00:00:47.220hi judy i'm amy hi amy it's so good to see you it's nice to meet you nice to meet you too thank
00:00:56.680you so much for coming to talk to me today i really appreciate your time it's my pleasure
00:01:01.940i love to talk about this stuff and i guess that's what makes you a great author so let's
00:01:09.280just get into it i want to welcome our listeners the missing witches coven to this amazing
00:01:15.880conversation with an icon of feminist spirituality novel essayist author poet judy grain thank you
00:01:26.200so much for being here oh it's my pleasure to be here my family always pronounced it gron
00:01:32.980gron and you know it has a meaning uh it used to be gronquist which is swedish and meant the
00:01:39.740branch of the evergreen tree. So I'll take branch or tree.
00:01:48.760And I believe your work to be an evergreen tree.
00:01:54.440Well, it certainly feeds me. I will say when you said that you were reading Blood,
00:02:01.200Red and Roses, I was, you know, just short of completely ecstatic. It was like, yes, yes, yes.
00:02:08.080a new uh you know a new lease on something and let's just all participate as much as we can
00:02:17.360yes i have so many questions for you i hope that uh if we run out of time that you'll come back
00:02:23.880and be on the show again but you sort of already kind of touched on my first question um with this
00:02:31.420new generation discovering your work um you said in uh blood bread and roses that you started the
00:02:37.200project in 1973 now these are some of my favorites I don't know if you know um for example Star
00:02:44.600Goody we had a wonderful conversation and I love these intergenerational conversations
00:02:50.660so much I think there's so much that the kids today everybody listening I'm doing big air quotes
00:02:57.940the kids today uh take for granted and don't understand that there was a struggle that led up
00:03:04.220There was such a struggle that led up to this is right. And it's just fortuitous that I was just in it from the beginning, you know, 1965. But I got radicalized in the 1960s. And then by 70, we were starting to reclaim menstruation.
00:03:26.060And by we, I mean, I was writing a positive poem about it. Not long after that, I think Judy Chicago was doing art installations. A huge, huge, a room, a bathroom with a gigantic tampon leaning against the wall, you know, that kind of thing, where it takes you a minute to know what you're looking at.
00:03:50.660And oh, my goodness, look what we're looking at, because it had been a hidden subject, taboo subject, shameful subject, all of our lives, with no exceptions, really, except in the wonderful little pockets of, you know, that are out of the mainstream and are doing something else because they come from a different tradition.
00:04:14.020Now, another thing that was happening at that time was the raging Vietnam War. So here was, and it was just bloodshed, and the raging war against the Black Panther Party by the FBI.
00:04:29.420There were shootouts and bombings, rebellion on every side.
00:04:36.420There was blood on the television every night because they let reporters film the war.
00:04:43.420So people got a new idea of what war is actually like.
00:04:48.420And it's only in retrospect that I look back and I see that I started taking on menstruation as a subject as a positive bleeding.
00:04:58.420In the middle of one of the most negative bleedings that the country had gone through has gone through many.
00:05:08.420So it just made sense that to me now that I would be doing it at that particular time.
00:06:30.380We started it in late 69, and we did projects that opened up public space,
00:06:37.980opened up a house that was a battered women's shelter,
00:06:42.020opened up public knowledge about the health center that was doing abortions and many other
00:06:49.400kinds of health interventions for women. We were a busy group. You just used a turn of phrase that
00:06:58.620I love so much. I'm going to carry it with me. Household collective. Can you tell me and our
00:07:06.440listeners about your household collective and how we can make these ourselves well we have to bring
00:07:12.660the house uh prices down don't we have uh one of the things that worked so well about our movement
00:07:20.200was that housing was really cheap at that time my you're gonna die over this my rent for a room and
00:07:29.540in our house every woman had to have her own room that was a rule a room of one's own
00:07:36.440and my rent was sixty dollars a month that's six oh okay it's ten times six dollars all right
00:07:44.520yes if only um and another thing that worked about it is that we were a mixture of classes0.94
00:07:53.840so there were women with resources mixed in with women who wouldn't you know never met a resource1.00
00:08:01.540in their life. And so all of the wisdom in that range of people got to play together and it was
00:08:10.800very dynamic. So that would be my first thing is get over the rivalries, get over your prejudices
00:08:18.700and realizing that bonding is what makes a revolution happen. You know, loyalty to each
00:08:26.500other, okay? I'm just taking a moment to write down, bonding is what makes a revolution happen.
00:08:34.240Oh, please talk more about that while I write down this sentence. You have to be loyal to each
00:08:38.580other. You have to turn out for each other. You have to listen to each other, even though there's
00:08:43.540never seems to be time to do that, but you have to try to take the time to do that.
00:08:49.580And of course, it has to be congruent with this mystery called history.
