Let’s talk about our periods

Hello. I am Bekah. And I get my period. Yes, that’s right. I bleed from my who-ha every 26-28 days. And I’ve been doing so since I was 12 years old. That is somewhere between 250-300 cycles. That’s a lot of tampons, a few sad months of pads and a hell of a lot of ruined underwear.

And despite how easily I just wrote what I did above, I STILL referred to it as my “who-ha.” Let me clarify: I’m talking about my VAGINA.

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And no matter how many hundreds of cycles I’ve had, I STILL hide the tampon when I walk down the hall in an office or public space.

But I’m not ashamed of my vagina and the beautiful yet horrific act of nature that happens every 26-28 months. I’m PROUD to be a part of this very uniquely female experience.*

I started using a period app a few years ago that honestly has made me appreciate having a period each and every month.

Introducing Clue

If you’re not using Clue yet, stop what you are doing and download it immediately. It’s a period tracking app that is really SO.MUCH.MORE. You can track your entire cycle: from your sleep, to your pill taking, to your skin quality, temperature (for baby making and baby NON-making), sexual activity and more!

I love inputting data so I can see when in my cycle I tend to break out and when I’m the most or least energized. And the more details you provide the app, the more accurate their cycle guessing algorithm will be. When I first signed up, I input the last few cycles I had tracked into the app, and they have RARELY been wrong. Seriously, I’ll get an alert telling me my cycle is starting soon (usually a 2 day notice) and I immediately think “No, way. I just had that thing.” and plan a week’s worth of outfits that require white thongs. Without fail, Clue is always right.

Monthly I get an update on my cycle that looks something like this (and there are many more details inside the app):

 

What I love even more about Clue is that they are doing research about periods around the world. They’ve sent out surveys to their users in countries everywhere and have compiled incredible data on what it means to have a period in America and in Africa and in Europe and on and on. As we know from the mission of Thinx, having a period is not as “simple*” as it is here in the US in other places in the world. Women stay home from school, women miss work and women are shamed, all for something that I take for granted and grumble about every 25.5 days.

I am proud to be a woman. I think right now is an AMAZING time to be a woman. And part of that is being proud of what my body does (or doesn’t do *praise hands*) every month.

I love my period. Do you?

*Just want to throw it out there that I know many women don’t get periods and also many women have very complicated periods, no matter where they live.