Period Queen

Book excerpt: 'This will start a revolution for women.' CONSTANCE HALL As young girls, most of us were given the talk about how to manage our periods. It's the beginning of a tedious bloody grind, one of the last great taboos. But the truth is, the menstrual cycle has benefits - big, fantastic, daily, monthly, even lifelong, benefits. Every month, you have four hormonal phases that keep coming around. Each phase bears its own gifts and ways of making us feel: a time to dream, a time to do, a time to give and a time to take. Once you know what these phases are, you can predict them, plan for them and use them over and over again. In fact, harnessing your period superpowers will make you unstoppable (until you choose to stop, that is). Period Queen takes the worst thing about being a woman and turns it into the best thing. Author and period preacher Lucy Peach urges us to stop treating periods like nature's consolation prize for being a woman, banishing the notion that hormones reduce us to being random emotional rollercoasters. Become an expert in recognising what you need at different times of the month and learn how every cycle gives you a chance to cultivate the most important relationship of your life: the one with your precious self. It's pretty bloody amazing.