The Tamponing: The Ghost in the Bathroom

Sep 28

6 min read

There is a ghost haunting my daughter. It doesn't live under her bed, whisper from the closet, or drag chains through the hallway at midnight. It waits for pool days.

The tampon.

Every damn time.

Welcome to The Tampon Chronicles, where puberty is terrifying, nobody knows where anything goes, and apparently the bathroom is haunted.

My daughter started her period the summer before sixth grade, and because apparently the universe enjoys a good plot device, we keep finding ourselves in the same situation: Olivia gets her period right before we're supposed to go swimming.

Cue the ominous music.

The tampon has returned.

Tampon ghost haunts a bathroom because puberty can be confusing while learning about bodies.

The first time we tried one, it actually went relatively well. Not easy, exactly. Her body was anxious, this was new, and she was trying to put something inside a part of her body she'd barely thought about before. But we worked through it together, and eventually she got it.

I remember thinking, "Okay. We did it. She knows how to use a tampon."

Ha. That was adorable.

Because the second time the tampon came creeping back into our lives, things were much harder. Once again, we had swimming plans. Once again, her period arrived. And suddenly there we were, standing at the entrance of the haunted mansion.

Welcome back to The Tampon Chronicles.

Here's where something interesting started happening: AI kept being the reasonable person in the haunted house. While Olivia and I were mentally running around screaming, WE HAVE TO FIGURE OUT THE TAMPON, AI kept basically pointing toward an exit sign and saying, "You know she doesn't have to use a tampon, right?"

Oh. Right. There are other doors out of the mansion.

Period swimwear exists. Plans can change. Swimming can be skipped. Tampons aren't a developmental milestone you have to pass to become a woman, and there isn't a Tampon Board of Certification that's going to revoke your vagina if you can't get one in.

You have choices.

And yet, I also understood why Olivia wanted to figure it out, because I've been in this haunted mansion before.

The Ghost of Tampons Past

My period also started the summer before sixth grade, and right around that same time, I had started swim team. Back then, there weren't period swimsuits sitting on a Target shelf, or at least nobody had told me about another option. If I wanted to swim, it was tampon or bust. Literally.

And I was terrified.

I didn't understand how tampons worked, and I didn't understand my anatomy particularly well. Honestly, before starting my period, I didn't even realize I had a vaginal opening. As far as little Angela knew, there were two holes down there: pee hole and butt hole. End of tour. Then puberty arrived and apparently unlocked a secret bonus level. There's a third hole?! Why are there three holes? Who designed this place? Why wasn't I given a map? And now somebody wanted me to put something in one of them? Absolutely not.

Except... swim team.

So I tried.

One of the mistakes I kept making was trying to push the tampon out of the applicator before I'd actually inserted the applicator far enough. I was nervous about putting the applicator inside me because I'd never put anything there before. Everything about it felt foreign, and because I was already menstruating, it was also messy. Very messy. It's difficult to calmly explore a brand-new part of your anatomy when your bathroom suddenly looks like a low-budget puberty horror movie.

Blood!

Gore!

Mystery holes!

Coming this summer: THE TAMPONING.

Fortunately, my older sister gave me an idea that changed everything: don't practice during my period. Take away the urgency. She suggested that when I wasn't menstruating, I could lie in the bathtub and simply practice getting comfortable with inserting and removing a tampon. There was no swim practice waiting for me, no bloody crime scene, and no ticking clock. I could slow down, notice my body, and figure out where things actually went.

Eventually, I learned. Decades later, I realized I was watching my daughter struggle with almost exactly the same thing.

The Mysterious Case of the Wandering Vaginal Opening

One thing we've realized during The Tampon Chronicles is that Olivia is still learning her own anatomy, which makes complete sense. You don't magically receive a detailed owner's manual when your period starts.

During one of our tampon attempts, I was trying to help Olivia figure out where everything actually was. At one point I said, "Just so you know, your hole is a little further back."

Olivia looked at me, immediately concerned. "How come my hole is different than everybody else's hole?"

I cracked up. "Olivia, how many vaginas do you think I've been inside? I don't know what's going on here. I'm figuring this out, too."

That might be one of my favorite moments from this entire experience, because I'm a sex therapist. I've spent my career talking about sex and bodies, and apparently my daughter thinks this means I have personally conducted an exhaustive survey of the precise geographical location of every vaginal opening. I have not.

I wasn't telling her there was something unusual about her body. I was trying to tell her where her vaginal opening was so she wasn't aiming for some imaginary location she thought it was supposed to be.

But her anxious brain took, "Your hole is a little further back," and turned it into, "MY HOLE IS DIFFERENT FROM EVERYBODY ELSE'S HOLE."

Suddenly we had gone from inserting a tampon to investigating The Mysterious Case of the Wandering Vaginal Opening.

So we decided to actually look. We got a mirror, and Olivia looked at her vulva. I looked at mine, too, so I could show her some of the differences and help her understand what she was seeing. We weren't looking because something was wrong.

Sometimes the easiest way to understand your body is to actually look at your body.

Bodies are different. Vulvas come in an enormous variety of shapes, sizes, colors, proportions, and configurations. Labia look different. Clitorises look different. Vaginal openings look different. There isn't one Correct Vulva™.

If you've never seen how much normal variation exists, look up The Great Wall of Vulva, an art project displaying hundreds of casts of real vulvas. It's an incredible reminder of just how ridiculous our idea of a "normal-looking" vulva can be.

What fascinated me most, though, wasn't Olivia's anatomy. It was what her anxious brain did with the information.

I said, "Your hole is a little further back."

Her nervous system heard, "SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH MY VAGINA."

Welcome to anxiety. Population: all of us at some point.

Learning Is Harder When Your Body Thinks There's a Monster

This is the part that connects to something I teach adults all the time: learning requires some amount of safety. When your nervous system thinks something is dangerous, your brain isn't particularly interested in curiosity and experimentation. It's interested in making the scary thing stop.

That's true whether you're:

learning how to use a tampon,
trying something new sexually,
giving a presentation,
starting a business, or
having a difficult conversation with your partner.

You can technically force yourself through something while terrified, but that doesn't necessarily mean you've learned it.

I think that's partly what happened with Olivia. The first successful tampon didn't magically erase the fear. The next time, her body still remembered that this was weird, unfamiliar, and something was going inside her. Her brain had plenty of questions available: "What if I do it wrong? What if it hurts? Why is my hole different from everybody else's hole?!"

And suddenly, we're back inside the haunted mansion.

So now we're slowing the whole thing down. We're looking at anatomy, laughing about the ridiculous parts, talking about what feels uncomfortable, and practicing when there isn't a pool party breathing down our necks.

Most importantly, we're remembering that there are other doors out of the mansion.

You Don't Have to Defeat the Tampon

I want Olivia to learn how to use a tampon if she wants to. I think it's a useful option to have, especially because she loves swimming.

But I don't want the lesson underneath the lesson to become: Your body said no, so push harder until it submits. That's not the lesson I want her learning about her body.

I want her learning that she can be scared and curious at the same time. She can slow down. She can look at her body and learn how it works. She can ask questions. She can laugh when puberty gets completely absurd. She can try again. And she can decide, I don't want to do this today.

Because maybe eventually the tampon stops being the monster. Maybe one day it's just a tampon. A tiny piece of cotton that goes inside a body she understands a little better than she did yesterday.

Until then, somewhere in the distance, a pool party is being scheduled. The wind begins to howl. The bathroom light flickers. A box rattles quietly beneath the sink. Olivia looks at me. I look at Olivia.

And somewhere, from deep within the haunted mansion, we hear it:

The tampon has returned.

To be continued...