GladRags Gab

This announcement below is from Marwin, who is doing a menstrual forum. Thanks Marwin, for letting women know about their options.

-Brenda 

Hey everyone!

I am hosting an event called “On the Rag”.  It's a forum night….about your period!This event is taking place on Monday, April 14 2008 at 7:30 PM.  It will be at SUNY Albany in Albany, NY in the Humanities building room 116.
I am going to give a talk about the history of disposable feminine products, the problems with them, and alternatives that are available to women.  Then, a forum-style discussion will follow.  I received donations of cloth pads from women who make their own pads, as well as Gladrags pads!  The ladies at Gladrags made a generous donation of several pads in various colors and styles which I am going to raffle off at this event.  I also received a sample Keeper and Mooncup that I unfortunately cannot raffle off.

I am so excited preparing for this event!  A lot of the preparing I had to do for this forum was looking back into articles I wrote a few years ago from a zine I made.  It featured several articles about radical menstruation.  One was about finding out about cloth pads, buying a few, and then moving on to making my own cloth pads!  These experiences really changed my views about menstruation and my body 180 degrees.  I used to hate my period so much, but I felt a lot better about it after putting the effort into taking care of my body.  Making pads was fun for me, improved my sewing skills, and it actually made me excited to get my period because I wanted to try out my new Hello Kitty island print flannel pads!  Come to think of it, the first pads I actually bought were Gladrags seconds and I based my own designs off of Gladrags.

I wanted to do this forum because I really want to promote the usage of cloth and/or menstrual cups/sponges to other women.  SO MANY women do not even know that these things exist!  Or, if they do, they have negative views about cloth (it's dirty/smelly/leaks/it's gross etc.)  I want to dispel these myths with people by providing them with information, and giving them a hands-on experience with really beautifully made cloth pads which were generously donated by several companies.  Having the pads is great; there are so many styles to show people!  I also want to hand out patterns or websites with printable patterns and encourage women to make their own pads as well.

I am going to write another blog entry after the Forum night, so check back within the next week for more info (and possibly pics!) of how it went.

Anyone in the Albany area hopefully see you there!

–Marwin Margolies

Did you know that your liver is one of the most important players when it comes to hormone production and balance?  It is the liver's job to help make our hormones as well as clear any excess hormones that might be overstaying their welcome.  Those of us who experience PMS often have a slight hormone balancing issue and with a bit of support to the liver can resolve the common complaints that we experience monthly.  Cramping is a great example of what I am talking about.  Much of the time cramping is a result of excess estrogen in the body.  By supporting the elimination of this excess, the estrogen levels can be returned to normal, often times diminishing cramps.  Of course inflammation also plays a role in this, but again through offering the liver some support inflammation can be lowered as well.  Irregular periods, breast tenderness, spotting and menstrual headaches might all be lessened with a good liver support treatment protocol.

Some of those treatment protocols would be:

1. Dietary guidelines - following anti-inflammatory diet, and look up those great liver loving foods!

NUTRITION

Food to Include:
    Dark green leafy vegetables, beets, endive, cucumbers, garlic, onions, artichoke, sprouted seeds, grains, tahini, vegetable products (raw or juiced only).
Foods to Exclude:
    All processed and refined foods, salt, strong spices, sugar, alcohol, drugs, synthetic vitamins, fats/oils, non-organic meats and dairy (due to hormones), coffee, heavy starches (potatoes, rice, bread, cereal), heavy proteins, chicken, eggs, milk or milk products, and  vitamins and herbal supplements (except as directed by your physician).
    Condiments except lemon juice and a little salt.
    
    
JUICE/TEA
    Red beet mixed with carrot (1/2 cup) once a day.
    Dandelion root tea: steep 1 teaspoon in 1 pint boiling water for 20 minutes.  Take once a day.

OTHER
    Deep breathing, 30 seconds each time, 10 times a day.
    Brisk walk or other exercise 20-30 minutes a day.
    Drink clean filtered water (at least 2 quarts a day).
    Do not use aluminum cookware.

2. Liver herbs - burdock, bupleurum, celandine, dandelion root, oregon grape, milk thistle, dang gui - go to your local herb store for a nice daily tea tonic, or liquid drop preparation.

3.  The ever famous castor oil packs

4.  Detox season is upon us!  The spring is the appropriate time to cleanse the liver.  Just as new shoots come up from the ground, this is the season the liver awakes from its winter slumber and shoots forward — creating motivation and movement.  Do your research before initiating any detox/fast protocol.  Best to work with a qualified practitioner as it is important to find the right type of detox for you.

Be well - and be happy!

Dr. J.J. Pursell ND, LAc.

The Herb Shoppe 2410 E. Burnside Portland, OR 97214

503-234-7801

 


Our customer, Juliana, recently emailed us this tip for getting out stains.  This one is a new one for me. 

