Dear Period,

Let’s be honest: in high school, you and I were sworn enemies. You ruined my favourite jeans, crashed sporting events, and showed up at the exact worst times with all the subtlety of a brass band. Back then, I counted the days until you’d leave.

Then came young adulthood. Safe sex. Contraception. The terrifyingly high stakes of my own biology, and the life-altering consequences if I got careless about any of this.

And suddenly, our whole dynamic shifted.

From Unwanted Guest to Guest of Honour

Somewhere in my twenties, you went from being my monthly annoyance to my most anticipated monthly notification.

Don’t get me wrong—your PMS Wingwoman was as sharp as ever, still causing all kinds of physical and emotional chaos (acne breakouts, cramping, bloating, fatigue, moodiness). Still a pesky nuisance, sometimes irregular, and consistently inconvenient.

But your visits during this early adulthood phase of my life gave me a sense of relief—as if I was holding my breath in the in-between times, dreading an unwanted pregnancy despite using multiple forms of contraception concurrently—because pregnancy (+STDs, especially AIDS) was so easy to come by, or so we were taught at school, thought among my peers, and in the general ethos of our time. ‘Safe Sex’ and ‘Say No to Drugs’ were slogans that were relentlessly pounded into our psyches, with good reason.

“Are you late? Why are you late? Is that a cramp or early pregnancy implantation? Did I take my pill 45 minutes too late two Tuesdays ago?”

The psychological gymnastics of actively avoiding pregnancy while sexually active was an Olympic sport, and you were the final judge holding up the scorecards. The moment I saw that first spot of red, the sheer relief and gratitude that would wash over me made me want to rejoice, full-on Sound of Music style.

I went from cursing your presence to throwing you a one-woman welcome party. “Take all my blood, take my abdominal comfort, take my dignity—just take away the panic!”

You were also an unexpected channel for fleeting moments of female bonding with friends and chance encounters with random women in public washrooms, usually gathered at the mirrors and sinks, and almost never initiated by me. Women around my age and of varying cultures would say to me:

• “Ugh, my period wasn’t supposed to come today. Have you got a tampon or pad you can spare?”

• “I’ve got the worst period cramps. Have you got any Advil or Tylenol on you?”

• “There isn’t enough concealer I can use to cover this mountain of a pimple on my chin. Period acne sux!”

“No worries, I got you, babe. Here, try this.” Or variations of this, was my typical response. There’s a special universal sisterhood born from shared menstrual suffering.

Ditching The Pill For Data-Driven Liberation

When I got married, I finally took the leap off the birth control pill and tried a natural method of birth control. “We’re married now, so if an accident happens, it’s ok”. Even though The Pill kept you predictable, Period, and minimized PMS symptoms, I never felt right taking it. It felt like I was hormonally gagging my body’s natural rhythm—chemically enslaving and hijacking my natural emotional state, my personality, my creativity. “Is this really me,” I’d ask myself, “or is the real me buried under a synthetic dose of hormones?” Dramatic, I know. But that’s how I felt.

Enter the CREIGHTON MODEL FertilityCare™ System (CrMS).

A new tool to proactively monitor my gynecological health? Sign me up! I was already in the habit of tracking you, Period, and deciphering the signals your PMS Wingwoman was telling me, thanks to Mom. So learning the Creighton Method with my husband (working regularly with a Creighton NFP teacher) was a natural next step for us.

Surprisingly, it added a layer of intimacy in our relationship that we never could have anticipated. I learned to read my cervical mucus, and we tracked everything using the Creighton charting system. We were thrilled to be able to understand my body more deeply, to be able to read the charts together, and to analyze my bio data trends over time. It built a weirdly beautiful layer of intimacy and trust between us.

The biggest shocker? Learning my fertile window was only 3-7 days, depending on how my natural cycle was going. I didn't need to chemically suppress my body 28 days a month to avoid pregnancy! Which got me even angrier about taking a daily birth control pill. GOOD RIDDANCE.

