My painful periods weren’t the only reason I left my full-time job at a magazine in 2023 to go freelance, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say they were a major factor. With few other options available to me, I realised that I couldn’t go on forcing a round peg into a square hole: full-time work without flexibility, while living with abnormal periods, was burning me out. And so, I turned to self-employment to give me the flexibility I needed.
Since then, I have been shaping my work around my cycle, keeping the worst three or four days free of in-person commitments, and building in room to work from the sofa when excruciating pain and heavy bleeding made normal office life impossible. Despite working in women-dominated industries, I never felt period pain would be taken as a valid enough reason to miss work. Maybe this was projection or societal conditioning, but it became unmanageable. Covid lockdowns had shown me what flexible working could look like, and the thought of going back to commuting into an office every month while doubled over in pain felt unbearable. I should have asked for more flexibility or support, but, as we are primed to do as women, I didn’t.
