The meaning of womanhood : for girls;Children's course

All reasonable efforts have been made to identify and locate the copyright owner of this material. If you are the copyright owner of this material, please contact our Copyright Office - copyright@deakin.edu.au

THE GOLDEN PATHWAY

BROCHURES

Now I want to tell you some things that will help you to take care for yourself in the right way through little girlhood and big girlhood and into womanhood. You can easily see that, since there are such wonderful possibilities ahead of you, it will be necessary for you to grow into a strong, pure woman, one whom your future husband will be proud to call his wife, and the mother of his children.

You may perhaps already know that the inside walls of the uterus are lined with countless tiny blood vessels. These blood vessels are for the nourishment of the little child while it is grow-

ing and developing within, but of course there will be a great deal of the time in a girl’s and woman’s life when there is no little life within her body, so nature has provided a very wise method of taking care of this superfluous blood during such times.

Once every month, or once about every twenty-eight days, this blood flows from the uterus and out through a passage which we call the vagina, the same passage through which the little baby comes into the world. We call these few days the menstrual period. This period usually begins when a girl is about twelve years old, although there is a great variance in ages. In some girls the period is established a year or so earlier and with others not for a year or two later. But whenever that period occurs, a girl has left her little girlhood behind her and has entered into womanhood and all the

possibilities of womanhood. The monthly recurrence of these so-called periods makes some girls very worried and they become filled with a sense of shame. Usually this is due to their not understanding, as you do now, what is happening inside them. There is, of course, nothing either to worry about or to be ashamed of. The menstrual period, as we have already stated, is just a way Nature has of helping girls to keep healthy by disposing of superfluous blood in their bodies.

For a girl to become a happy woman it is absolutely necessary that she be healthy. Therefore she must take this into consideration while she is yet a little girl and make it her aim to become perfectly healthy, strong and pure. All the reproductive organs, the ovaries, the uterus, the Fallopian tubes and the vagina, have been placed very carefully by nature

within the pelvic bones, so that they may not be easily injured for they are very delicate and very precious.

Too often, however, girls are allowed to grow up ignorant of the priceless possibilities of their own bodies, ignorant of what the functions of their bodies are, untaught how to care for themselves or how to protect themselves from injury. They clothe themselves in tight clothing which pushes the delicate internal organs out of shape. They are careless about taking cold. They sit up late at night when they should be sleeping to maintain their strength. They eat things which injure the stomach ; they read books which give them false impressions of life and lower their ideals, and otherwise fail to pay tribute to the wonderful gift which God has placed in their charge —a marvellously constructed body.

You should play and run and walk and work out of doors as much as possible, and you should practise deep breathing. The very first thing when you come down in the morning go out of doors and throw up your arms above your head and take several long, deep breaths. In this way your lungs will soon be filled with the fresh morning air and you will feel greatly invigorated.

Determine early that you are going to be a pure and healthy woman. But remember that to be the right kind of woman you must first be the right kind of a girl.

You know as well as I can tell you that not all girls are the “ right kind of girls.” Perhaps it is their own fault, or perhaps it is the fault of the parents who have not taught their daughters otherwise. They may not have had

any mother to talk with them about these things, the things about which you and I are now talking. Perhaps their mother doesn’t know how. They therefore grow up with a wrong idea of things that really are natural. You should be very charitable towards such girls and you should always help them all you can for they are more to be pitied than looked down upon. But you must be very careful not to imitate their ways.

For example, you cannot afford to saunter idly up and down the streets looking this way and that, talking nonsense and giggling. Men and boys make rude remarks about such girls. Decent boys and men shun such girls, and when the time comes for them to seek a wife they do not choose a woman who has been that kind of a girl. There are, moreover, some boys and men—those who are not decent—who

try to make the acquaintance of such girls. They flirt with them. Then they “ make love ” to them. They attempt and generally succeed in familiarities which lead to worse and worse things until the girl has lost her virgin purity and will all her life have something to regret, if, indeed, she is not branded with a shame which stains the honour of her womanhood and makes pure wifehood and motherhood impossible.

