In this guest post for the joni blog, author Annabel Youens reflects on contrasting menstrual experiences between her own Gen X adolescence—marked by secrecy, shame, and the sense that menstruation should be hidden away—and her daughter's more open and confident experience today. Youens highlights a broader cultural shift: one where access to products, open dialogue, and peer support are helping turn menstruation into what it has always been—a normal part of the body, free from shame.
The first time I tried to use a tampon, I locked myself in the bathroom and cried silently.
My mom stood on the other side of the door, yelling various instructions about how to angle it toward my back. And if you've ever tried to insert a tampon while tense, crying, and being shouted at, you already know it does not fucking work. Your body will not cooperate. The more my mom explained — and the more frustrated she got — the more impossible it became. And the more impossible it became, the less she could understand why I couldn't just insert a tampon like I was loading the dishwasher.
That was the whole tone. A period was a problem. Something to manage quickly, quietly, and preferably out of everyone's way.
What my generation learned: hide it
I grew up when you slid a tampon up your sleeve on the walk to the bathroom so nobody would see it. We had the obligatory health class — a diagram, the word vagina, a lot of nervous giggling — but the real message arrived everywhere else. You told your best friend you got your period. Otherwise, you said nothing.
You said nothing because blood was super gross, and because the boys in your class would make sure you knew you were gross if they found out. It didn't feel normal or natural. It felt like a thing I was constantly apologizing for.
My period was so heavy in junior high that I wore two super-plus tampons just to make it to lunch without bleeding through my underwear. I was already tall, already bigger than most of the girls and boys in my grade, and now there was this too — my giant bloody tampons. My period got filed under the same heading as everything else about my body at thirteen: way too much.
My daughter's version: "Oh, by the way"
Now fast-forward thirty-six years.
It's a Saturday morning. I poke my head into my daughter's room to ask if she wants something to eat. She's mid-Roblox with her friends, turns around, and says, "No, I'm good." And then, over her shoulder: "Oh, and by the way, I got my period last night. I grabbed a pad. Okay, bye."
That was it. That was the whole thing.
Every cell in my body wanted to double down. Are you okay? How do you feel? Do we need to talk about it? Do you need anything? I had a hundred thousand questions lined up, ready to go, ready to be the attentive, caring mother. Instead I smiled, said “Okay,” shut the door, and quietly went and increased my joni subscription.
The part I'm still learning: follow her lead
I'm still teaching myself at almost fifty to give my daughter information when she's curious. When she's not, I shut my mouth very hard, grit my teeth, and pretend everything is fine.
We'd had period products in the house for a while — partly because I knew this was coming, and partly because I'm in perimenopause, which is its own feast-or-famine adventure. (Who knows what I'll need today: a super-plus pad or just a panty liner?) So my daughter knew the supplies were there for her. No big reveal, no special trip. Just there, like toilet paper.
Then, a few days later, she talked about it on her own terms. Tuesday morning — of course we were running late for school — she wanders into my room and says, "Oh my god, it feels so weird to have blood coming out between your legs."
And I realized: this was the conversation. So I switched off the part of my brain that was already shaming me about another late slip, and told myself this mattered more. We talked about flow, and how it changes. She told me she'd already tried a tampon — the first one didn't feel right, so she tried again and got it, and said it actually felt okay. We talked about wrapping up her used pads before they went in the bin, and I was careful to say out loud: this isn't a shameful thing, it's a kindness thing. Nobody loves opening the garbage to a bloody surprise.
She handled the whole thing with grace, ease, and a matter-of-fact responsibility that, frankly, I did not have at her age. Nobody cried. Nobody got yelled at through a door.
What I keep in the house now
If you want the practical version — the closest thing I have to first-period tips — it's mostly this: keep a stocked, no-permission-required kit somewhere she can reach it. Ours has pads and tampons in a few sizes, kept where she doesn't have to ask, with enough that her friends can help themselves too.
Really, the contents of the kit matter less than the message it sends: this is normal, you don't have to hide it, and you don't have to ask.
The quiet good news
What gets me is how big this small shift actually is. Periods in 2026 aren't being treated as disgusting or secret anymore — at least not by these kids. Teenagers are open about it in a way I find genuinely cool, and secretly wish I'd had the courage to be — that open and free about a natural process.
There's a lot going wrong in the world right now. But this is a thing going right: a whole generation being raised to be empathetic, to look out for each other, to believe it's completely fine for everyone to be different. If we've managed that, I think we've got something right.
The goal was never to get the tampon in on the first try. The goal is to make sure she never has to cry on a bathroom floor to figure out what's happening with her body.
Annabel Youens is a writer on Vancouver Island and the author of Thread Traveller, named one of Kirkus Reviews' Top Indie Books of 2025 and a 2026 Can Reads finalist for Women's Fiction. She writes Saved by the Spell, a Substack about midlife, perimenopause, and reimagining women's transitions as sources of power rather than decline — with humour, honesty, and the occasional swear word. A Gen X mother, she's drawn to what happens when we stop hiding the ordinary, messy, powerful facts of having a body. Subscribe to Saved by the Spell and find Thread Traveller here. All emdashes are proudly Annabel’s!