{Period Pudding}
I wrote this lil’ story for a magazine 6 years ago. It never got published so I am liberating it from my hard drive today and sharing it with y’all!
I am currently on Day 2 of my period, today is my pudding day. The tradition is still going strong. Also, I think this was the first collaboration with my darling friend and photographer, Ketakii Jewson-Brown; I love her photos so much, it was the beginning of a really nurturing creative friendship. The recipe is at the end!
A lineage of Wombs and Pudding (written in 2016)
Once a month, every month, our family comes together to honour the sacred magic and mysteries of my menstrual cycle. We do that with pudding.
My husband and I conceived our period pudding tradition not long after my second baby was born. We were attempting to create ritual and celebration in something that felt like an extra, annoying thing to think about, on top of a seemingly endless to-do list of parenting a baby and a toddler. It worked. I love my time of menstruation now. Of course, the pudding is grand, but the ritual, the acknowledgment, the connection and the sharing; it has all created a big shift in my attitude. I love chocolate pudding and I only make it once a month, we all look forward to it. It has turned my period into a celebration.
Our pudding is based on the recipe of my Great-Grandmother, Nanna Pugh, and shared with me from my own mother. I remember, as a child, asking my mum to make chocolate pudding all the time, and quite often she did. I can’t help but feel connected to these women as my daughters and I make our pudding. I think of my Nanna Pugh and what pudding-making would have looked like in her life, early last century. Was it a joy for her to bake as it is for me? Did she save some for herself before she offered it up to her 10 children? I wonder where she got her recipe, was it from her mother or grandmother? My mum’s guess is that she pulled it from a magazine, modern woman that she was. I often wonder how my great-grandmother would feel about me using her pudding recipe to honour something that had been so private and personal in her life and time. Even in my mother’s time, only one generation ago.
I am not sure if she would approve or not. I can’t help but think that menstruation is a perfect time to show gratitude to myself with pudding and to wonder about the women who have made pudding before me. That lineage of wombs that brought me here and that now extends beyond me, to my daughters as well.
My favourite thing about period pudding is the influence it has had on our young daughters. They know that when I start to bleed, we are going to celebrate together. They often run around the house and sing; “Pe-ri-od pud-ding, pe-ri-od pud-ding”. They help me to prepare, they attempt to crack the egg, they stir and sprinkle the sauce ingredients and they lick the bowl. These beautiful girls are just three and five years old and already they have an understanding of why I am bleeding and that it is a magical amazing system. They know that it is something to celebrate and honour. It doesn't need to be hidden, it can be shared with joy. My eldest daughter told me recently; “When I become a lady, I am going to make my pudding with dates and peanut butter; a peanut date period pudding!”. We have a good few years before my daughters approach womanhood, but I feel so gladdened that they may possibly start their menstrual cycle with celebration and honouring. And pudding.