00:08:56.500so prepare for it because that moment is going to come along in your life you know we know it is
00:09:03.920because there are so many things going on that are wrong and and we knew them all then too
00:09:09.240we knew uh what the racism was all about we knew the suppression of uh of people of color and we
00:09:19.380were struggling about that we knew the the bad things about the war and we were struggling about
00:09:24.960that uh we knew you know all kinds of civil rights needed to be acknowledged uh and that women had to
00:09:33.360fight for what they had uh and the lgbt movement didn't have its alphabet yet we were just all gay
00:09:43.520we're all gay to begin with and we became lesbians and gays for a while and then we became lesbian
00:09:49.920gays and bisexuals and then now we've got trans folded all the way in and we've got more to the
00:09:59.320alphabet so it's ongoing it's an ongoing process it's a revolution that got started in that era
00:10:06.140and with roots in the 50s and has never stopped from my point of view so i was riding a train
00:10:17.000called revolution and and what did it consist of what did I need to do how could I contribute
00:10:25.120and so I had done a lot of my early poetry by that time and that was really spurring to people
00:10:34.020there were several of us poets who were you know busy organizing with our work
00:10:41.420and then i just jumped into menstruation because i wanted to answer the question what have women
00:10:49.920contributed to human culture because the mainstream stories were saying nothing babies0.76
00:10:57.540they were saying babies you know continual approval of uh men and children and so on
00:11:07.140and continual shut your mouth and just do your work. Be kind, be kind, be kind, and don't make
00:11:15.080a fuss. So we made a fuss. So we made a fuss. Indeed, I just started reading your memoir,
00:11:29.980A Simple Revolution, so you'll forgive me. I just started it, but I think it's like on page
00:11:35.380two or three you call activist art your demon lover and i just had to stop can you please
00:11:45.580expand on that notion for us wow well let's see i mean sure it seems um like just one of those
00:11:58.360metaphor as you grab out of the air, because I was wanting to say something paradoxical,
00:12:05.960because it is paradoxical to take on trying to be an activist artist. It is walking a tightrope,
00:12:13.300because if you fall in either direction, you lose track of this main beam that you're trying
00:12:20.640to put across that's coming through you um you don't want to be polemical and obvious and lectury
00:12:28.880and i'm right you're wrong um you want to be honest but you also want it to be artful and
00:12:36.260you want people to say i have felt like that that's how i think or i think differently than
00:12:43.700that and I'm going to go write that down you know so it's a it's a challenge it's you have to be
00:12:52.820more conscious and then more unconscious at the same time to do the pieces all right yes and I
00:13:01.760think that that's part of the great paradox of you know witchcraft as we call it or yes there's
00:13:09.340another paradox where did I have that word in my notes the great paradox of menstruation I think
00:13:16.080you called it yeah yeah how the paradox inherent in menstruation that's that's the exact quote
00:13:23.200what's the paradox of menstruation I think it's that it's so foundational to who we are as human
00:13:32.080beings and it can be and has been and is being interpreted in so many radically different ways
00:13:41.700it's like the same uh you know any any group of people and you start talking about their
00:13:50.340experiences with menstruation it's going to have to do with their generation it's going to have to
00:13:56.500do with their religion it's going to have to do with so many many things and what era is it and
00:14:05.360what is needed now and so on it's just like that so I mean I'm jumping around I didn't get to the
00:14:13.820women's household question that you asked me but I will say that in addition to you know cutting
00:14:20.500across class things class boundaries that's what enabled me as a working class person who
00:14:28.100if i quit my job for even five days i was suddenly in trouble and um and yet i wanted to devote
00:14:37.120myself entirely to this movement and to this uh this artful work which you can't depend on it
00:14:44.400just turning up and and making a living for you art doesn't do that it says um it's like a cat
00:14:51.840hides under the couch and it's like well when is it kind of come out and play with me
00:14:56.000well we had households and those households helped even out the uh the economics and they
00:15:04.800also formed the bonding that we needed to do these projects and the projects were very very
00:15:11.200important and it was um because i had a room of my own and enough support
00:15:17.600by that i mean just enough financial support to get by you know maybe it wasn't maybe it's
00:15:27.760tuna fish sandwiches you know a lot but that's okay if you're doing something that you love
00:15:34.200that's really meaningful to you and you think you're making the kinds of changes that you and
00:15:39.360your generation need in order to even survive and that's what we were that's what we were
00:15:45.600up against yes and it's it still feels like that of course it still feels like that that's right
00:15:54.180um because the things that surfaced as problems in like the 60s like rachel carson's silent spring
00:16:02.820making us aware that oh human beings are a problem to the planet and to ourselves
00:16:09.920by the everyday stuff that we do and now what do we do so the questions are enormous
00:16:19.060but the solutions are right there in front of us they're not that complicated they just require
00:16:26.880some attention and that means heads out of the sand look each other in the eye say what is
00:16:37.280important to do what can i do what steps can i take and they're going to be one step at a time
00:16:45.220they're going to feel small but you do them because they add up and they aren't small at all
00:16:52.300they're what makes it change yes i think feeling small is um what is expected of women and every
00:17:03.280time a woman does not feel small we get world changing yes totally so now to menstruation
00:17:11.760you know my mother had wanted to she was interested in science so i thought okay if i
00:17:20.620take on the subject of menstruation i'm going it's going to run me into science at some point
00:17:26.940because it is i already know connected to calendars so connected to the lunar cycle
00:17:34.780so it's got to be connected to calendars and it's got to go back in time and of course it does
00:17:40.940It goes back to markings on paleolithic bones that give every indication of being markings of a menstrual lunar cycle of a time that we are supposing that women's cycles were completely synchronized with the lunar cycles.
