What’s your story?

Raise The Cycle focuses on the urgent need for an earlier and broader menstrual cycle education for our young people. Who better to provide this education than the adults in their lives.

If you are here, it is likely that you are interested in finding ways to support a particular young person, or group, as they approach the start of their menstrual cycle journey. Menarche (the first period) is an undervalued and underexplored milestone, one that shapes our understanding of ourselves and our place in the world. A positive experience can help to develop self-esteem and improve body literacy, directly impacting long-term health outcomes. A negative experience can introduce us to shame, self objectification and disembodiment. These themes have the potential to show up again and again across a lifetime.

In many ways Raise The Cycle began when I was a teenager and deeply unhappy about having periods. Despite being well supported, there was something about the whole experience that felt wrong. I recall feeling that the moment should have been beautiful but instead I felt encumbered, uncomfortable and miserable. It took several decades for that to shift.

Fast forward a few decades and I have been working in the field of menstruation in various forms since 2018. Most notably, I achieved a Distinction across two years of studying at Masters level with the renowned Dr Lara Owen, a leading academic and pioneer in the field, on her Contemporary Menstrual Studies course (Year One in 2022 and Year Two in 2025). As part of the course, in Year One my research focused on first periods experienced in British institutions (e.g. in care settings, young offenders and schools etc). Most recently I have co-presented on the difficulties of communicating menstrual pain (dysmenorrhea). All elements of my research interest have led me back to the significant importance of menstrual education being available pre-puberty and delivered from a whole cycle perspective.

In 2021 I hosted the ‘Reclaiming Menarche’ podcast, a nine part series of conversations and stories around the importance of first periods and the benefits of reflecting on our own early experience.

I hope reading some of this website helps inspire you to join one of our conversations about first periods.

To read more about our Raise the Cycle programme please click here.