Margaret shares her secrets and her spirituality in this iconic Judy Blume novel, beloved by millions, that now has a fresh new look. Period resources should be for everyone, not just cis women! After all not all women menstruate, not all menstruators are women. The Bleeding Thunder project is borne out of our desire for complexity, community, and validation as trans & nonbinary menstruators. Menstruation can be an initiation, but queer, trans, & liminal people are often left out of mainstream menstruation and rites of passage narratives that adhere to static gender binaries.” bleedingthunder.com, 2022

This is up to you. Tampons, menstrual cups, disposable or reusable pads (towels) and period underwear are safe and suitable if you've just started your period. You might want to use pads for your very first period as tampons and cups can take some getting used to. It might be worth experimenting until you find the product that suits you best. Can a tampon get lost inside me? As it goes beyond menstruation to changing the world, what was the message you were trying to get across in your book? Do you want to learn more about cycle phases, hormones, fertility, activism, spiritual practices, or all of the above? You will find the perfect book for you in this list! Except that in some ways there is. A chapter that we ended up pulling from the book, but I wrote as a feature for American Scientist last year, was about pollution and disposable products for menstruation. The way we tend to think is, ‘How can we manage periods to make them invisible so we can go exist in the world?’ We tend to prioritize, ‘What are the most effective products that sop up my period blood and keep it from being visible to other people?’ In doing so, we are producing more and more disposable products that are harmful to the planet. This book has a very clear goal: let’s talk about periods as a normal part of life, y’all. It eloquently combines Okamoto’s personal experiences with practices and beliefs in society surrounding menstruation that prove to be unfair. Along with the problems, she offers solutions, starting with: let’s all have a conversation about periods. Hence the title of the book. Wild Power: Discover the Magic of Your Menstrual Cycle and Awaken the Feminine Path to Power by Alexandra Pope and Sjanie Hugo WurlitzerStudying variation helps us understand how the environment leads to bodies developing adaptations, and how that creates change over time. So what I love about a biological anthropology approach to periods, for instance, is that we don’t start from a clinical perspective of asking questions around ‘What counts as healthy?’ ‘What counts as diseased?’ Instead, we ask, ‘What’s the full variation of what it means to experience or have a period? And how does that help us inform and understand evolutionary biology?’ Note: Wild Power doesn’t cover much about the science of the menstrual cycle and assumes a bit of prior knowledge. This right here is a beautiful collection of essays about menstruation. A lot of things you might not think of are covered here. Madame Gandhi talks about how she had to stop bleeding while running the London Marathon because she was so tired. Wiley Reading talks about what it's like to be a trans man with a period in his story. Emma Straub talks about how she didn't think about a painful time for a long time.

For me, this book was really powerful. I cite and talk about it quite a bit in one chapter of my book. I thought her critique was so skillful. In the vein of what I was talking about with Rebecca Solnit’s book, I think critique is actually optimistic. It offers a path forward toward a better future and demands more of others. That’s what I admire about this book. It isn’t saying, ‘Therefore, you should all do nothing, go leave now.’ Instead, she’s saying, ‘I expect better of all of us. Let’s figure out a path forward.’ Here are a few books on periods that I would recommend if you are looking to learn more than the basics you learned 10 (or more) years ago at school. Or if you are ready to educate some other young ladies about periods. I will certainly be sharing what I’ve learned with my daughter. And another thing. Next year Sophie’s class will see the movieabout body changes, and her classmates are already buzzing about it. Sophie doesn’t want to know about that embarrassing stuff yet. Does that mean she’s immature? How can she prove otherwise? There are ways of covering up stains until you're able to change your clothes, such as tying a sweatshirt around your waist. Keep a spare pair of pants and tights at school or in your bag. Should I use pads, tampons, menstrual cups or period underwear? No, but there is a connection to health, to medicine. What moves me about this book is the incredible detail, compassion and attention that Dr. Reagan puts on all these parents who said, ‘No, my kid deserves something better. And I deserve something better because I don’t want this to happen again.’ Mothers were saying, ‘Nobody is protecting me. I’m going to get rubella and my kid is going to die.’Period Power: A Manifesto for the Menstrual Movement by Nadya Okamoto, Illustrated by Rebecca Elfast Those things are absolutely true. It’s also true that bodies need to rest sometimes and all bodies have moments when they’re not feeling great. There are some people who actually can’t function during their periods. They have endometriosis or adenomyosis or just unbelievable fibroids that make them bleed through their clothes continuously. I have friends who have periods that are that bad.