00:18:05.200so I just started going back in time talking to people reading everything I could get my hands on0.73
00:18:13.240and just putting the witchy vibe out menstruation is mine now so give it to me you know kind of0.55
00:18:22.680thing get humble right but not too humble and people start bringing you their stories and they
00:18:30.760bring you this article and that article and this might connect and whatever whatever and here I am
00:18:36.640part of this generous movement where people wanted their artists to succeed you know they wanted the
00:18:44.280people with the public voices to know things so they just show up that continues to happen
00:18:50.440I heard you heard I heard you needed this here you know and I don't even remember where it came
00:18:57.580from but here's the perfect article so my research and the library and we didn't have the web
00:19:04.860we had a lot of word of mouth and the bookstores which were our library our college our performance
00:19:13.700space yes and so I started with it and not having any idea what was on the other side of it I thought
00:19:23.800probably something whiner it's going to be like connections to science like that and i i mumbled
00:19:31.360along with that by mumbled along with it i mean i would talk about it in my public presentations
00:19:37.440which were like 85 of them a year or something at that time um and people would bring me stuff
00:19:46.540and somebody would tell me well when we were 11 we could levitate
00:19:51.580so you know i would ask an audience how many of you levitated when you were 11 and you know
00:20:00.26020 would raise their hands or something and i thought oh this is real this gotta
00:20:06.660have something to do with something and um you know other kinds of questions so
00:20:13.600i wrote notes lots of notes and and just started um from from from questions just from questions0.96
00:20:26.760not like i had answers or preconceived idea or anything like that i was a feminist i was
00:20:33.320belligerent about ha ha ha we menstruate you don't kind of thing because not it doesn't go anywhere
00:20:42.300isn't the story anyway um and it took me until 19 you know 92 to finish this as a as a book the
00:20:54.960one that you said you read blood bread and roses yes i have it right in my hands yeah and there's
00:21:02.100something close to the beginning um you asked why is god so mean to girls and now now now that
00:21:11.200you've like reclaimed menstruation as as power have you changed have you changed your thoughts
00:21:17.640on whether or not god is mean to girls at all i've changed my mind about god so many times
00:21:25.040it's really absurd um but yeah that was my question when i was 11 was like 12 and i didn't
00:21:34.360want to be a girl and one of the reasons was menstruation the other was breasts you know
00:21:40.420two of these marvelous things so writing this and i had ghastly cramps just ghastly ghastly ghastly0.99
00:21:49.620ghastly cramps the kind of crap cramps girls get when they don't want to be girls especially0.90
00:21:56.100um and i didn't see any purpose for it i knew i wasn't going to have kids why should i even have0.97
00:22:01.860periods the same questions that come up now only now people can actually do something about it and
00:22:08.980say, well, I don't need this. Goodbye. But my research, which happened, I was 33 when I started
00:22:18.520this, and 52 when I got it published. Can you say that again, please, for everyone who's in such a
00:22:28.140hurry right now? Please say that again. Well, I was 33 when I started this process of researching,
00:22:36.820which I thought would take a couple years and even after I had sent I published an early
00:22:45.860article that was menstrual positive and I used that and got in advance from Beacon Press in 1981
00:22:55.560but I didn't turn the book into them for another 10 years
00:23:02.440because it wasn't finished yet i had to go through massive changes for one thing i had0.96
00:23:11.220to step out of feminism interesting please expand yeah i had to step away from feminism1.00
00:23:20.760because as i say it was making me belligerent was making me want to say0.94
00:23:25.240ah ha ha we menstruate you don't and that's a diversion it's a diversion from what I think
00:23:32.740actually has happened so that's that's how I went through so many different changes
00:23:41.380behind all of this and wrote other things before I finished up this one but I just I had to change
00:23:50.120perspective and it was no longer how did women contribute to culture it was how did menstruation
00:24:00.160create the world that we are of who we are all of us everybody men women children non-binary
00:24:09.460trans everyone all the different genders we all play our parts and all of a sudden here was this
00:24:20.100theory here was something that could develop it's not all in blood bread and roses there's
00:24:26.040a lot of it is in there but not all of it it continues to develop there's more articles
00:24:32.280there's a dissertation that i did um and i'm about to write another set of essays that will get
00:24:40.560published because it's not done yet it's a process yes and the work i believe will never be done
00:24:50.300you know you were you worked on the book for 10 years and even then it still wasn't done we're
00:24:55.360still adding more and more and more to the conversation that's right and more and more
00:24:59.900people are absorbing the idea that menstruation does not have to be the curse it does not have
00:25:09.720to be god is mean to us and has cursed us but rather it can be something uh very very different
00:25:17.880from that that connects us to nature that connects us to our ancestors that connects us
00:25:23.720to understand creatures differently um like that yeah i i see uh blood bread and roses as being um
00:25:33.800uh an excellent compendium to uh the great cosmic mother monica show and barbara moore that was sort
00:25:40.600of where i started to get these like paleolithic notions of of women's contributions you know we
00:25:46.920sort of had been brainwashed into this notion that you know cavemen would smack when cave women over