And for the first time in my life, Period...I actually learned to respect you.

A Strange Kind of Partnership

I realize now that this era of our relationship was built on a bizarre, unspoken truce. We weren’t Besties, we were Research Partners. I tracked you, Period, and then learned to track my cervical mucus. I bought the ultra-absorbency products. I kept the heating pad and hot water bottle on standby. In return, you delivered my monthly proof of freedom.

You reminded me that my body is working, that our use of the Creighton Method was doing its job, and that my life stays on the track I chose for it.

So here’s to you, my chaotic, unpredictable, utterly essential Biological Buddy. I still hated the cramps, but every time you showed up on time (or even a little late), I was ALWAYS happy to see you, Period, in this phase of my life.

With equal parts annoyance and profound gratitude,

JiaHui 家慧

Dear Period,

Through my adolescent years and into my twenties, then early years of marriage, you and your inseparable PMS Wingwoman were a pesky combo that plagued me every 24 days, bleeding me for 7 days each time.

The 24-Day Hijack

This short cycle meant that we met for 15 cycles annually—bleeding 106 days (or 3.5 months) per year. Other people’s Periods visited them every 28 days—bleeding 91 days (about 3 months) per year.

I did some calculations. You hijacked a very significant proportion of time in my life. Of the 38 years we were acquainted, we bled for 135 months (11 years).

11 years. That is more than a decade of my life spent actively bleeding.
Why did you visit so often? Why so needy?

Given my 3-week cycle and the PMS tenacity, I only felt fully “normal” for a measly 9 days out of every 24-day cycle. That’s 137 days of normalcy out of 365 days in a year.

433 months (11.4 years, 32.1%) of normalcy, over the 38 years of our relationship. Which means that out of my entire menstrual lifetime of 38-years, I spent 25.8 years—or 67.9% of that time—trying to function while actively compromised by bleeding and PMS.

To think that 50% of the global population functions while quietly experiencing a similar private hell for at least 50% of their menstrual lifetime is mind-boggling. If this were a condition that MEN had to endure, there would be monthly paid leave for Menstrual Wellness. Menstruation products would be covered by universal healthcare, health insurance, or qualify for income tax credit. Or simply readily available for FREE; to anyone, anywhere, at all times—so that nobody would have to carry that stuff with them everywhere they go—because who needs that inconvenience and financial burden? The condition itself would be publicly elevated to physical- and character-building Menstrual Martyrdom Mission Quest. And men would be exalted as Everyday Heroes for showing such forbearance and resilience in the face of Nature-imposed regularly-scheduled torture.

Given that suffering and adverse life experiences have been correlated with the development of empathy, compassion, and prosocial behavior (Lim & DeSteno, 2016), it’s not surprising that women demonstrate higher levels of empathy than men, and that these sex differences in empathy levels grow larger with age (Christov-Moore, Simpson, Coudé, Grigaityte, Iacobani, Ferrari, 2016). However, that same study failed to take into account every woman’s private SUFFERING and regularly humbling HELL, that she must quietly find a way to cope with as she journeys through life. For me, that coping mechanism started out as an involuntary, brutal physical boot camp.

The Training Regimen

The VERY WORST thing about you was the severe period cramping (dysmenorrhea)—like sharp and repetitive abdominal stabbing that made me double over and immobilized me into fetal position. Mental visions of my uterus spasming with intention, sloughing off its unused lining like a superhero cape. The deep red cape exiting the vaginal canal in dark red globular chunks and stretchy sanguine syrup.

So intense was the pain, that there were times you caused sudden cold sweating and spotty vision, putting me on the verge of fainting. WHYYYYY was any of this necessary? By the time I was 13, I learned to sit with my head between my knees as soon as the cold sweats came, to prevent myself from fainting. Over-the-counter painkillers sometimes helped, but seemed to exacerbate the heavy lethargy that always came with the pain—a mixed blessing.

