October Monthly Friend: Sarah MacGregor

Name: Sarah MacGregor
Age: 34
Hometown: Vernon BC, Canada
Current location: Prince George BC, Canada
Occupation: Virtual Assistant / BellyDance Instructor

Interests: Dancing, Painting, Gardening
Dreams: I’m living them!  I get to work at home, make my own schedule, and not bother with a car; I have a big yard now with a big garden that’s probably going to get bigger every year; I get to teach dance classes out of my own home studio; I have a sweetie that loves and supports me; I have two kitties.  The only thing I would change is to move back to southern BC so that I can ditch the long winters and have a longer growing season.

How long have you used reusable menstrual products?: Since January of this year and I’m never going back!
Reason for making the switch to reusables: I hated to think of all the garbage I was creating using disposables, and I wanted to lose the “diaper rash” that most of those so-called dry weave products always gave me.  GladRags made complete sense as soon as I heard of them, and once I learned that I could use my soaking water to nourish my plants I was completely sold!

Funny anecdotes, deep thoughts, or anything else you’d like to share: My favorite quote that I like to remember whenever I’m hesitating about trying something new: “Don’t worry if you fall flat on your face – at least you’re moving forward” – Anonymous

Here at GladRags we love all things sustainable!  This includes bike commuting to work for all of us.  There are more benefits to biking than just sustainable living.  You feel good, spend less money, and get to enjoy the scenery of your town.  And now this!  There was a delightful little add-on to the stimulus bill:  The Bicycle Commuter Tax Provision – a $20 a month tax credit to employees for riding their bike to work!   We GladRags employees love it! See more information here.  The provision was heralded by Portland's very own bike commuting representative Earl Blumenauer.

If you ride to work a substantial amount of days, ask your employer to offer it!

Do you ride your bike to work or around town?  If not, what are your major barriers?  If you do, what do you think is the best part?

September Monthly Friend: Olivia F.

Name: Olivia
Age: 23
Hometown: Greensboro, NC
Current location: Pittsburgh, PA
Occupation: Case manager/social work grad student

Interests: Social justice, cooking, gardening, adventures
Dreams: Change daily.  I like being happy and I like living in a way that allows other people to be happy as well.

How long have you used reusable menstrual products?: Four or five years.
Reason for making the switch to reusables: It seemed environmentally sound and I was sick of having to go to the store monthly to feed large corporations and landfills. And I never found conventional menstrual products very comfortable.  I first started hearing the buzz in a women’s health class and then there was a community stitch ‘n bitch that included someone providing some pointers on making pads. When I was traveling and my period started unexpectedly, I was thrilled to realize that they could also be purchased!

Funny anecdotes, deep thoughts, or anything else you’d like to share: When I first made the switch, I was visiting my boyfriend.  I had mentioned to him that I was going to try them and he thought it was a bit odd.  When I got to his apartment for a visit, I put a stack of homemade pads on his bathroom shelf.  We had friends over for his birthday and we had finished a good bit of wine over dinner.  He returned from the bathroom with my brand new pads on his hands, using them as puppets.  Another female guest recognized what they were, and we had a good laugh.

While looking around the internet, we found a mention of GladRags in a someone's flickr photo stream.  She takes pictures of a number of images in her life.  This one happened to be of her laundry, including a number of GladRags pads.  As she states in a comment, for a second she wasn't sure if she should post it, because people might be grossed out, but decided that people should not be grossed out by periods. What a novel concept! Certainly many people are grossed out by menstruation and menstrual blood. The origins of this disgust are complicated and sometimes deeply rooted.  In a delightful follow up to our recent naysaying post, flickr's BlindTurtle challenges these assumptions and feelings. See her photo, thread, and discussion here. But we think pictures of GladRags in the laundry basket is a great image – quite a contrast to the image of a pile previously used disposable menstrual pads. That's a sight even the non-squeamish of us don't want to visualize for long.  We would love to see your GladRags laundry too, so please share!

Our friends at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, MI came up with the idea to have a menstruation party where they could open up a dialogue and celebrate their menses.  They asked GladRags to donate a sampling of our products.  Given how few women we hear from who have menstruation parties, we couldn’t resist giving to a cause that would promote positivity around our cycles.  Here is the email we received from Rachel and Anne Marie, the gracious hostesses of the party:

Last week we had our menstruation party at Grand Valley State University, and today we finished our project with an in class presentation on our experience. I wanted to say thank you for the GladRags donations and support of our menstruation party! I also wanted to tell you a little about the event.