00:25:54.360the head and that was the end of the story of you know human development but when we talk about
00:26:00.520things like language and you know uh controlling fire um it makes sense that it would have been0.73
00:26:08.760the female of the species who was interacting with one another more so than yeah and the hunters0.69
00:26:17.400yeah i would say so i mean why is it just patriarchal power hungriness that has created
00:26:30.820this shame and erasure around the subject of menstruation that is such a great question and
00:26:39.040it's one that i want to put in an essay so i'll just give you a short answer yes that um
00:26:45.160i've come to understand that the patriarchy is um is a a braiding in an evolutionary process
00:26:56.620i'll explain that more i think that um the first apes that became human beings
00:27:06.300developed rituals around menstruation. The word ritual means menstruation, so it's redundant to
00:27:20.300say that. They produced rituals around menstruation that enabled them to survive out of the trees,
00:27:28.240even though they were bleeding, and that gave them knowledge and pieces of knowledge that had
00:27:35.180be held in place um and so they acted them out i call those metaphors these pieces of knowledge
00:27:43.580that have had to be held in place and um and they develop and they uh gradually developed culture
00:27:53.580out of their seclusions the women and girls did it they had their own the men and boys did it also
00:28:02.940why because they loved their mothers you know they wanted what their sisters were getting they
00:28:10.120wanted to belong they wanted this new language too um and so they had their own blood rituals
00:28:17.800which we call hunting and uh those elaborated and created culture as well um but those two
00:28:27.340ways of leading are very different from each other. So I'm hypothesizing that these rituals
00:28:35.660developed along gendered lines in general, and they reach a point, I'm holding my hands up to
00:28:43.640illustrate, these strands, they're parallel strands. The women are doing something, the men0.55
00:28:50.140are doing something. They're both getting smarter, and they're both getting not knowing what each
00:28:57.020other is doing, because men were excluded from certain parts of what women were doing, and0.78
00:29:04.400the reverse was also true. So I'm positing that there's a braiding that needs to happen every0.89
00:29:12.820once in a while, so that these two cultural lines understand each other better. So I'm assuming
00:29:22.600that the patriarchy is one of those braids that crossed over there was something that men needed
00:29:28.760to do and to learn um and so the women said okay you've been holding back while we do all this and
00:29:38.440we're going to hold back while you do all this and the patriarchs put their rituals forward and they
00:29:47.720studied um male development which is what patriarchy is all about it suppresses women
00:29:57.880we know that but it also develops men and that's a part that i don't think has been addressed and i
00:30:06.040i want to at least start the dialogue about that that okay this is a development of the maturation
00:30:13.720process of males. And we've been in that for a while. And what has happened is, I call it
00:30:24.540necroformic, is that, and it happens in the women's rituals as well. They've been absorbed0.95
00:30:32.380because we're a learning species right we learn we study um and um and so the women's rituals0.98
00:30:44.920aren't serving everybody because they they've been absorbed and so what's next what what what0.62
00:30:51.280and so the men say okay we're next we're doing this and then they develop develop and now we're
00:30:57.620in a place where we're saying oh you all have had plenty of time to learn this and it's causing
00:31:04.900great harm and it needs to change so that's where i think blood bread and roses comes in to suggest
00:31:13.460the pattern and now how do we change it and we change it because we are ritual beings
00:31:19.940and because we hold our knowledge in particular ways so we've changed before we can change again
00:31:26.340and we're in the process of it we really are we're not as patriarchal as we've been in the past
00:31:33.220right and religion has held a lot of the patriarchy in place and it's being questioned
00:31:40.820on every side including by missing witches hey you know but also by people in the mainstream
00:31:50.420who are saying, or in the evangelical community, who are saying, you know, this is just too mean.
00:31:59.220God is being too mean to girls, you know, kind of thing, and too mean to LGBT people, and too mean
00:32:06.360to people of color, and so something has to change. So we're saying, oh, what about all0.50
00:32:14.340these goddesses this could be a change right and we try to define them along lines that say
00:32:22.120okay this is earth centered this is not sky centered earth centered hello we don't care if
00:32:27.560you take a rocket to mars and leave goodbye we're doing an earth centered something right here right
00:32:35.580now and that's part of our change so my short answer we love a long answer please expand as
00:32:45.520one of our mottos around here we love to expand on these ideas so how i'll tell you a little bit
00:32:54.780about me um there was no conversation around menstruation when i was growing up really um
00:33:02.060uh except for that we didn't talk about it and you knew that there was a shame you knew you didn't
00:33:07.360talk about it but you didn't even talk about it enough to really say you don't talk about it it
00:33:11.560was just yes I know yeah very right right yeah under the ground yeah so for me it was um hellish
00:33:23.200you know they told me you'll bleed for about a week and it's gonna hurt and so I accepted that
00:33:29.260And then I was bleeding for 10 days and in enormous pain, you know, a full third to half
00:33:37.520of my life was being taken up by either PMS or raging horrible.
00:33:43.960But in my mind, you know, they said it would be about a week at 10 days is about a week.
