The cost of menstrual shame | Kayla-Leah Rich | TEDxBoise

Translator: Lisa Rodriguez Reviewer: Hélène Vernet Me? I was disgusted, in shock really. I felt like Mother Nature was hazing me into a sorority I wanted no part of.

"Welcome to womanhood! By the way, we don't really talk about this, so if you can just keep it to yourself, that'd be great. " I was angry, angry at every single woman on the planet for the entire existence of this globe, who had not yet done anything to stop this before I had to have my first period.

Now, perhaps in the past, this maybe wasn't a very comfortable topic for you. For the women, maybe you can relate. For the men, I want to remind you that you have a sister, or maybe a daughter, or a wife.

But at the very least you all came from a mother, right? Chances are you love someone who menstruates. (Laughter) After my first period, I just took a cue from everyone around me and just kept it to myself - all the symptoms and the questions - even though half the population was likely experiencing the very same thing.

I just "went with the flow. " (Laughter) Of course, I'd heard the occasional sitcom references to "Her time of the month" or "PMS. " There is a more crass version at school and on the bus of "She's on the rag" or "Don't be a rag.

" And we've all heard euphemisms, have we not? "Aunt Flo's in town! " "The crimson tide," "The painters are in.

" (Laughter) Of course, I think my favorite is: "Shark week. " (Laughter) I don't really mind these euphemisms, but they did very little to educate, or to normalize such a prevalent process for me. And for 25 years, I hid all evidence of my period like it was a crime scene.

But that changed for me when I took my first trip to Haiti. In Haiti, I worked in mobile medical clinics, and in four days time, we saw 320 women, and every single one had either a urinary tract infection or a yeast infection. These very painful infections, they had waited weeks or months to see a doctor for.

And the scene is repeated week after week in Haiti. Grappling with trying to understand why these infections were so rampant, I learned that the women of Haiti have little access to feminine supplies, that they would use cut-up rags or a maxi pad for several days. And this was what was contributing to their infections.

You know, it had never occurred to me before what other women were doing for their periods. You know, we were all just so busy keeping this to ourselves, that nobody was really talking about it. Nobody was talking about the fact there are women who don't have access to feminine supplies.

That never occurred to me. And then, as if to add an exclamation point to the epiphany I was having in Haiti, I had an unexpected period. I would have been fine had I packed those ever-essential items that every woman traveller should pack.

But I didn't. And I was able to experience the panic of not being able to find supplies, and the shame of not being able to take care of my own body, and the humiliation when I bled through on my clothing, and the relief, finally, when I was in an airport where I could buy supplies. Two days, two short days, I experienced what hundreds of millions of women on our planet experience every month, month after month, decade after decade, an average of 3,500 days in a woman's lifetime.

I came back very different. And I immediately started working in a non-profit that makes reusable feminine hygiene kits for women and girls in developing countries. And because the cloth items in the kit are colorful, they can be washed and hung to dry using the sanitizing power of the sun.

It was through my work in this organization that I learned so much about the state of menstruation around the world. I learned that women will resourcefully resort to using items like bits of their mattress pad, or corn husks, even a rock, to manage their flow. Some girls who don't have anything would sit on a cardboard mat and wait out what they call their "week of shame.

" Did you know that there are places on this planet that place limitations on where a woman can go and what she can do when she's on her period? There are some women and girls who know the power of work and education to turn around cycles of poverty, and they get forced into exchanging sexual favors for a maxi pad. These are the facts that I learned and I share in my community as I try to rally support for this cause.

The response, without fail, is almost identical to my own which was: "It never occurred to me what other women were doing for their period. " And then, as if talking about other women's periods almost opened the floodgates, and give permission for the women in my community to talk about their own, my favorite thing to do at sewing events is to walk by a table of women and listen to them talk about their first periods, the thing they just didn't know! Embarrassing moments!

There was one girl who thought that it was a singular event, "period," one and done. (Laughter) Life would be different if that was the case. Several women shared about how they learned quite painfully that when they try tampons for the first time, the applicator was actually meant to be removed and thrown away.

Yeah. . .

It was through these communications that I learned that the ability to openly talk about menstruation, and have access to supplies, isn't just something that was happening over there, in Uganda, Guatemala or Haiti, but here, in our country, our state, our city. Right outside these doors, there are women in our community who struggle to find access to feminine supplies. Our homeless population are particularly susceptible to infections and having to go without.

But our refugee centers, the food banks, our crisis centers, they all need feminine supplies. Even some local middle schools! The nurse will pass out supplies faster than her own pocket book can keep up with.

