Why the ever living fuck does having endometriosis in your throat, lungs, and your general breathing space area exist!!!???

A Favor: Part Twenty

Nessian Modern AU

Masterlist

a/n: sorry for the wait yall this month really kicked my ass,, but also we reached part 20!!

tw infertility discussion

***

Gwyn: isn’t he beautiful <3

In the freezing February air outside the tea house, Nesta clicks on the picture attached to Gwyn’s text. It’s a distant shot of a man in his mid-thirties hunched over a library desk while working, unaware that there’s a camera on him. She’ll give it to Gwyn, though—he is a little handsome.

Emerie: the stalker levels are through the roof, gwyneth. seek help.

Gwyn: no i’m gonna marry him

Nesta doesn’t know whether to laugh or be concerned, but she types out a brief response before her thumbs fall off from the cold: Will give my opinion on him later. Got to go.

Gwyn’s crush will have to wait, Nesta thinks as she finally puts her phone away and pushes her way inside the exquisite tea house. Immediately, blasting heat thaws her frozen fingers and toes, and farther inside she spots the table she reserved for three. Right now, only one person sits at it.

Nesta grits her teeth and approaches the round table, heels clicking softly on the parquet floors. Elain doesn’t look up from the menu she’s reading. “This place would be nicer to visit in the spring,” is her only acknowledgment of Nesta.

“I like the winter,” Nesta answers simply, taking her seat across from Elain. She likes how the ice creeps over the garden outside until everything looks frozen in time, and she likes how the colorful flowers and trees become dulled by white snow. Not that her sister would understand or care.

“Of course you do,” Elain mutters, setting down the menu with all the careful elegance of a debutante. “I’m only here for Feyre, anyway.”

It almost saddens Nesta that she doesn’t feel hurt or offense at the words. She thought she would care more about Elain’s opinion than she actually does. “Where is Feyre, then?” she says, looking pointedly at the empty seat between them. “I thought she was coming with you.”

“I’m right here,” a breathless voice says, accompanied by the sound of hurried footsteps. Feyre appears, looking flushed from exertion and the cold. She sets her bag down and joins them at the table, scooting her seat all the way in. “Sorry I’m late. What did I miss?”

“Nothing,” Nesta bites. “I was just about to order.”

“So was I.” Elain smiles breezily.

Feyre glances between the two of them, clear concern on her face, but she covers it up and says, “I’m so glad we’re doing this.”

It was Feyre’s idea, of course. After Nesta told her off for never being interested in what she wanted to do, Feyre actually listened. She asked if Nesta wanted to hang out, and then let Nesta fill in the rest of the details on her own terms.

Which brings them to the tea house. Unfortunately for her sisters, however, Nesta doesn’t really know where to go from ordering tea and biscuits.

“How is school going?” Feyre asks her after their drinks arrive.

Nesta sips from her tea, already bored. “It’s been fifteen minutes and you have yet to say anything of substance, Feyre. It makes me miss being alone with Elain and her mood.”

Feyre looks taken aback, and Elain levels a glare at Nesta. An unsurprised, of course you have to ruin everything like this glare.

So Nesta clarifies, “That wasn’t an attack. I just hoped that after driving out here, I would get something better than shallow small talk.”

“And how do you know it was shallow?” Elain steps in harshly. “How do you know she isn’t actually interested in how you’re doing at school?”

Nesta slides blunt blue eyes to Feyre. “If that’s the case, then I commend you. Personally, I wouldn’t give a shit if I was in your position.”

To her surprise, Feyre snorts. She looks resigned when she says, “No, you’re right. I don’t care about what’s going on at school, not if you don’t. What would you rather we talk about then, Nesta?”

Without hesitation, Nesta says, “Ask me something you really care to hear the answer to.”

Elain shuts her mouth and sits back at that. Feyre twists her lips, thinking her next words over carefully. “How is your therapy going?” she finally asks in a cautious tone. “What do you talk about there?”

Remembering that she’s in a formal setting, Nesta stops herself from crossing her arms. She settles on wrapping her fingers delicately around her teacup instead. “We talk about whatever I feel like talking about,” she answers honestly. Although lately her conversations with Lana feel more restrained than usual.

“And what’s that?” Feyre urges.

Nesta shrugs, fitting apathy onto her face like an old mask. “Recently? Childbearing.” But it isn’t her favorite topic of discussion, not at all.

“You’re pregnant?” Elain jumps in, leading Nesta to throw her an unamused look.

“No, idiot,” she says. “My therapist just has the idea that if I end up being infertile it’ll screw me up, mentally and emotionally and whatever. She thinks I should deal with that baggage now instead of saving it for later.” She rolls her eyes thinking about it. How many times does she have to repeat that she doesn’t care about her body’s reproductive abilities until Lana gets it?

Feyre chuckles, confused. “Why would you be infertile?”

Nesta forgot—she didn’t want her sisters knowing anything that has to do with her health. She even made Cassian keep her doctor visits secret from Feyre. But that was months ago, and the sisters are… not exactly in a better place now, but looking for the way there. Nesta thinks she can tell them without any severe regrets. “I have endometriosis.”

When she’s met with silence, she adds, “You know, with the tissue growing on my ovaries and stuff. It might affect all the babies I don’t care to have in the future.”

Elain is the first to speak. “You always wanted to be a mother.” Her voice is soft, almost mourning. It irritates the hell out of Nesta.

“No, I didn’t,” she snaps back.

“You did,” Elain insists. Feyre still hasn’t said anything. “You took care of our cat, Mittens, until the day she died. You taught Feyre her alphabet. You raised me when Mama and Papa were too busy to do it. You never carried dolls around in strollers or anything, but you loved being a mother.”

“I don’t remember any of this,” Feyre says, blinking. “I’m sorry, can we go back to the endometriosis part?”

Nesta sips from her tea, the bitter taste a welcome distraction from Elain’s words. “What about it?”

“How long have you known?” Feyre demands.

“It isn’t cancer. And I’m getting treated, obviously. I’m fine.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

Nesta sighs, setting her cup down. “October. Cassian made me go to the doctor because he was worried about my periods, we had a big fight about health insurance, and now I use my salary from your boyfriend to afford medication so I don’t feel like dying every month. Is that everything you wanted to hear?”

Feyre only stares at her, for once revealing no emotion. “I keep forgetting,” she says finally, “that we’re not at a place to share things like that with each other. I keep being surprised every time I realize how much of your life you keep from us.”

“I don’t,” Elain huffs under her breath while she tears a croissant in half.

Nesta is still watching Feyre. “You remember how bad my cycles were? I would cry loud enough at night to wake the house.”

Feyre flinches at the memory, and Elain goes still.

“But no one ever woke up,” Nesta says. They never talked about it before, and she has no desire to keep speaking about it now. If they start to tally all the hurts they’ve dealt to each other, Nesta fears they’ll be here for hours. Worse, she fears she will lose.

She reaches for a lavender macaron and delicately pulls it apart, studying the cream filling inside. “Did you know they make these using the lavender flowers from the garden outside?”

“I hate lavender,” Elain says.

Spying her chance to shift the subject off herself, Nesta goes for it. “Because Azriel smells like lavender?” She pushes one half of the dainty cookie past her lips, chewing. “It’s an interesting cologne choice, I agree.”

“Wait, what are we talking about now?” Feyre looks around, unaware that they’ve moved onto another topic.

Elain’s innocent brown eyes turn into daggers pointed at Nesta, betrayal written across her face. Nesta feels no pity for her—especially not if they’re going to sit around judging each other for keeping secrets.

Feyre’s eyes widen and she turns to Elain. “Is it about your,” she lowers her voice and whispers, “crush?”

Nesta raises a skeptical brow. She doubts whatever Az and Elain have stops at just a crush.

“No, it’s not,” Elain answers determinedly. “God, do you have to bring men into everything, Nesta?”

“I think you’re projecting.”

“Quit it,” Feyre snaps at the both of them. “Or I’ll grab my things and leave.”

Do it, Nesta almost dares. But she has a feeling that Feyre means it, that she won’t submit to being taunted, so Nesta reins the words back from the tip of her tongue. After all, this tea is expensive.

The sisters take a moment to settle, and Feyre is the one to restart the conversation. “Either way,” she tells Nesta, “it looks like counseling is going really well for you. I’m glad.”

“Yeah, it really gives your skin a certain glow,” Elain drawls.

Nesta doesn’t rise to meet her sarcasm. In all seriousness, Elain and Feyre could probably use a therapist themselves. It might make Nesta’s interactions with them less headache-inducing.

“You should visit one day,” she throws the suggestion out without thinking.

“What, like a therapy session?” Feyre says.

Realizing the implications of her terrible idea, Nesta forces herself not to backpedal. “Yes,” she makes herself grit out. “If you’re interested, that is.”

Elain and Feyre share a glance of hesitation and concern. It’s a glance that grates on Nesta’s nerves, but she keeps her mouth shut and waits for a response.

Feyre answers first: “We’ll do it.”

Elain looks more doubtful, but seems to realize that refusing to go would paint her in a negative light. We can’t have that, can we? Nesta thinks wryly. She reaches for some macarons and starts stuffing them into her purse. “Sounds good. Great.” It is not at all great. Having her sisters in the same room as her and Lana might just be terrible enough to ruin Nesta’s next month or two.

“I’ll text you the details whenever I feel like it,” she tells Feyre and Elain as she rises out of her seat. Likely not for as long as possible.

“Where are you going?” Elain demands.

“I’m leaving.” Nesta pointedly drapes her coat over her shoulders, picking up her purse. “I have plans for the rest of the day, sorry.” Plans to get home and rate Gwyn’s work crush on a scale of one to ten. Maybe she’ll rewatch a sitcom if she has time.

“But it’s only been an hour,” Feyre protests.

Did Feyre think they would be spending the whole day together? Nesta wants to shudder at the mere idea of it, but she somehow… feels bad for her sister. “Maybe another time,” she promises vaguely. To provide some sort of reassurance, she adds, “I had fun today. Thanks for pulling this together.” The words are hollow, fake, and she’s probably a hypocrite for not being able to return the same sincerity she demanded from Feyre. But honesty isn’t going to get Nesta very far today, so this false politeness is the best she can manage.

Elain looks somewhat relieved, and Feyre looks disappointed but unsurprised. “Alright.” The girls nod at her. “Get home safe.”

She turns and leaves as soon as she’s given the green light.

A stale scent greets Nesta when she enters her apartment, reminding her that she hasn’t been around in days. In her defense, the winter months are easier to bear in Cassian’s heated cabin than in a poorly insulated basement.

Flicking the lights on, Nesta books it to the thermostat, her teeth nearly chattering out of her body. After turning the heat as high as it can go, she climbs beneath the covers of her bed without bothering to take her coat off. She doesn’t take out her phone to text the groupchat like she promised she would. She doesn’t even get her laptop to turn Netflix on. Rather, her focus is caught on the framed picture of her and Cassian sitting atop the dresser.

Everything was okay as she stepped out of the tea house. It wasn’t until she was inside her car that it came upon her: the whirlwind of emotions that had stayed so carefully hidden while she chatted with her sisters. All throughout the drive home, her mind kept returning to that one topic. Children.

Elain said that Nesta used to genuinely enjoy playing substitute mother when they were children, and she was right. But that was all fun and games, like playing teacher. What Elain left out was what happened after their actual mother died and their father went into debt, leaving all three girls in need of a parent figure. Nesta wasn’t a mother then—or at least, not a good one.

Now, she stares at the picture full of smiley cheeks and windblown hair, remembering the night that she realized she wanted to hold Cassian’s hand in hers.

She can’t imagine Cassian not wanting kids. They’ve never discussed it, but it’s so obvious to anyone who’s ever met him: he has too much love to give away to not one day end up with a whole brood of children. The thought makes Nesta’s stomach churn.

***

“Thanks again, guys.” Cassian shakes hands with his team as they file out of the conference room, all of them dressed professionally while he lingers in his hoodie. As soon as the last worker is out the door, he pulls out his phone, ready to shoot Nesta a message. She met up with her sisters alone today for the first time in a year, and he can’t wait any longer to find out if their brunch ended in a fight or not.

He clicks on his phone to find two texts from his brother, sent not too long ago.

Rhys: You’re in the office today for the monthly check-in, right?

Rhys: Don’t leave after the meeting is over. I’ll be there in an hour to introduce you to the new guy heading the Milan project.

Cassian frowns, confused. Rhys and the new guy are coming all the way up here to meet him? He didn’t know he was that important to the project.

While he waits for his unexpected guests, Cassian texts Nesta twice, and only receives a single short response saying she got home safe. Resolving to call and have a real conversation with her later, he gets up to change into the spare buttondown and pressed slacks he keeps in a locker in his office. If Rhys wants him to play the part of company boss, then he might as well look the part.

He’s adjusting the cuffs of his dark-colored shirt when the door to his office opens without warning, and Rhysand strides in followed by a stiff-looking young man.

Cassian eyes the stranger up and down first, trying to get a read on him the way he’s seen Nesta and Rhys read others. He doesn’t come up with a single thing, as usual, but he hopes he achieved his goal of looking intimidating.

“Cass,” Rhys greets him with a subdued nod, in full CEO mode. “This is our new hire, Keith O’Connell. I snagged him from right under Vanserra & Co.’s noses.” His near-violet eyes gleam with pride. “He’s going to be working out of Milan for us starting this summer.”

“Sounds good to me.” Cassian smiles lazily, and this is something he doesn’t need to fake—confidence. He reaches out to shake Keith’s hand. “Hi. I’m Cassian Madani.”

“Good to meet you.” The other man shakes back, but his grip is too tight, like he’s trying to break Cassian’s hand. Try-hard, a voice that sounds like Nesta tells him. Uses arrogance to cover up his insecurity.

Cassian takes it all into account as he pulls his hand away, seeing Keith through clearer eyes. His dark brown hair is slicked back with copious amounts of hair product, and a shrewd black gaze takes in every detail of the office. He stands like he’s attempting to seem taller than he actually is.

A typical white-collar worker looking for a way up the corporate ladder, Cassian concludes. Nothing he hasn’t seen before, but there must be a reason Rhys is so excited about him.

“Keith is starting here at your branch next week,” Rhys is saying when Cassian refocuses.

He blinks, unsure if he heard correctly. “What, all the way out here?” Away from Velaris in this modest mountain town?

“We agreed it was best if you two work together as closely as possible while preparing for the summer launch. Since you can’t come to Velaris, that means Keith comes here.”

Cassian looks at Rhys in astonishment. He thought that once he rejected the Milan position, he’d cleaned his hands of the job for good. Clearly he was wrong. “Just how involved am I going to be on this project?”

Rhys grins back at him. “You’ll lead from home base, of course.”

Cassian glares. Rhys responds with a look that says they’ll talk about this later.

Keith seems to find the idea of working alongside another person as distasteful as Cassian finds it unexpected, but he says anyway, “I can’t wait to start working together. I have a lot of ideas for the Italian outpost that I think you’ll appreciate.”

“I’m sure I will,” Cassian hums. “When do you start again?”

“Next Monday.”

“Then we should talk then.” Cassian gestures out the door. Keith looks taken aback, likely having expected more out of this meeting. But Cassian can’t meet with this guy until he gets a hold of what the fuck is going on. After shepherding Keith out of the office and shutting the door after him, he turns to Rhys with a raised brow.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Rhys warns. “Your role in this project is serious.”

“This project isn’t even part of my job description. What am I supposed to know about international business conductions?”

“You know enough to keep an eye on that O’Connell kid for me.” Rhys leans against Cassian’s desk as if it’s his own and crosses his feet. “He’s an asset to the company, but he also worked for our competitors up to a couple of months ago. I can’t trust him to manage this thing on his own, and I don’t have the time or resources right now to watch over him myself. That’s why the duty falls to you.”

“I manage security,” Cassian states, in case it wasn’t obvious. “What about Az?”

“Az has his own things to handle.” Rhys waves him off. “Just do what I tell you to, will you? Pay attention to O’Connell for the duration of the Italy venture and make sure he doesn’t steer our ship off course. You’ll get paid triple for the extra hours.”

“I don’t need triple,” Cassian grumbles, but Rhys is no longer listening. He’s typing on his phone and already heading for the door.

“Feyre and I are having dinner here before heading back home,” he calls over his shoulder. “See you later; I believe in you!” The door shuts after him, leaving Cassian alone.

“Yeah, yeah,” he replies to the empty room.

Cassian leaves not long after Rhysand does, having no excuse to linger. Outside, he’s greeted with a surprise leaning against the hood of his truck.

Nesta pushes off the hood as soon as he catches notice of her. “Long day?” she asks.

He laughs for the first time all afternoon, the sound surprised and genuine. “I was just thinking about you.”

“That’s why I’m here. I heard your thoughts.” There’s a light in her pale eyes that only burns whenever she looks at him. It’s the same light that powers her ability to make jokes and let her guard down around him in a way she can’t with most others, and Cassian is especially grateful for it today.

Nesta reaches out and takes his hand into hers. He watches the way their palms fit together in endless fascination, his brown fingers a stark contrast against her white ones. He squeezes once and looks back up at her. “How did meeting your sisters go? You never told me.”

