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Menstruated: What Our Period Blood Tells Us

An illustration of a Black person’s hand holding up a diva cup that is a third full with dark red liquid. We see the hand from the wrist up. The background is filled with blobby shapes that range from brown-red to dark red to light pink in color. Some of the blobs have white outlines. The word “Menstruated” is written in red text across the top left corner.
Charnel Hunter

In the 34 years that guest host Omisade Burney-Scott was a menstruating person, she always felt that blood held more significance than just the biological. She meets an OB/GYN who shares little-known facts about period blood, and talks with two menstrual health advocates about how art and community have connected them to their cycles. Plus, an attorney discusses what she's paying attention to this year in terms of period policy.

Meet the Guests:

  • Dr. Charis Chambers, who is known as "The Period Doctor," talks about how period blood can inform menstruators about other things going on in their bodies, and why we don't want to think of a period as "a detox"
  • Vianey Blades, a certified exercise physiologist and menstrual embodiment mentor, traces her connections to menstruation activism back to her grandmother and how art has helped her feel connected to her period
  • Ashi Arora, a reproductive and menstrual health liberation activist and researcher, shares how complex trauma can affect menstruation and how community has been significant in her experience of her period
  • Jennifer Weiss-Wolf, attorney and executive director of the Birnbaum Women's Leadership Center at the NYU School of Law, discusses how and why she coined the term "menstrual equity" in 2015 and what she's paying attention to in terms of period policy this election year

Dig Deeper:

Omisade's work with Black Girl's Guide to Surviving Menopause

Dr. Charis Chamber’s Instagram and TikTok accounts (check her out on YouTube too, why not!)

Explore the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research

Join Vianey's newsletter or sign up for her interactive sister circle meetups

Jennifer Weiss-Wolf’s book Periods Gone Public

Why 2015 was the "Year of the Period"

Learn more about the "tampon tax"

Kiran Gandhi on bleeding and running

The trailer for Lina Lyte Plioplyte's film "Periodical"

Read the transcript | Review the podcast on your preferred platform

Leave a message for Embodied

Paige Miranda is a producer for "Embodied". Previously, she served as WUNC’s 2023 AAAS Mass Media Fellow.
Kaia Findlay is the lead producer of Embodied, WUNC's weekly podcast and radio show about sex, relationships and health. Kaia first joined the WUNC team in 2020 as a producer for The State of Things.
Omisade Burney-Scott (she / her) is a Black southern 7th-generation native North Carolinian feminist, social justice advocate and creative with decades of experience in nonprofit leadership, philanthropy and social justice.