For several years, the 28th of May has been a day to celebrate menstruation and to bring attention to challenges in regard to menstrual health around the world. And because this topic is bigger than most people realize, every MhDay is celebrated under a different motto. And this year the focus is: empowerment!
From the beginning, Kulmine has been much more than just a company producing and selling cloth pads and pantyliner. There was always an aspiration present – a striving to share knowledge, to educate women beyond the basic biological processes and to empower them.
Petra Sood, one of the founders, has her roots in leading workshops for women. Through the teaching of bodily wisdom and simple yet highly effective methods, she has enabled women to connect with their inner strength and find true relaxation. The knowledge taught in these workshops is shared through Kulmine on Tour to this day: small workshops that combine information about alternative menstrual products and the menstrual cycle with instructions to simple exercises.
The connection between education and empowerment is also found in every corner of the large and informative website – including the growing blog with many different authors who add their own view on a big range of topics.
But what is this mysterious empowerment that is supposed to come through education about menstruation?
There can be no human life without blood! It is a simple sentence, but only rarely it this acknowledged in everyday life. Accepting menstruation not only as normal but as something with true value is a natural consequence of this truth. To value the female and other cycles of life opens the door to empowerment. And while this process can be encouraged by others, it still is a very personal process. It is not boastful or loud. The strength of the female cycle is not boastful or loud. Though it certainly can feel powerful for those who feel it rising from within! But mostly it is a quiet and slowly blooming strength nourished bit by bit through knowledge that should have been told long ago and that never was supposed to lay in the dark only whispered about.
A simple example of this: Did you know that the blood you shed does not smell – the plastic you bleed in does!
And how different you can care for yourself when you know your cycle and the many different moods that come along with it.
The moment when all these bits and pieced of knowledge come together – that is what makes education into a possibility for more.
Education that connects with those who seek knowledge and which is offered freely – never pushing, never shoving the information onto someone: that is also what makes empowerment possible.
It is education that nourishes you, that makes you feel good about yourself and makes you understand yourself better. It might even light something within you and spark a flame, and before you realize that anything has happened, something has changed, and you would never want to go back to the way it was before.
Kulmine has been doing this work of utmost importance for the last 25 years and will continue to empower through education.
For the Mhday two years ago, we offered a freebook with instructions on how to sew your very own clothpad in the innovative Hela-Shape. It is still online!
