Exhausted with doctors not taking periods seriously, a new wave of authors is asking whether menstruation can ever be tolerable – even enjoyable
A tiny drop of blood on our bathroom floor was what gave me away. My mother took it as a sign that, at the age of 15, my period had arrived. After popping out to the shops, she came to my room with sanitary pads and a bunch of flowers; the pads came with a brief lesson on how to use them while the gerberas were left behind without explanation, some unspoken symbolism for my blossoming womanhood.
The truth was, I had had my period for two years. It had arrived without fanfare when I was 13, but, in that short time, I had absorbed so many myths – that I would smell; that sharks would attack me if I swam in the ocean (I grew up in Australia); or that I would end up mysteriously syncing with other women as in a kind of witchy coven – that the thought of a period, and the dark adulthood those flowers symbolised, terrified me so badly that I had refused to deal with it. Instead, I had spent two years living in monthly subterfuge, stealing sanitary towels from friend’s houses and fashioning protection out of wads of toilet paper.
Continue reading...from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2KcSAIk
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