    We had 15 guests, plus the two of us for a grand total of 17.  It ended up being a really good number for discussion. We  had originally planned for activities to take up most of the  party, but we ended up having a dialogue that lasted almost  an hour. Women were really excited to talk about their  experiences in a positive atmosphere, and everyone really  opened up about both positive and negative experiences.  There was such a diverse range of experiences that ranged from happy to sad to touching. It was really very moving, everyone was very open and supportive, and we could not have asked for a better outcome.

On top of the discussion, we had red-themed refreshments and decorations, created pages for a zine, and made menstruation-positive t-shirts.

   The products and information that you donated were a huge piece of the night. Part of our discussion was on reusable products, and why they are important for our health and our environment. We stressed that we did not want to push products on anyone, but that corporations that produce disposable menstrual products have a vested interest in keeping reusable products a secret, and that we all deserve to be informed on all of our options to make the best decisions for ourselves.

A large majority of the women there did not even know that reusables were an option and were educated about them for the first time. At first many were skeptical (and a little grossed out), but it was amazing to see how much the mentality changed within as little as a half an hour. When we did our door prize give away at the end, everyone was excited for a chance to get her first reusable pad, and many women were talking about making the switch.

Everyone, at both the party and in class today, took information, and seem very excited about the prospect of more sustainable, comfortable, and healthy products. And we have been inspired to keep the momentum going and hope to continue to host gatherings to promote positive menstrual mentalities.

It really was an amazing event, and your donations made it possible—it truly would not have been the same without them. I am including some pictures from the event. Enjoy!

Yours in menstrual solidarity,

Rachael & Anne Marie

Sounds like your party was a success!  Thanks for sharing your fun with us!

December Monthly Friend: Michele A.

Age: 26

Current Location: Brooklyn, New York

What she does: She is a performative story teller and a kinesthetic monologist. “They don’t have words for what I am.” she says. And, oh yeah, she’s also a waiter.

Dreams: “I wanna have a dream!” She guesses that right now her dream is that her friend, who is due to give birth sometime next week, has a healthy baby. Another dream of hers is, “That someday I will chill out and realize that I am not in control of the whole universe, and to let things just happen to me.”

How long she has used menstrual alternatives: Probably for about 9 years, starting around the age of 17 or so. Michele said that she stopped using tampons and pads at this young age because she realized that conventional products were inconvenient, expensive and uncomfortable. Around that time she was validated in her ideas while reading the book Cunt by Inga Muscio and realized “Wow! Other people don’t like those either? Awesome!”

Reason for switching:  “Back then I wasn’t about to use a pad (they’re like diapers!), and just forget about tampons! So I just started to bleed all over myself.” Eventually she started innovating -  she would stick a sock in her underwear, or just whatever soft fabric was around. After a while it seemed right to do something more intentional, making her cycle more hers.  She started collecting rags for this purpose and after a while she had her “bag o’ rags”. In a culture such as ours where bleeding is hidden and forgotten, this enlightened young woman was celebrating hers.

Michele once had an assignment in her ritual dance class, in which she had to find something she did with intention, and create a dance about it. Her dance was about the ritual she had cultivated of “reading” the period blood on her rags. When she had to change or refold her rags she would ask ask the universe a question and then apply what she saw in her blood in whatever way seemed right.

As an ending note and as a great plug for us, Michele would also like to say how much she loves her GladRags, and how dainty and lady-like it makes her feel to use her beautiful, soft, lovely Rags.

We like to hear of women doing awesome stuff in the world. It is just icing on the cake when they happen to enjoy the comfort of GladRags alternative menstrual products at the same time! Here’s a testimonial from one group of adventursome GladRags devotees:

We’re Rachel, Carla, and Jess, three botany field interns at Death Valley National Park. We plot vegetation throughout the park and spend most of our time in the wilderness. The menstrual cup makes our lives easier.
After spending a week or more in the field, the idea of carrying around our bloody disposable products in order to pack them out of pristine wilderness areas seems unpleasant. There’s the smell, which is not only foul for us, but also attracts animals like mountain lions and coyotes. We already have compost stinking up our gear. With cups, we don’t have to carry around a period’s supply of disposables in our already limited space and we don’t have to triple bag the used items with more disposable things to take home and add to our local landfill. As far as comfort goes, in the harsh desert climate the cup makes the most sense. The desert’s dry already, we’re glad we don’t have to shove dry tampons up our ‘ginas. Gladrags, thanks for offering us a great deal on menstrual alternatives. You’ve certainly improved our lives for the better!

