When I was in college, I took an anthropology class. It focused on the native cultures of the Pacific Northwest. I don’t remember all of the details of the tradition, but it entailed menstruating women leaving the home to stay in a hut away from the rest of the family until she was done with her special lady moon time, or whatever. At the time I thought this was horrible, casting a poor girl out for something she had no control over. How cruel, how uncivilized!
Many years, a husband, and two small children later, I am dreaming of a hut of my very own. I would just need a bed and some snacks, maybe a pile of magazines. Peace, sweet peace is what I would find in my little family-less hut. I could be an over sensitive meany without hurting my husband’s feelings. I wouldn’t have to break up squabbles while feeling swollen and crabby. Those Indians had it all figured out, and we had to come and mess it all up, ruining special lady hut time forever. Colonialism sucks people.
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