The light flickers so briefly Cassian wonders if it’s a trick of his eyes. But then Nesta is there again, at full brightness. She squeezes his hand back. “Take me home. I’ll tell you all about it.”

***

a/n: i love writing stuff related to cassian’s job i’ll just be throwing random words in there and calling it business jargon

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My experience with irregular periods.

I was thirteen when I got my first period. It was light, I craved Oreos like crazy, and my stomach was a mess. And, like many other young girls, my first few periods were irregular.

My mother had told me that it was common for my period to be irregular for the first year or so, but that as I got older, it would become a cycle -- like the moon, as I would later learn. So I never worried about when it was "supposed" to come; I would watch for the signs (for me, bloating, sore breasts, cramping, cravings, and, let's be honest, some mood swings), then wear a pad until my period would show up. I was a nervous kid, so I always played things safe rather than sorry, but usually I was right about when my period was coming. Until I wasn't.

Instead of becoming regular as time went on, I gradually became more irregular. I would feel some cramping and prepare for my period only to be stood up. My mother said that I still had time, that maybe my cycle was just a little different. She also told me that stress could be affecting my cycle -- again, I was a nervous child and was dealing with some stuff at the time -- and that if I was still not regular by my next check-up, we could ask the doctor about it.

Fast forward to my check-up and I'm sitting on crinkled paper facing my general doctor. She asks if I have anything bothering me, and I do that thing where I look at my mom before answering the doctor, telling her that I haven't had my period in a few months. Yes, my period has been irregular since it started, yes, there's no chance that I'm pregnant, and yes, I'm still young. "I wouldn't worry about it yet," she says.

Fast forward another few years. I'm in high school, and I haven't had my period for nine months. As a virgin, I was terrified -- what if I was secretly pregnant and I didn't know? After all, hadn't I heard stories about women who didn't know they were pregnant until the baby popped out into their hands? Wasn't the annunciation a big deal because Mary was a virgin? I didn't want to carry the next Christ! I also certainly didn't officially know how becoming pregnant worked. Hadn't I gone swimming recently? Wasn't there that time I used a toilet after a man? (In addition to being nervous, I was also a natural born idiot and a naive fool.)

I went to the doctor again, this time more freaked out than the last. And again, the doctor told me not to worry -- I was a bit overweight, a bit stressed, and after all, it's not like I was trying to get pregnant, so why worry about a few missed periods? I'd regulate eventually, so for now I should just enjoy it.

Except I didn't. It freaked me out -- especially when my younger sister got her period and it showed up like clockwork. Meanwhile, my cycle looked more like spare cogs and parts that hadn't been put together.

I'm in my mid-twenties now and still irregular as ever. And while I've taken many steps to help regulate my hormones (which I'll write about in a future post), it still pains me that my menstrual health is only a concern if I'm trying to get pregnant. As if this cycle of my body is purely for making babies and has nothing to do with my overall health. I'm tired of doctors overlooking women, women's symptoms, and women's issues. I'm tired of PCOS, ovarian cysts, PMS, endometriosis, and every other women's issue being treated as secondary while study after study funnels attention to erectile dysfunction (as if men will die if they can't get it up).

I'm tired, too, of having to whisper about these problems. How many times has a woman dared to talk to me about her period only to bring her voice low in case someone were to overhear this social "taboo?" Whispers of periods so heavy that she became ghostly and anemic, passing out in the yard. Whispers of cramps so bad that she threw up and up and up until there was blood. Whispers and whispers about her hysterectomy -- the loss of the thing she carried both her babies in. Whispers of the surgery, how she didn't know they would shave "down there." Whispers of the large clots. Whispers of the doctors trying to talk her out of the treatment -- after all, what if she wanted kids later? Each of these women whispered to me.

How many times have we worked our whispering voices into octaves for our doctors to hear only to have the medical industry brush us aside? How many times do we find ourselves having to take our treatment into our own hands?

I can't change the medical industry overnight. I can't promise that scientific sexism will be overridden within the next few years. I can't even say that women's healthcare will finally begin to be taken seriously. But I can encourage women to raise their voices. We can talk about the blood flowing between our legs, the cramps, the pain, the clots and color and even the Rorschach patterns we see left on our underwear. We can talk about the absences, the counting on the calendars, the surgeries, the pills, hot water bottles, scars.

I started this blog for every woman who feels burried alive. Burried women still have voices.

That ‘only lesbians experience corrective rape’ bit that someone appended to @kagurasdragons​ post really has me upset so I’m going to talk about something I’ve never really discussed here (except with cas but w/e she’s special).

It’s okay to share this, the reason I wrote it is because this discussion is really important to me and I think it needed to be said. But now I’ve finished, this was a bit difficult to write and I think I’m going to have trouble going much further into the topic, just because of the headspace it’s got me in. Huge trigger warning for manipulation, emotional abuse, grooming, and rape.

The things touted by these aphobes to invalidate asexuality are the exact same arguments that rapists use to groom asexuals into abusive situations. When aces go to places like their tumblr or their fave dragon game and see this bullshit, it causes isolation, self doubt and deeply reinforces everything the rapists are saying.

Asexuals are very vulnerable to not only corrective rape but also manipulation, grooming and sexual abuse from partners who use their lack of sexual attraction to convince them that they don't understand how things work and what is acceptable or not. For example, I was convinced that I was 'abusing' my (now ex) husband by denying him sex - even though I am ace and also have endometriosis which makes sex terribly painful, forced or otherwise. Consent became a foreign concept, and sex became something I had to bite the pillow and endure to ‘earn’ any physical affection such as cuddling or even speaking to me with anything other than disdain and anger, which he had convinced me was impossible for him to express when he was ‘abused’ by being denied sex for longer than a week, that sex was the way normal people expressed love. It took a close friend to finally see what was happening and challenge my ideas, and I eventually left him and got out of there.

There is a word for sex without consent, it’s called rape. It’s not always physical force, sometimes it’s six years of grooming, emotional manipulation, strategic cutting-off of independence, all those things that minors are vulnerable to because they don’t have the experience or understanding of sexual stuff that adults do. That’s how minors are convinced to do deplorable things against their will and never talk. Child sexual abuse isn’t always a case of physical force, the children are often groomed into it. I’m not saying aces are childlike, I’m not comparing the two situations. My point here is that a lack of understanding can be used to manipulate, because do you know who else can lack that experience and understanding of how sexual stuff is? Who else shares that vulnerability? Who can be easily convinced that their sexuality is why they aren’t seeing the ‘truth’ of the situation? Who are told that their mindset is wrong and needs to be cured? Who are infantilised constantly about their lack of sexual attraction to put their abusers in a position of power? Asexuals. Not every single ace is so sex negative or so inexperienced, but many are, and this climate of exclusion and invalidation creates perfect victims. There are aces out there who have never been pinned down and physically forced, but they have been raped. And when their partner finishes and rolls over to sleep, they lie there bleeding and hurt, and cry and feel violated and vulnerable, and scared, and ashamed and dirty, and stupid for feeling that way. And they don’t question what their partner has done, because their asexuality isn’t real, they just need to try harder.

All this gatekeeping and aphobia is doing nothing but reinforcing what the rapists are saying. “Your feelings aren’t real, aces don’t count, see even the other sexualities won’t acknowledge you, you’re just broken, let me tell you how it really is.” That’s the kind of situation these aphobes, exclusionists and gatekeepers are facilitating by keeping aces alone, isolated, self-doubting and sad, just the way the abusers want them.

Who I Am

I never really write these introduction type of things... mostly because I'm afraid for people to get to know me, and also because I'm so tired of being bullied. In short... I'm afraid. I'm afraid of judgement, I'm afraid of hatred and I'm afraid of the truth I'm about to write here. My name is Andrea. I'm 22 years old and have done nothing with my life. The reason for this is because I have multiple illnesses which prevent me to put mind over matter. I have RSD which is basically the most painful disease known to medical science. I also have Gastroparesis which means my gut is paralyzed and causes me the inability to hold down food, eat, causes chronic vomiting due to undigested food, awful pain, etc., Severe Fibromyalgia, Asthma, Endometriosis, Interstitial Cystitis, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Chronic Migraines due to a neck injury I received from my abusive father and step mother, who I no longer live with. I have had seven surgeries, in fact I'm actually recovering from one right now: a spinal cord stimulator implant in my spine to help me walk due to the RSD affecting my left leg. I'm so critical of my life at this very moment; simply put: I hate my life right now. I hate that I can't work and have to amount to constant judgement and nasty attitudes from some family members. Last year, I wanted to die. I wanted to end it all because I was so tired of how much pain I live in on a daily basis, I was so tired of constantly being exhausted, I was so tired of the guilt, depression, anxiety and PTSD, I was so tired of being ignored by my father and step mother.. to them, I don't exist. I was so heartbroken due to a break up I went through with my then boycriend of two years. I was tired of the way my biological mother treated me; she in short told me she hopes I'll die alone, I deserved the abuse from my father and step mother, she said I'm a truly miserable and awful person. Even though I saved her from her alcohol addiction by putting her through rehab which caused her to meet her now husband, get my half sisters back in her custody, have a dog which I gave her... she hopes I die alone. So, last year around December I truly wanted to end my life. Then, when I had a cholescystectomy, I decided to give Supernatural a little look see.

I was immediately enraptured by the story of these two brothers and their Angel. Of all of the characters, I found myself relating Castiel and Bobby the most. Castiel because i do nothing but try. I try so hard to regain my independence. I fight and fight but, even if I have good intentions, I'm beaten down, tormented by my conscious, shunned by some of my family and always seem to end up losing. I feel just as broken as this beautiful creature.

Bobby, well, when Bobby was dying we got to see his abusive childhood, his father. Bobby so desperately wanted to be as far from his father as he could, so he shot him just so he could protect his mother and himself. Bobby's fear was always clear: He would never ever end up like his dad. Which is why he refused to have children of his own. Same goes for me. I love all of these beautiful characters, however I love Castiel and Bobby a little bit more, only because they struck a chord with me. More specifically being Castiel out of them all.

As I continued to watch I began to find my place, a fandom I could call home and family. Being sick, I lost all of my friends, I lost my independence, my future career-wise, I had to drop out of college. Instead I spend my time seeing doctors, inside hospitals and emergency rooms, in my house locked up in my dark room day after day alone (my grandmother works, which also makes me feel so utterly guilty and worthless due to my lack of contribution) with my cat and three dogs. Thanks to this show, I have a family. I have people I can lean on if I ever need the support, I have people I'm close with. One, in particular: my best friend who, even though she lives in Canada and I in Texas, we speak every single day. This show has done so much for me and more.

Misha Collins... Where do I begin. This man saved my life. Yes, the show did most of it but the moment Castiel walked inside that barn on my tiny MacBook Air screen whilst I was doped up on pain medication and struggling to breath from my gallbladder surgery, I felt safe. I immediately wanted to get to know this human, the actor behind the Angel. So I started looking him up on YouTube and watched his conventions so many of you are so very kind to post... for that I thank you. This man is the epitome of kindness, love and compassion. I know he'll never know of my existence but, because of him, because of the Angel he is both on and off-screen, I decided to stay. No matter how much I hurt, no matter how guilty and worthless I feel, watching Misha's conventions on YouTube, seeing the charity work he does (My, what fame has done to this beautiful man), the fact that he loves poetry, is so passionate about humanity and equality, his quirkiness and weird antics, his laugh, his smile, his eyes... him. Everything. He was the final reason I needed to stay.

Because of this show and it's cast, I finally discovered who I am. This is the first time I have ever written or admitted this aside from my best friend, but I'm ready. I'm ready to make peace with it and embrace it. I'm bisexual. For years I hid it, even from myself. I just shoved and pushed it aside but deep down I knew I was bisexual. The only thing that stopped me from admitting it was my father, who is very homophobic. I refuse to allow him to force me to lie to myself and hide who I am, anymore. I'm afraid to put this out there, but at the same time... I'm ready.

So, I believe thanks are in order.

•Thank you Misha Collins for simply existing. Thank you, sir, for saving my life. You don't know I exist, but because you exist... I choose to stay.

•Thank you Jared Padalecki, Misha Collins and Jensen Ackles for all you do for our family: from charity work to conventions. Thank you for being there for us.

•Tina, if you're reading this. I love you, bitch. Because of you, I feel loved and needed. I feel accepted. Because of you, I finally came out and expressed who I really am; no bars, no filter. All me. Thank you for being my sister, I'll always be here just as you're always there for me. You mean everything to me.

Finally, thank you so much Supernatural. Thank you for helping me find my place in the world. Thank you for helping me find a family full of psychotic weirdos I can feel comfortable with. You guys are so accepting and kind... it just makes me feel so loved anytime I log on to my various social media accounts. Thank you so much Supernatural. And thank you SPNFamily.

I Though I Was Coming With a Flu [edited]

Characters/Pairing: Dean x Fem!Reader, Sam, Dr. Blaze (OC)

word count: 2k

Warnings: Bit of angst, fluff, lots of it, unexpected pregnancy!!!

A/N: This is and old story among the firsts pices of SPN fanfiction I ever wrote and posted on Tumblr. Since my brain haven’t been helpful with me and the new stories I have in mind I decided to edit this one. I was about to change the ending a bit, but fuck it. I like it, even if it is dull… Oh, and I’m tagging people.

Anyways this is prompt: ‘The reader was told she was infertile by her doctor a long time ago. She finds out he was wrong when she realizes she’s pregnant… with Dean’s baby.’    From “60+ Dean x Pregnant!reader Prompts” that I don’t remember who it was from because I deleted the original post, so sorry!! 

[Feedback is awesome]

I Thought I Was Coming With a Flu

The cold water felt wonderful against your hot, flushed face, soothing the feverish sensation. You delicately patted the droplets off of your sensitive skin with a soft fluffy towel. Observing in detail your reflection in the mirror, you didn’t recognize the person looking back at you anymore.

Dark circles around your eyes,cheeks shrunk to half it’s normal size- displaying the cheekbones through thin, pale skin - It’s been, what two, three weeks since you started to feel sick… you didn’t keep count anymore. Your neck looked longer and thinner, not to mention that you’d lost at least 20 lb and all of your jeans were baggy now, even your sweats started to slide down your hip.

You carded your fingers through your dirty hair, moving  it to the side and contemplated your languid face once more before rinsing your mouth with the last of mouthwash; what was the point on brushing your teeth if you were going to throw up again in like 20 minutes?

You made your way down the hall to the kitchen, stopping once or twice to catch your breath; you couldn’t be off bed for more than a few minutes without feeling like you were going to faint. You finally reached your destination and laid against the doorframe, to regain your composure and were immediately greeted by the worried looks of the Winchester brothers.

“Morning to you too,” you said in a sarcastic tone.

“Hi,” they said in the unison.

“Umm… Hun, you know it’s 5 in the afternoon, right?” Dean was getting up so you could seat on his place, even though there were a lot of empty chairs.

You’ve known the boys for more than a decade, and after crushing on Dean for the last five years, you finally took a chance and expressed your feelings for him, with Sam’s help of course. Only to find out the elder Winchester reciprocated them. The past year has been the best of your life, living and hunting with your boyfriend and your amazing best friend.

As you seated yourself, you let out a loud sigh of relief. “Are you alright?” Sam asked.

“Yeah…no, actually I’m not.  I thought I was coming with a flu or something, but it’s been more than two weeks, and I’m getting weaker by the hou-“

A big gag interrupted you, and you quickly covered your mouth with both your hands. Taking in deep, calm breaths and waiting until it passed. Dean already had a glass of water in hand for you.

You nodded as you took it from his grip and you thank him, your voice barely above a whisper. You drank the liquid and waited for it to settle down before trying to speak again. Sam and Dean’s eyes were set on you, making you feel a bit uncomfortable, so closing your eyes you threw your head back, gathering your hair like a ponytail to let some air in the back of your neck, that was covered in sweat.

“It’s just that smell!” you complained.

“What smell? Dean said, his hands softly massaging your shoulders and his nose crinkling as he sniffed the air around him.

“The friggin’ coffee smell, it’s making me sick!!” You let go of your hair and waved a hand in front of your nose to fan the stench away when you started to feel your stomach clench again. The knot in your belly became tighter and you got up as fast as you could and ran to the kitchen sink to disgorge the little water you just had.

“That’s it, I don’t care how much you hate it, but I’m taking you to the hospital!” Dean said as he remove your hair from your face and stroke your back.

After the tumult of nurses and interns running around questioning you and performing standards exams; they took your temperature and blood pressure, drawn some blood and put you on an IV to hydrated you again, you lied on the hospital bed, definitely out of your comfort zone. Dean was sitting by your side on the bed and Sam pacing around, waiting for the doctor to come in with the results and any kind of news about what was wrong with you.

“Why the hell did they have to make me wear this?” you whined to Dean signaling to the polka dots robe, and obviously you were naked underneath; well, except for a pair shorts that you made Dean sneaked in for you when the nurse wasn’t looking .

“I think it looks good on you” Dean leaned forwards, his face closer to yours.