00:36:13.920interesting that um there's respect for women the older we get there's more of the respect
00:36:24.240um one woman told me in her group uh which used to be called a tribe and i i know we don't use
00:36:34.800that language anymore but um she said a woman is not fully mature into her powers until she's 52
00:36:45.180years old okay marking that on my calendar um and the idea that you go through some agony is just no
00:36:59.180That's not what happens. What the belief is that the menstrual flow that is so crucially important to the functioning of humanity and stems from women's body functions and the culture that has grown up around us, that that is internalized and the old women have all of the power.0.97
00:37:27.340None of it is dissipated in having children, having the blood leave for whatever purposes, but it stays with us and just continues to get wiser and wiser.0.97
00:37:46.680Imagine if that was what you were looking forward to.0.99
00:37:50.360Now, here's the patriarchal version of it, that the purpose of the female is to have kids and raise them.1.00
00:38:00.620It's not just the Bible. Darwin thought that as well, that men had to have been the ones who created culture because women were busy with the children.0.76
00:38:12.460As though children don't motivate you to be as inventive as possible.
00:38:17.420and and if if as if raising children doesn't influence culture based on how you raise them
00:38:25.960of course it has nothing to do with it adults are not created by their parents at all of course no
00:38:31.320right yes so uh um let's see where was i remind me we were talking about um the church and women
00:38:44.120are just meant to have children and even darlin yes exactly so so both the church and the secular0.98
00:38:49.820science were fixated with this idea that women didn't do much of anything except be very beautiful0.51
00:38:58.420as beautiful as possible as fertile looking as possible for as long as possible and never did
00:39:03.240get old and raise the kids and became a wonderful grandmother and isn't she darling and though you
00:39:11.400know don't get me wrong raising kids is an amazing process which i have skipped over because i had
00:39:18.240other things to do my books or my kids and they rule my life but i watch uh parents all kinds of
00:39:26.720parents you know i cannot imagine how they are getting through covid having to homeschool and
00:39:32.320work at home and you know take care of everybody's terrors about all this it's no wonder here in the
00:39:39.200U.S. especially, people have lost their minds, many, many, many of them. But my point is that
00:39:47.840the biblical teaching was that Eve had disobeyed God, and God punished Adam and Eve, threw them
00:39:56.840out of the Garden of Eden, and Eve especially was cursed to give birth in pain, and, you know,
00:40:07.760her menstruation was a shame and and she did it in pain and i heard this from women who were raised
00:40:16.240in the christian traditions that taught that quite explicitly so it's no wonder that you know we0.73
00:40:22.640suffered all kinds of agonies and pain i did not want to be a girl and every month i would remind
00:40:30.000myself of how much i didn't want to be a girl my own thing was highly motivated to write blood
00:40:37.440bread and roses not just because my mother was interested in science but because i suffered
00:40:43.600horrifically just as you did and lost many days uh you know every month had to lie down had to
00:40:52.000be quiet well we don't do seclusions anymore in seclusions you lie down people bring you food and
00:40:59.360water. You dress very simply, you're supposed to dream and not tell your dreams or tell your
00:41:08.340dreams or, you know, stay there for a long periods of time and get trained by your grandmother or
00:41:14.760some wonderful older female considered exemplary is kind of a school. But you're not being punished,
00:41:23.720You're in a seclusion. And you're supposed to be quiet. You're supposed to lie down. You're supposed to do all kinds of other things, which I know can be pretty horrifying in reading the various restrictions that women put themselves under in formulating their rituals.
00:41:46.980But then I'm saying those rituals and those restrictions became cultural objects.1.00
00:41:56.260For example, there was a lot of separation between various aspects of menstruation.
00:42:04.920So she might not be allowed by her group to let the blood fall onto the ground.
00:42:14.860had to be caught by something. So the something had to be invented to catch it.
00:42:22.460She might not be allowed to touch her body. And so gloves were something that was wrapped around
00:42:34.660her fingers that would become what we know of as, you know, elbow length gloves at the movies
00:43:07.980They're like the basis of who we are as human beings, in there, in there, in there, in there, one after another.
00:43:19.300So I would say, okay, the gloves are metamorphic because gloves show up in menstrual rituals and they have something to do with the development of human consciousness.
00:43:32.920I would say that of all kinds of different things that we developed to solve for ways that we were developing, particularly human consciousness, and using menstruation to do it, and related blood rituals, and men were doing it too, similar things.0.60
00:43:56.600Does this make sense? Probably not. But if you read Blood and Roses, it will gradually come in because I'm having to be all over the map. This information is not readily available. You have to search for it and you have to make the great leap of saying, all right, I see what it is with carrots.