I later learned that the pain level of severe period cramping is equivalent to early-stage labour and heart attack.

So is THAT it? Years of intermittent and torturous period cramping as a TRAINING REGIMEN for eventual childbirth, years later?

Your PMS Wingwoman was always too generous with her terrible taste in gifts:

• Period acne and bloating

• Headaches and breast tenderness

• Irritability, sadness, and mood swings

• Anxiety and fatigue

These unwanted gifts had such staying power, lingering for days after tail end spotting ceased.

For a neurodivergent child born with big feelings, the emotional chaos and acne shame were amplified and felt even more acutely. Sensory overload during PMS was particularly grating and challenging to navigate, but also forced me to start learning early how to self-regulate under such challenges.

I couldn’t decide if you, Period, were a TRAITOROUS part of my body that lay dormant some of the time and aggressively asserted your presence other times, or if you were an external ENEMY that visited from time to time.

But by the time I was 12, I decided you were most definitely an external ENEMY whose torturous visits I had no choice but to accept with as much grace as I could manage. The possibility that my body would ever betray me was just too frightening for my 12-year-old mind to accept.

The Cognitive Load of Period Logistics

Your frequent visits, Period, didn’t just disrupt my body; you constantly threatened my experience of Life. Navigating a rigorous academic schedule, high-stakes exams, and later, a demanding professional career meant I was trapped in a perpetual state of defensive logistics.

It was an extra cognitive load that I did NOT need.

If an important final exam, a cross-country/track meet, cheerleading competition, or a crucial presentation fell during my 7 days of abdominal stabbing and PMS brain fog, “taking a sick day” wasn’t an option. I had to learn how to mask the pain and perform through the exhaustion.

Mitigating your impact became a military-style operation. It meant:

• Pre-emptively dosing myself with painkillers hours before a test, praying the timing would align so the sharpest cramps wouldn’t hit mid-exam.

• Mapping out the nearest restrooms at every new venue or office space to ensure a quick escape route for sudden cold sweats.

• Planning outfits with comfortable dark bottoms, loose tops, and flat shoes for those bloaty bleeding days.

• Carrying Tylenol/Advil plus an arsenal of different sized pads and tampons at all times.

• Channeling every ounce of my neurodivergent masking energy just to sit upright and look professional while my uterus was staging a violent coup.

It was an exhausting, invisible layer of project management that coincided with every major milestone of my youth and early career. I couldn’t afford to be passive. To survive the school year and later, the workplace, I had no choice but to master the art of defensive scheduling. Quite the operation, given my innate time-blindness.

The Data, the Dialogue, and the Soup

Your comings and goings made it imperative for me to learn how to notice and make meaning of the data my body was regularly giving to me. The annoying and oftentimes embarrassing period-related questions my mother would ask every cycle, coupled with the calendar tracking she insisted I keep up with, cultivated in me from a young age a holistic approach to interpreting individual symptom “data points” as patterned holistic systems—a way of thinking that has expanded to many other parts of my life as I journey on.

SIDENOTE: ‘Aiya’ 哎呀 is a versatile, everyday interjection used to express surprise, disappointment, frustration, dismay, or pain—depending on the context. Kinda like saying “Oh no!,” “Oops!,” “Ouch!” in English. You’ll likely be seeing Aiya 哎呀 in my posts a LOT.

On and on it would spiral and escalate. This regular line of questioning felt embarrassing, intrusive, and suffocating. It made me feel powerless and angry—further animating you, Period, into a larger and larger ENEMY. But despite my tactical attempts to evade my mother’s annoying Period interrogations; her fiery, loving, and determined persistence would eventually wear me down and I’d sulkily take the time to notice what my body was telling me, and reluctantly tell her about it. We’d argue about discuss what the symptoms meant, what ingredients she planned to use, and why. The older I got, the more I appreciated these conversations with my mother and the wisdom she was sharing with me.