“you’re only saying that because is backless,” you chuckle as he slipped a hand on your back, feeling your bare skin and his lips met your in a loving kiss.

“Guys, would you please keep it in your pants, We are in a hospital, not to mention I’m right here with you!” Sam glared at you two.

The door opened suddenly and a tall man walked in, he was  wearing a white coat. “Good evening I’m Doctor Blaze. You must be Y/N, right?” He smiled down on you and extended a big hand to shake yours.

“Yes I am. Hello, nice to meet you. This is my boyfriend, Dean and my friend, Sam”

“Doctor” Dean stood and shook his hand as well with a strong grip and a nod, and then before it was Sam’s turn.

“So, how are you feeling?” Dr. Blaze sat himself down in the bed next to you and smiled.

“I’m feeling much better now, I hadn’t had a gag or the urge to vomit in… dunno,  an hour”

“That’s the medicine we gave you, doxylamine… to prevent the nausea,” he explained.

“I love it!” you answered happily making him laugh a bit.

“Y/N, can I talk to you in private? You know, without your bodyguards.” You chuckled at the joke but the boys didn’t find it funny at all.

“Why?” Sam was the one asking.

“It’s just that I have some personal questions to ask and sometimes is better if the patient is… alone”

“It’s ok Doc, you can ask me anything in front of these guys.” You shrugged pursing your lips.

“Are you sure?” he ensured.

“Yes!”

“Okay… Um, I noticed here in your chart that you said you are… um, you can’t have kids?”

“Yeah,” you bit your lip and looked down to your hands.  “I have endometriosis.” You felt Dean’s hand squeeze your shoulder, you looked up at him but his eyes were set on the Doctor.

Dean knew how much it affected you when you found out a few years back.

“And how did you take on those news… I mean, how are you coping?” Dr. Blaze blew some air through clenched teeth.  “I know it must be hard,” he said placing a hand above yours in a gentle manner.

You sighed and bit the inside of your cheek for a second before answering “It is,” you simply said, “I always wanted kids, but I’m trying to make my peace with it.” you eyes started to welled up, and out of the blue Dean was infuriated

“What is the point of all this? Is she alright or not?”

Doctor Blaze smiled at you again, but his smile was different, warm and full of hope somehow, and all of the sudden you knew. Your eyes widen and you gasped a bit, unnoticeable by the guys.

You turned around and took Dean’s hand in between yours, looking up “Babe, would you give us a minute… both of you please.” You turned to talk to Sam, he nodded, and took Dean by the arm, walking him out of the room.

“Doctor, are you trying to tell me what I think you are?” Without realizing your chest was rising and falling rapidly.

“Y/N, what I’m trying to tell you, is that you are pregnant.”

Your hand was on your mouth and it sled to your neck and you started sobbing. “Are you… Is this… How?” You were so shocked you couldn’t form a single sentence.

“We won’t know exactly until we do more tests, but this kind of things happens. Ehr.. sometimes women with endometriosis can get pregnant. We are gonna have to monitor you and the baby regularly. But everything is going to be fine…I’m assuming those are tears of joy?”

“Yes!!” you said covering your mouth again. “How far along am I? What can I do to keep the baby safe and-“  He chuckled.

“If you like it, I can bring an ultrasound and we can clear some stuff right now-”

“Yes, please!!” you interrupted him.

“Okay, I’ll be back in a few minutes.” He walked out. Dean and Sam came rushing in, obviously thinking the worst when they found you in tears.

“Y/N, what’s wrong? Tell me please!!” You looked up at him unable to say anything a smile on your face.

You opened you mouth to try to explain what was going on when the Doctor was back, pulling a card with a big ultrasound machine and a woman, which you assumed was the ultrasound technician, pushing at the other end.

The woman sat in the chair next to your bed, “Hi, I’m Susan. Y/N, right?” she spoke politely and you nodded. She immediately asked you to lift up your robe and you complied without hesitation.

“Can someone tell me what the hell is going on? What is this for?” Dean raised his voice.

Sam had a big smile on his face, he already figured it out.

“Wait and see” you said to Dean, extending your hand for him to hold and patting the bed next to you.

You squealed when the cold gel hit your stomach, the room went silent as the transducer probe rolled around on your lower belly.  And after a few moments, that seem like an eternity to you. Susan pointed her finger to the screen,

“There it is! That black hallo is the amniotic sack, and that little thing in there… that’s your baby. Congratulations!” You bit your lower lip and smiled back at her.

“So, you wanna hear the most beautiful sound in the world?” You nodded and she pressed a button couple of buttons.

“Thump thump thump thump…”  You gasped and pressed your fingernails to your palm as goosebumps prickled all over your skin.

“For the size and approximate weight I’ll say you are about… eight weeks,” Susan said breaking the silent spell.

You sighed “Thank you!”

Sam’s at the foot of the bed, one hand stroking your feet through the covers as his eyes welled up. You finally looked up to see Dean, his eyes wide, jaw dropped in astonishment. Meeting your eyes,  his mouth opened and closed, but he said nothing. Making you worry; maybe he didn’t want children, maybe the whole you can’t get pregnant thing was good for him.

“Ba-babe, are you alright?” you stammered, nervous about his quiet reaction.

“We should give you a minute,” Dr. Blaze said, already walking out the room.

Sam came to your side and gave you a big hug. “Congratulations Y/N, I’m so happy for you!” he whispered in your ear before kissing your forehead.

“Dean, please say something!” you breathed out as soon as the two of you were alone. “I know we never planned thins, and is a big surprise for me too. But- but… you don’t have to do this if you don’t want it, I’ll never force y-”

Dean plump lips on yours stopped you from saying anything else and after the shock  you kissed him back. His arms were wrapped around your body, holding you tight.

When you parted to breathe he gently grabbed the back of your head and planted a kiss on your forehead before lower himself to your stomach, lifting the robe and kissing below your belly button softly before whispering “You have no idea how much I prayed for you.”

Tags: @nadiandreu7 @winchesters-princess @purgatoan @whywhydoyouwantmetosaymyname @thegreatficmaster @death2thevirgin @mogaruke @isis278 @marygracewinchester @lbug1025 @babypieandwhiskey @impala-dreamer @authoressskr @fangirl1802 @ria132love @policeofficerdean @donnaintx @feelmyroarrrr @just-another-busy-fangirl @love-kittykat21 @tanithlowisabamf @emilyymichelle @goldenangelbloodcastiel @likesiriusly @petrovadixon @deathtonormalcy56  

Dean/Jensen: @dancingalone21 @anokhi07 @leather-moccasin-hero @hunterintraining1967 @deansbaekaz2y5 @missmotherhen @kaitlynmarie1120 @tas898 @akshi8278

Dean Pond (Fluff- Sorry if I misplaced you on this list!):   @aprofoundbondwithdean @manawhaat @thing-you-do-with-that-thing @nichelle-my-belle @leatherwhiskeycoffeeplaid @bkwrm523 @whispersandwhiskerburn @roxy-davenport  @samsgoddess @wildfirewinchester @frenchybell @spn-fan-girl-173 @deandoesthingstome @jelly-beans-and-gstrings @fiveleaf @deansleather @curliesallovertheplace @waywardjoy @imadeangirl-butimsamcurious @kayteonline @supernatural-jackles @wevegotworktodo @quiddy-writes @deantbh @supermoonpanda @sinceriouslyamellpadalecki @deanwinchesterforpromqueen @chaos-and-the-calm67 @memariana91 @plaidstiel-wormstache @teamfreewill-imagine @chelsea-winchester @fandommaniacx @writingbeautifulmen @revwinchester @lucibae-is-dancing-in-hell @castieltrash1 @supernaturalyobessed  @ruined-by-destiel @inmysparetime0 @winchester-writes @deals-with-demons @maraisabellegrey @faith-in-dean @winchestersmolder @bennyyh @clueless-gold @deanwinchesterxreader @melbelle45 @winchester-family-business

If you don’t want me to tag you anymore just say the word

Survey #51

“i’m unashamed, i’m gonna show my scars.”

have you ever been confused about your sexuality? yes, but i am perfectly aware it was only due to my anxiety and this repetitive thought cycle i used to have. i was afraid i was bisexual, despite having no traits of one. yet i was still afraid. thank GOD that eventually stopped. have you ever tried drugs? no. do you put family first, friends, relationships, school, or something else? i'm TRYING to put myself first. what's your sexuality? heterosexual, some asexual traits. have you ever liked someone else while you were in a relationship? no. what is your favorite card game? "magic: the gathering." i don't FULLY understand it, but i play "duels of the planeswalkers" on my ps3 sometimes, where i understand all the cards. i can't really play it much tho. ptsd trigger. have you ever lived on a university campus? no when was the last time you saw a photo of your ex? idk really. do you “binge-watch” tv shows? not since jason's and my "sherlock" days. do you play any games on your phone? only "pokemon go" when was the last time you wore something totally inappropriate for the weather? does this happen often? i do it all the time. i wear flip-flops in the winter and will usually not wear a jacket unless my mom forces me. if you could dye your hair any color (and have it look good/professional), what color would you pick? GRAY. mom won't let me, though. have you ever liked someone and they were taken? yeah. now. have you ever read the book thirteen reasons why? yup. are you more of a studs or hoops type of person when it comes to earrings? studs, generally. are you on good terms with your last ex? not really, no. have you ever received a teddy bear? no. lol funny, i was just talking the other day at wal-mart how just ONCE, i want a guy to get me one of those big teddy bears. which movie villain do you find the most terrifying? scream. childhood fear. are you proud of your parents? in some areas yes, others, no. someone removes you from their facebook friends and then tries to add you again … do you ignore them, or accept? accept. what would you say if your best friend came to you and said she was pregnant? oh my gosh, i'd be overjoyed. she's been trying for a baby for so long now, and she has to see someone about fertility if she and bradley don't get pregnant by next month. to make matters worse, i inadvertently found out ectopic pregnancies occur most often in people who have endometriosis, which she as. i'd never dare tell her that, but i'm so worried that'll happen to her or she just won't be fertile at all... who is the most attractive person of the opposite sex that you know? that i know personally? jason. what would you consider unforgivable? rape. what are your views on spontaneous human combustion? i don't really know... i mean aren't there cases where officials were pretty sure the situation truly was spontaneous combustion? i mean i guess, theoretically, it could happen. do you enjoy fishing? yes!! i love the peace and quiet, and feeling one with the fish on the rod is so cool. the last piece of roadkill you saw,what kind of animal was it? a fox, i believe. does your hair have layers? yep. what’s on your mind right now? jason. i wrote him a six-page letter last night; my mom's going to give it to him today. it's his 23rd birthday. bats: cute or gross? SOOOO FUCKING CUTE!!! have you watched any good horror / thriller movies lately? the new "blair witch" was pretty good, but it left a few open ends. what are your opinions on the song you're currently listening to? absolutely adore it. "breath" by breaking benjamin. what is something that people in your family tend to do a lot that irritates you?  uhhh... idk. everyone in my family's different. what do you wish you had more knowledge about? basic survival skills, like what settings to put the washing machine on, etc. name a song you listen to when your upset/angry/sad?  i mean, lots. but one of my go-tos for a bad mood is "fuck u" by archive what would you say if someone asked you to get high right now? i'd like to think i'd say no, and i honestly think i would, but with how this day's going, who the fuck knows what i'd say. i want an escape from this feeling. are you tired from last night? did you stay up late last night at all? holy shit, yes. i stayed up until almost four typing up a letter to jason. there's more things i need to say to him. i really hope he reads it... do you have soft hands? do you like holding hands? yes and it depends on whether or not your hands are clammy or not. i miss jason's hands. they were so soft and warm. have you ever burnt your tongue like REALLY bad? if so, what on? yes, on rice that just came off the stove. do you like to have cake on your birthday? which kind of cake in mind? i want a doughnut cake. if you met your 12 year old self, right now, what do you think they'd think of you? she'd be... so disappointed. would you date someone who has cheated in their previous relationships? no. what is your favorite song lyric? "i'd probably still adore you with your hands around my neck," because it makes me think of jason. that's so me. he could just... do anything, i guess, and i'd still love him. i promised. are you comfortable with who you are? have you accepted who you are? no. i'm a failure that's in love with a man who'll never love her back. i gave away the key to my happiness, and it's not something he can just give back. what’s something you would say to an ex right now?   just wrote him six pages worth of shit last night.  i really hope he reads it. did you ever collect any sort of cards?   pokemon cards, somewhat. do you consider yourself pretty?   i think i could be if i wasn't so fat. have you ever been diagnosed with anything unexpected, mental or physical illness? how did you finally find out?   i have mental illnesses, but i expected them all, so.  when i had a cyst, that was unexpected, though. does your mom like the last person you kissed?   she's very confused with him, as am i.  she doesn't understand why he just so suddenly had had enough with me.  she spites him for how much pain he's caused me, but who knows, really. how many people of the opposite sex do you fully trust?   none. are you currently in love right now?   i know so.  i wouldn't be going through all this hell for jason if i wasn't.  in that letter i mentioned i wrote to jason, i actually talked about this.  talked about the difference of loving and being in love: whether or not you'd accept a person's gradual changes in life.  and i obviously have, as i haven't seen him in a year, and i still love him. last time you had anal sex? (if ever)   never.  the concept is really gross. do you believe that if you want something bad enough you'll get it?   no.  just wanting something isn't enough. have you ever learned any self-defense? if not, would you be interested in learning?   no, and i guess so.  it'd be wise. what is your favorite soundtrack for a film/video game/television show? (though feel free to name as many!)   the "shadow of the colossus" soundtrack!! have you ever used your bra to hold things like you would a pocket?   no, actually. have you ever done yoga?   i used to do yoga on a daily basis on the wii fit.  lost 40 pounds. have you ever had to block anyone online?   yup. ever been the only one trying to fix a relationship?   HMMMM, I DON'T KNOW, AM I, JASON?? how exactly do you feel right now? what's on your mind?   i feel sad.  i feel disappointed in myself.  don't ask how my brain got to this point, but i just realized something about myself: if jason came back, i'm almost certain i'd leave my abstinence behind.  and look, anyone who knows me knows i am so serious about my celibacy until marriage.  i'm so proud of it, to have accomplished it during a passionate, long-term relationship.  but... i'm staring to second-guess it.  is it truly, really worth it?  should jason and i have just had sex anyway while we were together?  let's all be adults here: sex is supposed to be a very passionate display of affection, at least to me; i don't believe sex can be casual.  and, well, i wish i could've shared that with jason.  i don't give a fuck who my future husband's gonna be, i highly doubt i'd regret giving my virginity to the first person i ever loved, because i will always love him.  i wish, i wish, i'd let jason know that part of me.  and yeah, i know "but the bible says premarital sex is bad!", well, it says a lot of stuff is bad, but all that was forgiven by the coming of jesus, yada yada.  it's not entirely clear what old rules remain intact in the new testament.  like... what if i've been believing an old testament rule this whole time?  that'll be funny. but anyway, i'm just... remorseful right now.  i mean, jason even got tested for stds for me.  he was clean.  so on a physical level, us having sex wouldn't have risked the spread of disease, which is another, if not the prime, reason i chose abstinence.  ugh.  i'm so split right now.  why am i even worrying about this, it's not like he's going to come back anyway. are you a heavy drinker?   no.  i don't like the taste of alcohol, so i don't drink a lot, anyway. do you own many pairs of shorts?   i don't own any. is there a situation you currently feel hopeless about?   *"welcome to my life" plays in the distance* when was the last time you sang out loud to yourself?   ha ha a few minutes ago.  backstreet boys came on. is there a band you like with amazing music but a bad vocalist?   that's totally megadeth.  i personally think dave is an atrocious singer, yet i like it at the same time...? when was the last time you wore earrings?   now!  i had such a rough morning, so colleen tried to cheer me up before work.  she told me to get all pretty, to treat myself.  so i did!  i put on makeup, got on some clothes that actually fit.  i even put on my new ruby ring and put earrings into my lobes! do you enjoy going through old pictures?   sometimes.  occasionally the nostalgia is too much. when’s the last time someone was disappointed in you?   probably this morning when i told colleen i wrote jason another letter... which compliment do you receive the most?    people call my hair pretty. do you believe people when they say they don’t judge people?   nope.  we ALL judge people somewhat. have you ever received a hickey from the last person you kissed?   plenty of times.  i was honestly into hickeys.  i think biting can be romantic. think of your last kiss, was it good?   jason's italian, baby.  boy knows how to kiss. what side of a heart do you draw first?   left plan on getting married?   yes.  i'm christian so don't believe in dating if you're not interested in eventually marrying that person. do you believe everyone needs a second chance?   not everyone, honestly.  some people are beyond redemption. be honest, do you like people in general?   as a general statement?  no. do you want your tongue pierced?   i do, but mom is really trying to convince me not to.  they're dangerous for your teeth, and besides, i have a metal retainer on the back of my bottom teeth, and that can really get fucked up.  i'm probably still gonna do it, tho. should the guy always pay for the date?   no.  personally, i believe whoever planned the date should pay. where do you hope to live when you’re older and settled?   on the western side of nc.  in the woods, preferably. do you read the bible?   honestly, not as much as i should. do you get sick of people who call themselves bipolar all the time?   FUCKING YES.  do not abuse a mental illness!!! ever have an ultra-sound performed on you? what was it for?   yes, because something was wrong with my liver.  turned out being okay. what bands are you into?   mostly heavy metal bands, both old and new. do your parents wish you were more successful?   sigh.  i'm sure they do. have you ever been interrupted during sex?   during foreplay, yeah.  sex, no. has a dentist ever screwed up on anything when working on you?   yeah, actually.  while flossing me, this damn dentist went WAAAAAY up there into my gums and formed a deep pocket.  now i can't floss that spot without flinching. whose house, other than yours and your families, are you most comfortable at?   colleen's. have you ever been on the honor roll?   all the way from elementary through high school. do you ever read things you wrote as a kid? what were you like?   OH MY GOSH I'D NEVER I WAS CHEESY AF how do you feel about people your age having children?   personally, i think 20 is a bit too young, but just barely.  it's not a big deal if you feel you're ready, as your body, by age 20, is, too. do you think it’s possible for an 18 year old to be ready to get married?   sure.  some people meet the "perfect" partner at a young age. how do you wear or style your hair most often?   i don't really style it.  it's parted on the left side of my head, so my hair swoops over my forehead and rests on my glasses. how many instruments do you own/have you owned?   flute and electric guitar for or against guyliner?   omg sexy af do you believe exes can be friends?   if you were actually in love with each other, absolutely not. did you pull a senior prank?   no, because i fancied graduating. have you ever been unfaithful in a serious relationship?   no, and i never would be. what do your parents think about piercings and tattoos? do you agree with them?   both my parents are iffy with piercings, but each allowed us (my sisters and i) to make our own choices with them.  tattoos, i personally think my mom's more open towards, so long they're not stupid.  judging by my dad's reaction when i told him i had tattoos, dad's very iffy with them. do you watch any anime? what genres do you enjoy?   yeah, mostly horror-oriented stuff.  my fave's "fullmetal alchemist" (+"brotherhood").  i looove "deadman wonderland."  i watched some of "death note" and "black butler," but i didn't get into it. do you have plans for today?   yeah.  go to colleen's to print out jason's letter (we have no ink at home), then probably go to jason's job to give it to him.  i think i'm going to go in... which is such a gamble.  that might be the death of me.  if he's not at work, then we'll drive to my house so mom can go drop it off at his house, because i don't think i'd survive even pulling up into his driveway.  after that, i may or may not spend the night with colleen. anything special about today?   yeah.  it's jason's 23rd birthday.  happy birthday, my love. do you think home schooled kids are weird?   of course not.  i do, however, believe that they usually are a bit socially deprived.  school is such an important part of a child's life, and is really where they learn so many social skills. do either of your parents have any tattoos or piercings?   mom has her ears pierced do you feel comfortable in a bikini?   not anymore whatsoever. do you believe humans should have the option to be euthanized?   i really don't know. have you ever played magic: the gathering?   yes, when jason and i were dated.  it's one of his passions.  he's so cute when he geeks out over it. do you want to have a bachelor / bachelorette party before you get married?   i mean, i guess?  i don't really know what you do at bachelorette parties? would you ever get a name tattooed on you?   no, not even my child's. what’s your best friend’s pet’s name(s)?   miracle and maxwell how old are you? how old do you act?   i'm 20, about to be 21, and sometimes i act older, sometimes younger. when was the last time you ate a banana?   like, two, three months?  i stopped eating them because they gave me hellish heartburn, always.  like, so bad i wanted to cry. have you ever taken the eharmony personality quiz?   oh.  my.  gosh.  ya'll, yes.  after i joined christianmingle, i was curious, so checked it out.  I HAD NO MATCHES. is there a girl that you truly hate?   i think it's genuine hate, but i know i shouldn't feel that way.  it's not like she's ever directly done anything to me.  i don't even know her, only her name.  i'm childish to spite her so heavily just for dating jason, but dammit, he's mine. do you own a strapless bra?   no.  generally not a good idea for someone with d-sized boobs.  the ladies will fall out, let's be real. have you ever had a piercing get infected?   yeah.  yuck. band that you really want to see in concert?   i think more than anyone, i want to go see metallica with my mom.  they're one of my faves, and my mom, holy shit, they're like mortal gods to her.  i know she'd cry at one of their concerts.  she'd be overjoyed, and that'd make me happy. which baby animal is your favorite?   meerkats, once they get more fur and open their eyes. would you ever consider getting a piercing in your septum?   thought about it a few times, actually.  however, i have the side of my nose pierced, and i don't think that plus the septum piercing looks good.  i mean yeah, i could take out the piercing i have, but i think i like it better.  i still look at septum piercings on pinterest sometimes tho lol gay marriage: love is love or a horrible stand against god?   i honestly think it's fine.  i didn't for most of my life, but i came to realize i was wrong.  and besides, jesus says nothing negative about homosexuals.  in fact, there is one statement he says that in our modern language, is understood to say some people are simply born that way.  however, the word used has multiple meanings, so.  fun fact, most of the old testament, their rules are for the jewish.  jesus' coming and crucifixion forgave the sins of the old testament. do you cuss?   yes, because i don't believe in "curse" words. who’s your celebrity crush?   link neal fuck me pls did you have a furby when you were younger?   haha omg yes if you had a baby girl, what would you name her?   ALESSANDRA "ALICE" QUINN YES YES YES VERY GOOD if you had a baby boy, what would you name him?   i'm stuck between the names "vincent" and "luther," so idk. what part of your body are you self-conscious about?   most self-conscious about?  my stomach.  i have stretch marks on it now, and it just... grosses me out.  i used bio-oil while we had it and it helped, but it costs about a hundred bucks, so we haven't been able to afford it again.  now i use a coconut cream or something like that, and i don't think it does much.  i also hate my inner thighs, which also have stretch marks.  my right leg is especially bad, because my laptop burned the design of them into the flesh to where they're a brown, obvious color.  ugh.