00:44:21.180i see what it is with the food i've done this whole study around food and what we call food
00:44:28.280and it's it's so much of it is related to menstruation it's like how is that possible
00:44:37.100but when we think why menstruation was so sacred it's it goes something like this the menstrual
00:44:46.900blood stayed in the womb and when she was ready to have a baby and the goddess in some form said
00:44:55.960okay go that the blood would form up into the baby there was no sense of eggs yet but they needed the
00:45:07.180microscope to be seen right sperm no such thing as sperm sperm needed the microscope to be seen
00:45:18.860but people incorporated men and women together into this whole fertility cycle anyway
00:45:25.060um and menstruate but menstruation was this substance that would form up into something else
00:45:35.140so they saw that okay the red ochre in red clay could be formed up to turn into something else
00:45:42.980right red stones red this red that and you know red flowers let's bring those plants home
00:45:54.100and one of those plants was the carrot plant which was inedible to start with it was just a
00:45:59.140thorny little root all dried up and they just started but they were using the flowers for
00:46:07.000their rituals for tattooing especially which was a marking a linguistic marking at menarche
00:46:14.800at first menstruation and they just began selecting for these red long red roots
00:46:22.800anyway yeah I have I had so many questions that came up while you were talking and I'm just trying
00:46:30.500to decide what order to ask them and I guess I guess most broadly for um you know we talk a lot
00:46:39.060about like prehistoric people and and how they informed culture so why are metaphors and rituals
00:46:47.800still so important to us today oh well yeah well i'm a poet so uh working with language is my job
00:47:00.900and crossing into everybody else's field and fearlessly stealing from this one and that one
00:47:07.240and the other one is also my job and i have you know taken it to the max
00:47:13.440and to have a language to understand0.97
00:47:20.020so you're not I'm not just saying oh women were important because women are smart it's saying
00:47:29.960here is how culture developed here is how we got all these things that we're calling culture that
00:47:36.300make us different from the creatures and we are very different from the creatures in so many ways
00:47:41.960And all those ways, I'm saying, are metaphoric.
00:47:46.060So one of the uses of it is that it helps me understand that creatures are just like us, except for the fact that we're metaphoric and they're not.
00:47:56.480And that gives me a tool to examine my whole relationship with creatures and how I think about them in terms of I know what makes me a unique ape.
00:48:11.960You know, and I subtract all of that, and I'm left still with a person looking at a dog person, looking at a spider person, looking at, you know, a mealy bug person, looking at a fox person.
00:48:34.100so that's one thing another thing is as i say it to me not enough just to say we're smart
00:48:43.340because all creatures are smart they're smart at being who they are doesn't explain anything
00:48:51.140to say that we did all this because oh gosh we're just so smart i'm saying we did all this because
00:48:57.120we are ritually based. And because we're ritually based, we can change our rituals.
00:49:04.320And this is the paradoxical part, is that each community does it differently, which explains
00:49:10.920human difference. Darwin said he was unable to explain human difference. But to me,
00:49:16.920metaphoric theory really does describe human difference, that we developed our
00:49:24.760metaphors along different lines and many of them in opposition to each other so one group would say
00:49:31.900she must drink alcohol and the other group would say she must never ever drink alcohol and those
00:49:39.760things then became like cultural law that you would kill over it you would not be allowed to
00:49:47.700intermarry because are the kids going to drink or are they not you know all of this stuff comes up
00:49:53.140So it starts to answer questions that hadn't been answered and to give us some tools for how do we change who we are?
00:50:06.940How do we change? And I'm just talking about how do I myself, how have I changed in my thinking about creatures?
00:50:15.560Just that. Just that little thing. One person, one bunch of creatures. How do I understand them differently because of metaphoric theory? And how do I understand men differently? Why are they so violent? Well, I know why they're so violent. They're supposed to shed blood.
00:50:34.040that's been their cultural role through the whole of humanity and the question is not
00:50:41.680must they never ever but how what are some other ways that they could do that
00:50:48.320paintball guns comes to mind you know paint yourself red and and or whatever i know i'm not
00:50:58.360not meaning to be flippant about men's rituals at all no of course say that they matter and
00:51:04.820studying them matters and here is one tool that can be used to address that so this is just some
00:51:12.400it's just some of what of what it addresses yeah there's so much you'll need to come back and talk
00:51:20.900about blood bread and roses more but i i need to change gears because i have to get to this before
00:51:25.940we finish um okay i came to your work through um betty de shong mador's lady of largest heart
00:51:32.780oh yes and yes you're quoted in the book as i'm sure you know and i understand that you have just
00:51:39.080come out with a book about inanna yourself somewhat recently eruptions of oh yes eruptions of inanna
00:51:45.740can you yes can you tell me a little bit about your relationship with inanna well that i'll start
00:51:53.700again with menstruation there's another aspect of it besides the physicality of the blood itself
00:52:00.900which is complicated and marvelous in and of itself to play with um but there's also energy
