On Period Leave, and why it matters and belongs here.

This post and this practice couldn’t have existed, for me, without the inspiration provided by my friend Marina in a spontaneous and incredibly valuable sharing she created around menstruation during our online women circle’s meetings during pandemic times. She would love if you could donate to the Argentinian UNHCR and/or Doctors Without Borders, if your location prevents you from doing so, go for your local branch. Mention ≠ absolute endorsement.

I was diagnosed with uterine polyps in December 2019, after five months of steadily increasing bleeding and pains – yay, expired teargas. The gynecologist who first diagnosed me offered both the immediate surgery approach and the wait and see approach, depending on my self-assessed level of discomfort – and also since I thought I could come back to Italy within six months, as I used to do before Covid hit.

When she saw me more keen on the wait-and-see, she said something on the lines of “Your body is bleeding excessively because she is trying to push the polyp out, and it’s a small one, near the cervix … it can make it!”. What I heard was something on the lines of “You have six months to throw the New Age-woo-woo-sink-of-LOVE at your body so that she feels supported enough to heal you”. There was an alliance to be formed.

I started right after the visit, slamming my printed ultrasound in the middle of my friends’ happy hour table, with major dramatic effect. Before anyone could complete the obvious “Who’s the father?!” sentence, a better informed friend clarified “That is not a baby”. Before shock could turned into concern, I made proper introductions: “It’s a benign polyp [in Italian polipo, which also means octopus] and it’s in my uterus, so it’s mine. I named it Jerry”.

Glasses were raised: “To Jerry!“.

My awesome friends_

Little did we know that I wouldn’t be back for almost three years, and that by that time Jerry would have peacefully left my uterus to go travel on its own, while another one of us would birth a real human baby, Camilla, who turned three just yesterday 🙂

As all children, before leaving home, Jerry taught me invaluable lessons, mostly about the Me&My body Alliance – the MMA [Wikipedia], but way more badass! Among these lessons, other than the precious one that many need to hear “pain if not normal and you are not crazy” [Psychology Today website], is Period Leave, which I started taking in 2020 – in absolute secret. The secrecy was not much due to “period shame”, which thankfully was never a thing for me but it is definitely still a thing [livestrong] – thank you Mother and Teachers. I was, and to some extent still am battling against … “Rest shame”? Thank you, internalized capitalist patriarchy.

I hope not to hit menopause before I can see paid period leave becoming universally statutory for all menstruating people. Some countries already have it for years – and if you think Scandinavia, I’ll caution you to rather look somewhere else in the African and Asian continent first …

… But, regardless, today I’m using my period leave to write about the Period Leave because, after years, my internal battle ground is still open. As it goes for any other right I fight for, I first have to fight from within and earn it from myself – a process often mediated through relational and collective discussion and experimentation. Then I can muster the courage and strength to practice it, organize around it, demand it universally.

This is how it went so far when it comes to Period Leave:

• Zero, as I said, I did it secretively … and half-arsedly_I told myself I would allow myself to work as much as my body feels happy to work on the first day. And painfully resented when it wasn’t at least as much as the Fordist model of factory work – as devised by Henry Ford, who was not a menstruating person, surprise surprise!
• First, I made a “serious joking experiment”_I started dressing in full red on period days, as a “forever and collective art performance“.
• Second, I started surrendering_It would be: day one of my period “unappealingly” OFF, and day two would be at wish but with plenty of meditation to “resist resentment”.
• Third, I started embracing and celebrating_I came out as a happily menstruating pain and polyp free being more and more often, engendering great conversations and moments of menstruating sisterhood and siblingship.

And now times should be ripe for demands and advocacy. And the internal enemy is the only one that blocked me today. My own boss but also my own labor union, because I am blessed to be a very picky freelancer no-profit consultant working via remote at the moment. So, as my last “Period Leave” marked by apologetic secrecy is coming to an end, I commit to:

1. I explicitly communicate that I am on period leave through a specifically crafted “[PERIOD LEAVE] And this is why” auto-responder message that I will also share here as a template.

2. I explicitly demand paid period leave in my next job negotiation with very open-minded and progressive NGOs, communities and educational organizations and institutions.