Welcome!

For the past 21 years or so (minus 5-1/3 pregnancies & a while during which I was divorced), I follow every menstrual cycle with a dip (or actually 3) in the local mikvah.

A mikvah is known in English as a ritual bath - and yes, going to the mikvah is a Jewish ritual (not only for women, but that's another story) and it's a kind of odd one. The way it goes (to tell it as simply as possible) is a woman gets her period & counts 5 days of bleeding (even if she stops bleeding after 3) and then 7 "clean" days, during which there's no bleeding. On that night (after the last "clean" day), the woman sneaks off* to a place where she goes through a whole cleansing process (brushing & flossing teeth, combing her hair, shaving her legs, getting rid of dry skin, etc.) and then dips in a small pool of water that hasn't run through any standard pipes (I really don't get how this works)... Before dipping, you've got to take off all rings, earrings, contact lenses, necklaces, nail polish and anything else that isn't permanently attached to your body. (Going after tye-dying shirts - not highly recommended, getting that dye off your hands is nearly impossible.) Anyway, after doing this whole process, which takes about half an hour or so (I usually do it at home & then go) you stand in a little room and press a button to tell the mikvah lady you're ready. The mikvah lady is the woman who accompanies you to the little pool and checks that every hair on your head goes under the water.

It's usually during the time that I stand waiting for the mikvah lady to call me that I begin to think all sorts of thoughts. Some of them involve planning user interface for waiting women, others consider how many women are busy making faces at themselves in the mirror as they wait and yet others cause me to ask myself what I'm even doing there...

*Mikvah is a very private thing. You don't talk about it with people (even your kids) and so it seems somewhat mysterious. You're actually supposed to kind of sneak off. Every time, my kids ask where I'm going and I just tell them "out". One of them's figured it out (the wet hair is a dead giveaway), but the others are completely in the dark.

I'm here to share my thoughts and experiences and will be happy to post other people's experiences as well. Just email me. I'll make sure to keep it anonymous (and hopefully soon I'll set up a form so women can share their experiences).