00:52:09.780the kind of energy that you know causes us to go contort in pain and the kind of energy that flows
00:52:16.500through us and makes us beautifully creative and radiantly fabulous looking and psychic
00:52:26.500and in love and our heart bursting that I believe the ancients called Inanna, the Sumerian
00:52:39.460ancients and those sumerians they created writing so they wrote down all kinds of stories about her
00:52:47.140they described the cosmos in terms of um gods which are a combination of human characteristics
00:52:56.420and nature natural forces water sky moon wind and inanna and inanna is still with us
00:53:11.540she has a long history lots of wonderful stories i took on
00:53:15.620eight of her stories in my book eruptions of inanna she's erotic aesthetic
00:53:22.260um justice um industry she's just grand compassion
00:53:31.260yes and and paradoxical oh totally paradox we love that yeah and communicative so there's so
00:53:44.860much to be said about it so much to be said about it and i just got started and it's coming off of
00:53:52.120Betty's work, because Betty did incredible translations of the very first poet that is
00:53:59.380named in any tradition whatsoever of writing, Anne Hedwana, the high priestess of Ur. Ur,
00:54:07.340hello, Ur. Didn't Abraham come out of Ur? Yes, yes, yes. So, you know, there's a richness,0.95
00:54:15.980textural richness, not just some stories about some goddess. It's like a presence still with us,
00:54:22.120that the more we know about her the better off we are I think yes and I you talked about taking
00:54:30.98010 years uh our we published our first book my podcast partner Risa and I um last year and they
00:54:39.200didn't give us 10 years but we did we did have a little wiggle room and just something you said
00:54:44.720made me want to tell you this that when I was writing about Anna Heduanna um I didn't know
00:54:51.120until we were like two days away from print deadline like that the word cuneiform you know
00:54:58.500this first language and the word cunt had the same roots and i wrote to my editor i was like0.61
00:55:05.180you have to let me put this in you have to let me put this in i promise i'll keep it like one
00:55:10.580sentence there's there's so much there that's yeah tell me the name of your book i'll send you
00:55:18.140a copy okay yeah it's called missing witches I'll I won't have you tell me your mailing address
00:55:23.500on the on the podcast for the world to hear but I'll send I'll send you a copy
00:55:27.900all right I would be honored honored I'll send you my address email yeah perfect perfect okay
00:55:35.640so I watched a YouTube interview somewhat recent with you I watched it recently I'm not sure how
00:55:44.500recent the interview was and I wrote this down because I want you to talk on it so much
00:55:54.880you said people who are marginalized are central to what needs to happen next and then a little
00:56:04.280bit later you said write your ideas down don't be afraid of them can you expand on that and tell
00:56:14.080our listeners who are, you know, we've, we've spoken to many other authors about imposter
00:56:19.840syndrome or all the other things that might make us not write down our ideas. So can you give us
00:56:26.960a big boost to those who might still be afraid of their ideas and tell us all why they're so
00:56:31.600important? What is imposter syndrome? When you, you don't believe that you are legitimate, like,
00:56:39.760um i'm writing this book but i have no right to be writing this book because who am i
00:56:44.660yes indeed oh yes yes i have one of those voices as well it still talks to me nasty like that
00:56:52.200and i write down what it says every once in a while read it back to it and say you know
00:56:58.460how many books have you written you know voice that says i'm no good
00:57:04.260can't do it that's wonderful that's a tactic for that critical voice our critical voices are
00:57:15.180important because we need them when it's copy editing time or the copy editor is saying this
00:57:20.860whole page needs to come out and you go no no no and then your critic comes in and says actually
00:57:27.880maybe they're right. But think about this. This was, you know, I had a horrific bunch of traumas
00:57:40.980happen to me in my life, a lot of them. Near-death experiences, coma for three days, couldn't talk
00:57:49.140when I came out of it. You know, seeing visions and things like that that I definitely didn't
00:57:55.980want to talk about having a difficult parents they they were perfect parents for me but they
00:58:02.060were very difficult in many ways as many people are um and kicked out of the service i mean i had
00:58:09.260all manner of radicalizing events that could have taken me down but fortunately i just have this
00:58:17.900drive to be a creative person and somehow as a kid i got the idea that not only i could be a poet
00:58:26.140which is a ridiculous idea to serve your whole life what's your occupation oh i'm a poet
00:58:33.240no okay but what do you earn your money yeah
00:58:37.840so somewhere along the line i got the idea um that if you walk toward what you're afraid of
00:58:49.780that's a very creative place and of course that has everything to do with marginalized people as
00:58:56.540well um you know if you investigate what marginalized people think about stuff you
00:59:04.240will learn something new because the mainstream just watches the news listens to this and that
00:59:12.700and parrots back x um but the marginalized people have to look more deeply sometimes
00:59:21.320are retaining knowledge from way before there was a mainstream you know and so they have answers
00:59:30.460answers, answers. Not everybody. I'm not idealizing what that's like. But the marginalized
00:59:38.960people are ones who can really lead some changes because they're impacted so severely. They've had
00:59:47.820to get smart. They've had to take notes. And they've had to use what they were given, not from
00:59:56.900the mainstream to survive. So for all those reasons, you know, they carry a lot of wisdom.
