Changing Woman is the figure at the center of Dine religious life, associated with the four sacred mountains that bound Dine land, with the turning of the seasons, and with the origin of the Blessingway, the body of ceremony most concerned with maintaining hozho, the state of beauty, harmony and order Dine religion holds a person and a community should live in. Kinaalda identifies the girl directly with Changing Woman for the duration of the rite, and the ceremony is frequently closed with a full nightlong Blessingway sing conducted by a qualified singer, tying the girl's personal transition to the broader ceremonial system that protects and renews the whole community.
Frisbie's study remains the fullest academic account of the ceremony, and kinaalda continues today as an actively practised, living rite among Navajo families, taught within Dine communities rather than performed for outside audiences. Specific songs, prayers and elements of the Blessingway sing are ceremonial knowledge belonging to trained singers and to the Dine people, and this account describes the ceremony's structure and significance without reproducing that restricted material. Families today weigh the ceremony's four-day demands against school schedules and modern work, and it is common for a kinaalda to be held over a long weekend or a school break rather than exactly at the moment of first menstruation, an accommodation that keeps the ceremony's core structure intact rather than abandoning it.