Bleeding: one woman’s health(s)care story

By Maya Khamala

My period started 2 whole weeks early, which had never happened to me before. I had recently ended a bad relationship, and just as recently completed a Master’s degree while working full time at 2 jobs—one of them “paid activism.” I had been spreading myself too thin. Feminist community organizing work in its many permutations has always been an important reflection of what I feel I stand for, but it can often feel like working day in and out in order to add one drop of goodness to an entire ocean of systemic bullshit. The work can be exhausting and demoralizing, especially when you don’t have multiple health practitioners camped out in the corner of your bedroom, ready to give you the extra loving you will surely need.

So, the bleeding. It started at half time, for the first time. Menstruation as concept, I can handle