By Listening to Her Customers, This Entrepreneur Found a Larger Audience — And a Greater Mission

Michelle Kennedy launched the Peanut app to help moms. But now, the app is out to help all women.

March 4, 2020 15+ min read

This story appears in the March 2020 issue of Entrepreneur. Subscribe »

Michelle Kennedy arrived at lunch, nervous about the conversation she was about to have with her best friend. It was 2016, and Kennedy had just made a big career decision. She was going to leave her job as a tech exec and launch a new app for moms. It was exciting — a new adventure, a massive market, a lot of potential upside.

But the downside was this: Her best friend, BBC journalist Sophie Sulehria, had been struggling for years to have a baby. In fact, at the time, Sulehria had just completed her third failed round of in vitro fertilization, and it was taking a toll on her mental health. Kennedy didn’t want to add to the burden.

“It was a very bad time. My husband and I were really suffering,” says Sulehria. “When Michelle said she had something to tell me, I thought, Oh God; she’s having another baby! But she told me about the business, and she was so worried: ‘I don’t want to be your best friend who’s not only got a kid but also has a mum business — I don’t want to alienate you.’ ”

Related: 6 Reasons Moms Make the Best Entrepreneurs

But Sulehria was supportive. She knew the business was a fantastic idea, even though her exclusion from its target audience was killing her. So she asked Kennedy for a favor, as a friend and as a hopeful mom. This would be the earliest feedback Kennedy would receive as an entrepreneur, and although she wouldn’t know it yet, it would set the tone for how she would build her business — by listening to, and quickly responding to, the needs of the community it serves.

“I said, ‘Promise me one thing: When this app becomes successful, create a piece of it for people like me, a place where women having fertility issues can find support and friendship and discussions and information, because wouldn’t that be fantastic?’ ” Sulehria recalls. “And Michelle literally looked at me that day and said, ‘I promise.’ ”

Image Credit: Courtesy of Peanut App

Today, Kennedy’s company is called Peanut, and it has a million users and $9.8 million in funding. But back in 2013, before Peanut was even a twinkle in its founder’s eye, Kennedy was a rising star in the dating app world. She was deputy CEO of a European dating network called Badoo, and she also had a role in launching the brand Bumble, which would go on to become one of the industry’s major players.

Kennedy’s life was changing. Her personal dating days were behind her. She’d just given birth to her son, Finlay, and didn’t have many girlfriends with kids in her hometown of London. She wanted to find some like-minded women at a similar stage of life, but all she could find were archaic message boards and Facebook groups.

“The products available to me were all, quite frankly, crap,” Kennedy says. “Nothing represented me as a mother.” At the same time, she was watching a flood of utility-based applications enter the market — new ways to order food or pick up your dry cleaning — and felt that a huge opportunity was being overlooked. 

“Women are 50 percent of the population the last time I checked, and motherhood, in some way, will touch everyone’s life,” she says. “But no one is touching this space?” 

She came up with an idea for a networking app for moms and called it Peanut, after her nickname for her baby bump when she was pregnant. But she didn’t feel ready to take the leap — until three years later. “There were just signals in the market,” she says. “People were starting to talk about motherhood differently because we’d started to talk about womanhood differently, and it just felt like the right time.” In 2016, she began ideating in earnest, brought three trusted team members on board, and got to work. 

Peanut set out to embody the voice of modern, millennial motherhood. The team wanted it to function as a friend — one who understands that being a mom is a big part of a woman’s identity, but it’s not her entire identity. They spent a lot of time defining its voice. Users, for example, would be addressed as “Mama,” which tracks in both the United Kingdom and the United States and has a playful edge.

In February 2017, just a few months after she shared her plans with best friend Sulehria, Kennedy brought Peanut into the world, launching in the U.K. and the U.S. A simple beta version allowed women to create a profile, swipe to explore other women’s profiles — like on a dating app — and chat. 

The reaction was instantaneous. Thanks to some earlier-than-planned press coverage from the London Evening Standard, thousands of women flooded the beta offering, and Kennedy had fast validation. But the new users also revealed a vulnerability. Much like with dating apps, where happy couples no longer need the app, women were ditching Peanut once they’d made a new friend. “And why wouldn’t they?” Kennedy says. “You don’t need to make a new girlfriend every day — and in that case, you maybe don’t need to continue using Peanut.” 

Related: Debunking Three Myths About Women in Tech

This was a problem in need of solving. And as it turns out, users were already proposing a solution. “A lot of our users were saying, ‘Wait; how do I ask all the women on here a question? How do I share this article with all the women in my neighborhood?’ ” Kennedy says. “We had always planned to build community-based features, but our users let us know that we’d have to build them a lot quicker than planned.”

So the team hustled to launch community-wide message boards (called Peanut Pages) and group chats (Peanut Groups). Kennedy and her team thought they knew exactly how women would use these features; they expected to see chatter around the usual early-­motherhood pain points, like getting babies to sleep or working through pregnancy discomfort. But they got something much different. 

“Women were sharing about really intimate stuff: relationships, love, sex, work, money, housing, social issues,” says Kennedy, whose team kept an eye on developing conversations via a combination of artificial intelligence and human monitoring of message boards. “We had to stop and say, ‘Wait a minute. Why are these conversations happening on Peanut?’ And it’s because they just aren’t happening anywhere else — you’re not going to post on a local Yahoo message board about postpartum sex or frustrations with your partner. This has to exist in a private network.” 

While some popular topics did prove to be playful (“boobs and books”), the majority had a more solemn tone — and one in particular was being discussed at a surprisingly high volume. 

“So many women were talking about trying and struggling to conceive baby number two,” says Kennedy. “Maybe they were going through IVF, or had just suffered a loss, or found they were facing infertility, or had been diagnosed with endometriosis or polycystic ovary syndrome. Whatever it was, there was so much conversation.” 

Kennedy immediately thought of her best friend, Sulehria. She knew the facts were brutal: One in eight women will be affected by fertility issues, and one in six will experience a miscarriage. She also knew that the emotional burden was vast. “The most poignant thing Soph ever said to me was, ‘You know, I could use someone other than you to talk to,’ ” Kennedy says. “So now here we are with Peanut, and if all these women are talking about their struggles to conceive baby two or three, what about the women who haven’t had a baby at all?”

Kennedy planned to serve this audience someday; after all, she’d made a promise to her friend. But she thought it would be a long time from now, and a small part of a much larger pie. Now, by following her users’ lead, she realized she had it wrong. She needed to fulfill this promise fast — and the opportunity could be very big.

Image Credit: Courtesy of Peanut App

Women who struggle with fertility issues have already given their community a name: It’s TTC, for “trying to conceive.” Across the internet, there’s evidence of these women craving connection. Search #TTC on Instagram and you’ll find 1.4 million posts; #TTCcommunity has more than half a million posts; #TTCaftermiscarriage has nearly 82,000. 

But those makeshift communities, as the Peanut team saw it, weren’t working. “These women are making use of existing social networks, but they’re not finding a real community,” says Hannah Hastings, Peanut’s head of growth and brand marketing agency. “Instagram is a public space. If you choose to have a private profile, discovery is limited. So you’re either sharing personal information publicly or cut off. It doesn’t solve the need.” 

Sulehria backed that up. She found no comfort in the major social media networks, and in-person support groups were too far from where she lived. “Plus, the face-to-face thing is so daunting — to walk into a room and say, ‘Hi; I’m having this mental health problem,’ ” she says. “I just wanted something I could look at and engage with while I was lying in bed.” 

Peanut had identified a problem worth solving, but the team knew it couldn’t just create some new message boards called TTC and invite their users in. The psychological struggles facing the TTC community are significant and nuanced, and the internet can quickly become an emotional minefield. 

“There are articles and articles out there saying, ‘If you’re going through [infertility], just get off Facebook,’ ” says Barbara Collura, president and CEO of Resolve: The National Infertility Association. “Because the moment someone inevitably drops an ultrasound photo on there, it’s like…Oh my God. Women feel bombarded by this day in, day out. People stop going to the mall, restaurants, family events. So in a digital space, they want to feel safe. Anyone who’s trying to be inclusive to an audience of people who are trying to conceive has to be übersensitive.”

Keeping these sensitivities in mind, Kennedy decided to shield the TTC community from the rest of the app. Peanut TTC would function almost like a separate platform and have its own onboarding process. That way, TTC users wouldn’t accidentally stumble upon conversations from happy new moms (though they could opt in to see everything else if they wanted).

After that, the Peanut team had to dive into the nuances of the TTC world, and they leaned heavily on Sulehria as a guiding voice and gut check. Kennedy also asked Sulehria to connect her with other women who’d been struggling to conceive and may be willing to share their experience. Slowly but surely, a small but mighty focus group helped her build this new product with care. 

Related: How 2 Entrepreneurs Built a Membership Community for Working Moms

The team learned, as an example, that there are plenty of tensions within the TTC community that Peanut would have to contend with. “A woman who’s been trying for five months and a woman who’s been trying for five years are in very different positions,” Kennedy says. “To put them in one bucket? That’s not the experience we want to give users.”

Kennedy had started to see evidence of this earlier. On Peanut, where some women had created fertility-related message boards, there was a lot of debate about which posts belonged. “A woman who had become pregnant posted an image of her positive pee stick, which can be really triggering for other women,” she says. “We’d get notifications and reports, and we’d also see our users say to each other, ‘Hey, maybe you should take it down, or post it somewhere else.’ ” 

So in Peanut TTC, the company created UX solutions for those sensitivities. Blurred filters can be applied to potentially sensitive content (flagged by the creator or other users), and women will have to opt in to see those messages or images. The team developed proprietary artificial intelligence, which monitors group discussions and flags any comments that may not suit the brand’s ethos. “If a user is writing a comment and we detect an element of negativity, the app will say, ‘Hey, are you sure you don’t want to rephrase that? Peanut is a place of supportive conversation,’ ” explains Hastings.

In November 2019, after nine months in development, the company launched Peanut TTC. The community grew quickly, and user engagement skyrocketed — 60 percent above Peanut’s typical engagement.

It’s a good start, but Kennedy knows there’s a lot still left to do. She wants Peanut to expand its sensitivity features, improve how it matches women with relevant groups, and create room for TTC women to celebrate their pregnancies. And, more important, she also wants to keep following this line of thinking — watching how people use her product, and reacting with new solutions. She’s already seeing many options: Women are using the app to talk about raising teenagers, fighting chronic health conditions, sex after the age of 50, and more.

“Women have all these different life stages,” Kennedy says. “We can be the product that helps you find other women like you at every stage.”

Image Credit: Courtesy of Peanut App

Peanut is still in that early stage of a tech company’s life, when user growth is prioritized over profit. Which is to say: The app is free to use and makes no money. But Kennedy is building a monetization strategy based on premium products or in-app purchases. Imagine a user paying a small fee for direct access to a respected doctor, or an expert who can quickly and personally respond to a health-related question. 

Maybe it’s a great idea. Maybe it’s not. Maybe women will be interested in using it, but not so interested in paying for it. Either way, Kennedy believes she’ll find her answer, so long as she keeps engaging and listening to her users. 

To do that, her team is hustling to repeat the success of TTC with other communities. Later in 2020, for example, they’ll roll out Peanut Meno, for women approaching and going through menopause. 

