My Story

I like to call myself a period cramp survivor, because that’s what it’s always felt like to me. To the older women I looked to for help, it was “just a period,” but to me it was the knowledge that I lived on a timer. It began with my last cramp of the cycle, and ticked down to the next.

That timer began to determine everything in my life. The plans I made, the teams I didn’t sign up for, the trips I was nervous to agree to.

My cramps were so bad that I wasn’t able to feel my legs. Sometimes, I couldn’t even see straight. I had no choice but to close my eyes and breathe. (I think that’s why I was drawn to yoga at such a young age). I was twelve years old, lying in a wet towel underneath my blankets, grateful that scolding hot water at least seemed to make a dent in the pain, sending breath into my abdomen and counting the seconds until the ibuprophen kicked in. I tried screaming a few times, but it made the cramps worse. Sobbing requires your abdomen to engage, so I avoided that too.

This is not a pity party, and before I started this business I never talked about that pain. The pain that changed the trajectory of my life. The pain that, over time, began to make me believe that I was less than the women around me. I believed that I was weak and fragile. That I simply couldn’t handle it.

Imagine, telling a child that’s screaming in agony that they’re not strong enough.

That everyone else is dealing with it, why can’t they?

I remember wishing that my school nurse could switch bodies with me. I wished she could feel the searing knives pressing into her belly, twisting her organs in knots. Then, maybe she’d stop giving me that knowing smirk that even at twelve I knew meant, you’re overreacting.

At the gynecologist, at fourteen years old, I was offered birth control. I never liked pills, especially ones that would change my body, and I said I’d rather try something else. My doctor shrugged.

She shrugged.

I will never get that image out of my head, sitting on a table with terrifying metal footholds beside a tray full of torture tools, shrugging at me because I didn’t want to take a medication to mute my symptoms. I wanted her to tell me that there was an answer, that I wasn’t meant to be in pain, that she believed me, and that she could help me.

But she shrugged, and told me that I could have a prescription to ibuprofen 800.

Two years later, I got on the pill. I was sick of living on that timer. I just couldn’t take any more cancelled plans, cancelled shifts at the ice cream shop, or the sickening 45 minutes between taking the pill and waiting for it to kick in enough that I could open my eyes, but never enough to be able to get out of bed. My staircase became Mt. Everest on those days.

I started the pill while I was in recovery from an eating disorder. I gained 15 pounds in two months. My doctor told me that was impossible, that weight gain wasn’t a side effect of the pill. I felt sluggish, depressed, and lost all excitement about intimacy with boyfriend at the time. Again, she told me that had nothing to do with the medication. She didn’t care that it was the only thing that had changed about my routine.

I threw the packet in the trash.

I resigned myself to living with the pain.

Those years of my life were dark for many reasons, but this resignation was chief among them.

When I turned twenty-two, I decided to find a different doctor. (It hadn’t occurred to me that that was an option because I was a child.)

My new doctor, an angel, took me seriously. She said, “the level of pain you’re describing isn’t normal. Let’s run some tests.”

I wanted to kiss her on the mouth and start sobbing simultaneously. I just nodded, dumbly, too stunned to speak.

We began the journey of testing for endometriosis, which was arduous.

It took a year to get all sixteen appointments, and at every single one I was excited. I was finally getting the care I’d been waiting for for my entire life.

By this time, I was deep into my bachelor’s degree in integrative medicine, and my doctor was incredibly supportive.

At our final appointment, she sat down in the room with a grave look on her face.

I was expecting a diagnosis.

She put her folder down, and put her hands in her lap, She said, simply, “You don’t have endometriosis. All I’ve been able to find is that you have an incredibly small cervix, and your cramps will ease after your first baby.”

I have never wanted kids.

I stuttered, and said, “Doctor, did you just prescribe childbirth?”

She laughed, and we both softened.

She said, “I’m not telling you that there’s nothing you can do. I’m telling you that there is nothing I can do. I encourage you to stay in school, and to figure this out for yourself.”

I went out to my car, and sobbed.

That lasted awhile.

I’d been thinking of dropping out of school. All I’ve ever wanted to do is write novels. That was my dream. I didn’t want to study integrative medicine, I just felt like I needed answers. But when the testing started, I thought maybe I could quit or switch majors. I could get my life back. But suddenly, and all over again, it was up to me. There was no guiding light, no system of care, no bloodwork or ultrasound or plan for me to follow. It was just me, and the timer.

I wiped my eyes, and decided I wasn’t going to quit again.

This pain wasn’t normal.

I wasn’t weak.

I was just a girl who needed answers, and I’d been told I had to find them for myself.

So I did.

I returned to schoolwork like my life depended on it, because it did. But I didn’t find what I was looking for in those classes. We had classes dedicated to childbirth, but not fertility. We had happy healthy mother baby, but not I’m in so much pain every month that I can’t feel my legs. So I kept searching.

I bought ever single book that even slightly hinted at period cramps.

I studied female hormones.

I learned about estrogen dominance, and its link to cramping.

I got certified as a hormonal health coach so I could health coach myself.

I changed literally everything about my routines, my diet, my workouts, my screen time, my stress response, my lymph, my detox pathways.

And, one day, I started to bleed through my underwear.

Without noticing.

I don’t think I can accurately paint this picture for you. After twenty-five years of seven hours of debilitating cramps before I’d even really started bleeding, blood coming out in scared pools like an afterthought to the pain…

I was bleeding without feeling anything.

I thought it was a fluke.

Then, it happened again.

I cried. I got angry. I got the answers I was looking for.

It took a long time before I decided to share those answers with you.

This was not what I had set out to do. But I have been guided here, and the passion I feel now to bring this sense of relief to you is unparalled. It is so often what we didn’t want to happen that defines us.

I am not defined by the pain I once felt, but the lack of it I feel now. The lack of help that was offered to me. The years that I will never get back.

I am taking them back now, and giving them to you. I started Avira for you. It is my greatest offering in this life, and the biggest blessing to me.

Thank you for being here.

All my love,

Alexandra