"When I heard my daughter had her first menses, I cried..."

Some years ago, we were having this conversation when my colleague shared about the spontaneous emotion he felt when he heard the news that his daughter had had her first menses. He told us he 'cried'. What he said had stuck with me for a long time, and yesterday, I reminded him about it as I was also going through some emotional experience myself. I asked him why had he cried. This is his exact raw response via whatsapp: "For me it was just the fact that I'd last seen her as a litter (sic little) 5 year old. I wasn't there to experience her maturation into puberty. So when I heard that I was shocked. Her innocence was murdered."

I reflect on what he said as I write and process my own emotions when I said bye to my daughter who was departing home for college. I have read and researched this stuff about rites of passage, but I will write this blog off the top of my head here. In traditional Africa when a girl had her first menses, it was an occasion for rites of passage rituals. Rites of passage deal with major transitions in our life trajectories. They also help us to deal with the ambivalences of life. Let me throw at you the deepest; death. The funeral is a rite of passage. Death is a final detachment from a person who once lived, so it is a sad and painful moment for the remaining. However, in cultures such as the Chewa, and in traditions such as the Christian religion, death is celebrated as the transition from the earthly life to the spirit world. So, while there is grieving, there also is rejoicing. It is definitely not all about mourning.

Similary, when our daughter starts her menses, it is a marker of growing up, that she has become potentially fecund. It is a good thing, right? So we rejoice. But at the same time we also grieve, because it signals detachment. To become fecund and reproduce, she has to leave her family and be with some man. Her first menses signals her 'leaving'. In traditional settings, she would leave home very soon to get married. So the rites of passage are about rejoicing for her leaving, yet this is also a time for grieving for the parents left behind. The girl ventures out on her own, to become her own person, to forge her destiny. This can evoke a happy sad feeling, just like my friend experienced.

Giving birth is another bloody rite of passage too, is it not? The severing of the bonds between the mother and that which was literally physically part of her. Yet, that is not end of it. The mother (and hopefully father too) develop a psychological bond with their child. These bonds are severed when the child 'leaves' home to make their own home. For young females, a bloody affair (pun intended) signals the readiness of the bond to be broken.

I told my friend that I had the same ambivalent feelings when my daughter announced that she would be leaving for college. I was happy sad. When I come to think of it, going to college is an important rite of passage in modern Africa. It is also the severing of bonds between parent and child. It is detachment. With this detachment comes pain. This is why people cry. That is why my friend cried at the news that his daughter had her first menses. Why indeed do we cry? In fact, why should we cry? My friend describes why he cried with some pretty strong language - her innocence was murdered.

Psychologically, kids are an extension of ourselves. We are one with them. We are in control of ourselves including the kids as part of ourselves. But it is not going to last forever. They will leave, one day. They will break the attachments with us to form new ones of their own. This detachment will be experienced as partly painful and partly joyful. It is in fact normal and I dare say even emotionally healthy to acknowledge that happy sad feeling. That is why we laugh and cry at the weddings of our children.

The other reason we cry is that we are scared. Yes, I am happy my daughter (sorry, I am so focused on daughters, but sons included!) is growing up, is 'leaving'. But what will become of her? Yea she is becoming fecund, but with who is she going to reproduce? In our traditional African cultures (and others as well), the anxiety about who she would reproduce with was dealt with by arranged marriages. Early marriages are condemned today. Of course, I agree. But they did serve the purpose of avoiding competition over females and multiple sexual partners.

I have been to college and I know what it is like. It is going to be a whole new and wild world for my daughter. There is alcohol there, weed, (and hopefully not too many other things). In our time, there was the October Rush - College used to open in October so the senior boys or men try their luck to get a girlfriend from the freshmen. And yes, there is the sex. How will that go if it happens? Would it be a good experience or fraught with problems? And we parents are not in control. Gosh! Can you feel that? So, yea, we cry because we are also scared about how things will turn out for them. We hope things will be okay. Right?

But of course, we cannot just sit and hope things will be okay. That is why rites of passage in traditional Africa go with rituals including education and providing information to help the person take up new roles, eg how to make babies. So if our children go to college but we do not talk about sex with them, that is irresponsible parenting. The difference from our traditional Africa, is that our daughter has to know all about sex and avoid getting married or having a baby too soon. So it is more likely than not that in these modern times, our daughters will be having sex before marriage and not because they want a baby. So if we fail to talk about it when our daughters go to college, what do we expect?

But, as I said, it is not only about mourning folks! We are happy our child had her first menses yaay! She is going to college yaay! Incidentally, my friend became a grandfather last year. He traveled across the oceans to cuddle his grandchild. This is comforting. I gives me hope that things for me too will turn out okay. I mean, look at my friend, he was crying on that day becasue her innocence would be murdered, the next thing is he is, with tears of joy, sharing about meeting his grandchild.

When my daughter left for college, I looked for something artistic to capture my feelings. I could not help shedding a tear over Hanna Montana's Love That Lets Go (Ft Billy Ray Cyrus). Best wishes to my daughter, our daughters and sons too everywhere. You will be okay 🥲.