They also go beyond just monitoring conversations on the app. Peanut formally recruited some of its most engaged users to serve as MVPs — Most Valuable Peanuts. The brand ambassador program rewards some users with a tote bag or a sweatshirt when they share the app with other women. Other MVPs do more structured work, like distribute flyers at local coffee shops or the library, or organize a group meetup. The tasks are paid (“If I’d pay someone else to do the job, why wouldn’t I pay my user?” Kennedy says) and selected at the leisure of the user; some women have earned up to $500 in a month.

In Kennedy’s eyes, it’s a small expense to elevate the insights of Peanut’s most tuned-in community members. Her 1,500 current MVPs are, indeed, incredibly valuable. “They’re the women creating our product,” she says. “We look at the data, listen, engage, and implement. We get feedback, iterate, and do it again. And when we don’t get it right, we have 1,500 women ready to tell us how to fix it. And those 1,500 women know, because they have direct access to our million women, engaging with them, organically and naturally, day after day.” 

Related: Why Investing in Women-Led Startups Is the Smart Move

Kennedy calls this a “constant user feedback loop,” and perhaps nobody better embodies that than an MVP named Tricia Bowden. She’s a former marketing agency exec who, in 2017, moved back to New York after spending a year on the West Coast. She had a 1-year-old son and was new to life as a stay-at-home mom, and a lot of the friends she’d returned home to weren’t yet mothers. “I Googled ‘Meeting mom friends’ and came across Peanut,” Bowden says. She joined, started lining up playdates, and before too long had a reliable network of friends close by.

Her passion for the brand grew fast, and Bowden soon became one of Peanut’s most valuable MVPs, and one of the loud voices pushing Peanut to expand to the “Meno” community sooner than later. Kennedy was impressed and gave her a promotion: In January, Bowden started a full-time gig as Peanut’s head of strategic growth and partnerships for the New York market, where the company will build out an office later this year. 

Bowden’s first order of business is to optimize and scale the existing MVP program, rolling it out on a hyperlocal, local, and national level — which is to say, Bowden basically became the feedback loop. She’s a user who helped shape Peanut, who then joined Peanut, who is now helping Peanut find and attract more people like her, who, of course, will then go on to shape Peanut anew.  

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By Listening to Her Customers, This Entrepreneur Found a Larger Audience — And a Greater Mission

Michelle Kennedy launched the Peanut app to help moms. But now, the app is out to help all women.

March 4, 2020 15+ min read

This story appears in the March 2020 issue of Entrepreneur. Subscribe »

Michelle Kennedy arrived at lunch, nervous about the conversation she was about to have with her best friend. It was 2016, and Kennedy had just made a big career decision. She was going to leave her job as a tech exec and launch a new app for moms. It was exciting — a new adventure, a massive market, a lot of potential upside.

But the downside was this: Her best friend, BBC journalist Sophie Sulehria, had been struggling for years to have a baby. In fact, at the time, Sulehria had just completed her third failed round of in vitro fertilization, and it was taking a toll on her mental health. Kennedy didn’t want to add to the burden.

“It was a very bad time. My husband and I were really suffering,” says Sulehria. “When Michelle said she had something to tell me, I thought, Oh God; she’s having another baby! But she told me about the business, and she was so worried: ‘I don’t want to be your best friend who’s not only got a kid but also has a mum business — I don’t want to alienate you.’ ”

Related: 6 Reasons Moms Make the Best Entrepreneurs

But Sulehria was supportive. She knew the business was a fantastic idea, even though her exclusion from its target audience was killing her. So she asked Kennedy for a favor, as a friend and as a hopeful mom. This would be the earliest feedback Kennedy would receive as an entrepreneur, and although she wouldn’t know it yet, it would set the tone for how she would build her business — by listening to, and quickly responding to, the needs of the community it serves.

“I said, ‘Promise me one thing: When this app becomes successful, create a piece of it for people like me, a place where women having fertility issues can find support and friendship and discussions and information, because wouldn’t that be fantastic?’ ” Sulehria recalls. “And Michelle literally looked at me that day and said, ‘I promise.’ ”

Image Credit: Courtesy of Peanut App

Today, Kennedy’s company is called Peanut, and it has a million users and $9.8 million in funding. But back in 2013, before Peanut was even a twinkle in its founder’s eye, Kennedy was a rising star in the dating app world. She was deputy CEO of a European dating network called Badoo, and she also had a role in launching the brand Bumble, which would go on to become one of the industry’s major players.

Kennedy’s life was changing. Her personal dating days were behind her. She’d just given birth to her son, Finlay, and didn’t have many girlfriends with kids in her hometown of London. She wanted to find some like-minded women at a similar stage of life, but all she could find were archaic message boards and Facebook groups.

“The products available to me were all, quite frankly, crap,” Kennedy says. “Nothing represented me as a mother.” At the same time, she was watching a flood of utility-based applications enter the market — new ways to order food or pick up your dry cleaning — and felt that a huge opportunity was being overlooked. 

“Women are 50 percent of the population the last time I checked, and motherhood, in some way, will touch everyone’s life,” she says. “But no one is touching this space?” 

She came up with an idea for a networking app for moms and called it Peanut, after her nickname for her baby bump when she was pregnant. But she didn’t feel ready to take the leap — until three years later. “There were just signals in the market,” she says. “People were starting to talk about motherhood differently because we’d started to talk about womanhood differently, and it just felt like the right time.” In 2016, she began ideating in earnest, brought three trusted team members on board, and got to work. 

Peanut set out to embody the voice of modern, millennial motherhood. The team wanted it to function as a friend — one who understands that being a mom is a big part of a woman’s identity, but it’s not her entire identity. They spent a lot of time defining its voice. Users, for example, would be addressed as “Mama,” which tracks in both the United Kingdom and the United States and has a playful edge.

In February 2017, just a few months after she shared her plans with best friend Sulehria, Kennedy brought Peanut into the world, launching in the U.K. and the U.S. A simple beta version allowed women to create a profile, swipe to explore other women’s profiles — like on a dating app — and chat. 

The reaction was instantaneous. Thanks to some earlier-than-planned press coverage from the London Evening Standard, thousands of women flooded the beta offering, and Kennedy had fast validation. But the new users also revealed a vulnerability. Much like with dating apps, where happy couples no longer need the app, women were ditching Peanut once they’d made a new friend. “And why wouldn’t they?” Kennedy says. “You don’t need to make a new girlfriend every day — and in that case, you maybe don’t need to continue using Peanut.” 

Related: Debunking Three Myths About Women in Tech

This was a problem in need of solving. And as it turns out, users were already proposing a solution. “A lot of our users were saying, ‘Wait; how do I ask all the women on here a question? How do I share this article with all the women in my neighborhood?’ ” Kennedy says. “We had always planned to build community-based features, but our users let us know that we’d have to build them a lot quicker than planned.”

So the team hustled to launch community-wide message boards (called Peanut Pages) and group chats (Peanut Groups). Kennedy and her team thought they knew exactly how women would use these features; they expected to see chatter around the usual early-­motherhood pain points, like getting babies to sleep or working through pregnancy discomfort. But they got something much different. 

“Women were sharing about really intimate stuff: relationships, love, sex, work, money, housing, social issues,” says Kennedy, whose team kept an eye on developing conversations via a combination of artificial intelligence and human monitoring of message boards. “We had to stop and say, ‘Wait a minute. Why are these conversations happening on Peanut?’ And it’s because they just aren’t happening anywhere else — you’re not going to post on a local Yahoo message board about postpartum sex or frustrations with your partner. This has to exist in a private network.” 

While some popular topics did prove to be playful (“boobs and books”), the majority had a more solemn tone — and one in particular was being discussed at a surprisingly high volume. 

“So many women were talking about trying and struggling to conceive baby number two,” says Kennedy. “Maybe they were going through IVF, or had just suffered a loss, or found they were facing infertility, or had been diagnosed with endometriosis or polycystic ovary syndrome. Whatever it was, there was so much conversation.” 

Kennedy immediately thought of her best friend, Sulehria. She knew the facts were brutal: One in eight women will be affected by fertility issues, and one in six will experience a miscarriage. She also knew that the emotional burden was vast. “The most poignant thing Soph ever said to me was, ‘You know, I could use someone other than you to talk to,’ ” Kennedy says. “So now here we are with Peanut, and if all these women are talking about their struggles to conceive baby two or three, what about the women who haven’t had a baby at all?”

Kennedy planned to serve this audience someday; after all, she’d made a promise to her friend. But she thought it would be a long time from now, and a small part of a much larger pie. Now, by following her users’ lead, she realized she had it wrong. She needed to fulfill this promise fast — and the opportunity could be very big.

Image Credit: Courtesy of Peanut App

Women who struggle with fertility issues have already given their community a name: It’s TTC, for “trying to conceive.” Across the internet, there’s evidence of these women craving connection. Search #TTC on Instagram and you’ll find 1.4 million posts; #TTCcommunity has more than half a million posts; #TTCaftermiscarriage has nearly 82,000. 

But those makeshift communities, as the Peanut team saw it, weren’t working. “These women are making use of existing social networks, but they’re not finding a real community,” says Hannah Hastings, Peanut’s head of growth and brand marketing agency. “Instagram is a public space. If you choose to have a private profile, discovery is limited. So you’re either sharing personal information publicly or cut off. It doesn’t solve the need.” 

Sulehria backed that up. She found no comfort in the major social media networks, and in-person support groups were too far from where she lived. “Plus, the face-to-face thing is so daunting — to walk into a room and say, ‘Hi; I’m having this mental health problem,’ ” she says. “I just wanted something I could look at and engage with while I was lying in bed.” 

Peanut had identified a problem worth solving, but the team knew it couldn’t just create some new message boards called TTC and invite their users in. The psychological struggles facing the TTC community are significant and nuanced, and the internet can quickly become an emotional minefield. 

“There are articles and articles out there saying, ‘If you’re going through [infertility], just get off Facebook,’ ” says Barbara Collura, president and CEO of Resolve: The National Infertility Association. “Because the moment someone inevitably drops an ultrasound photo on there, it’s like…Oh my God. Women feel bombarded by this day in, day out. People stop going to the mall, restaurants, family events. So in a digital space, they want to feel safe. Anyone who’s trying to be inclusive to an audience of people who are trying to conceive has to be übersensitive.”

Keeping these sensitivities in mind, Kennedy decided to shield the TTC community from the rest of the app. Peanut TTC would function almost like a separate platform and have its own onboarding process. That way, TTC users wouldn’t accidentally stumble upon conversations from happy new moms (though they could opt in to see everything else if they wanted).

After that, the Peanut team had to dive into the nuances of the TTC world, and they leaned heavily on Sulehria as a guiding voice and gut check. Kennedy also asked Sulehria to connect her with other women who’d been struggling to conceive and may be willing to share their experience. Slowly but surely, a small but mighty focus group helped her build this new product with care. 

Related: How 2 Entrepreneurs Built a Membership Community for Working Moms

The team learned, as an example, that there are plenty of tensions within the TTC community that Peanut would have to contend with. “A woman who’s been trying for five months and a woman who’s been trying for five years are in very different positions,” Kennedy says. “To put them in one bucket? That’s not the experience we want to give users.”

Kennedy had started to see evidence of this earlier. On Peanut, where some women had created fertility-related message boards, there was a lot of debate about which posts belonged. “A woman who had become pregnant posted an image of her positive pee stick, which can be really triggering for other women,” she says. “We’d get notifications and reports, and we’d also see our users say to each other, ‘Hey, maybe you should take it down, or post it somewhere else.’ ” 

So in Peanut TTC, the company created UX solutions for those sensitivities. Blurred filters can be applied to potentially sensitive content (flagged by the creator or other users), and women will have to opt in to see those messages or images. The team developed proprietary artificial intelligence, which monitors group discussions and flags any comments that may not suit the brand’s ethos. “If a user is writing a comment and we detect an element of negativity, the app will say, ‘Hey, are you sure you don’t want to rephrase that? Peanut is a place of supportive conversation,’ ” explains Hastings.

In November 2019, after nine months in development, the company launched Peanut TTC. The community grew quickly, and user engagement skyrocketed — 60 percent above Peanut’s typical engagement.

It’s a good start, but Kennedy knows there’s a lot still left to do. She wants Peanut to expand its sensitivity features, improve how it matches women with relevant groups, and create room for TTC women to celebrate their pregnancies. And, more important, she also wants to keep following this line of thinking — watching how people use her product, and reacting with new solutions. She’s already seeing many options: Women are using the app to talk about raising teenagers, fighting chronic health conditions, sex after the age of 50, and more.

“Women have all these different life stages,” Kennedy says. “We can be the product that helps you find other women like you at every stage.”

Image Credit: Courtesy of Peanut App

Peanut is still in that early stage of a tech company’s life, when user growth is prioritized over profit. Which is to say: The app is free to use and makes no money. But Kennedy is building a monetization strategy based on premium products or in-app purchases. Imagine a user paying a small fee for direct access to a respected doctor, or an expert who can quickly and personally respond to a health-related question. 

Maybe it’s a great idea. Maybe it’s not. Maybe women will be interested in using it, but not so interested in paying for it. Either way, Kennedy believes she’ll find her answer, so long as she keeps engaging and listening to her users. 

To do that, her team is hustling to repeat the success of TTC with other communities. Later in 2020, for example, they’ll roll out Peanut Meno, for women approaching and going through menopause. 

They also go beyond just monitoring conversations on the app. Peanut formally recruited some of its most engaged users to serve as MVPs — Most Valuable Peanuts. The brand ambassador program rewards some users with a tote bag or a sweatshirt when they share the app with other women. Other MVPs do more structured work, like distribute flyers at local coffee shops or the library, or organize a group meetup. The tasks are paid (“If I’d pay someone else to do the job, why wouldn’t I pay my user?” Kennedy says) and selected at the leisure of the user; some women have earned up to $500 in a month.

In Kennedy’s eyes, it’s a small expense to elevate the insights of Peanut’s most tuned-in community members. Her 1,500 current MVPs are, indeed, incredibly valuable. “They’re the women creating our product,” she says. “We look at the data, listen, engage, and implement. We get feedback, iterate, and do it again. And when we don’t get it right, we have 1,500 women ready to tell us how to fix it. And those 1,500 women know, because they have direct access to our million women, engaging with them, organically and naturally, day after day.” 

Related: Why Investing in Women-Led Startups Is the Smart Move

Kennedy calls this a “constant user feedback loop,” and perhaps nobody better embodies that than an MVP named Tricia Bowden. She’s a former marketing agency exec who, in 2017, moved back to New York after spending a year on the West Coast. She had a 1-year-old son and was new to life as a stay-at-home mom, and a lot of the friends she’d returned home to weren’t yet mothers. “I Googled ‘Meeting mom friends’ and came across Peanut,” Bowden says. She joined, started lining up playdates, and before too long had a reliable network of friends close by.

Her passion for the brand grew fast, and Bowden soon became one of Peanut’s most valuable MVPs, and one of the loud voices pushing Peanut to expand to the “Meno” community sooner than later. Kennedy was impressed and gave her a promotion: In January, Bowden started a full-time gig as Peanut’s head of strategic growth and partnerships for the New York market, where the company will build out an office later this year. 

Bowden’s first order of business is to optimize and scale the existing MVP program, rolling it out on a hyperlocal, local, and national level — which is to say, Bowden basically became the feedback loop. She’s a user who helped shape Peanut, who then joined Peanut, who is now helping Peanut find and attract more people like her, who, of course, will then go on to shape Peanut anew.  

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source http://www.scpie.org/by-listening-to-her-customers-this-entrepreneur-found-a-larger-audience-and-a-greater-mission/ source https://scpie1.blogspot.com/2020/03/by-listening-to-her-customers-this.html

By Listening to Her Customers, This Entrepreneur Found a Larger Audience — And a Greater Mission

Michelle Kennedy launched the Peanut app to help moms. But now, the app is out to help all women.

March 4, 2020 15+ min read

This story appears in the March 2020 issue of Entrepreneur. Subscribe »

Michelle Kennedy arrived at lunch, nervous about the conversation she was about to have with her best friend. It was 2016, and Kennedy had just made a big career decision. She was going to leave her job as a tech exec and launch a new app for moms. It was exciting — a new adventure, a massive market, a lot of potential upside.

But the downside was this: Her best friend, BBC journalist Sophie Sulehria, had been struggling for years to have a baby. In fact, at the time, Sulehria had just completed her third failed round of in vitro fertilization, and it was taking a toll on her mental health. Kennedy didn’t want to add to the burden.

“It was a very bad time. My husband and I were really suffering,” says Sulehria. “When Michelle said she had something to tell me, I thought, Oh God; she’s having another baby! But she told me about the business, and she was so worried: ‘I don’t want to be your best friend who’s not only got a kid but also has a mum business — I don’t want to alienate you.’ ”

Related: 6 Reasons Moms Make the Best Entrepreneurs

But Sulehria was supportive. She knew the business was a fantastic idea, even though her exclusion from its target audience was killing her. So she asked Kennedy for a favor, as a friend and as a hopeful mom. This would be the earliest feedback Kennedy would receive as an entrepreneur, and although she wouldn’t know it yet, it would set the tone for how she would build her business — by listening to, and quickly responding to, the needs of the community it serves.

