Writer Phoebe Adebayo has suffered from crippling period pains for a decade. Here, she describes the monthly horror that most men – and even some women – never experience.
Period cramps. The worst thing a woman can face. The urge to just want to stop it…to then knowing that, a month later, it will happen all over again. Welcome to the unforgiving world of being a female.
I started my period at the age of 11. A question I always ask myself is: Why do we have to embark on such a dreadful journey from so young?
It all started in maths class in secondary school, when I excused myself to use the toilet as I felt a tingling feeling in the pit of my abdomen.
I looked down at my underwear and I squealed with joy. Funnily enough, I was happy to see the blood stains on my underwear. I felt a feeling of womanhood.
If only I knew that would come with a lifelong service of suffering.
There’s a certain type of period pain that feels like it wants to split you in two. It attacks you low in your abdomen, sharp and consistent. It attacks like a warning signal no one else can hear. The sort that floors you, leaving you fatigued and bed bound 100% of the time.
The kind of pain that makes you cancel plans, miss work, and lie curled up in bed, wondering why you were born a woman, and not a man, and why my brother never has to go through this monthly ordeal.
Bad period cramps aren’t just physical. They’re emotional. They dance with your hormones, teases with them, then tears them into shreds. It’s exhausting. Draining.
There’s the pain itself, but also the silent suffering because periods, even in 2025, are still a propaganda to me.
We’re taught to minimise our pain. We’re expected to grit our teeth, take an ibuprofen and push through.
Power through meetings. Smile through social events. Care for others. Pretend like nothing is happening.
When, in reality, my abdomen has temporarily put my life at a standstill for the next four days. This isn’t drama. It’s not an overreaction. It’s real and it battles us women every day.
We’re made to accept it and believe that it’s normal that our bodies must betray us every month, and we must endure it in silence.
We do not talk about it enough, what it’s actually like: the equipment of hot water bottles suppressed against our lower stomach, the random back pains, the merge of the stomach pains with the buttocks pain, the use of medication which only temporarily touches the pain.
The exhaustion that creeps in from bleeding. The sleep loss and the constant fighting inside your body, like it’s your enemy.
I regret the excitement I felt at age 11 because if only I knew.
My mother always prepared me for these situations, as she suffered it years before me, but most of the time even the preparation doesn’t stop the cramps from clawing my insides out.
It doesn’t stop me from being happy one minute and very easily agitated the next.
I guess it’s just something we women have to sadly deal with. I now see it as part of being a woman, and although I’m no longer excited about it, I am most definitely willing to face it, just because I know I’m not the only one going through it.