You would think that after a while, the ingredients discussion would become repetitive, but no. Because she was in regular contact with her friends—whom I affectionately think of as her “TaiTai 太太 Network” of Chinese Canadian housewives, where the art and science of bo tong was, and continues to be, a regular topic of enthusiastic conversation.

The Art and Science of Bo Tong (煲湯 Soup-Making)

Mom’s TaiTai friends were a fiercely formidable group of ladies and a veritable Knowledge Community of all things Cantonese Chinese. We all lived in the same neighbourhood and they first met while walking their kids to school in the mornings, then they’d head to someone’s home (often ours) for tea and snacks, and the magic that happens when women come together to gab about life. Navigating Womanhood and Motherhood as first-generation Chinese-Canadians in a land they were not born to, but which they had chosen for their forever home, was a common theme. Much time and energy was also spent swapping bo tong (煲湯 soup-making) wisdom that was handed down to each of them through their ancestral ladder of matriarchs; or gathered through their friend and family networks, random conversations with TCM doctors, TV and radio interviews of TCM doctors and home cooks, and local Chinese newspaper columns about health written by TCM doctors. Bo tong knowledge has always been ever-evolving among generations of Chinese mothers and grandmothers since time immemorial.

I don’t know if mom’s soups truly made a difference in my cycles, but her tong has always warmed my body and soul. All the thoughtful care she puts into them is pure liquid love. To this day, now in her early 80s, she still makes nourishing and delicious tong for my husband and me on a weekly basis, and we are so very grateful.

*SIDENOTE—30-day post-partum confinement: I know this sounds like an antiquated misogynistic tool of the Patriarchy for their oppressive pleasure. I assure you it is not. It is a nourishing period of deep rest and recovery following childbirth. The new mother’s mother, mother-in-law, aunties, or even hired aunties for this period, lavish the new mom with nourishing food and tong. This time of rest and seclusion focuses on keeping the body warm, eating nutrient-dense foods, and delegating household chores to allow the new mother to heal completely and to bond with her child.

Matriarchs, Menstruation, and Mother-Love

The regular Period interrogations discussions with my mother in my pre-teen years quickly destigmatized you, Period, in my mind. By the time I was in high school, I had downgraded you from Nuclear-Level ENEMY to Unwanted GUEST. Strangely, you were also a conduit to intensifying my fiery relationship with my mother in my teenage years. Period conversations that were about as comfortable as petting a porcupine have that effect.

Decades later, the Enemy has been downgraded, the porcupine has been petted, and the Annoying Intruder has finally left for good. But the tong? The tong stays. And so does the data-driven, liquid love my mother boiled into my bones and soul.

JiaHui 家慧

Disclaimer: I have no financial ties to any of the vendors mentioned in this post. No sponsorships, no payouts, no perks—just pure resource-sharing.

Dear Period,

I’d been wondering about you since I was 8 years old, ever since I started reading Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume books the year before. Friend, Enemy, or Pest—which one would you be? I must have been thinking about it a bit too much because you came when I was in 4th grade at the age of 9—two years earlier than I expected you. After all, Margaret, Nancy, and Gretchen were 11 when they got their periods (Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume, 1970), and Beezus got hers when she was 12 (Ramona Forever by Beverly Cleary, 1984).

So when I first saw a dried red-brown stain on my underwear, my first thought was that something I ate must have escaped my pee hole or my poop chute. Red bean dessert soup? Chocolate Vitasoy? Chocolate milk? Soy sauce? Oyster sauce? Whatever. I’m way too old to be having embarrassing accidents like this. Just throw my undie in the laundry hamper and grab a new one (I’d been doing my own laundry since I was 7). Nobody has to know my holes are leaking. Especially not Mom, she’ll freak. I decided I’d avoid having any red or brown food for the next few days but each day, the same stains appeared. I’d started to wrap toilet paper around the gusset of my undies, in case the mysterious staining might soak past the thin fabric. I failed to connect this mysterious leakage to the sore little rocks that had started forming under my nipples some months back. On one of those days, I was peeing in a school washroom, and decided to bend a little lower to take a look at what colour my pee was. It was normal coloured, but to my astonishment, there was a slow-moving dark-red stretchy drop coming from somewhere behind my pee stream. FASCINATING! I knew it wasn’t coming from my bum hole. But it wasn’t coming from my pee hole either. Since WHEN DID I GROW A HOLE between the two? I finished, wrapped more toilet paper around the undie gusset, and decided I should gently ask my mother about this…tomorrow…or maybe the day after that. The mysterious leakages stopped the next day—no doubt because I stopped eating and drinking red and brown things—SUCCESS! I was so happy! I don’t have to tell Mom after all!