01:00:06.080Where am I going with your question? Tell me. You're walking toward the fire. Something
01:00:14.020like menstruation was a huge shame in my life. It was a huge pain in my life that I couldn't1.00
01:00:21.740explain and didn't understand and that would put me on the bathroom floor no matter where I was
01:00:28.600in Grand Central Station I'd be lying on the bathroom floor it was terrible um and working
01:00:35.460on this book was then like oh am I going to shame myself excruciatingly but at the same time I just
01:00:44.980have such a strong feeling that there's something in here. And so I just I said, well, I've come out
01:00:52.940as a lesbian. I've come out as a working class person. You know, now I'm going to come out as
01:00:59.640a menstruating person who has investigated that. And it was very difficult when I first
01:01:07.160took Blood, Bread and Roses out. People didn't want to read it. I would teach it and to my
01:01:15.140students and my students had been so traumatized by their own periods that we found we had to
01:01:22.460first work with that. We had to first work that through until people who had suffered
01:01:33.260excruciatingly uh and were very deeply ashamed we would just replicate fearlessly replicate some
01:01:40.940imagined seclusion in which they were treated really well and would wash each other's hands
01:01:50.320and faces would you know hands on heart say little prayers bring flowers and presents i suggest you
01:01:58.500do that with some of your friends deliberately redo being 12 years old and then and see what
01:02:07.780happens see what it does for you afterwards um so we would go through that which is just you
01:02:15.240address the shame you go and you just address it you say i'm ashamed and why and what's underneath
01:02:22.880this. And let's excavate the shame. Let's excavate the fear. I'm terrified of this. Let's excavate
01:02:31.500that. And because there's a power in that, and the power is keeping me clamped up against a wall
01:02:39.200somewhere, unable to move. What is that power? And it's my power to investigate, and I'm going to do
01:02:46.660it and just see what happens. And of course, what happens is a whole bunch of stuff. I'm not saying,
01:02:52.700oh, wasn't it so much fun to do this book? There were lots and lots of things about it that were
01:02:58.580fun. There were lots of things about it that were hard, that were like, oh, I thought this,
01:03:06.660but this is telling me something else entirely. And I can no longer keep posturing around,
01:03:14.320thinking that somehow men are a blight on humanity, but rather to say, our ancestors chose
01:03:20.800to live with males and not all female creatures do that but a horse did what did they know that i
01:03:27.620don't know that got us where we are you know that got us to this amazing place that we are where we
01:03:38.980have antibiotics we have surgery incredible surgery the men developed that stuff the microscopes the
01:03:47.340telescopes. That came out of men's rituals. I'm not going to throw that out the window. You know
01:03:53.260what I mean? So it's like not only to face our fears, but everything that we have an aversion to,
01:04:02.120like insects. That's why new subject is insects. It's like stop wantonly killing insects because
01:04:12.340they are the basis for life on earth and if they're all disappear and they are disappearing
01:04:18.140rapidly where everything is done for forget climate change just stop killing insects treasure
01:04:27.520them get to know them honor them and save their lives who do that wonderful i wasn't expecting that
01:04:37.820commonality solidarity and difference even among species yeah yeah okay i don't want to take up any
01:04:50.440any more of your time but i will ask this final question assuming that you will promise to come
01:04:56.240back and talk to me again another time i would love to amy this is thank you thank you so my
01:05:02.680final question is i mean we have the great iconic iconoclast poet author judy grain with us right
01:05:11.000now so for those you and i we're not mothers but we can still help people raise their children
01:05:17.000so in your best auntie judy what would you tell the young mothers who are listening who are
01:05:24.560contending with talking to their own daughters about their menstrual cycles yeah well i'll say
01:05:33.220what i know from other mothers that i have known since a consciousness developed that it was
01:05:41.120from a lot of it from um from spiritually based women talking to indigenous women
01:05:49.760mainstream x mainstream like witches and so on talking to indigenous women about what did you do
01:05:58.820in your group that was different and then adopting it as well as blood red and roses but other
01:06:06.380writings as well i'm saying um is uh some people have been in situations where they could take
01:06:15.660a group of girls through a particular kind of initiation with the participation of the mothers
01:06:23.260and grandmothers to give them a different orientation about their bodies, about their
01:06:31.240abilities. One in particular in Northern California, there was a shallow river and they put a rope
01:06:38.340across the river, had the girls hang on to the rope and come across the river. But this is after
01:06:43.880a year of teachings, various teachings and so on, you know, would be interesting to talk to those0.56
01:06:50.540now adult women about did they pass that on to their kids? Do they think they benefited? Were0.99
01:06:58.720they able to talk about this in other contexts? Or was it always have to be a secret? But for
01:07:05.220other mothers, they're going to find the kids don't want this. The kids have been to school
01:07:10.980and you know they have their own language about it um which may be they want to get rid of it
01:07:19.620all together because who needs it um and for that I would suggest that all of us who have
01:07:29.040any kind of information that's different write books for the kids you know if I would take the
01:07:36.220time to write what i talked about but to write it in such a way that it might be appealing to
01:07:42.140a 12 or 13 year old who then would have a different orientation perhaps toward her
01:07:49.660body and what it has achieved but i don't know i don't have some answers so it's going to be
01:07:56.700so individual a lot of mothers that's a special day the first day of the period and so as soon
01:08:03.740as the kid feels like it it's a mother-daughter day and here's the cake and here's let's go to the
01:08:11.900walk to the pond and talk let's do something special let's invite aunt emily over and have
01:08:18.380flowers bring your best friends if you want to but you don't have to and if you need to
01:08:25.180keep it a secret then do that because everybody's situation is so different right now
01:08:31.100and that needs to be taken into account well so the mothers need to deal with it first because
01:08:41.020otherwise they're likely to lay their trip on the kid their needs what they want that all needs to
01:08:48.300be done with their friends their peers that's what i suggest that that you do immediately do that
01:08:56.140Make a drum circle and talk about everything.