Two women dancing and menstruating. Rock art by Indigenous Australians from the Upper Yule River, Pilbara, Western Australia. Image from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_and_menstruation

This article was submitted from the Wellington NCWNZ branch:

My name is Giuls (they/them) and I recently joined the Wellington branch of the National Council of Women of New Zealand. Thank you for having me!

I am a period advocate on a mission to educate people about the menstrual cycle. I grew up knowing nothing about periods - specifically how cool they are! But now I know how incredibly empowering it is to understand your cycle.

Recently, I have conducted a survey with two main purposes:

• to get an understanding of how familiar people are with periods and the menstrual cycle
• to find out how people prefer to access information and learn about periods and the menstrual cycle.

I posted the survey on different Facebook pages, and I collected 147 responses by 7 February 2025 (177 responses at the time of writing).

First of all, I was stunned by the number of responses! I wasn’t expecting such big feedback, and I was very grateful that so many people took the time to answer my survey.

Some other data wasn’t as surprising. Most of the respondents identify as female (92.5%), and most of them say that they’ve learned about periods in school (63.3%) or from podcasts, books or other media (63.9%).

I was curious to find out how confident people are in their knowledge of periods and the menstrual cycle. The overall results were interesting.

The majority of respondents:

• have a good knowledge of periods (54.5%)
• have some knowledge about the menstrual cycle but feel like they could know more (70.1%)
• would like to learn more about the hormones involved in the menstrual cycle (57.1%)
• would like to know more about how the menstrual cycle affects their every-day life, such as energy level, productivity, mood etc (57.1%)
• are overall interested in learning more about periods and the menstrual cycle (55.1%).

What interests me the most about the menstrual cycle is not so much the biological side of it (bleeding, how eggs get released etc), but more so how the different phases of our cycle affect our every-day life. Because they do!

Even though I’ve been tracking my cycle for years and I have become very familiar with how my body and mind behave in different phases, I’m still flabbergasted every time I think about it. I love to know that (mostly) there’s a reason why I feel the way I feel at any given point of my cycle, and that I can predict it, plan around it, and get all the support I need to make sure I use my cycle to my advantage rather than letting it become a challenge.

Of course, everyone is different, and every cycle is different. There are also many conditions people can suffer from around their cycle (for example, endometriosis or premenstrual dysphoric disorder) which I only know about in theory, and which will affect how we feel on top of what’s already going on inside us during our different phases.

But generally speaking, learning about our menstrual cycle and getting in tune with its ebbs and flows means we’re unlocking a whole new level of understanding our body and ourselves, which can make us feel free, empowered, and on top of things. We can predict when we are the most likely to feel strong, creative, giving, focused and productive, as well as when we might get more sensitive, vulnerable, emotional and overwhelmed.

This is what I wish everyone knew. Learning about my cycle truly changed my life and my entire perspective on how I move through the world every single day. My mission is to spread the word about how amazing having a period can be!

From my survey, it emerged that the preferred learning format for most people is a podcast, an audiobook, or something people can listen to in their own time (71.7%). Since this was also not a surprising response, I’m already in the process of developing a podcast (watch this space!).

But in the meantime, mostly because I love interacting with people and communities, I would also love to share more about what I know about periods and the menstrual cycle with you in a presentation. This would also be a great chance to engage with you in person, and to get the conversation going around periods and the menstrual cycle.

I would love to interview people on issues I have little or no knowledge or experience on, such as endometriosis and premenstrual dysphoric disorder (if this is you and you’d like to be involved, please reach out!). I would also be interested in knowing what people are the most curious about, and if there’s anything in particular you’d like to know!

Thank you again for making this space available to me. I am so excited to meet you and get involved. 

Periods can truly be the best thing ever. Once we learn how to get in tune with our cycle, we can use it to our advantage and start living our best life - one period at a time.

To read more articles from The Circular (January-February 2025) issue 650, click on the tag below.