“I said, ‘Promise me one thing: When this app becomes successful, create a piece of it for people like me, a place where women having fertility issues can find support and friendship and discussions and information, because wouldn’t that be fantastic?’ ” Sulehria recalls. “And Michelle literally looked at me that day and said, ‘I promise.’ ”

Image Credit: Courtesy of Peanut App

Today, Kennedy’s company is called Peanut, and it has a million users and $9.8 million in funding. But back in 2013, before Peanut was even a twinkle in its founder’s eye, Kennedy was a rising star in the dating app world. She was deputy CEO of a European dating network called Badoo, and she also had a role in launching the brand Bumble, which would go on to become one of the industry’s major players.

Kennedy’s life was changing. Her personal dating days were behind her. She’d just given birth to her son, Finlay, and didn’t have many girlfriends with kids in her hometown of London. She wanted to find some like-minded women at a similar stage of life, but all she could find were archaic message boards and Facebook groups.

“The products available to me were all, quite frankly, crap,” Kennedy says. “Nothing represented me as a mother.” At the same time, she was watching a flood of utility-based applications enter the market — new ways to order food or pick up your dry cleaning — and felt that a huge opportunity was being overlooked. 

“Women are 50 percent of the population the last time I checked, and motherhood, in some way, will touch everyone’s life,” she says. “But no one is touching this space?” 

She came up with an idea for a networking app for moms and called it Peanut, after her nickname for her baby bump when she was pregnant. But she didn’t feel ready to take the leap — until three years later. “There were just signals in the market,” she says. “People were starting to talk about motherhood differently because we’d started to talk about womanhood differently, and it just felt like the right time.” In 2016, she began ideating in earnest, brought three trusted team members on board, and got to work. 

Peanut set out to embody the voice of modern, millennial motherhood. The team wanted it to function as a friend — one who understands that being a mom is a big part of a woman’s identity, but it’s not her entire identity. They spent a lot of time defining its voice. Users, for example, would be addressed as “Mama,” which tracks in both the United Kingdom and the United States and has a playful edge.

In February 2017, just a few months after she shared her plans with best friend Sulehria, Kennedy brought Peanut into the world, launching in the U.K. and the U.S. A simple beta version allowed women to create a profile, swipe to explore other women’s profiles — like on a dating app — and chat. 

The reaction was instantaneous. Thanks to some earlier-than-planned press coverage from the London Evening Standard, thousands of women flooded the beta offering, and Kennedy had fast validation. But the new users also revealed a vulnerability. Much like with dating apps, where happy couples no longer need the app, women were ditching Peanut once they’d made a new friend. “And why wouldn’t they?” Kennedy says. “You don’t need to make a new girlfriend every day — and in that case, you maybe don’t need to continue using Peanut.” 

Related: Debunking Three Myths About Women in Tech

This was a problem in need of solving. And as it turns out, users were already proposing a solution. “A lot of our users were saying, ‘Wait; how do I ask all the women on here a question? How do I share this article with all the women in my neighborhood?’ ” Kennedy says. “We had always planned to build community-based features, but our users let us know that we’d have to build them a lot quicker than planned.”

So the team hustled to launch community-wide message boards (called Peanut Pages) and group chats (Peanut Groups). Kennedy and her team thought they knew exactly how women would use these features; they expected to see chatter around the usual early-­motherhood pain points, like getting babies to sleep or working through pregnancy discomfort. But they got something much different. 

“Women were sharing about really intimate stuff: relationships, love, sex, work, money, housing, social issues,” says Kennedy, whose team kept an eye on developing conversations via a combination of artificial intelligence and human monitoring of message boards. “We had to stop and say, ‘Wait a minute. Why are these conversations happening on Peanut?’ And it’s because they just aren’t happening anywhere else — you’re not going to post on a local Yahoo message board about postpartum sex or frustrations with your partner. This has to exist in a private network.” 

While some popular topics did prove to be playful (“boobs and books”), the majority had a more solemn tone — and one in particular was being discussed at a surprisingly high volume. 

“So many women were talking about trying and struggling to conceive baby number two,” says Kennedy. “Maybe they were going through IVF, or had just suffered a loss, or found they were facing infertility, or had been diagnosed with endometriosis or polycystic ovary syndrome. Whatever it was, there was so much conversation.” 

Kennedy immediately thought of her best friend, Sulehria. She knew the facts were brutal: One in eight women will be affected by fertility issues, and one in six will experience a miscarriage. She also knew that the emotional burden was vast. “The most poignant thing Soph ever said to me was, ‘You know, I could use someone other than you to talk to,’ ” Kennedy says. “So now here we are with Peanut, and if all these women are talking about their struggles to conceive baby two or three, what about the women who haven’t had a baby at all?”

Kennedy planned to serve this audience someday; after all, she’d made a promise to her friend. But she thought it would be a long time from now, and a small part of a much larger pie. Now, by following her users’ lead, she realized she had it wrong. She needed to fulfill this promise fast — and the opportunity could be very big.

Image Credit: Courtesy of Peanut App

Women who struggle with fertility issues have already given their community a name: It’s TTC, for “trying to conceive.” Across the internet, there’s evidence of these women craving connection. Search #TTC on Instagram and you’ll find 1.4 million posts; #TTCcommunity has more than half a million posts; #TTCaftermiscarriage has nearly 82,000. 

But those makeshift communities, as the Peanut team saw it, weren’t working. “These women are making use of existing social networks, but they’re not finding a real community,” says Hannah Hastings, Peanut’s head of growth and brand marketing agency. “Instagram is a public space. If you choose to have a private profile, discovery is limited. So you’re either sharing personal information publicly or cut off. It doesn’t solve the need.” 

Sulehria backed that up. She found no comfort in the major social media networks, and in-person support groups were too far from where she lived. “Plus, the face-to-face thing is so daunting — to walk into a room and say, ‘Hi; I’m having this mental health problem,’ ” she says. “I just wanted something I could look at and engage with while I was lying in bed.” 

Peanut had identified a problem worth solving, but the team knew it couldn’t just create some new message boards called TTC and invite their users in. The psychological struggles facing the TTC community are significant and nuanced, and the internet can quickly become an emotional minefield. 

“There are articles and articles out there saying, ‘If you’re going through [infertility], just get off Facebook,’ ” says Barbara Collura, president and CEO of Resolve: The National Infertility Association. “Because the moment someone inevitably drops an ultrasound photo on there, it’s like…Oh my God. Women feel bombarded by this day in, day out. People stop going to the mall, restaurants, family events. So in a digital space, they want to feel safe. Anyone who’s trying to be inclusive to an audience of people who are trying to conceive has to be übersensitive.”

Keeping these sensitivities in mind, Kennedy decided to shield the TTC community from the rest of the app. Peanut TTC would function almost like a separate platform and have its own onboarding process. That way, TTC users wouldn’t accidentally stumble upon conversations from happy new moms (though they could opt in to see everything else if they wanted).

After that, the Peanut team had to dive into the nuances of the TTC world, and they leaned heavily on Sulehria as a guiding voice and gut check. Kennedy also asked Sulehria to connect her with other women who’d been struggling to conceive and may be willing to share their experience. Slowly but surely, a small but mighty focus group helped her build this new product with care. 

Related: How 2 Entrepreneurs Built a Membership Community for Working Moms

The team learned, as an example, that there are plenty of tensions within the TTC community that Peanut would have to contend with. “A woman who’s been trying for five months and a woman who’s been trying for five years are in very different positions,” Kennedy says. “To put them in one bucket? That’s not the experience we want to give users.”

Kennedy had started to see evidence of this earlier. On Peanut, where some women had created fertility-related message boards, there was a lot of debate about which posts belonged. “A woman who had become pregnant posted an image of her positive pee stick, which can be really triggering for other women,” she says. “We’d get notifications and reports, and we’d also see our users say to each other, ‘Hey, maybe you should take it down, or post it somewhere else.’ ” 

So in Peanut TTC, the company created UX solutions for those sensitivities. Blurred filters can be applied to potentially sensitive content (flagged by the creator or other users), and women will have to opt in to see those messages or images. The team developed proprietary artificial intelligence, which monitors group discussions and flags any comments that may not suit the brand’s ethos. “If a user is writing a comment and we detect an element of negativity, the app will say, ‘Hey, are you sure you don’t want to rephrase that? Peanut is a place of supportive conversation,’ ” explains Hastings.

In November 2019, after nine months in development, the company launched Peanut TTC. The community grew quickly, and user engagement skyrocketed — 60 percent above Peanut’s typical engagement.

It’s a good start, but Kennedy knows there’s a lot still left to do. She wants Peanut to expand its sensitivity features, improve how it matches women with relevant groups, and create room for TTC women to celebrate their pregnancies. And, more important, she also wants to keep following this line of thinking — watching how people use her product, and reacting with new solutions. She’s already seeing many options: Women are using the app to talk about raising teenagers, fighting chronic health conditions, sex after the age of 50, and more.

“Women have all these different life stages,” Kennedy says. “We can be the product that helps you find other women like you at every stage.”

Image Credit: Courtesy of Peanut App

Peanut is still in that early stage of a tech company’s life, when user growth is prioritized over profit. Which is to say: The app is free to use and makes no money. But Kennedy is building a monetization strategy based on premium products or in-app purchases. Imagine a user paying a small fee for direct access to a respected doctor, or an expert who can quickly and personally respond to a health-related question. 

Maybe it’s a great idea. Maybe it’s not. Maybe women will be interested in using it, but not so interested in paying for it. Either way, Kennedy believes she’ll find her answer, so long as she keeps engaging and listening to her users. 

To do that, her team is hustling to repeat the success of TTC with other communities. Later in 2020, for example, they’ll roll out Peanut Meno, for women approaching and going through menopause. 

They also go beyond just monitoring conversations on the app. Peanut formally recruited some of its most engaged users to serve as MVPs — Most Valuable Peanuts. The brand ambassador program rewards some users with a tote bag or a sweatshirt when they share the app with other women. Other MVPs do more structured work, like distribute flyers at local coffee shops or the library, or organize a group meetup. The tasks are paid (“If I’d pay someone else to do the job, why wouldn’t I pay my user?” Kennedy says) and selected at the leisure of the user; some women have earned up to $500 in a month.

In Kennedy’s eyes, it’s a small expense to elevate the insights of Peanut’s most tuned-in community members. Her 1,500 current MVPs are, indeed, incredibly valuable. “They’re the women creating our product,” she says. “We look at the data, listen, engage, and implement. We get feedback, iterate, and do it again. And when we don’t get it right, we have 1,500 women ready to tell us how to fix it. And those 1,500 women know, because they have direct access to our million women, engaging with them, organically and naturally, day after day.” 

Related: Why Investing in Women-Led Startups Is the Smart Move

Kennedy calls this a “constant user feedback loop,” and perhaps nobody better embodies that than an MVP named Tricia Bowden. She’s a former marketing agency exec who, in 2017, moved back to New York after spending a year on the West Coast. She had a 1-year-old son and was new to life as a stay-at-home mom, and a lot of the friends she’d returned home to weren’t yet mothers. “I Googled ‘Meeting mom friends’ and came across Peanut,” Bowden says. She joined, started lining up playdates, and before too long had a reliable network of friends close by.

Her passion for the brand grew fast, and Bowden soon became one of Peanut’s most valuable MVPs, and one of the loud voices pushing Peanut to expand to the “Meno” community sooner than later. Kennedy was impressed and gave her a promotion: In January, Bowden started a full-time gig as Peanut’s head of strategic growth and partnerships for the New York market, where the company will build out an office later this year. 

Bowden’s first order of business is to optimize and scale the existing MVP program, rolling it out on a hyperlocal, local, and national level — which is to say, Bowden basically became the feedback loop. She’s a user who helped shape Peanut, who then joined Peanut, who is now helping Peanut find and attract more people like her, who, of course, will then go on to shape Peanut anew.  

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I have a lot of feelings about the resurgance of the abortion debate in the US and as a result other western countries (Canada specifically) atm. I figured I needed to write them down and while it won’t add anything new to the discussion I hope the humanizing element might help someone somewhere sometime.

I grew up going to Catholic school. My parents definitely believe in God and we go to church but they also taught us that the word of the church is not gospel (pun intended.) My dad, who is not catholic, used to joke that we (my mum and her family, and by extension I) had a very protestant view on catholism. None the less I was a product of my environment and learned in school that abortion was wrong. I remember going into my mum’s room at the age of... probably about 11? And asking her if I could explain my debate style logic for why abortion was wrong. She sat there quietly and listened to me while I grinned with pride at what I thought was a good arguement then told me that if that is how I felt that was fine. Her affect did not convey it’s intended horror to me until years later.

In high school debate club our advisor said the line he had always been taught was that there are three things you do not insert into a debate: the existance of God, Hitler/Nazis, or abortion. In high school and university I took some philosophy classes and ruminated a lot on issues of existance/life and of liberty/autonomy. Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that I could not seeing myself ever having an abortion; if it came to that adoption would probably be a better option, but that it was not my place to determine what others could do. My morality does not trump that of others and I find religious devotion in the idea that I am never going to know what God’s Will /actually/ is and even if I did, people have to be allowed to follow their own life path, to make their own choices even if that brings them closer or further to whatever divine morality there might be in the abstract. A girl a few doors down from my room in residence had a pregnancy scare after a drunken night (which opened up the whole discussion of how even if she felt she had consented legally she had been assaulted.) I had a campus health appointment for a chest infection that day and I remember looking at the sexual health and family planning brochures and contemplating picking them up for her, of offering to go to appointments with her, to be there while she figured this out. Her period came the next day.

Back in my catholic school days I could never picture myself having sex before marriage. The older I got and more I learned and thought about it I decided I would never have sex unless I loved the man. When I was 20 I had my First Love. He shared by beliefs in most regards and at least respected the rest. As a result we waited months, waiting until we had said ‘I love you.’ So I lost my virginity, and the next morning, my second time having p-in-the-v sex EVER, while still swirling in all the emotions that come with a first time and a first REAL boyfriend, the condom broke. I was on the pill so realistically it was not the end of the world. I had been on it since I was 16. Ironically, the white guy politicians may be interested to know, I was on it not for contraception but to actually protect my fertility; endometriosis runs very strongly in my family and I got the tell tale cramps before I went on it. By going on the pill I am attempting to ensure that one day when I am in that “traditional marriage” they value so highly I will actually be capable of concieving a child. But back to my moment of sheer panic. I was being punished by some universal force; the first time I ever had sex, though it was in a committed relationship with a partner who had the prospects to support a family should it come to that, I was no where near ready for a child.

I googled if you could take the morning after pill along with daily oral contraption, because I REALLY didn’t want to end up pregnant and face the choices associated with that. I found out you could and after asking if I was ok for the millionth time my boyfriend ran out to the pharmacy to get one. I lay there thinking about so many things. I had been so careful, I had thought this through; having sex was not a momentary decision. We had used two forms of prophalactic contraception. But it still might not be enough. “But abstinance!” But I loved him and I wanted to share that depth of relationship with him. That being said, my mum had always said “you don’t even have to love the man, but you need to think: would this be someone I would want to co-parent w if it came down to that?” And I wouldn’t; I loved him but we were 20 years old; he was immature, could barely keep himself alive much less a baby; and while I loved him I fully admit I could not picutre myself spending my life with him, not deep down.

Then my thoughts moved to myself. In theory, I think I would make a good mom, when I’m ready. But I was not. I am on anti-anxiety and anti-depression medication; would I have to stop it if I did get pregnant? Would I be able to survive the resurging depression and anxiety while pregnant if I did have to off of it? Should I go off it /right then/ in case I was and the meds affected a fetus in the first two weeks? Even if I was to choose to carry a unexpected pregnancy to term I would then put either the baby’s or my own life at risk. We all also know the adoption and foster care system has so many stories of abuse but also I would be in a finanical and social situation which would disadvantage it if I was to keep it- assuming its business student father, who was set to make a lot of money, wasn’t around, as a worst case scenario. He came back with the morning after pill, I went to work and endured the cramps and crying fits if caused.

When I finished my birth control pills for the month, on winter break, I waited the ~2-3 days it always takes for my period to start. I prayed to God to help me, to please let me not be pregnant. I went out for coffee with my high school friends and they told me not to worry; I had used 3 seperate forms of preventative measures; there was an infitesimal change, but I still worried. The stress made me ill- and that was while still taking my meds, who knows what it would have been like without them. Was I nausiated because I was anxious or pregnant? I had called my mom crying a few days after it happened, told her I had done /things/ with my boyfriend and wasn’t sure what I was feeling then. I was so upset she feared I had been sexually assaulted. I thought a lot about if I could go through with having a termination if I was pregnant. I still don’t know if I could have or would have. There were moments when I was determined to have one, moments were I was determined to carry it.

