Finding My Marbles

Jill D.  •  Colorado  •  24

My story starts the usual way: waiting for a period that just wouldn’t start. A spot here, a spot there, but where is the actual flipping cheetah? I wished my period would just happen already. 

But nature won’t be rushed; my period happened when it happened, several months later. Ruining my orange pair of “Friday” underwear, I might add. Whether or not it was actually Friday, this underwear anarchist cannot say. 

That’s when things took a turn for the colorful.

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I told my mom, and she sat me down. She pulled out a box of tissue paper and gave it to me. 

She said, “You’re a woman now, Jilly. I’ve been waiting to give you this until it happened.” 

Inside the box? A marble. 

A handmade, clear and blue marble—the cratered blue center wrapped in a shell of transparent glass, lovingly rounded into a smooth sphere. It was like a little alien planet to represent the alien shift into womanhood. It was a beautiful marble. But it was a marble nonetheless. What the hell is a woman supposed to do with a marble? 
…
I wish I knew where it was.

From Student to Teacher

Megan S.  •  California  •  34

In fifth grade, my school broke up the boys and girls and gave us all “the talk” about puberty. It all felt really abstract to me at the time, my parents hadn’t officially given me any sort of talk before then. Spring of sixth grade, my first period arrived. None of my close friends had gone through it yet. Conveniently, my mother had recently moved cross-country for a work gig, so I was stuck figuring this out with my socially awkward, stoic father (I did call my mom, she cried- I had no idea how to react to that). I felt so weird asking him to buy supplies for me, I tried to ration them for as long as possible. This helped lead to a super-embarrassing leaking incident in seventh grade, a literal pool of blood on a chair in my sixth period class.

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After that, I realized talking to my dad about this stuff maybe wasn’t the worst option. In seventh grade, we had a “reproductive ed” unit, and, things felt a lot less abstract. Down the road, I ended up teaching ninth grade health; At first I was surprised by some of the questions I would get in our anonymous “ask anything” box, especially questions that seemed to come from girls. But, I realized quickly that I shouldn’t be- back when it was happening to me, I was pretty clueless about puberty too.

Is This Forever?

Cass L.  •  Indiana  •  25

It was the summer of 7th grade. I remember having no idea what was happening to me so I nervously told my mom that I was bleeding. She laughed and informed me I had just started my period.

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A feeling of horror overcame me as I thought I'd be bleeding every day for the rest of my life. I was not ready and did not want this. So of course I started crying as I asked my mom. After my mom explained to me it only happens a few days every month, I felt a lot better. Welcome to womanhood, I guess.