When Lockdown The First hit us in March I instantly lost all sense of time and space. We closed our two Skinny Batch Bakery locations, sent all the engineers and staff home from Dynamic Ltd; as everyone locked the doors and pulled down the blinds while we waited for the CoronaZombies to fuck off.

Which they did not. That sentiment of “I know the government said 2 weeks but I’d say it’ll be 5” whittled away and ultimately just got longer and longer as one day and week blended into the next.

What day was it? What week were we in? Was it still even 2020? I saw a few of my fellow parenting bloggers measuring the time in monthly periods and realised I had started to do that too.

“We are two periods into this lockdown now!” I would announce to Ass Monkey as he was shoved off out into The Scary Outdoors to buy tampons (the yellow pack, for my still average vagina, thanks for asking).

But as dementing as the global pandemic has been, it is NO match for the change in hormones I have experienced around my periods this year. The raging, the wailing, the incapacitation (I feel like Vanilla Ice should do something with those lyrics if I’m honest) – and then the guilts that ensued afterwards when it was all over were too.. obvious to ignore.

As a woman who got her first period in the late 80s I can tell you that all I have been accustomed to doing is ‘getting on with it’ with regards to my monthly cycle. There was an unspoken blanket-ban on the mention of any of the following in my house growing up; blood, periods, tampons, pads, cramps, back pain, feelings, hormones, menstruation or monthly cycle. Jesus, I don’t think we even ever referred to them as ‘Women’s Problems’. The sad truth is; we just didn’t talk about it.

So here I am in my 40s, just beginning to learn how the hell my body works. I’ve been to the GP, I’ve had my hormone levels checked, I’m taking supplements, I bought a book and I’m inspired by the great advice of Erica Quinn who, in her own words, is ‘Obsessed with Periods’. Finally, somebody is.