My health education consisted of an hour in the school cafeteria, with a man who looked disturbingly like Al Bundy from Married with Children, clicking through a slideshow of male and female genitalia covered in warts and other abnormalities.
If his goal was to convince me that my body was gross, mission accomplished.
We were a ranch family that avoided personal, awkward conversations at all costs. Our version of ‘the talk’ was watching the birds and the bees...and the cattle and the dogs.
(Don't get me started on how the dogs scared me about sex.)
The odds of my having a graceful transition into womanhood were slim to none.
The Day It All Began
My monthly visitor first arrived while playing catch in the driveway. One minute I was fine, the next, I was struck with excruciating back pain. I collapsed on the gravel and writhed around like the dramatic 12 year old that I was.
I crawled to the bathroom, closed the door, and shrieked at the discoloration in my underwear.
My mom's first suggestion?
Kidney infection.
That is how far off the radar puberty was for my family, and how little we spoke of such personal things. In fact, I'm 42 now, and still, I have so many questions for ChatGPT about how my body works.
Family Tradition
When my mom hit puberty, her own mother handed her The Life Cycle Library — a collection of books from the 1970s about “becoming a woman.”
Lucky for me, she kept them all these years so that I too could benefit from their…vintage wisdom.
Needless to say it was incredible useful...which is where I place the blame for my traumatizing experience with tampons.
Tampons were painful. My mom said discomfort was normal as you are getting used to them so gritted my teeth and carried on. Becoming a woman was evidently more horrific than I realized it would be. I asked if there was any chance I was putting them into the wrong place...which should've been a sign to her that I needed more assistance than The Life Cycle Library could provide, but as I said, we were an avoidant family.
Design or User Error
My first softball game during my period was agony. I couldn't for the life of me imagine why they had designed a tampon to be surrounded by a cardboard tube that poked and prodded the inside of a woman's body.
Clearly, this was designed by a man.
The discomfort of running the bases made me uneasy, but eventually, I forgot the pain. The mind is a powerful thing. When we can distract ourselves, we can often overcome painful sensations. Realizing that I had forgotten about my potentially damning situation, I trotted to the outhouse.
Not only was the discomfort gone, but so was the tampon...
There are times where, now, as a perimenopausal woman, I forget things. Even simple things like replacing feminine products while in the bathroom; however, as a shy, self-conscious teenager, I did not forget something as vital as a tampon. Not to mention, the pain early in the game was unmistakable.
No, I didn't "forget" anything. Yet, something was missing.
I returned to the field, trotting with a new gait that was the result of my newfound ability to kegel. I didn't know "kegel" was the word, but I had learned to will my body to contract, and I did that ever after when on my period. Everywhere I went for the rest of the evening, my eyes scanned the ground, unsure of what I would do if I found my missing item, but also certain that if anyone else spotted it, they would know immediately who it belonged to, and forever after that, I would be the girl who loses used feminine products.
There would be nicknames. Probably even a mention in the school yearbook.
I never found it. I also never heard anyone discuss finding anything...unusual. My best guess is that a stray dog made the discovery.
One would think that the situation would have generated some questions from me for my mom. For instance, "Why are tampons slippery?" "Why is there a cardboard tube around the tampon?"
However, even at that young age, I was a master avoider. Awkward conversations, embarrassing faux pas, menses mistakes...I kept them all to myself.
Eventually (and by eventually, I mean over a year later), I was discussing my hatred for tampons with my mom and her friend. I described how I hate the design, the discomfort of the outer shell, and my fear of the slick applicator.
They both furrowed their eyebrows.
"You haven't been removing the applicator? How is that even possible?" my mom asked.
Oh, it's possible. Painfully possible.
If you're going to avoid anything, avoid leaving the applicator attached to the tampon when in use.
The Larger Lesson
As an adult with a daughter of my own, I vowed to start early with communication about everything. Sex, drugs, rock and roll, all the things.
She recently reminded me of a conversation when she was young about masturbation. She claims she was six. I think she was older. (Maybe seven.)
The fact is, when we avoid discussing the embarrassing, personal, life-altering parts of life, we open the door for trauma.
Not just tampon trauma.
Kids who don't use the real names of their body parts are more likely to be sexually abused and then less likely to have the words to tell adults about the abuse.
Our silence teaches kids that certain topics are off-limits. They don’t need to know the word taboo to feel it.
If You Want Your Teen to Talk to You
Fear causes us to avoid, and our avoidance makes it unsafe for our kids to open up to us.
They're going to learn these things somewhere. Trust me.
Maybe TikTok, maybe their best friend, maybe somewhere even worse.
I never found that tampon. But I did find my voice, and if that means my kid rolls her eyes when I explain cardboard applicators, so be it.