Of course a fetus never existed. I got my period on Christmas Eve, and thanked the God I believe in. The whole experience took way more out of me then the event people joke about very casually when they say someone had a “pregnancy scare.” I am sure there are at least a /few/ scenarios I didn’t think of. I am sure it would have been so much worse if I had gotten pregnant. There are so many factors which play into whether a woman might or might not choose an abortion. There would have been so many people effected by the decision but ultimately, it was my life which would have changed the most. It could have RUINED me for life, thrown the whole thing off course. Carrying a fetus in that time and place with my health concerns could have ruined it’s chance at life too. There would be no positive. It would have been a decision I would have had to make and to live with for the rest of my life, but ultimately it was my choice. It was a choice which could not have been taken away from me regardless of a law. It would be a choice I would have to weigh with my health and my own moral beliefs. Even if it was against the law I could have had one illegally. I want to bring children into this world one day, it is one of my greatest dreams, but I will do it only when I am in the best possible situation to give those children all the opportunities I can.

The choices are difficult to make. They are not inherently wrong or right, no matter what self-righteous idea you have which contradicts that. I don’t know of a religious text in any major reigion which specifically refers to the morality of ending a pregnancy, or even the life of an unborn child if you choose to frame it that way. They each have their own emotional and physical consequences, something every women, and particularly women who have experienced the choice or shadow of the choice themselves, is accutely aware of. The decision is rarely if ever made lightly. A woman’s own mind and moral compass is strong enough to check and balance for themselves without interferance. If you cannot respect her inner struggle and ability to know herself and her own mind your problem is not with “killing babies” it is with your understanding of the equality and equity between humans. If you can empathize with other humans how can not you with women who have had or would have abortions? Who would agonize over their own lives and the lives of those around them- and the opinions of those around them? With the narrative I presented above- having done everything right only to have somethig go very very wrog? With another soul who is making the hardest decision of their life, do quote my dad.

When pads are a luxury, getting your period means missing out on life

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When pads are a luxury, getting your period means missing out on life

Moshi, Tanzania — Every month when payday came around, Suzana Frederick purchased a packet of sanitary pads. It was the first thing she bought. And when her period started, she knew she was ready for it.

The 19-year-old single mother from Arusha, Tanzania, was making 30,000 shillings ($13) a month as a housekeeper and would spend between 1,500 and 3,000 shillings ($0.70 to $1.30) on pads — a staggering 5% to 10% of her salary.

For an American woman making a typical wage, that would be the equivalent of between $169 and $338 for just one pack of sanitary pads.

The steep price was worth it for Frederick. The alternative of missing a few days of work each month to manage her period at home would have been more costly.

Roughly 1.8 billion people around the world menstruate. Some can’t afford sanitary products. Others have nowhere to buy them. And even if price isn’t an issue, stigma and taboo still stop many from fully participating in work and school during their periods.

For these women, the cost of menstruation is missing out on life.

Girls use fabric and rugs, but dream of pads

In rural Tanzania, most women and girls on their period use “kanga,” layered pieces of thick, colorful fabric used for making traditional east African dresses.

The stiff material gets wet quickly and often leads to urinary tract infections. Girls and women say they live in constant fear of bleeding through.

“I put [it] on in the morning, it will be wet with blood at 10 a.m. and start showing on my skirt,” says Esuvati Tisanai Shaushi, a 15-year-old Maasai girl who lives in a village near Arusha. Her school, like many in Tanzania, doesn’t have toilets with running water to wash.

“I feel ashamed… [I] keep on wondering how it will be [what will happen] in class.”

Among young girls in Tanzania, the gold standard of sanitary pads is Procter & Gamble’s brand Always.

Tisanai Shaushi has used them only once, when she was given a sample at school.

“I was so happy,” she said. “When I removed it, my pants were clean. It was comfortable.”

But when she asked her mother to buy the pads for her, the answer was no.

“She told me to use kanga because she uses them too,” Tisanai Shaushi said. When she pressed the issue, her mother told her she could buy them when she got her own money.

Related: Calculate how period poverty would impact you

Procter and Gamble (P&G) has invested heavily in educational campaigns in East Africa, including in Tanzania. Among other initiatives, it provides samples and starter packs to schools. But once the samples run out, the girls often go back to using kanga. Always pads are not widely available, and when they are they’re more expensive than other products.

Jennifer Davis, the global head of feminine care at P&G, told CNN the cost reflects the quality: “The foundation of our portfolio globally is always superior protection.”

P&G doesn’t break down its revenues from its different products. But Euromonitor International, a market research company, estimated P&G made $6.2 billion selling feminine care products in 2017 — more than any other company.

Davis declined to say how much P&G makes per pack, but said it is trying to keep pads as affordable as possible.

However, Always pads remain unaffordable for many Tanzanian girls.

Jennifer Rubli from Femme International, a menstrual health NGO in Tanzania, says P&G has done a great job marketing its products.

“Girls don’t talk about wanting disposable pads. They want Always,” Rubli said.

Other cheaper sanitary products are available in Tanzania, but the selection is limited.

Chinese-made pads — perfumed with menthol and aloe vera “flavors” — are typically slightly less expensive and more widely available in Tanzania, but several women and girls who spoke with CNN complained of “burning” and “itching.”

“I used pads only once, and I felt a burning sensation. After using it for six hours and changing it, I was burning,” one woman, Yuster Venance Kimaryo, a 37-year-old fruit trader in Moshi said. “That’s when I stopped using it.”

Period absenteeism

There are no global statistics on how many girls miss school because of their periods, but anecdotal evidence shows that period absenteeism is common across much of the developing world.

In Tanzania, 16% of girls say their periods keep them out of school, research by the Tanzania Water and Sanitation Network found.

During a recent school day, Violeth Hugolin Msophe, a pupil at Ghona Secondary School in Moshi, near Kilimanjaro, bled through her kanga and all over her dark green skirt. She wrapped her sweater tightly around her waist, asked a teacher for permission to leave and walked two hours home.

Martha Msangi Goodwine, the teacher who’s in charge of girls’ welfare at the school, said this happens so often that teachers sometimes buy pads just to have them on hand — but they can’t afford to supply the whole school.

“Many children here come from villages and very few are able to buy pads in the shops,” she said.

When non-profit organization Femme International gave each girl at Ghona a pack of AFRIpads — reusable pads that last as long as eight hours and are effective for up to a year — it was a game changer, especially for girls from poorer backgrounds who were using old rugs as pads.

“Most of them suffered from infections and other diseases, all that because of those rugs,” Goodwine said.

Girls are suffering fewer illnesses since using AFRIpads, made from absorbent, quick-drying fabric, that secures to underwear with snaps, Goodwine said. The school’s headmaster Peter Mushi said attendance has improved after the girls got AFRIpads. He doesn’t have precise figures, but said the effect was “noticeable.”

Speaking about the pads, Sophia Grinvalds, who co-founded the company with her husband in 2010, said “the onset of puberty should not simultaneously mark the end of schooling or a monthly experience of indignity and shame and stigma.”

Grinvalds said the idea for reliable reusable pads came from her own experience living in a village in Uganda. While washing sanitary pads might be unusual in developed countries, it is not a barrier in poor communities, where women routinely use and wash pieces of cloth.

AFRIpads has already made 2.5 million pads. The company is building a new factory that will make it possible to increase production three-fold.

It’s not only access to pads that keeps girls out of school it’s also period pain and untreated conditions.

Tisanai Shaushi says the beginning of her cycle is too painful to walk the short distance from her village to school; she often misses one or two days every month. She’s never taken any pain medication. Like sanitary pads, they are out of reach for her.

“There are periods when I am in school and I cannot write because of the pains,” Tisanai Shaushi said.

Tisanai Shaushi wants to be an engineer one day. But to do that, she needs to get good grades and win a place in one of the few high schools in her area. By keeping her out of school every month, Tisanai Shaushi’s period is another barrier she has to overcome.

“I keep on asking myself why does it have to be that way,” she said.

Menstrual pain is poorly understood, even in the world’s richest countries. Long-term conditions like endometriosis, which affects one in 10 women of reproductive age, are often misdiagnosed and go untreated. But in the developing world, pain isn’t just misunderstood, it’s ignored.

Related: Give girls choices, not lives already decided for them

“[Girls] are leaving [school] early because of it, or they’re not concentrating, so even if they are staying in school and being marked present … they’re not taking anything in,” Rubli said.

Tisanai Shaushi is worried about falling behind. And she’s not alone — three-quarters of Tanzanian girls say their periods affect their performance in class, according to the Water and Sanitation Network.

While primary school enrollment among girls and boys is nearly equivalent in Tanzania, that changes in secondary school when puberty hits.

Nearly 61% of girls of secondary school age are out of school compared to 51% of boys, according to the 2014 Demographic and Health Survey, a program funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

A 2018 study by Unicef and Unesco found girls are more likely to be out of school in Tanzania starting aged 15 and increasingly so as they get older.

The real price of periods

Elizabeth Scharpf was working for the World Bank in Mozambique when she saw the economic cost of menstruation first hand at a struggling factory making computer bags.

“The head of the factory told me that the female workers miss two to three days of work a month when they are menstruating,” she said. A quick calculation revealed the business was losing 20% of its workforce because women could not afford menstrual pads — and profits were taking a hit.

In response, Scharpf started Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE), a social venture aimed at addressing period poverty.

Researchers, NGOs and charities all agree that it makes economic sense to start taking periods seriously.

“Whether directly or indirectly, [menstruation] actually affects everybody…and yet people who menstruate are unduly punished, because of something that’s completely normal and natural,” Femme International’s Rubli said.

Tanzania’s government reports that 60% of women live in “absolute poverty.”

The period poverty situation in some cases is so extreme that research conducted by nongovernmental organizations found that women engaged in transactional sex to obtain pads.

“As a woman you’re already economically disadvantaged to begin with and you’re put in this position where you have to fight that much harder the rest of your life because of something that you had no control over,’ Rubli said.

Suzana Frederik has been through a lot. Her mother died when she was very young. When she was in fifth grade, she lost her father.

Primary education is free in Tanzania, but compulsory uniform, school shoes and equipment became prohibitively expensive for Frederik. She dropped out shortly after her father died.

When she got pregnant aged 17, her boyfriend told her to get abortion. She refused and ended up alone, with a child to feed.

Spending 2,000 shillings ($0.87) on a pack of pads meant less money to buy food for the two of them.

She said she was lucky. “My periods lasts for three days, so one pack is enough for me.”

Frederick, who now lives in a shelter for vulnerable women, can get pads when she needs them. But access to pads is still out of reach for millions of women around the world.

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There is something that you probably do not know about me…. Something which happened in June 2017 and answered a lot of questions relating to the way I had been feeling for quite some time.

My story actually begins back in February 2016, when I fell really ill with what I thought was a bad case of flu, but what the lovely doctor at the Emergency Out of Hours Clinic thought was Appendicitis! Quite a big difference between the two I think you’ll agree!

He referred me straight to the A&E department, where I was later admitted to a ward and kept in for three days. On the Second Day I was taken to theatre to have my appendix removed, which was when the games began.

The following morning, I was visited by the consultant, who informed me that my appendix was still very much in my body and healthy. So he just labelled my illness as P.I.D. This later turned out to actually be a bad infection within my Fallopian tube.

No more questions were asked at the time, and I was sent home with lots of antibiotics and was told to rest & recover. Which I did!

The antibiotics were awful, and made me feel just as bad as I had prior to surgery. In fact, I’d liken it to that stage of drunk when you know you are so far drunk that double vision & dizziness kicks in…. just without the fun!

After Recovery!

Once I had recovered and was back to full health, which was a good three months or so after the surgery, I started asking lots of questions, why, what, what if and so on… But there was a lot going on in my life at that moment in time, A house move, a cancer scare (which is another story) and a well deserved holiday. It was shortly after my holiday, that I found out that there was a Gynaecologist at my local GP surgery, so I made an appointment and went to see her for a chat. This was probably about November 2016.

She agreed that P.I.D. was a rather vague diagnosis, and probably meant “we’re not sure”. It could potentially cover many different problems! So she referred me to a specialist gynaecologist for a second opinion.

This took quite some time to come through, but I eventually went to see him in February 2017, nearly a year to the day after the initial surgery had happened.

We talked it through and he asked me to come back a few weeks later for ultrasound tests. Back to waiting again!

Then eventually in March 2017, I went to see him and following the ultrasound, he informed me that one of my Fallopian tubes looked as though it may be blocked. So he wanted to go for an exploratory laparoscopy. Oh joy… more surgery. At least this time I wasn’t feeling ill as well.

Again, this took time to come through, as most things do with the NHS, and to accommodate his busy schedule and my travel arrangements, we opted for July 2017 for the surgery. A year & a half after the initial surgery.

I was really lucky, the gynaecologist who I was being treated by is one of the best in the area, and he wanted to see me at the local private hospital rather than the general.

The Diagnosis

I went into hospital, thirsty, hot & hungry. it was a hot summers day, the sun was shining bright & I wasn’t allowed to eat or drink anything. The nurses were lovely, the private room wasn’t too shabby and I was being offered options for my post surgery meal? I wasn’t use to this, normally it is tea & plain toast!

I put in my food order, did my wee sample (which was a challenge after not drinking all day), and waited my turn.

After the surgery, I was allowed to recover in my own private room, which was nice, as my partner was sat there waiting for me. Shortly after I returned to my room, the consultant came around and told us what he had found… Obviously I was a little out of it still, but I got the gist.

Fallopian tube blocked & damaged

Some kind of scarring damage to the outside of my Liver (still don’t know what this is from)

Endometriosis

Incredibly unlikely that I will ever have children without IVF, which even still will be challenging.

I went home shortly after this, and finished recovery in the comfort of my own home. 

The Follow Up

Six weeks later, I went back to see the gynaecologist, who explained everything in more detail to me. He even showed me photographs of my innards (which was REALLY strange) and talked about what next.

He explained what Endometriosis is, and how it is an incurable condition. In fact, doctors do not even really know what causes it, or why it happens.

I left the hospital that day reassured, and armed with the answers that I had been seeking since my original surgery. The diagnosis had actually answered a lot of questions that I had about how I had been feeling, the stomach pains and period cramps, aches, discomfort, the Fatigue and the general lack of Oomph.

I finally knew that it wasn’t in my head, and these symptoms were actually something. And, now I could work to relieve them and get back to normal…. well, almost normal.

The only problem I have with doctors, is when you ask them “what next” or “how long” or “when should I”…. they always respond as though you are an everyday 9-5 kind of person, sitting behind a desk, answering phones and using a computer. So their answers rarely apply to me as a fitness professional.

How Did It Affect Me?

At first, things didn’t really affect me too much. I still had the fatigue, the cramps and the general discomfort. The gynaecologist had warned me that symptoms may worsen over time, so I was waiting and expecting things to get worse before they got better again. But I hadn’t anticipated quite what.

I have always been blessed with really regular cycles, and they have NEVER stopped or prevented me from doing anything. So when the cramps started to worsen, I know I was in for a bit of a bumpy ride. One particular month, I think September 2017, the pain was so unbearable, that I had to call off a few engagements, and skip the gym. I could barely stand up straight, let alone train.

Then, the flow started to increase, it was getting so bad, that I was constantly in fear of accidents (and ladies, you know what I mean). Again, the one thing that suffered was my training! I started missing workouts, and darn those chocolate cravings. I had to control my urges to binge on chocolate cake so much! And I felt like such a hypocrite as a nutrition coach & trainer. This was getting me down.

I was suffering severe bloating, headaches, crippling cramps, heavy flows & although these were quite bad, the worst symptom of all was not the periods. It was the fatigue. I constantly felt exhausted, I had zero energy and all I wanted to do was sleep. This was NOT me! I am usually the one with all the energy!

I even had to change my more physical fitness classes so that I didn’t have to participate, just in case I was having a “Low Ebb” day.

Eventually in January 2018, I decided I had to take control of things. It all had to change!

So, I started investigating and researching things on the web. I know that not all information on the web is correct, but I did come across a book written by a doctor, a gynaecologist who specialises in Endometriosis.

It wasn’t a cheap book, nor a small “read in a few hours” type of book, but I ordered it from Amazon and as soon as it arrived I delved in.

The information was incredibly in-depth, and helpful. Firstly, exercise is useful for endometriosis, it can help to improve your energy, so I started making efforts to increase the intensity of my exercise back up.

I changed my classes back, so I could participate if I felt up to it, but also just shout instructions if I didn’t. I started lifting weights again!

I upped the amount of water I was drinking and started to reduce the amount of alcohol I consumed. I cleaned up my diet, and even though it was not bad, I removed a few naughties.

Then, I started to remove milk from my diet and that was when the real changes started, You can read more about this in my blog How cutting out Milk changed everything!

Since then, I have felt better than I have done in years, and my last cycle was, well it was better than usual. So I truly hope that this improvement continues.

I started to log my nutrition, my activity & how I was feeling in the Success Diary, Which allowed me to pick up on any patterns, certain times of the month and/or certain feelings/pains, emotions, highs &/or lows. It has massively helped me to set out goals, plans & improve my own health & state of mind. 

