"Menstruation, a sign of good health, must be normalised, and celebrated"

I am grappling with writing a book chapter. I have entitled it "The nexus between COVID-19 and Sexual and Reproductive Health of Adolescents: Bringing adolescents ‘home’". I am not going to talk about the book chapter in this post, but just the heading of the post. I was reading about menstruation for my book chapter when I came across the text I have quoted as the title of this post. I know a lot is going on out there about menstruation to make life better for the girl, but I really had not engaged it much until today. Well, at least intellectually. The text comes from an editorial in The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health.

In traditional Africa, when a girl had her first menses, it was welcomed with rites of passage and celebratory rituals. This served to enhance her sense of belonging to her peer group of mature girls. It was normal. But how did we lose that so that today menstruation is not regarded as normal and not celebrated? I was going to say something about colonialism and all that, but not for today.

Parents in Africa should go back to celebrating menstruation. And it is not just a mum and daughter thing to be talked about in secrecy and under wraps. No! Fathers must also be involved. The announcement must be made - our daughter/niece etc has started menses, let us celebrate... I think in our families we must celebrate a menstruation day for each of us who has ever menstruated, and we must renew this each year. I think there are advantages to this approach and attitude. I agree with the editors of the Lancet.