"Here is a great cleaning tip, learned from a friend's grandma about removing blood stains. if you soak in milk before placing the item in the laundry, the blood stains come right out. Not sure if it is the enzymes in the milk or what but it has never failed me. I have even just done a brief soak about twenty minutes before  throuwing the stuff in the laundry and it has worked just fine. Of course the more set the stain the longer the soak. Share with the masses :)" - Juliana

Thanks for sharing, Juliana. I love multiuse products! Milk - who knew?!  Other great products are the Bi-O-Kleen products we listed on the site (don't try to wash down a cookie with them,though!). Soaking GladRags in our new soaking bucket or percolater with some Bac-Out is a safe and healthy way to keep them fresh.

After reading Ellen's story (see below), Talia had her own sad tale to tell.  Read on!

It was just yesterday that I finished my first period fest with my *new* mooncup. So of course, the next thing to do? Sanitize via boil-age. Well, the water was just taking forever to boil. I decided to go downstairs real quick and planned to quickly return to the kitchen and tend to my newly clean lil moo'cup.

2 hours later.

The water boiled, evaporated and is nowhere in sight. My poor moo'cup is no longer with us. It is now a charred mess that thankfully did not lead to my house burning down.

 I suppose excessive boil-age is not covered under the guarantee warranty??

; )

Editor's note: Boiling your silicone cup is a-ok (just don't let the water boil off!) but it is not necessary for sanitation.  The vagina is strong and can accept foreign objects that are not entirely sterile…

I love excuses to get out in the woods in the dead of winter.  Skiing, snowboarding, sledding and snowshoeing (ok, what's the deal with the "s-" sports of wintertime?) are good reasons to get outdoors and remember that life is ok, even when it's incredibly cold and potentially dismal outside.  As long as you're geared up and surrounded by trees and snow, all becomes right with the world again!

I personally find snowshoeing to be just the goofiest looking endeavor.  Giant flip flops for the snow, especially when coupled with ski polls for leverage, can't help but make you giggle.  Goofiness aside, man do they stop you from sinking into the powdery stuff and make for a nice walk in the woods.  I do find the flopping to be a bit too loud (here's where cross-country skis really take the cake) but let's not be too picky…

Snowshoes can be rented for as little as $10 - good, affordable fun for the whole family.  PB&J and hot tea (perhaps wine for the grownups) round off the trip nicely and a view doesn't hurt either.

Here's to happy flopping!

-Diana 

The snowflakes that fell on January 24, 2008 were so small they looked like glitter when the sun caught them-these are the details that come into sharp focus on the day that someone is born.

Because of the amazing digital technology of telephones these days, I know that at 8:50 a.m. of this day, I got the call-"Today's the day." Immediately my eyes smarted (today's the day!), and I braced myself-I was "on call" now. I was the "big sister doula," the person that takes care of the older child while their sibling is being born. This would be the third time I would get to witness a birth, not just through my own eyes but also through the eyes of a three year old.

At 11:21 a.m., I received the second phone call, lasting 18 seconds, telling me it was time to pick Astrid (the big sister) up for school and come home with her in order to be there for the birth of her younger sister, at their home. In this role, my job is to be firmly in the world of the child as their family transforms, expands. I take this role seriously, to protect the integrity of this major event and also because children respond very well to undivided attention. For this birth, however, I found myself drawn toward the sounds of this child making her way into the world again and again. What follows is the dual reality I found myself in: Astrid's and mine as we ate lunch, waited (not for very long!), and listened to the deep involuntary sounds of labor.

Astrid: "Kitty just ran out of there! She said, ‘Too much ruckus!'  Silly Kitty (laugh) Too much ruckus! (laugh) That one sounded like a horse. (pause) That one a dog. (pause) Oh, that one's a cow."

Me: Those are the most honest, amazing, deep, beautiful sounds I had ever heard. These are not sounds you will ever hear in any other situation. God, what a privilege to hear them. I'm so lucky. I can't believe so many people never have this experience. This is the story of going to the deepest places of the body to find the will to bear birth. "Do you want to go in and see the birth?"

Astrid:  "No, I want to go meet the baby after she is born. What is this? Can I have this yogurt? Mmmmm. I like this yogurt."

Me: "Mmmm, looks good. Your mom's doing a good job in there," (trying not to cry). "Are we going to make some necklaces later?"

Astrid: "Yes! You know what? My teachers know how to sing ‘Oh my darlin'!"

Me: "They do! That's great. Oh! Your Mom is calling us!"

We left our food and went into the living room at the very moment that Astrid's baby sister was lifted into her mother's arms by her father who had just caught her, with the help of the two midwives. I can't say what it was like for Astrid, but for me walking into the room was like walking into a brick wall emotion. My eyes and chest and throat crumpled immediately, and as I looked around, I saw the feeling mirrored perfectly in everyone else's face in the room. Whoosh!-the child slides in to the world-the father's face! the mother's face! my face, crumpled in tears.

Me: I will never forget the look on his (the dad's) face. What a moment. Look at that baby. Were mine ever that small?

Astrid: "Look at her small hand! She's so cute! (pause)  I'm still quite a bit hungry."

