Teenaged Tampon Trauma

If the goal was to convince me that my body was gross, mission accomplished.

We were a blue-collar 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 traumatized me.

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 not incredibly useful.

Tampons were painful.

My mom said discomfort was normal as you are getting used to them, so I gritted my teeth and carried on. Becoming a woman was evidently more horrific than I realized it would be.

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.

Between innings, I trotted to the outhouse.
The tampon was gone. Not the one from my pocket...

Everywhere I went for the rest of the evening, my eyes scanned the ground, unsure of what I would do if I found the missing item, but also certain that if anyone else spotted it, they would know immediately who it belonged to, and forever after, I would be blessed with a new, horrific nickname. 

I never found it. I also never heard anyone discuss finding anything...unusual.

One would think the situation would have prompted me to ask my mom some questions.

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
• Imbarrassing faux pas
• Menses mistakes

I kept them all to myself. 

Eventually, I was discussing my hatred for tampons with my mom and her friend. I described the poor 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?" 

Oh, it's possible. Painfully possible.

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 teach our kids that some topics cannot be discussed with adults.

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.

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.

Because everything is behavioral health...especially allowing ourselves to have hard conversations.