Chapter 12: Rupi Kaur

"i bleed each month to help make humankind a possibility. my womb is home to the divine. a source of life for our species. whether i choose to create or not. but very few times it is seen that way. in older civilizations this blood was considered holy. in some it still is. but a majority of people. societies. and communities shun this natural process. some are more comfortable with the pornification of women. the sexualization of women. the violence and degradation of women than this. they cannot be bothered to express their disgust about all that. but will be angered and bothered by this. we menstruate and they see it as dirty. attention seeking. sick. a burden. as if this process is less natural than breathing. as if it is not a bridge between this universe and the last. as if this process is not love. labour. life. selfless and strikingly beautiful."

‘period.’ is a photo series developed by rupi for a visual rhetoric course in her final year at university. the goal was to challenge a taboo, tell a story without the use of words.

- Rupi Kaur, Period

I stumbled upon this after it was mentioned in The Doctor Will See You by Tamer Seckin, MD. According to Dr. Seckin, Kaur also suffers from endometriosis. The photo story that accompanies the above passage includes images of women's periods- stained sheets, used pads, blood in toilets and showers and a woman curled up with a heating pad, clearly in pain. Basically, all the things we're taught to hide from the world.

This really made me think about the fairly high occurrence of endometriosis (10% of women of reproductive age are diagnosed) and how hard it was for me to find someone to take me seriously. 10% is not an insignificant number. Why did I run into so many gynecologists who were so ignorant on the subject?

The best I can come up with is that a lack of open and honest discussion about menstruation and its symptoms has led to doctors dismissing period cramps and pain as normal. I was always told that my killer periods disrupting my life was normal. A PA at my gyno's office actually told me that taking vitamin C and ibuprofen before my period would help. Vitamin C doesn't cure endometriosis. Nothing does. Surgery can treat it, but there isn't a cure. When I told her that I basically live on ibuprofen the week before my period, she shrugged and gave up. So I just assumed it was normal.

It's not. And talking other people who menstruate is the only way to get a baseline for what is normal. Only after I started an open dialog with my friends that menstruate did I realize that there was something really wrong. They weren't bleeding through pads, sheets, underwear, pants and towels every month. They weren't throwing up. They didn't wake up from a dead sleep with ovulation pain. None of these things were okay or normal and they were all huge indicators that I had endometriosis.

So, talk to your friends. Open a dialogue about your health. Know what's normal and what's a red flag. Be comfortable advocating for yourself and discussing exactly what's happening with your body. Are you passing huge blood clots? Tell a doctor who will listen. If yours doesn't, find a new one. Periods continuously interfering with your life is not normal. Don't let anyone tell you it is.