Somehow, Mom came across my stained underwear a couple days later. We had an enlightening chat, confirming my suspicions that I had THREE holes “down there”—not two—just like all girls and women.

• She showed me how to use pads, and the varying sizes. How to discard them.

• How lucky we had pads with sticky backs—that back in her teenage years the pads weren’t sticky and they had to wear a thin leather belt under their clothing, with little notches to attach the front and back end of cotton pads to, that were always leaky.

• She gave me a little calendar—the size of a checkbook, enveloped in a red plastic cover—to mark days when blood appears, and told me this is something I’d need to do ALWAYS, to learn about my period patterns.

• She told me that some days might be heavier bleeding and some days there might be…pain in my belly (WHAAAAT?!). I needed to note this on the calendar too.

• That I might feel heavy emotions or feel really tired a bit before, during, and after my period.

• I’d need to tell her every time my period came, so that she can make me pork liver soup and more beef dishes to help my body replenish the iron and blood I’d lose during my periods.

• Then she gave me laundry advice on blood stain removal.

⏳Flashback…

I’d already known about how babies are made by the time I was in 2nd grade. It was a combination of my own sleuthing and reluctant awkward conversation with my mother. My YeeYee’s (姨姨 maternal auntie) pregnancy sparked many questions that I posed to EVERY adult in my life at the time, who, to my 7 year-old mind, all gave me annoyingly patronizing and highly unsatisfactory responses:

• Mom and Dad said they’d tell me when I’m older.

• Some relatives joked that I…

  • exploded out of a rock.

  • was found on the side of a street.

  • was found in a pile of trash at the side of a street.

  • was bought at the outdoor food market.

  • was found in a pile of trash at the outdoor food market.

  • (all typical Chinese colloquialisms about where babies come from—note how opposite this is from Western colloquialisms involving beautiful gift-bearing storks and magical cabbage patches.)

• Auntie J, my babysitter, told me to ask my mother.

• My teacher told me to ask my mother.

• The school librarian told me to ask my parents.

• The recess teachers on duty told me to ask my parents.

• (It was the early 1980s, and I was in Catholic school).

None of my friends knew. Not even my BEST friend, L, who was the smartest friend I had—but we conjectured that since it’s such a BIG SECRET, it must have something to do with BOYS (ew) and HOLDING HANDS (ew! ew!) or KISSING (EEEEEEEW!).

So the next time I was at YeeYee’s house, I looked it up in my cousin S’s Charlie Brown Encyclopedias, and learned about sperm from a man going inside the egg from a woman, and fertilizing it in her womb. But the encyclopedia had NOTHING to say about HOW a man’s sperm got inside a woman’s body, never mind specifically into her egg. S (age 5) and I discussed this, agreeing that there had to be some sort of touching between a man and a woman for sperm travel, but we couldn’t figure out this puzzle beyond that. We vowed NEVER to touch boys, and to only tap their clothes when playing tag.

Later at home, I relayed my findings to my parents at dinner, and asked some pointed questions about sperm travel. A silence descended. Mom and Dad shared an uncomfortable look. Then Mom huffed, “I’ll tell you after dinner - sik fan la! (食飯喇—eat your dinner!)” Pretty sure I saw Dad trying to hide an amused smile as he picked up his rice bowl with one hand, his chopsticks with the other, and put them to his mouth. “FINALLY!” I thought, “This is gonna be gooood!”

