Through stories and folklore, Dr Pinkola Estés outlines the many ways in which women can begin finding their voice, harnessing their power and reclaiming their inner ‘Wild Woman’. Note: Wild Power doesn’t cover much about the science of the menstrual cycle and assumes a bit of prior knowledge.

You will come away from reading this book armed with knowledge; feeling inspired and ready to take action.Knowing and understanding your period can be a window into your health and your mind. You just need to get to know it. Not only that but us girls need to go about breaking this taboo, these books will inspire you to do just that. There they are: 17 of the best middle grade books about periods and puberty! I’m sure tweens will love these stories. Which of these books have you read? Which ones did I miss? More Book Lists I gather from your book that menstruation is something you wanted to know more about for a long time. That resonated with me because it’s a topic that I never heard anything about in an educational setting. Could you tell me how you got interested in it?

First thing first: No shame. No fear. Let’s get educated and help educate the rest of the world for menstrual equality. Because, hey, half-ish of the population gets their period, and it’s the most basic bodily function, and it shouldn’t be kept a secret anymore. This book is an incredible ‘all-rounder’, covering cycle phases, hormones, traditions, breaking taboos, period pain remedies and gut health. Author Le’Nise Brothers is a nutritionist, yoga teacher and women’s health and hormone specialist and this is her first book.My hope is that the more you understand about how hormones and neurotransmitters affect our menstrual health, you’ll better understand your body and perhaps change your expectations about what you can and can’t do.” You Can Have a Better Period, 2022 This right here is a gorgeously designed collection of essays about menstruation. Every topic—and maybe even topics you wouldn’t think of—are covered here. Madame Gandhi writes about free bleeding while running the London Marathon. Wiley Reading writes about being a trans man with a period. Emma Straub writes about living with a horrendously painful period without questioning it for far too long. Ask Me About My Uterus: A Quest to Make Doctors Believe in Women’s Pain by Abby Norman As usual, Sophie faces challenges and challengers with determination and resourcefulness. With the same down-to-earth, realistic, humorous take on friendships and family relationships praised in the three previous Sophie Hartley books, this fourth story brings the indomitable Sophie a step closer to growing up without compromising her sense of herself. Side Note That I Find Hysterical: When finding the cover image for Under Wraps, the list of You May Also Like To Read suggestions included a bunch of books about periods and ended with Nicholas Sparks’s A Walk To Remember.Draw your own conclusions here. Flash Count Diary: Menopause and the Vindication of Natural Life by Darcey Steinke

I assigned them the first chapter of both Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit and Viral Justice by Ruha Benjamin. One of my students said, ‘I started the readings you assigned, and neither of them is about science. Why did you assign them?’ I replied, ‘It’s because they give you a roadmap towards how you could live a different life as a scientist. Hope in the Dark is all about learning from history, realizing that you can have principled optimism and produce change and make a different future for yourself and that pessimism is lazy. Viral Justice shows that small changes in your local community can have big effects in the world, and that you shouldn’t believe that pulling on one little thread isn’t going to do something big. And since your final paper is on imagining futures, those are the things I want you to be thinking about as you’re writing it.’ Similarly, when I was thinking about what books to choose for you, I thought, ‘What were the approaches that really changed my thinking as I was writing my book?’ Some of those things may actually be true. The problem is—and this is not a new argument, I was just reading a paper from the 90s, by Antoinette Burton about this—that the project of imperial feminism, of white women going in and imposing their ideas on others, is one that’s been around for over 100 years, if not far more. It deserves being interrogated, because all people can speak for themselves. And when adult women from one culture decide that they know what’s best for the adult women or people of another culture, that’s concerning. They’re not even right all the time.

Periods Gone Public: Taking a Stand for Menstrual Equity by Jennifer Weiss-Wolf

The whole cycle is actually very clever, extremely interesting and can tell you a lot more about your life than ‘you need to buy tampons.’ First, there's no shame. Afraid of nothing. Let's learn more about menstrual equality and spread the word to other people. There are about half of people who get their period, and it's the most basic bodily function, so it shouldn't be kept a secret any more. A primer on the menstrual movement and everything you need to know about periods is one of these books. It also talks about the political activism of the world, how you can make your period work for you, and essays and a memoir about not-so-great periods. Let's get to it now. Important Books About Periods Period Power: A Manifesto for the Menstrual Movement by Nadya Okamoto, illustrated by Rebecca Elfast Margaret Simon, almost twelve, likes long hair, tuna fish, the smell of rain, and things that are pink. She’s just moved from New York City to Farbook, New Jersey, and is anxious to fit in with her new friends—Nancy, Gretchen, and Janie. When they form a secret club to talk about private subjects like boys, bras, and getting their first periods, Margaret is happy to belong. I’m a biological anthropologist, which means the foundation I’m coming from is human evolutionary biology. That is the lens through which we seek to understand people. Over the years, bioanth has really moved away from just straight up studying human evolution and questions like ‘Why did we evolve big brains?’ There’s definitely a whole line of paleoanthropology that does that. But there are now a significant number of us within bioanth whose research questions focus on trying to understand the wide range of human biological variation. 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?