Le'Nise Brothers, Period Story Podcast
No more hushed tones and quiet words this is a podcast that needs to be heard full volume. Half the world menstruates and it’s time we started having open conversations about our periods. Le’Nise Brothers is leading the way with the Period Story Podcast.
Like so many women on TYL Le’Nise is a multi-hyphenate woman - she is a women’s health, hormone and menstrual cycle coach and the founder of Eat Love Move, a nutrition and wellbeing practice, a yoga teacher AND the host of the Period Story Podcast. In each episode she welcomes a guest onto the podcast to talk about their period story, unpicking and debunking some of the myths and misconceptions we’ve all heard about periods. Through these conversations the podcast goes further than periods, to tackling a multitude of related topics including body image, orgasms and female desire.
She has next level soothing tones but beyond that there’s a real comfort in listening to the stories of the women’s experience now having been denied access to them out in the open for so long. The podcast is an incredible source of information and advice that everyone should have access to. Though each person’s story and experience is unique you can’t help but come away from each episode feeling reassured by shared experiences that you’re not alone.
Listening to the podcast it’s clear we need to start putting our pain in context and stop normalising women’s suffering. Phrases we are no doubt all familiar with like “pain is normal”, “it’ll go away”, “you just need to get on with it”, have lead to the normalisation of women missing out on huge amounts of work, school and social events. Le’Nise reminds us through her podcast to put that into context, let’s say you are in pain for on average 4 days of every period this would result in you writing off an astonishing 48 days a year to pain. It’s not a few days a month and it deserve serious conversation and resolutions from the medical profession - something we know is sorely lacking especially for Black women who have had to fight to have their pain taken seriously.
Professor John Guillebaud (UCL Institute for Women's Health) has conducted research showing that period cramps can be as painful as having a heart attack and still many women are told by medical professionals that ibuprofen is enough to deal with the pain. The consequences of the lack of transparency and the hesitance to speak up about menstrual health are huge. Conditions like Endometriosis which affects 1 in 10 women during their reproductive years and have been estimated to affect 200 million women across the globe, are rarely detected in the early years. A lack of medical research and low awareness mean that average it takes 7.5 years from onset of symptoms to get a diagnosis in the UK.
Listen To the Period Story Podcast
Here’s a couple of my favourite episodes to get you started!
💫 Allysa Rochelle 💫
I discovered the Vulnerability Queen - Allysa Rochelle - when she hosted an incredible workshop at the agency I work at. As the Founder of TING, Rochelle is a passionate youth development specialist. She works with young creatives from diverse backgrounds as a mentor, and hosts diversity and inclusion workshop in businesses and schools. Her honesty and vulnerability make this episode a must listen.
💫 Mika Simmons 💫
Every day 58 women in the UK will receive the life changing news of a gynaecological cancer diagnosis. Mika co-founded the Lady Garden Foundation in 2014 in honour of her late mother who died of ovarian cancer. Lady Garden is committed to helping save the lives of women diagnosed with gynaecological cancer by challenging taboos and doing away with the ‘private’ in our ‘private parts’. On top of this incredible work, Mika is an award winning filmmaker and host of the Happy Vagina Podcast. In this episode, Mika shares her period story and together she and Le’Nise unpack the shame surrounding female pleasure.
Follow Le’Nise and Period Story Podcast
You know what to do. Follow Le’Nise and the Podcast at the links below:
Le’Nise Brothers Twitter @eatlovemove
Le’Nise Brothers Instagram @eatlovemove
Period Story Twitter @periodstorypod
Period Story Instagram @periodstorypod