It was NOT good. It was downright GROSS. The KEY THING here is that Mom told me that all the action happened in the VAGINA—“where your pee comes from”, and then the embryo finds a cozy spot beyond the vagina, in a woman’s womb, and grows in there for 9 months. Then when the baby is ready to come out, it comes through the vagina or there’s a caesarean operation that a doctor does on the woman—which is why Mom has a big thick scar on her belly that I had seen and touched. There was NO MENTION OF A SEPARATE THIRD HOLE for this. All of it sounded gross and painful. After all, a pee hole is small, isn’t it? She told me about blood that “will come out of your vagina once a month” when your body is ready to have babies—“probably when you’re about 12 to 14 years old”, and that breasts would also start to grow around the same time. Hair in more places too.

I let all this new information roll around in my mind for a few days. This was the first time I thought God and Mother Nature, although very wise and creative, were also kinda silly. Because why would any 12-year-old be a suitable mother? Wouldn’t 20 years old be a better age? Why make the female body able to carry babies at such a young age? Why steal our childhoods? I posed these questions to Mom, who didn’t have any answers for this, but did tell me that our Chinese ancestors had babies in their teens, and that there was a time when having a 4-generation mega-family living under one roof was a prosperous blessing.

She also told me never to call God or Mother Nature “silly” in public.

I mentally filed all this information for future review, for when I turn 12, and decided that being a kid meant freedom from all that gross weirdness. I did a quick mental calculation—if I’m 7 now, it’ll be 5 years until I’m 12. I only have 5 years of childhood left, and as much as I wanted to speed my way into grown-up-hood, I realized how precious these next 5 years would be.

🚀Back to Reality…

So imagine my deeply dumbfounded disappointment when you, Period, showed up as a red-brown undie stain when I was only 9. You were THREE YEARS early. You STOLE from me. You really PISSED. ME. OFF. You THIEF.

JiaHui 家慧

There is a precise moment when the bamboo stalk must make a choice.

When the winds of life shift violently, it cannot remain completely rigid. If it refuses to move, it shatters. Instead, it does something miraculous: it bows. It bends. It leans deep into the dirt, weathering the storm in absolute silence, only to snap back toward the sky when the air clears—stronger, hollower, and more resilient than before.

Welcome to BambooM-ing.

If you have found your way here, chances are you are navigating a shitstorm of your own. Perhaps you are standing on the precipice of midlife, or newly crossed over to the other side of 50 (like me). Perhaps your body is shifting under the new weight of menopause (pun intended), or your mind is wrestling with the tumultuous waves of mental health.

You are not alone. This space is a sanctuary built for the process of becoMing.

The Woman Behind the Words

To understand why this space exists, you need to know a little bit about me.

Up until a couple of years ago, I operated in a highly structured, visible professional world in the Greater Toronto Area (Canada). To save myself, I had to step away from a toxic environment that bent and nearly broke me. I had to refocus my energies on healing, learning to take better care of myself, regrouping, and taking exploratory footsteps in new directions. I am an educational leader, strategist, and researcher; with an insatiable interest in the innovation of teaching and learning within our digital context. In that world, public identity is everything.

But beneath that professional armour, I am a woman who has grown up during second- and third-wave feminism, navigating the best I can through our current fourth wave.

I have walked through the fire of major life passages in a pluralistic Western society, carrying a complex web of intersectionalities and identities—I am:

• she/her, cis-gendered

• a second-generation Chinese-Canadian, thus a member of the overseas Chinese Diaspora and all the cultural baggage that carries

  • often considered a “bamboo shoot” (竹昇 zhú shēng / jook sing) by Homeland Chinese and first gen emigrants—closed at both ends like a section of bamboo—not Chinese enough (perceived language/mindset inadequacy) nor Western enough (not White therefore a Perpetual Foreigner)

