Barbara’s Story

I'm 10 years old and I'm playing outside in a neighbor's yard. The mom of this house, we call her Mrs. S, she's very beautiful. She has flaming dyed red hair and she has a very loud voice that's often heard throughout the neighborhood screaming her children's names when it's time for the kids to come home. I am barefoot, I am wearing a little, blue pair of shorts and a button down white cotton top. I'm doing what I love most at that time, which is feeling the grass beneath my feet, and I'm playing with the neighborhood kids. And it was a respite for me from the often chaos that went on in my home, just being outside where I could actually be a child. And I go to catch a ball and I lift my arms up and all of a sudden I hear Mrs. S screaming and running towards me.

She's saying, “Stop! Stop! What is it that I see? Do I see hair under your arms?” 

And I run. I just run. I was never a very fast runner. And she ran and she caught me and she tackled me to the ground.

I clamp my arms to my sides and my heart is beating rapidly and I'm trying to catch my breath. I don't really understand what's happening, but she's able to pry my left arm above my head. And she sees a couple little hairs and she starts shouting.

“Has your mother told you, has your mother told you about your period? When I got mine, I thought I was dying…” 

Only it's much more shrill than that, and it's louder, and I just shake my head no. And she promises that she's going to call my mother up and let her know about this. And so that night my mother tells me very minimally about getting my period. Very, very minimally. And there's no reference to anything that's just happened, the fact that I've been tackled and feeling kind of violated. And I'm also very scared because now I've linked the sense of wondering when is this gonna happen and is it imminent? And I have no clue. 

So fast forward. I get my period when I'm in eighth grade and all over again I'm embarrassed and I'm angry because there was plenty of time for me to have learned about my body and about getting my period and not to have this sense of dread around having gotten it. I have always carried with me this negative sense of my period, which has been gone for a while now, which I celebrated. I never celebrated getting my period, but I celebrated it's being gone. I think I realized within that also what was lost, the sense that it could have been so different. And also the sense that it was something so integral to my body and my sense of myself and there's a cycle and a rhythm to it. And I was very disconnected from it and I was not aware of these things. That's the loss that I wish I had been more aware of.

This sense of that Mrs. S's trauma was visited upon me, not even a relative. It shows how critical it is for us to be talking about this. That’s a piece, a big part of what drew me to this project because like with anything else that doesn't get openly discussed enough. What would it be like, how can we take the experiences we've had and celebrate them or heal from them as we may need to and be able to give different messages to people who are younger than us. 

It’s 58 years later from when I was 10 and as I was thinking about this story, Mrs. S called me up. She's 90 now, she's still friends with my mom. And she is still in many ways a boundary tackler. But she's also so much more than that. And I realize that I'm so much more than the struggle that I've had in my life for many reasons with my body image. So I just think that this is all very important and I've seen this as an opportunity to do some healing and also some celebrating. So thank you.

-Barbara, she/her, 68