Do you have a daughter?

The things I wish an older woman had properly taught me

I love my mother, I will miss her terribly when she’s gone, but I never had a really close relationship with her. She doesn’t know shit about my life, past or present, except for the most basic and normal day to day things.

I never confided in her anything too personal or intimate, and truth be told, she never seemed to care much about it, she never asked. Maybe it’s just us, our personalities, I don’t know.

Thing is, as I grew older and went to the various stages of life as a woman, there were times when I thought that my life wouldn’t be so fucked up if someone had taught me something useful, something that only someone older and more experienced could know.

I had my period for the first time when I was 9. I remember vividly, screaming for my mother after finding my panties full of blood on a beautiful Sunday morning. I knew what it was but no one is truly prepared for something like this, something that will mess up with you every month for almost the rest of your life. My mother came to me, gave me clean clothes and a pad that could cover my whole ass and told me “Well, put that on because we have to go to your uncle’s house. Now you just have to deal with it…”. Nice mum, that was helpful…

I was terrified, I had a lot of questions in my head and I was feeling like I had a fucking diaper between my legs. The answers I wanted? I found some with my classmates and others much later on the internet.

20 years ago finding something on the internet was a struggle, today, not so much. Problem is, you don’t want a young teenage girl full of questions and doubts looking for these things on the internet (or anything really), at all! She won’t have enough knowledge or experience to know what is good and trustworthy information and what is rubbish. In between, she will also find and see things that are not appropriate and that will probably raise even more questions and doubts in her head! Or freak her out!

We need to be more open with each other to talk and teach about periods and blood. We all go through it, we’ll all have to live with it for decades and it’s something that has a huge impact in our…

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