• an only child

• wife to my soulmate and best friend

• caregiver to my loving elderly parents

• childless childFREE

• a dog mom

• auntie to several nieces and nephews

• auntie-mentor to several children and youth in my life

• godmother to 3 godsons and 1 chow chow

• mercurial and loving friend to an increasingly select bunch of beautiful souls—a necessary adaptation to my dwindling social energy and increasing BS intolerance

• bilingual (English + my heritage Chinese dialect)

• neurodivergent—diagnosed “gifted” at the age of 10 (latter part of 4th grade) by school district psychoeducational testing; I’m also time-blind

• an educator at heart and an accidental researcher by circumstance

• the first member of my father’s family to ever attend university

• the first member of my mother’s family to attain a PhD

• the first member of my family to present my research at international research conferences across the globe over the years

• a conflicted cradle Catholic

• a Nature appreciator and beginner bird watcher

• an active hobby dim-sum-er

Like many other Cross-Cultural Kids, I navigate these intersectionalities between a culture I’ve inherited and a culture that I live in. I have been dancing the identity code-switching dance all my life–linguistically, culturally, professionally—and I still stumble sometimes.

I am also the heiress of intergenerational trauma. My family and ancestors on both sides carry the experiential weight of the Chinese Communist Revolution (1927–1949), Japanese invasion of China (1931-1945), the Chinese Civil War (1945-1949 Nationalist Kuomintang government vs. Chinese Communist Party), and the Chinese Exclusion Act of Canada (1923-1947). The latter greatly impacted my great-grandfather, a well-respected man in Toronto’s early Chinatown, known for his generous nature and willingness to help others in the community.

I know what it feels like to navigate the chaotic emotional rollercoaster of infertility and subfertility, as well as the heavy guilt and shame that attach themselves to your innermost soul like unrelenting parasitic barnacles. I am currently in the midst of the profound WTF-ness of watching my body change, newly post-menopause—rewriting the rules of my energy, my mood, and my sense of Self. I know the heavy, unspoken weight of managing precarious mental health while carrying on as positively and solidly as best I can in the outside world—so as not to worry or burden others.

To balance the heavy, I invite as much play into my life as I can manage. I’m playing with music on the piano and drums, enjoying the lyrical process, and all the embodied mashing and bashing. I’m playing with all kinds of visual art mediums, a new pathway for my self-expression, and a remedy for blank walls in my home. I’m playing with crochet, which I find deeply relaxing and meditative, while upping my gifting game. I’m playing pickleball—a recent injury-inducing compulsion. I’m playing with Latin and swing dancing—an additional way for my husband and me to connect and layer the laughs! I’m playing with the idea of quitting snowboarding each of these past few winters, only to put it off for another year as I prove to myself that “I’m not ‘too old’ for this…YET.” I’m playing in the water—paddling with my husband, friends, and my dog, on SUPs and kayaks—finding serenity in connecting with the land and water, in deep gratitude. I’m playing occasional equestrian—taking an extended break after a concussion from a botched horse jump, and limiting myself to trail rides. I’m playing martial artist—practicing Tai Chi with my father for the past 20 years, and briefly dabbling in Wing Chun. I’m playing with words in the children’s storytelling space. And I’m playing with ideas about a possible entrepreneurial adventure in educational consulting.

I am a human being who needs a place to lay down the professional armour and speak my unapologetic truth as I work out what it means to me, to be a capital-W Woman in this time of my life, in the space that I occupy—socially, temporally, geographically, physically, metacognitively, emotionally, spiritually.

Why I Am Writing Anonymously

You will know me here simply as JiaHui (pronounced “Jee-ah Hway”).

It is the Mandarin pinyin of my Chinese name 家慧 meaning Family Wisdom, given to me at birth by my father. It doesn’t exist in any of my official English documentation. Nobody calls me by my Chinese name except my family in our home dialect.

I have deliberately chosen to step behind a pen name and write anonymously, not out of fear, but out of a profound need for freedom.