You must realise that not everyone in this world is good. There are bad men and women just as there are bad and ugly animals. We try to keep the worst of them shut up in prisons and asylums, but there are always some at large, and even when they are not really wicked and intending to injure one, they are often impure through ignorance and ready to impart their uncleanliness. So pure girls

You must keep your minds and thoughts pure. You know the whole story of creation now—the mystery of life. You know that it is a beautiful story, a story of God’s goodness to us in letting us share with Him in the joy of creation ; a story of love and work and purity. You do not have to think or wonder about it, to ask any question or talk about it with anyone else except your mother. You can, after you have thought it out, and felt your happiness in realizing how wonderful a being you are, put it all out of your mind and just remember that in order to do justice to God’s graciousness to you and to the love and care of your mother and father, you must make of yourself the very best kind of a girl and woman possible. You must remember

that in order to take the proper care of your future home and children, and to give your children strong, vigorous, healthy bodies, you must be also strong, healthy, and vigorous yourself. You must go to bed early and sleep long hours. You must read good books in order to educate your mind so that you will be able in turn to train the minds of your children.

You must be happy and cheerful and sweet tempered, for these become a habit, and if they become habitual in girlhood they will follow you into womanhood.

One other thing I want to speak to you about and then I am going to leave this in your own hands to think over. This is the subject of bad habits. You know Shakespeare says, “ How use doth breed a habit in a man.” A

habit is a fixed way of doing a thing. If a woman frets and scolds all the time we say she has the habit of fretting or nagging. There are thumbsucking and nailbiting habits in little children. Whatever thing you get into a way of doing constantly is a habit.

There are good habits and bad habits, and sometimes it really seems as if it were easier to acquire bad habits than good ones. I think this is because it takes strength to ward off bad habits, and learn good ones ; but the more strength we exert the stronger we grow. So temptations toward wrong are put in our way, that we may become strong through resistance. And, of course, as you very readily understand, the great thing we have to live for is to become strong of character and to help others to do the same.

Often we acquire bad habits unconsciously, and it is always a fact that our habits grow on us little by little, growing stronger each time they are indulged in, until, before we know it, we have become a slave to them.

There is but one way in which we can avoid this disastrous result, and that is, in the very beginning when our conscience warns us that the thing we are doing is not just right, to stamp it out there and then, and say “ I will not do that thing, lest it get the best of me.”

There are a great many bad habits which may become our masters—lying, stealing, eating and drinking wrong things, scolding, fretting, crying, selfishness and many others. All of these are bad enough and any one of them may perhaps make us miserable for life and hinder us from developing that

There is, however, one habit, worse than any of those mentioned above, which you should strongly fight against if it attempts to steal into your young life. I refer to the habit of self-abuse. Perhaps—and we will earnestly hope it is so—you never yet have heard of this habit and know nothing of its harmful results. If this be the case then you have no need to worry, and what I am about to tell you will just help to warn and strengthen you against any such temptations. A great many children —girls as well as boys—are the unfortunate victims of this habit, and it is possible that those who are already victims may attempt to induce you to follow their example. For you know that those who do wrong often try to make others do wrong also. So, if at any time.

any of your playmates or acquaintances should begin to tell you things which they say you must “ never, never tell your mother,” or anyone else, and then try to show you how to practise this weak habit, you must not allow them to touch you, nor must you listen to what they say. When some one wants to tell you something that you mustn’t tell your mother, you are quite safe in believing that it is something wicked and that they ought not to tell.

The habit of self-abuse is an injury to those priceless organs which have been given you for the sacred act of creation. Man is the highest and noblest work of God’s creative hand, and God has given to him what He has given to no other creature—a mind and soul with which to enjoy all things. It is quite as possible, however, for Man to bring untold unhappiness upon

himself as to bring joy, if he misuses his reason and judgment. The power to create a little child ought to be accompanied, for both father and mother, by the highest joyous reverence. But to attempt this act of creation in any other way than through marriage and the home life as it has been established by Church and State is wicked and wrong, and can only bring great misery and unhappiness.

If, at any time, anyone, no matter who, ever tempts you to touch or violate in any way those parts of your body which should be kept sacred for the process of reproduction, you must turn away and take no further notice of them. You must hold yourself high above all contamination of body and mind. The Bible calls the human body a temple for the dwelling of the Spirit, and so, truly, it is. It is a temple which must be kept pure and holy. It must

be kept clean within and without. It should be respected so that it may command the respect of others. If you hold the value of your body lightly, if you do not take care of it, protect it, shield it from disease and dirt, if you allow it to be handled familiarly, you cannot expect others to respect it.

Keep yourself above the association of evil companions. Read only good literature. Think pure, good thoughts. Remember that you are God’s handiwork.

Keep in mind the marvellous processes which go to make up the wonderful thing called “ Life,” and pay your respect to your Creator by holding the gift he has placed in your possession spotless.

Printed in Great Britain for INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY SOCIETY by A. & L. Wharton, Retford and Nottingham