Food stamps doesn't pay for tampons. And as a community we gather support around those that are struggling and try to provide some basic needs like food, water, and shelter. But feminine supplies are the silent necessity, a need that's not being met because nobody's talking about it.

The interesting thing is: I was talking to volunteers by the thousands about the needs around the world and locally, and I realized that I wasn't really talking about menstruation. You see, I have four boys. And we turned our house into a maxi pad manufacturing plant for girls around the world.

But I realized that I was still hiding my own supplies. I would smuggle them in from purchase to bathroom, you know, not wanting to embarrass. And when I realized the incongruence, I decided that I needed to change.

So I tried an experiment. I got a box of tampons, and inside I placed some money and a note that said, "Congratulations for being brave enough to open this box! All the money is yours.

" (Laughter) I took my box and put it in the middle of my kitchen islands, and waited. Nobody touched it for three weeks. (Laughter) Finally, when I went out of town, Dad, who was in on the deal pressured the boys.

"- Open the box. - Pff! .

. . Uh-uh.

" My 12-year-old didn't really know like "what is this about? " And when his older brothers let him in on it, he left the room. He wasn't going to have anything to do with that.

Finally after much pressure, my 9-year-old, with his quick ninja-like reflexes, opened the box and then ran into the other room before the contents could have any effect over him. (Laughter) My 15-year-old peeped in the box and then pocketed the money for his efforts. This experiment wasn't just for my boys, it was for me.

I wasn't doing myself or them any favors by hiding the very biological process that helped create their lives. So now, I no longer hide my products, my symptoms, my period. There is a cost to the shame and silence in which we surround menstruation.

It is individual, it is local and it is global. The costs range from the energy and effort it took for me to hide for 25 years, to the girl in Middletown, America, who lives with Dad and is too embarrassed to ask him to buy her some supplies, so she goes to her school nurse instead; or the girl in Uganda, who on first signs of her period, thinks that she is dying, because nobody told her what was going to happen with her body; to the girls all throughout Africa, who drop out of school at drastically different rates than the boys, as soon as they hit puberty because they don't have supplies. These costs extend to Nepal, to the women who are sent outside their community to sit in a menstrual hut and wait out their week until they are clean and can rejoin community again.

These are the costs. Celeste Mergens said, "This planet is never going to reach its fullest potential, if half of its population is being held back by their very own biological nature. " There's a cost to the shame and silence.

In the past, maybe you thought the silence around menstruation was just discretion. After all, we don't openly discuss everything that goes on in the bathroom, right? But there's a difference between silence, shame, and discretion.

For example, we can buy toilet paper without any embarrassment, and we openly display it in the bathroom. But people are really humiliated to buy feminine supplies, especially if it's a male checker, and we tuck those away so nobody gets to see those. Discretion looks like me not openly discussing my period at the dinner table.

And shame looks like tampon manufacturers that make rustle-free packaging! So the woman in the stall next to me doesn't know that I'm bleeding? We've been taught to be ashamed about menstruation even among other women.

There is a global effort taking place to end the stigma behind the period. It takes on many different forms. It looks like a woman from England who ran a marathon while freely bleeding without any products, or an American artist, who designs pictures using her captured menstrual blood.

I think they're beautiful. Now to some, these things might seem like extremes, but I want to remind you that on the other end of that pendulum is the woman who walks through her village freely bleeding without products, not out of choice, but out of necessity. And that woman in Nepal, who dies alone in her menstrual hut, from exposure.

Regardless of what has been passed to us, we have an obligation to the women and girls around the world and for the generations that follow us, to set a new tone around menstruation, to change it from shame and silence, to acceptance and education. And how we do that is how any good idea worth spreading starts. It's with a conversation.

Congratulations! Some of you just had your first one! (Laughter) And for all of you, I'm encouraging you to go out and have more.

Maybe try your own tampon experiment. Or it could look something like this: maybe you can go today and ask somebody, "Did you know there are women on this planet that don't have supplies? " You can ask questions like: "What would you want me to know about menstruation?

" "What was your first period like? " We can start here and maybe expand to questions like: "What toxins are in our tampons exactly? " "Should there be a luxury tax on feminine supplies?

" And we can ask, "Who needs feminine supplies and who should provide those? " And will you, no matter what your efforts look like, locally and globally, will you ask the women and girls that they serve, if they have the supplies that they need? We need to start talking about menstruation and asking questions about the period.

Now, if you were to ask me, I would tell you, I no longer think that women everywhere should put an end to the period. But I do believe that brave men and women have the ability to put an end to the shame and the silence. This whole planet was peopled by periods.

(Laughter) And there is no shame in that.