Adopting to reproductive health changes in a new year
A new year, new beginnings. Old year: put the old things that hurt you to rest. I did not read these things anywhere. I am just thinking about them as I write I have just put on my creative hat on and it seems to be working…. We have just started a new year. Beginning something is not easy. One is not sure what will the end be like. Hope keeps us going. It is important to keep hope alive. With each new day, new hope. So with the New Year, new hope is required for the more days still ahead of us. Holidays mean different things to different people. Some people look at them as an opportunity to rest and relish on happy memories. Some look at the holiday with a heavy heart as they think of what they lost during a corresponding period. Others dread the holidays when they think of the people they will be with while others are ecstatic as they think of reuniting with their loved ones. Same coin but different sides.
By Fadzayi Maposah (ZNFPC Mash East province)
As I always say hormones have no manners. They behave as they want, not limited by time or boundaries. They know nothing about holidays and the activities that one wants to do. In fact, we can term them as highly disobedient, doing as they please, when and how they please! As shared before, it is important to master the processes that one is going through and see how best to live within the given circumstances.
As the year 2022 came to an end, some were starting on the menstrual journey. Whenever I hear about the novices beginning their menstrual walk, I do my best to reach out to those females. It is because of the nightmares that I associate with taking the first step. One young girl who was just being a young girl on holiday, had most of her plans disrupted after the menstruation plane landed in her life. She is 11 years old and has two years left of primary school. If she can be described as perturbed by the reproductive health changes in her life, the female adults in her family are shaken by the journey that has begun. To begin with, they consider her too young to be able to handle menstruation and what it really entails. Already they are worried that she may forget to change her sanitary ware and not only spoil her clothes but also become prone to infections that come with leaving sanitary ware just for too long. The young lady was at a loss of words to explain to the adults that although the whole experience was new, it was not wholly new to her.
https://www.herald.co.zw/adapting-to-reproductive-health-changes-in-a-new-year/
She had seen her school mates begin the journey. The word seen was enough to cause her relatives panic. What had she been doing seeing other girls` menstrual blood. So the young girl would then start explaining that no, she had not seen the menstrual blood, but she knew of school mates who had begun menstruation and were handling the normal situation very well. It is always important to listen, listen calmly if I may add. Usually people listen just to respond and it is worsened by panic and fear.
Growing up is not easy for the children, neither is it easy for the parents and guardians. Letting go and believing that a child is slowly becoming an adult or is an adult is something that parents and guardians battle with. Even at my age there are questions that my mother MaNcube asks that she has always asked. I have come to realise that I am just her daughter that I also have daughters of my own does not take away the fact that she is my mother, so Mother me she will!
I was being a responsible parent at Chido’s school, seated where parents and guardians had been told to sit as authorities cleared the children. As I sat there I could not help overhearing a female adult re-assure a young girl. From her presentation, the length of the school uniform still in a very dark shade and her haircut, she was just beginning high school. It is always easy to fish out the new kids on the block. They carry the innocence of junior school…. “It will work out well, do not worry,” the adult said to the young girl, who was looking at the lawn and playing around with her fingers. “Please say something, “the adult encouraged. The young school girl did not say anything. The school hat bobbed up and down. She was nodding.
Another adult female came to the two and then informed them that they needed to get something from the other side of the school. The woman who had been there with the school girl then asked the other adult to sit down briefly. I looked up and saw Chido greeting other school children as she was making her way back to where I was. The adult who had been there all the time then said,” Please, before we go back home, we need to reassure her.” “I thought we had done that already,” the other female said.
With her arm around the girl she said: “You are doing great, you have done well in the past two days. Maybe one or two days left. It cannot be easy starting school in a new place and then it happens. There are probably many other girls who are on their periods. It is just that we do not know. Let us go.” As they walked away, I could only hope that the young girl had heard and accepted the reassurance. When I walked to meet Chido, I was full of empathy for all the girls in different places who had begun high school at the same time as their `it` experience.