When I knocked softly and she opened the door, she whispered, “Mom… I think something’s wrong with me.”
I knelt down, took her trembling hands in mine, and smiled gently.
“Nothing’s wrong, sweetheart,” I said. “You’re just growing up. This is normal — it’s part of becoming a woman.”
But as I hugged her, I could already feel the worry pressing in — not because of the blood, but because I knew what would come next. My husband, Mark, and our two teenage sons had never been comfortable with these things. In our house, “women’s topics” were something unspoken — whispered between bathroom doors and closed drawers, tucked away like secrets too private for daylight.
I promised Emily we’d talk about it openly, that there was nothing shameful about it. I meant it. But I didn’t yet realize how hard that promise would be to keep.
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