I started to utilise all of the tools that I had created for my PT clients, in my own journey. The only difference being that I was not trying to lose weight, I was trying to manage this condition.

Now, it’s been a little over a month since I started to cut out alcohol and milk. I have also reduced the amount of red meat I eat.

And the changes in my energy, digestion, bloating and so much more are huge.

I genuinely haven’t felt this good for ages!

As a fitness professional dealing with Endometriosis, it has been a hard slog. But I embrace the challenge and am confident that nutrition and fitness will enable me to manage the symptoms. But I have decided to keep a little part of my blog to one side, reserved for this journey specifically, to hopefully offer some help to all of the women suffering, whether they are fitness professionals or not.

We all deserve to be happy & comfortable in our bodies!!!

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Find your Happy Place! Follow me on Social Media for all your Fitness, Nutrition & Mindset information:

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If you want to know more about my Successful Mindset Online Programme, then you can enrol on Udemy today and get to work on achieving exactly what you want in life – whether it is fitness, weight loss or a huge surge in your self esteem and confidence. The course, WILL serve you what you need.

But, if you are more of a physical kind of person, and enjoy a good book in your hands, then you can pick up The Success Diary on Amazon Here.

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If you would like more help with transforming your body, then please visit either http://www.lmfitness.info and claim your free Breakthrough Call, so we can start to work through what may be holding you back, what your personal goals are and what actions you may need to take in order to start seeing the results that you desire.

Dealing with Endometriosis as a Fitpro There is something that you probably do not know about me.... Something which happened in June 2017 and answered a lot of questions relating to the way I had been feeling for quite some time.

Endometriosis - My Story

Hello! I’m Jessica from the Mrs. Pennington for Your Thoughts blog! I was so excited when Lucy messaged me and asked if I’d share my story about life with endometriosis! I started blogging specifically to share my story and get the word out there about this underrecognized terrible disease that affects 1 in 10 women.

Chances are you have met someone with endometriosis, have heard of it, of even have it yourself. Endometriosis isn’t a clear and concise disease that hits everyone the same. There are 4 stages of endo, but the stages really have no correlation to a number of symptoms a woman may feel. I have Stage IV endometriosis and have (unfortunately) had a pretty unique experience with it, which is why I’m here today! I don’t want any woman, young or old, to think that excruciating pain and a host of other symptoms are “normal” or that they’re crazy. Both of these comments were said to me in the beginning of my journey.

 Speaking of the beginning, let’s take a trip down memory lane. I started my period when I was about 10 years old. It was most irregular, like most young girls. Once I started having monthly periods, they were horrendous: cramps, bloating, heavy bleeding, passing large clots. I was told that this all was normal for girls my age.

 As I got older and reached my late teens to twenties, the problems only escalated. I still had all the same symptoms, but also had the joy of vomiting, fevers, rectal pain, and extreme fatigue. I had been to multiple doctors and was brushed off. It was normal to feel this way they said. I even had a doctor tell my mother that I was “hysterically dramatic” and needed to “adapt to the ways of being a woman”. In my early twenties, I was diagnosed with appendicitis during a bout of incredible pain. My doctor was “old school” and wanted no scans—just immediate surgery.

 I’m forever grateful for that man. While in surgery for an appendectomy, an ovarian cyst was found. This in itself was nothing new as I’d had cysts often. A wonderful OBGYN was in on my surgery and finally could tell me what was causing all of my issues: stage IV endometriosis. She explained to my mother that what I had been feeling every.single.month was comparable to childbirth.

 Over the past 15 years, I’ve had multiple surgeries, including an emergency hysterectomy immediately following the birth of my second son. Endometriosis had ruined my uterus and caused it to rupture during my intense contractions. Waking up to hear that I’d had a hysterectomy was music to my ears! I’d always heard this was the answer to ending endometriosis!

 Hysterectomy, however, was not the answer. I only continued to decline health-wise. The pain increased. Each month brought rectal bleeding, fevers, diarrhea, and a period. That’s right—a period after a hysterectomy. The 25th of each month or so all hell would break loose and I’d be reminded of the disease that had taken over my life. As time went on it wasn’t just a once a month ordeal. Symptoms were increasing with seemingly no rhyme or reason.

After an ER visit last December, I began to research. I Googled for hours. I came across the Center for Endometriosis Care in Atlanta. Dr. Sinervo, the lead surgeon there, was highly acclaimed. I couldn’t find a single bad review of this man on the internet. (How many people can say that?!) He was known for performing endometriosis excision surgery. I began the process of becoming a patient at the CEC and never looked back.

 April 11th, 2017 I underwent excision surgery with Dr. Sinervo and Dr. Kongoasa of the CEC. I woke from anesthesia to the news that they’d found stage IV endometriosis in various spots in my body. I had many adhesions as well. My left ovary adhered to my hip, my omentum, umbilical tissue, and my bowels. I had endometriosis on my vaginal wall, as well as my rectum. Most devastating, though, was that endometriosis had deeply infiltrated the wall of my sigmoid colon. There was beyond a 50% blockage of the colon. A 6-inch section of the colon needed to be resected.

It has been nearly 3 months since I underwent my excision surgery. Excision is known as the gold standard of endometriosis treatment. If you compare it to weeding your garden—excision is like pulling the weeds by the roots versus just mowing off the top. Recovery has had its ups and downs. Some days are fantastic, while others are spent in bed. Pelvic floor physical therapy has become a big part of my routine. With a bowel resection in the sigmoid colon, the central nervous system is impacted so recovery involves a lot of “reprogramming” of that system!

While I’m not 100% yet, I’m told that I can expect my new normal in the next few weeks to months.

 The journey with this disease has been no walk in the park. If there is one thing I’ve learned, though, it is that we have to advocate for ourselves. Never stop until you feel that you’re receiving attention and treatment that you deserve! Feeling the unexplained pain and experiencing other

symptoms I’ve mentioned is NOT normal. You are NOT crazy or dramatic. Seeking out the very best care you can find, and not stopping until you’re satisfied will help you find your healthy, happy ending!

If you or someone you love happens to be struggling with endometriosis, please don’t hesitate to visit my blog and hit that contact button! I love to help others on their journey with this disease.

XoXo

Jessica

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Predisposed And Unaware: How Race Called The Shots On My Health

I’m a black woman with uterine fibroids. These noncancerous growths, also called intramural fibroids, line the muscular wall of my uterus. Technically benign, they threaten to grow into larger, painful masses that could ultimately rob me of the ability to bear children.

Fibroids are common in all women, but research suggests that African American women are significantly more likely to develop uterine fibroids. In fact, in addition to a family history of fibroids, being African American is at the top of the list of causes for the condition. And black women aren’t only at a higher risk for developing fibroids. They also tend to experience more severe symptoms.

As I consider my new diagnosis and explore treatment options, I reflect on the incidents that led me to this point. The signs of the condition were there, but I was never quite aware of them until my diagnosis. It’s important for black women to know about the unique risk they have for uterine fibroids and understand the scope of their options in order to face fibroids head-on.

Frustration and pain

Before my own diagnosis, I didn’t know much about fibroids — other than that they caused my mom to get a hysterectomy.

Having African American roots may very well have had something to do with this. For black women, fibroids develop at a younger age and grow larger than for other women. As a result, the fibroids are more likely to cause extreme pain, infertility issues, and lead to a hysterectomy.

How did my race make me more prone to reproductive issues? My diagnosis confused me. I didn’t understand why being black increased my risk. I wanted to return to the “regular” days of my adolescence, when I was a textbook case for normal periods.

I’d eventually learn that my mom and I weren’t the only ones in my family to deal with this condition. Although complications are rare, uterine fibroids had deeply impacted my female relatives. They had had procedures ranging from fibroid reduction to uterus removal. I wondered if I’d be the next story to tell. If uterine fibroids would change the course of my life. If I’d ever have another child.

I wondered if I’d be the next story to tell. If uterine fibroids would change the course of my life. If I’d ever have another child.

Growing up “regular”

I’ve always considered myself lucky in the reproductive area. This is mostly because I’ve always been “regular.” I got my first period at a “regular” age. I had a “regular” 28-day cycle, and I was able to maintain a “regular” weight for my short stature. Everything in my life remained “regular” up until my first child was born. Suddenly, I found myself going to the doctor more times than I could count for more pains than I could remember. After finding out I had retained placenta, I had no expectations of being “regular” again.

Persistent Pain

I’d always had back pain, intense menstrual cramps, and pain during sex. But so many women have the same problems that I thought they were just part of being “regular.” Many of the things I’d read about uterine-related health issues like endometriosis and polycystic ovarian syndrome were linked to irregular periods. And since my periods have always been on a predictable 28-day cycle, I believed that nothing was wrong. So when I started having the occasional cramp, I was uncomfortable but not alarmed.

Around six months postpartum, I began having occasional cramp-like sensations.

After 14 months of nursing, I thought my frequent uterine contractions marked the return of my old “regular” friend.

“My body is having trouble regulating itself,” I’d think to myself. Then it occurred to me that all the issues I’d had with retained placenta could’ve affected my reproductive cycle. So I started talking with holistic practitioners and thinking of a plan.

A natural cure

During a family trip to Colorado, curiosity led me into an apothecary. I had no intention of purchasing anything, I just wanted to know what the homeopathic world had to offer. But when the practitioner commented on my skin and the conditions that could relate to that symptom, I was sold.

I told her everything. I told her about my traumatic birth experience and the retained placenta. I told her about the frequent bloodless cramps I’d been experiencing. And I told her about my history of painful menstrual periods. She recommended raspberry leaf tea and an assortment of herbs believed to help reproductive issues and jump-start menstrual periods. I’d never had loose leaf tea before. I was excited to get started.

After a few days, I started cramping. I had some light spotting, which excited me. I was sure my period was finally back and I could live like before. But after a few hours, the pain multiplied and I couldn’t walk. I knew something was wrong. It was time to call a doctor.

A diagnosis

I’d never been big on taking medications, but I knew something had to be done. I made an appointment with my gynecologist to understand what was going on. After discussing the pain, she recommended an ultrasound. A few days after my ultrasound, the doctor called with the news: I had multiple uterine fibroids. She was nearly certain that they were the cause of my pain. Suddenly, all those years of gut-wrenching periods made sense.

Looking forward

I cried and moved around to reduce the pain. My frequent movement woke my husband, and he insisted that we go to the urgent care. Despite the fact that I was in extreme pain, the doctors found nothing. The doctor prescribed muscle relaxers and we went home. For the next three days, I had to take muscle relaxers around the clock in order to function.

During my cycle of ibuprofen and muscle relaxers, I remembered my tea and the benefits of raspberry leaf. I had nothing to lose, so I began drinking it. Soon, tea replaced every drink other than water. Within two weeks, I got my period for the first time in two years. I was in a lot of pain, but it felt worth it. There was hope to be “regular” once again.

My diagnosis is new, but my complications aren’t. I plan to have a laparoscopy and hysteroscopy to see if my fibroids can be managed with diet changes or if they should be removed. As time goes by, I truly believe the tea is helping. Even if that help is a placebo effect, it’s given me peace of mind. Fibroids may bring complications, but with homeopathic and medical solutions, there’s hope.

For other women out there, I encourage you to get to know your family history and listen to what your body tells you. My family history and predisposition to uterine fibroids were signs I missed. Whether I could have prevented them or not doesn’t matter now. I’ve learned that it’s important to know your body and your options, so you can be in control of your future.

Rochaun Meadows-Fernandez is a freelance writer that specializes in health, sociology, and parenting. She spends her time reading, loving on her family, and studying society. Follow her articles on her writer’s page.

This original story was published on Healthline.com.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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Predisposed And Unaware: How Race Called The Shots On My Health

I’m a black woman with uterine fibroids. These noncancerous growths, also called intramural fibroids, line the muscular wall of my uterus. Technically benign, they threaten to grow into larger, painful masses that could ultimately rob me of the ability to bear children.

Fibroids are common in all women, but research suggests that African American women are significantly more likely to develop uterine fibroids. In fact, in addition to a family history of fibroids, being African American is at the top of the list of causes for the condition. And black women aren’t only at a higher risk for developing fibroids. They also tend to experience more severe symptoms.

As I consider my new diagnosis and explore treatment options, I reflect on the incidents that led me to this point. The signs of the condition were there, but I was never quite aware of them until my diagnosis. It’s important for black women to know about the unique risk they have for uterine fibroids and understand the scope of their options in order to face fibroids head-on.

Frustration and pain

Before my own diagnosis, I didn’t know much about fibroids — other than that they caused my mom to get a hysterectomy.

Having African American roots may very well have had something to do with this. For black women, fibroids develop at a younger age and grow larger than for other women. As a result, the fibroids are more likely to cause extreme pain, infertility issues, and lead to a hysterectomy.

How did my race make me more prone to reproductive issues? My diagnosis confused me. I didn’t understand why being black increased my risk. I wanted to return to the “regular” days of my adolescence, when I was a textbook case for normal periods.

I’d eventually learn that my mom and I weren’t the only ones in my family to deal with this condition. Although complications are rare, uterine fibroids had deeply impacted my female relatives. They had had procedures ranging from fibroid reduction to uterus removal. I wondered if I’d be the next story to tell. If uterine fibroids would change the course of my life. If I’d ever have another child.

I wondered if I’d be the next story to tell. If uterine fibroids would change the course of my life. If I’d ever have another child.

Growing up “regular”

I’ve always considered myself lucky in the reproductive area. This is mostly because I’ve always been “regular.” I got my first period at a “regular” age. I had a “regular” 28-day cycle, and I was able to maintain a “regular” weight for my short stature. Everything in my life remained “regular” up until my first child was born. Suddenly, I found myself going to the doctor more times than I could count for more pains than I could remember. After finding out I had retained placenta, I had no expectations of being “regular” again.

Persistent Pain

I’d always had back pain, intense menstrual cramps, and pain during sex. But so many women have the same problems that I thought they were just part of being “regular.” Many of the things I’d read about uterine-related health issues like endometriosis and polycystic ovarian syndrome were linked to irregular periods. And since my periods have always been on a predictable 28-day cycle, I believed that nothing was wrong. So when I started having the occasional cramp, I was uncomfortable but not alarmed.

Around six months postpartum, I began having occasional cramp-like sensations.

After 14 months of nursing, I thought my frequent uterine contractions marked the return of my old “regular” friend.

“My body is having trouble regulating itself,” I’d think to myself. Then it occurred to me that all the issues I’d had with retained placenta could’ve affected my reproductive cycle. So I started talking with holistic practitioners and thinking of a plan.

A natural cure

During a family trip to Colorado, curiosity led me into an apothecary. I had no intention of purchasing anything, I just wanted to know what the homeopathic world had to offer. But when the practitioner commented on my skin and the conditions that could relate to that symptom, I was sold.

I told her everything. I told her about my traumatic birth experience and the retained placenta. I told her about the frequent bloodless cramps I’d been experiencing. And I told her about my history of painful menstrual periods. She recommended raspberry leaf tea and an assortment of herbs believed to help reproductive issues and jump-start menstrual periods. I’d never had loose leaf tea before. I was excited to get started.

After a few days, I started cramping. I had some light spotting, which excited me. I was sure my period was finally back and I could live like before. But after a few hours, the pain multiplied and I couldn’t walk. I knew something was wrong. It was time to call a doctor.

A diagnosis

I’d never been big on taking medications, but I knew something had to be done. I made an appointment with my gynecologist to understand what was going on. After discussing the pain, she recommended an ultrasound. A few days after my ultrasound, the doctor called with the news: I had multiple uterine fibroids. She was nearly certain that they were the cause of my pain. Suddenly, all those years of gut-wrenching periods made sense.

Looking forward

I cried and moved around to reduce the pain. My frequent movement woke my husband, and he insisted that we go to the urgent care. Despite the fact that I was in extreme pain, the doctors found nothing. The doctor prescribed muscle relaxers and we went home. For the next three days, I had to take muscle relaxers around the clock in order to function.

During my cycle of ibuprofen and muscle relaxers, I remembered my tea and the benefits of raspberry leaf. I had nothing to lose, so I began drinking it. Soon, tea replaced every drink other than water. Within two weeks, I got my period for the first time in two years. I was in a lot of pain, but it felt worth it. There was hope to be “regular” once again.

My diagnosis is new, but my complications aren’t. I plan to have a laparoscopy and hysteroscopy to see if my fibroids can be managed with diet changes or if they should be removed. As time goes by, I truly believe the tea is helping. Even if that help is a placebo effect, it’s given me peace of mind. Fibroids may bring complications, but with homeopathic and medical solutions, there’s hope.

For other women out there, I encourage you to get to know your family history and listen to what your body tells you. My family history and predisposition to uterine fibroids were signs I missed. Whether I could have prevented them or not doesn’t matter now. I’ve learned that it’s important to know your body and your options, so you can be in control of your future.

Rochaun Meadows-Fernandez is a freelance writer that specializes in health, sociology, and parenting. She spends her time reading, loving on her family, and studying society. Follow her articles on her writer’s page.

This original story was published on Healthline.com.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from Healthy Living - The Huffington Post http://bit.ly/2qoWC4s