I’m hesitant to get into this because it’s late and I’m just now starting. I’ve had an ‘ok’ day with bouts of miserableness having to do with a pulled shoulder and just life life-ing me. But I’ll take a crack at it.

Periods are considered impure in many cultures, including in Vedic culture. At least modern interpretations of it. I say this because these civilizations are thousands of years old and have of course changed over time. My family is Hindu, so I grew up with certain restrictions around my period. For example, I was discouraged from touching anything on the altar where we pray until day four of my period. Discouraged might be a strong word. My mother said, “We don’t do this, this, and this until after the fourth day” and I just listened. (The fourth day is when women partake in a ritualistic bath and wash their hair.) I didn’t ask questions, and I didn’t process feelings about it until much later. I would say most of this is still internalized. I still invariably wash my hair on the fourth day of my period even if I washed it the day before.

There were other little experiences related to purity that bothered me more. For example, once I smelled a flower my mom had picked to place on the altar. I was very small and she said to me that we shouldn’t enjoy things we were offering to God. Doing so by mortals made the flower impure. It was the same with incense. One time I whiffed an incense stick and she told me the same thing. I was really small when these things happened, and at the time I didn’t consider them micro-aggressions by my mother. Not at all. I still don’t. These are things she learned from her mother, who learned them from her mother, who learned them from her mother, and so on.

I look back on these memories now and of course I find it problematic that these kinds of ideas and restrictions are so deeply embedded in a culture. I think the central idea or question that undergirds all of this, and this is something it’s taken me years of spiritual reflection to arrive at, is whether I believe God is ever-loving, or should God be feared? As someone who believes in God and has her whole life, much of my spiritual evolution from kid to now has been in service of exploring this question, and developing my own relationship and syncretic belief system.

(I’m doing a horrible job explaining this, forgive me. Please regard this as a loose diary entry.)

There are many rules related to periods in Hinduism that I don’t know. For example, my roommate in college who happened to come from a very strict Brahmin family experienced segregation during her period. This was a girl born and raised in America, but she had to keep away from the family during her period, eat separately, etc. I found this utterly barbaric and we spent many nights awake in our beds talking about her experience. I lucked out in that my parents (although my dad is a naturalist and completely oblivious to this bullshit, thank God) aren’t enforcers. Sure, my mother is a God-fearing woman, but much of what she relayed was in reverence. Had I told her I was really upset about any of this, she would have burst into tears and apologized.

But I wasn’t. To be honest I didn’t know how I felt about any of it for most of my life. Although I’m fairly vocal now, I still find myself doing things that make it clear I’ve internalized many of these misogynistic ideas. For example, I don’t pray during my period. Normally I do every morning before I set off for the day, and every night before I go to bed. I know this may seem antiquated to some readers — somebody in 2026 who still says their prayers everyday. Yeah, maybe it’s weird to folks. I think we’re living in an age where people are reticent to admit they believe in God. It makes me sad because the spiritual foundation I received from my family has given me a greater force to surrender to, a basis upon which to forgive myself for mistakes, during the toughest times in my life. But I kind of take a vacation from my prayers during my period to reset. I speak to God through journaling and meditations while lying in bed, and it’s always a joy to revisit the altar once the week has passed.

So like I said in the very beginning of this newsletter, I’ve made some of the aberrant views of the period work for me, and that’s been victory enough. I also always smell the flowers I offer to the gods, and I take a big whiff of incense before I light it every morning.

I know this might bring up big questions. Please help me out by sending them in. Or maybe you’ve had experiences with this yourself. I’d love to hear about them and I do plan on writing about this more. Prompts would be helpful.

Goodnight.