December Monthly Friend: Dionne

December Monthly Friend: Dionne M. Frey

Name: Dionne M. Frey
Age: 36
Hometown: Denver, CO
Current location: Portland, OR
Occupation: Personal Assistant and Student Midwife

Interests: Midwifery, women’s health, reading, knitting, nature walks, herbs, alternative medicine and health.
Dreams: My dream is to be a midwife and help babies enter the world peacefully by empowering  women to choose how and where they give birth.  I want to change the world one birth at a time.

How long have you used reusable menstrual products?: I’ve used reusable menstrual products for 9 years and I love them!
Reason for making the switch to reusables: I was tired of ugly, itchy disposable pads and I felt disgusted when I thought of all the disposable products that I would use in a lifetime of menstruation piled up in a landfill.  I also thought that breathable menstrual products like GladRags would help stop me from having so many yeast infections and they really did help.  I really wish I had thought to search for reusable products sooner, not only because of the landfill thing, but because they are so much more comfortable and beautiful than disposable pads.

Funny anecdotes, deep thoughts, or anything else you’d like to share:  When I was a little girl my grandma told me that she got her period when she was 10 years old and that she and her sisters used to use old rags to catch their menstrual flow that they would wash and use again.  I thought it was kind of gross,  not because they washed them and used them over and over, but because they used scraps of old things that used to be used for something else.  I guess I always thought that  there should be something especially for menstruation. As soon as I turned 10, I thought, “OK, I’m old enough to get my period now!” and I was very excited, checking often and sometimes feeling disappointed when there was no red spot in my panties.  It didn’t come until I was 12, in gym class, and I had to go to the nurse’s office to get a pad. I felt so bummed out when I put on my first disposable pad thinking, “This is what I was so excited about?” The pad was thick and scratchy and I didn’t feel womanly wearing it at all.  The first time I put on a GladRag at the age of 27, I wished I could turn back time and put on a GladRag on that first day of my period and celebrate my menarche.  I also wished that my grandma was still alive to see that there really was something special to use just for menstruation, and it was not an ugly, itchy, disposable pad that had been created to clean it up, freshen it up or hide it from the world, but to be comfortable and help women feel good about their bodies.