By Christina Valenzuela stood near her booth at the women’s conference. Materials in hand, welcoming smile on her face, she was ready to meet and greet!
Her goal: introducing women to the resources of her educational ministry business, Pearl and Thistle: high-quality, self-paced video classes; thoughtfully created journals and worksheets; and opportunities for in-person workshops. Her materials aim to help all Catholics (single, religious and married) understand and embrace body literacy.
“Body literacy is learning to read the language of the body,” said Valenzuela. This approach unites the biological science of the way God created us with the way He speaks to us theologically.
At the conference, Valenzuela hoped to reach the women in attendance with a positive message of trust in the truths of the theology of the body – and appreciation for the wonder of their own bodies.
“For girls and women, body literacy means learning to read the signs of our menstrual cycle,” she said.
Yet not a few women who passed by her booth that day gave comments such as, “I’m not cycling anymore – and boy, am I glad that’s over!”
Responses like this continue to stir Valenzuela’s unfolding mission, which has had some surprising twists and turns.
‘The period lady’
Valenzuela, of Massachussets, is a married mom of four children and a lifetime professed member of the Lay Fraternities of St. Dominic. A certified instructor of the Boston Cross Check method for more than 10 years, her educational business called Pearl and Thistle naturally grew out of her NFP consulting. The resources of Pearl and Thistle communicate body literacy and theology of the body to an even wider audience.
“I never thought I’d be ‘the period lady’!” Valenzuela jokes. She has presented her Cycle Prep workshop to many groups of pre-teen and teen women (and their moms) over the last several years. The response has been positive, and it’s an important work and ministry.
“We know from research that girls navigate the puberty transition with considerably less anxiety and with much more positivity when they are adequately prepared for and affirmed in these body changes,” she said.
While meeting the needs of the girls, Valenzuela recognized a deep need of parents. “Moms that I worked with were often at a loss because they knew they wanted to provide a better, more complete education on cycles and periods for their daughters,” Valenzuela said. This education, however, needed to be age and context-appropriate for Catholic young women.
Rather than being focused on fertility, Valenzuela’s courses – and the charting activities that are part of them – focus on overall health and body literacy, including understanding Church teaching on human sexuality. “Teaching your daughter about ovulation doesn’t require going into lots of details about sexual intercourse, [and] teaching her to chart her cycles isn’t the same as teaching her NFP.”
After every live presentation, she’d also encountered at least one mother cornering her afterward, asking with a confidential air: “Hey, can you help me on the other end of things? Where can I learn about perimenopause? No one ever sat me down, like I’m sitting my daughter down, to tell me about that stuff!”
Valenzuela continued to let the Holy Spirit lead in knowing which resources to create next – even when the needs surprised her. She has recently put the finishing touches on her Perimenopause Prep course and reflected, “It wasn’t something that I thought I had any interest in, until women started asking for it.” She hopes that the new course will give this age group of women the boost that her Cycle Prep workshop has provided for young women.
A new book
At the heart, Christina Valenzuela’s educational efforts invite all Catholics – single young adult women, religious men and women, younger women, high schoolers, women entering perimenopause, parents, and Catholic couples – to learn about body literacy and theology of the body.
The exciting journey continues for Valenzuela, as she celebrates the publication of her book “The Language of your Body: Embracing God’s Design for your Cycle” by Our Sunday Visitor in 2024. She hopes the book will continue to “open up honest conversations,” moving beyond the tendency for girls and women to “dismiss cycle issues as our cursed lot in life,” as some of those conference-goers seemed to do that day.
Valenzuela’s message brings hope and joy.
“By reframing our understanding of the menstrual cycle as something which allows women’s bodies to image God in a particular way,” she said, “we, as a Church, can be a better and more perfect image of Christ’s loving bride through our care and ministry to one another.”
Want more inspiration from Christina Valenzuela? Learn more – including how you can pre-order her book – at pearlandthistle.com, and be sure to subscribe to her weekly curated list of Body Literacy resources. Past newsletters are also archived there, providing a rich treasure trove of inspirational and educational resources.
