only thought that came to my mind was, how was I going to stay alive after bleeding for four days in a row. Conjectures about menstrual cycles were many and varied. Back then in India, this was a topic no one would talk about in public. It used to be such an unfathomable conversation to have, even with your own mother. There was no internet either so you couldn't google it either. Girls would learn about menstrual cycles when it really happened to them, or from their elder sisters, if luckily they happen to have one. Unfortunately I didn't have one. Talking about periods was such a taboo in our society, that while watching Television, if there was an advertisement for sanitary napkins, my father would immediately get up, go to the kitchen to drink water or do some mundane task. Only later, after the health counselor's visit did I figure out that it was all the pretend task and water needs. The thought makes me giggle now. So many years passed after that. I survived the bleeding of my menstrual cycle; safe and sound. Got married; had two beautiful daughters; life was all nice and pleasant. Going through those four days of cycle became like a second nature. It would come and go just like hair falls and grows back. Instead, if the period was ever late, worrying about it became second nature too. Fast forward a few more years, and a day came when I had to go through an emergency Hysterectomy, and all of a sudden, now no more periods! The most dreadful memory of my life. I couldn't figure out if I should be happy or sad for losing those years' long ritual of bleeding every month. I felt empty. It has been several years that I didn't have my periods. Do I worry now? Do I wonder why my period did not start yet? Yes! That thought comes to my mind with the speed of light, but does not vanish that fast. I feel a kind of stab in my heart, a pain which keeps reminding me what I have lost. “I have lost my womanhood.” The organ of my body which made me what I am, a woman, my companion, is no more in my body now. The routine of bleeding, for four days every month, doesn't happen anymore. Still out of habit, 14th of every month, I wait for my period to start. My despair becomes deeper than the sea. Sometimes I wonder, if I should be happy for the good riddance of every month's trouble and inconvenience, or mourn for the loss of my integral body organ, my “WOMB”, my womanhood. My Body has changed, but my mind still works like a woman. I wish there was a machine that could accurately measure my sadness and display it in numbers and I can record it .

Everyone thinks adulthood is something you need to get over with and not something to be eased into .For me it was terrifying being a female and reaching adulthood by female standards.I have always been a tomboy so when my body started changing i was scared because i didn't want to change my body into something i was so sure i couldn't identify with.It started at thirteen, one month and two days after my birthday.I had started realizing changes around my chestal area .Painful changes you might say as when i run or jump my growing tissues aches in pain.Puberty was setting in and to manage it i took steps. Step one, i started wearing bra and stopped hanging with my male friends for fear of rifdicule.It wasn't the hair or the physical body changes or the hormonal surge that clinched it,it was my period.At school we were taught menstruation and periods and such but i almost never pay attention to those topics because in my naivete thought i was above those bodily functions.Therefore waking up to bathe and realizing my underwear was stained was for me the end of my life not to mention the cramps that choose that moment to register in my brain.I was compelled to tell my mother who beamed and readily supplied the necessary materials saying that she has been waiting for this day for the end of my tomboyish ways and the begining of my womanhood.Step two,every month from then on it means that i have to go to my mom's medicine drawer and avail myself of her resources.I was forced to take a good look at myself and redefine who I was and what I was going to make of myself with what I have. I consumed so many self help books to understand my body better and if possible get the changes to stop.I looked forward with dread during the beginning of every month to the unwanted and scary process that my body would commence in addition to the pain that always accompanies it.Before the d-day i would get so cranky,withdrawn and annoyed at so many things especially at my mother because she is my mother and she is supposed to take care of me.She is supposed to take away that burden that i don't want even though i didn't voice it, she is supposed to know what am thinking and going through because as i said she is my mother.It was my sister who literally saved me from myself a couple of days to another d-day.Within myself i was convinced that i was going to become a boy whether anybody liked it or not and by anybody i meant my mother.I was convinced that if i wish and pray hard enough that God would hear me and magically restore to me the body i really was meant to have and make me into who i wanted to be and of course i wrote all this in my journal.My very nosy very curious sister with the knack for sniffing things out sniffed out my journal where i stashed it under a pile of dirty clothes and read it.When i came back from school and was doing my laundry in the laundry room,she came up to me,offered me a chocolate bar before sitting on my pile of clothes on the floor.She asked me how school was and if there was any bully tormenting me to which i snorted and told her that i invented bullying. She laughed and asked me why i was allowing a natural process God made to bully me.I quietly asked her to get up from my clothes carry herself out of room and never to ask me that again despite the anger brewing in me as i knew then that she read my journal. She laughed in that i-know-best-and-am-your-senior kind of way which is totally annoying.She proceeded to tell me about her own first time which she agreed was painful but which she bore wholeheartedly because it was a thing of pride.She told me how women are the backbone and silent leaders of the family and society and how being a woman is the best there is to be.By the time she was done i was viewing womanhood in a different light.She then told me things to do to minimise the pain and make the experience bearable and when it finally came again and i did all that she told me,it was wonderful.I barely noticed it all thanks to my sister and i stopped wishing for a new body. Now in many countries and culture ,females are struggling with the definition of self that comes with adulthood and puberty based on social standards .They strive to come to terms with the natural growth of their person and how they really want to perceive themselves. this puts them at risk of identity crisis and subsequent identity displacement.Mothers and female relations then should pay sufficient to the girl child during this period of transition in a child because if my older sister had not intervened who knows where i would be with my issues by now.