How “Synching Up” With My Mom Changed Our Relationship

Cover by Anton Luzhkovsky on Unsplash

There is a popular theory that spending enough time around other women will align your menstrual cycles. This anecdote has been passed from mother to daughter over the course of time despite no scientific consensus on its validity. I was about 15 when my mom passed it to me.

“We’re finally synched up!” she told me after I shyly asked her if she had a pad. “You do know what synching up means don’t you?” she said to me. I hated how she would always do that, point out all the weird new changes that were happening to my body and making me feel guilty for not knowing what they were already. My parents have been divorced ever since I can remember so I was only with my mom half the time. I think she thought that meant that she only had to tell me about half the things mothers should tell their daughters in hopes that someone else would fill in the gaps when I wasn’t with her. Nevertheless, she went on to explain this one to me and it went a little something like this;

In caveman times, women within the same commune would synchronize their cycles with each other so that when they got their period, their man couldn’t cheat on them with nearby women because they would also be on their period.

I am embarrassed to say that I took this as scripture for a very long time. When I was 20 and I had my first roommates, the topic of syncing up got brought up. “Did you know that this is why periods sync up?” I said before regurgitating the above story to three women I barely knew. They made no efforts to let me down easy; “no the fuck it isn’t,” I think one of them said. A part of growing up that no one warns you about is coming face-to-face with the gaps in your knowledge that stem from the bogus lies your parents told you as a child.

There are a lot of social implications of getting your period like the idea of becoming a woman. There is a relationship between getting your period and getting sexualized that goes fairly unnoticed. Even if you aren’t interested in boys and boys aren’t interested in you, once people know you have started menstruating, they look at you differently, as if getting your period means that your capacity to engage in sexual activity went from 0 to 100 overnight. I remember hearing from a friend, who got her period at age 12, that once she got her period, her mom locked herself in her room for hours, crying about how she wasn’t ready to start protecting her daughter from boys.

I don’t think that my mom was trying to sexualize me when telling me that story, but the context was definitely there. Especially, you consider that my stepdad was living in our house at this time, her story could have been very easily interpreted as “I am so glad that we are getting our periods at the same time now because now my husband is less likely to cheat on me with you in our home!”.

I can’t help but feel really sorry for my mom. She grew up in a Muslim household with two older brothers and six younger sisters, but she has moved oceans away from them and doesn’t talk to or about them much. I imagine that if this story were passed to her from her mom the way it was passed to me, it probably played a role in their divided relationship. Getting your period fundamentally changes your relationship with your mother as a daughter. I think to change it for the better, it is imperative for girl moms to remember that just because your daughter gets her period, it doesn’t mean she stops being a little girl overnight.