“If this piercing pain that brought me to my knees in tears and sent me home from school was so normal for so many women, then how come I never saw other girls on the floor gasping for air? I couldn’t understand how this was normal.”

‘It’s just cramps. All girls have cramps.’ ‘You went home from school for that?’ Doctors told me it was all in my head. I felt embarrassed and ashamed.’

‘It’s a good thing you’re pretty because you don’t have much else going for you.’ Those words cut deep. I allowed them to affect how I viewed my worth.
“I was diagnosed with Lyme disease after I began college. I found unnatural amounts of hair coming out in my brush. I stood in front of the mirror in tears.”

‘Someone I loved had been expertly lying to me for the entire length of our relationship.’: After experiencing infidelity, woman says ‘once you’ve recognized the true capacity of the pain, it gives you the power to create something beautiful out of it’
“I woke up every morning thinking maybe it was just a sick joke. All at once, I was with a stranger instead of the person I thought I knew so well.”