By stepping into the identity of JiaHui, I am removing the mask of the external professional to reveal something much more authentic—the bloody guts and starry whims of ME.

Anonymity is my shield, but it is also your mirror. By keeping my everyday identity hidden, this publication ceases to be about me as an individual. It becomes about us. It allows me to write with raw honesty and radical acceptance about the things generations upon generations of women have been explicitly told to suffer through in silence, until the 2021ish dawn of the current “Menopause Gold Rush” when menopause FINALLY started entering mainstream conversation.

Navigating the Menopause Gold Rush

Speaking of the “Menopause Gold Rush”—this weird cultural intersection we are at now, where overdue empowerment meets hyper-commercial capitalism—I would like to express my deep gratitude to the following Un-Muted Mpowering Menopause Mavens:

• Dr. Jen Gunter, Dr. Mary Claire Haver, and Dr. Karen Tang (all OB/GYNs), who are giving women the medical vocabulary and the confidence to stop being dismissed by doctors.

  • for her 2021 silence-shattering BS-busting book The Menopause Manifesto—a must-read/listen for EVERYONE, even if you weren’t born with ovaries—if only to understand the bodily lived experience of loved ones in your household—mother, sister, wife, daughter—and the other 50% of the global population (including some of your colleagues). At the very least, listen to her 2022 TED talk. Her podcasts, blog, social media info, and more can be found here: https://drjengunter.wordpress.com, TikTok, Instagram.

  • for ushering a social media tsunami of digestible shame-free videos breaking down perimenopause symptoms (like visceral belly fat and brain fog) on TikTok and Instagram, and her 2024 book The New Menopause. Check out her website for a goldmine of health resources, podcast, social media info, etc.: https://thepauselife.com.

  • for being a trailblazing OB/GYN and surgeon who uses her massive social media presence to bust taboos around endometriosis, adenomyosis, fibroids, chronic pelvic pain, menopause, gender affirming gynecologic care, and the intersection of racism and healthcare. Her superpower is breaking down medically and emotionally complex topics with dynamic entertaining clarity. Her 2024 book It's Not Hysteria: Everything You Need to Know About Your Reproductive Health (but Were Never Told) is a vital, inclusive, and empowering guide to gynecologic health. You can access her resources and follow her advocacy on TikTok, Instagram, Youtube, and her website: https://drkarentang.com.

• Oprah, Halle Berry, Davina McCall, and Michelle Obama for using their MASSIVE cultural capital to pull perimenopause, menopause, and post-menopause out of the taboo and medical dark ages, dropping it squarely into mainstream pop culture and politics.

The Purpose of BambooM-ing

This Substack is not a self-help manual or a clinical guide, and I am NOT a health care professional. It is a literary sanctuary—a “hidden bridge” connecting the analytical world we have to live in with the deeply emotional, spiritual, and physical realities of being a woman in midlife—and maybe beyond (who knows how long I can keep this thing going? *eyeroll+snort*).

Moving forward, you can expect essays, reflections, and deep dives into:

• Bearing the Childbearing Years: Navigating the shifting tides of menstruation, fertility, and the heavy expectations of the childbearing years.

• The Peri-to-Post-Menopause Transition: Navigating the physical and emotional shifts without losing our minds or our identities.

• Mental Health in the Middle: Speaking openly about anxiety, depression, burnout, and the psychological restructuring of midlife.

• Resilience (The “M-ing” Process): Creative and philosophical musings on how we bend without breaking, shatter our old expectations, and grow roots that run deeper than before.

This is a space to breathe. A space to reflect. A hidden BambooM-ing grove where we can sit together in the shade, drop our titles at the gate, and talk about what it actually means to survive and thrive through life’s deepest valleys.

Thank you for stepping across the bridge with me.

With warmth, resilience, and joy,

JiaHui 家慧

A Note to My Early Readers: If this first reflection resonated with you, please consider subscribing to receive future essays directly in your inbox. Let’s cultivate this grove together.