October Monthly Friend: Rose

Hometown: Boulder, Colorado
Current Location: Los Angeles, California
Age: 21
What she does: New to the LA area, she is about to attend the second round of an intensive program of acting classes.

Interests: Her many interests include reading and crocheting. She loves to go out dancing and sometimes bowling with her friends. And of course, true to the California girl she is quickly becoming, she loves going to the beach and shopping.
Dreams: Rose dreams of being a successful actress, accepting roles in which she can express the deep passion she feels for life. She wants to be financially secure and looks forward to traveling as well as getting married and having kids. She also dreams of paying her parents back for all their help. Roses also has a personal goal of writing a book someday.

How long she has used menstrual alternatives: About six months.

Reason for switching: Upon hearing about the various options available for her, they sounded better for the earth and also more convenient. Rose religiously uses the Moon Cup, as she was a loyal tampon user. She found the Moon Cup really comfortable as well way more convenient than tampons. She also uses the GladRags Pantyliners on occasion, but finds that she hardly needs to use them except for at the end of her cycle because her Moon Cup doesn’t leak or give her any reason to need a back-up.

Rose was so smitten with her menstrual cup at first use that she has recommended them to many of her friends. She says that not one of her friends had heard about menstrual alternatives, in fact many of them thought it was super weird. In the past few months she has convinced three people to try menstrual cups and they have all love them and would never go back to conventional menstrual solutions.

Former GladRags employee Diana, here. To give you all a glimpse into some of the expeditions upon which I have embarked since my departure, here’s bit about my most nautical journey to date – working as educator/deckhand aboard the schooner Adventuress.

The breathtaking vessel Adventuress is a 1913 schooner, currently underway in the Puget
Sound, educating all who climb aboard about environmental stewardship, nautical skills, communal living, and marine life. Participants in Adventuress sails are taught by crew about the benefits of plankton (they provide 2/3 the world’s oxygen!), shown how to tie a buntline knot, get to check out the living quarters below decks and, of course, must haul away on lines to raise the four sails of the ship: main, fore, stay and jib.

Cape Cod mamas ain’t got no pies
Heave away! Haul away!
They feed their children codfish eyes
And we’re bound away for Australia!

At first the sea shanties we sung as we tugged and pulled on the lines seemed a little silly, but they were invigorating during some challenging physical work. This good dose of manual labor, mixed with discussions of environmental education theory and the characteristics of chitons (super cool monopods found in the intertidal zone), gave great balance to life on Adventuress. My duties included helping to sail the ship and teach the curriculum of the environmental educational program, but I was the real student during my time on the ship. I came out of a month on the boat knowing more about sailing a tall ship, but I also was reminded of personal capability and empowerment.

Adventuress prides itself of the empowerment of its students. Many are nervous to be entrusted with tasks aboard a ship, especially if they have never sailed before. But the attitude aboard this schooner is: no new skill, unknown concept or uncharted land is out of anyone’s reach. I was at the bottom of the totem pole, skill-wise, on the boat and I was humbled, but I was then given the opportunity to learn boatloads (literally) and remember that my capabilities know no limits!

One of my most rewarding accomplishments coming out of the month on the Adventuress was the conversion of the majority of the female crew to reusable menstrual products. The sailor ladies received a big package from GladRags full of pads, sea sponges and cups – they really live the light footprint that they teach.

Sailing the seas in GladRags style,
Diana

Name: Tracy P.

Hometown: Portland, Oregon

Age: 22

Profession: Vocational support staff for adults with developmental disabilities

Interests: Knitting, spinning, music, bicycle rides, friends, coffee, animals, reading, etc

Dreams: In first grade, my teacher had my class all create pictures of ourselves performing our dream jobs. I drew myself in overalls, boots, and a floppy hat standing at an easel and painting a portrait of a nearby pig. It was captioned “Farmer/Artist.” I think I’m still pretty into that.

Number of years/months using (appreciating) menstrual alternatives: About a year and a half using alternative menstrual products. Much more than that wondering about/appreciating them.

Reason for switching to alternatives: It makes so much more sense! Better for the environment, better for my body, better for my bank account.

Favorite thing about alternatives: Reusable menstrual products required me to get to know my body in a way that disposables can’t. I’ve gained a greater appreciation of my menstrual cycle since using GladRags and the Moon Cup.

Funny anecdotes?: Never chop up a big pile of jalapenos with your bare hands. Especially if you’re going to have to empty your moon cup any time in the next 24 hours.