We went directly back to the kitchen and sat down. She ate her sandwich, wanted some mustard. She wanted to know what else I brought in my bag for her. I pulled out a light stick. We opened it up and cracked it into pink glowing life. Here, I'm a little ashamed to admit, is when she went back to her mother, holding her newborn infant in the first five minutes of her life, and said, "Mom! Look! I have a glow stick!" Her mother, of course, said, "Oh! That's great!" And Astrid came back with me to see what else we could do.

I am proud to report that I have witnessed five births now (okay, two were my own) and always come away from them wondering at the privilege of it. Here we go on about menstruation, but this, this person whooshing into the world, and the shocking love of it, that's what it, all these moon cycles, is all actually about. Whether we choose to flip one of those hundreds of cycles into a being or not, that's what they are about.

- Michelle A.L. Singer 

Michelle Singer is a freelance journalist currently living and working in Montpelier, Vermont. Former GladRags employee and menstrual enthusiast, she is also a great lover of books, hiking, and wrestling with the continual confusion of feminism. She lives in a multi-generational home with all her most important fans-her parents, husband and two truly adorable children.

I was at a book group the other night with delightful, intelligent, mothers of small children who have an unspoken agreement that although we choose a book every time, we're really getting together for wine and conversation. In fact, our discussions in recent meetings have barely grazed the subject of the book whose premise we were gathered under.

At our last meeting, ongoing struggles of life: marriage, children, and wellness (sleep, sex, and prescriptions) inevitably consumed our conversation. When we lingered on mental health and I put forward my belief that all issues of health stem from a root cause (oftentimes emotional or spiritual), one woman offered her menstrual cycle as an example of something that is strictly biological.

For a few days every month, she said, her personality changes-she "hates everyone" and wishes she could just be by herself for those days. Since this happens only during PMS, it is clearly just a hormonal shift, she concluded.

This group of women doesn't happen to know about my dear love for the menstrual cycle and as they continued to talk in turn about menstruation, I, for once, just listened. The verdict was unanimous-thumbs down-and when the hormonal pill that now advertises that women can simply "skip" menstruation came up, the idea was welcomed.
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I stumbled upon the GladRags website about 2 years while 'mindlessly' looking up cloth diapers on google.  I don't even have kids yet, but I grew up on cloth diapers, and want my kids to do the same.  Even though I had always known diapers were bad for the environment, I had never even thought about how pads were just as bad!  I had also started boycotting tampons around this time b/c one of my friends who is a pediatric nurse had a patient with toxic shock syndrome and it freaked me out.

Once I started using GladRags (1.5 years ago), I never looked back…I love them!  Maybe it's just in my head, but I think having a completely cloth pad feels so much cleaner b/c my skin can breathe, as opposed to a disposable pad that has the plastic-like lining that sticks to your underwear.  They have cute designs, prettier flowers, etc…I feel great when I wear them!  And all of my friends are getting hooked on them too…!

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all of the world's most important seeds.

In an effort to preserve crop diversity in the face of a mounting environmental crisis and monoculture farming, The Global Crop Diversity Trust has created an Arctic seed vault that will store millions of seed samples.  These seeds are the foundation of our world's agriculture and their preservation is important for continued food production.

Ok, there is a slight freakout factor with the existence of such a facility.  It means that we have brought our world to such a precarious state that we need to take precautions like ensuring we don't lose our food sources and have to manufacture all of our seeds in a laboratory.  However, this is a very pragmatic approach to preparing for the future even if it does seem "doomsday"-esq.  The fact is that our world is in such a state and we might as well act accordingly.

Another important organization is Seed Savers Exchange.  I just donated to them because I pictured being forced into eating food from a laboratory just to survive and having to take up meat eating for lack of anything else to consume.  Yikes!

I hope that our united efforts reinvigorate heirloom seed preservation and guarantee a world free of genetically engineered agriculture.

Save the Seeds!

Diana

I was recently made aware of this new site, sponsored by Procter and Gamble, to market the Gillette Venus Breeze, a razor for women.  They call the site, the manquarium.  The premise of the site is as follows: you are a girl and you want to find a man.  The manquarium website will help you build the perfect man.  The site asks you to pick a body of a guy in swim trunks (animated of course).  You can scroll through man "types", like the geeky but cute one with glasses, or the person of color with corn rows.  Ok, so now that we have picked our man, we answer some questions about ourselves, like where we want to go on a date or what the best compliment would be.  We put all of this into the site and what we get back is an animation of our man swimming telling us things that the Proctor and Gamble team thinks we want to hear.  Like if you input that you want him to think you are smart, your man will tell you something like your intelligence is hot.

Ok P and G, what are we saying here?  I glean from this website the following…

• women should be looking for a man

• they should pick a man based on how he looks

• clearly we need to shave to find a man 

I mean, that is the bottom line.  This is an ad for a razor.  So we are all heterosexual women who need to snag a man.  

Shame on you procter and gamble.  Shame on you…