Drown out the silence and brave the wilderness – what Brené Brown teaches us about creating a space where women can thrive.

This blog reflects on what I have learnt from the work of Brené Brown in relation to how we can change the culture and open up the conversation about female topics such as the menstrual cycle.   Improving our understanding of our self, specifically what it means to be female, and how what’s happening in our body’s makes us perform – in sport and exercise, and in other areas of our life is very empowering.  If we can stop the secrecy, silence and judgement that surround subjects like the menstrual cycle then we have so many opportunities to allow girls and women to fulfill their potential.  Let's brave the Wilderness!

I LOVE Brené Brown.  I usually listen to her books rather than read them, as she is such a great storyteller. I often feel like I’ve had a really good conversation with her after listening because in my head I’m chatting along ‘Yes Brené, that is so true’, ‘Seriously Brené, it’s like you read my mind!’ Many a time I have been stopped dead in my tracks (literally, as I listen whilst running!) by something she has said in her books, and how strongly and clearly it has resonated with me, my life and my work.  I’d love to share two of the many pearls of wisdom I have learnt from Brené, which strongly underpin what I believe are the fundamental barriers to allowing girls and women to fully understand their bodies. In understanding ourselves, we become empowered to see the amazing potential we possess, and not just the challenges our body and mind throw at us. We are trying to change the conversation in sport and exercise.  The menstrual cycle, for example, is often seen as a barrier to peak performance.  But, there are so many influences of these fluctuating hormones which could be harnessed as super-powers, and at the very least, a better understanding of any negative side effects of the cycle can remove anguish and anxiety, which is performance enhancing in itself.

So I’d like to start by talking about silence, secrecy and judgement.  These are the three things that Brené says allows shame to grow exponentially.  And when we are talking about female specific factors such as the menstrual cycle, breast pain and pelvic floor dysfunction we are talking about subjects that for centuries have been at best met with discomfort and embarrassment, and at worst with shame and fear. Yet, we continue to douse them with a good helping of silence, secrecy and judgement, and so the stigma around them continues to thrive.  Let’s take the menstrual cycle.  We don’t talk about it enough.  There’s definitely lots of energy and loud voices trying to change this at the moment, campaigning against period poverty, for example, which is fantastic. But the silence continues at home, in school or work and amongst friends.  I know, because I often ask how many female athletes have spoken with their coach about how they might capitalise on good days of the cycle or manage symptoms on other days, and there has been no conversation. It seems crazy because we examine the colour of these athlete’s urine to record hydration, measure the composition of their sweat to inform what and how much they should drink, yet we still find it so difficult to factor in the menstrual cycle in our pursuit of peak performance. I was speaking to a PE teacher the other day who said girls still come in with ‘sick’ notes to stay off Games if they are having their period, and others who have suffered stress fractures because they lost their period, but thought that was normal (but it was in fact an indication of poor nutrition, which led to loss of bone health and eventually a fracture). We won’t dispel the myths that you can’t exercise on your period, or that losing your menstrual cycle is normal if we aren’t having open conversations about what actually is normal, what is healthy and what might help our performance as girls and women (athletes or not!).

And then there’s the secrecy. We obsessively euphemise periods as though they are ‘he who cannot be named’ (big Harry Potter fans in this house!). We keep them a secret because we don’t even use the right words.  How can we expect girls to know anything about their body if we’ve been speaking in tongues about ‘aunt flo’ and her ‘hygiene products’ (although my favourite is the French slang for period - 'Les Anglais ont debarqué' – 'the English have landed.'). We also smuggle tampons up our sleeves like they are illicit contraband.  If we keep this stuff a secret, then we perpetuate the idea that we shouldn’t and can’t talk about it. And I think it’s quite the contrary.  I am not advocating over-sharing, but I am definitely for sharing.  I was with a group of athletes who started discussing the menstrual cup recently, specifically, whether it was any good when you were doing high impact sport.  Another started sharing her own experience of being daunted to insert it at first, but after describing how she managed it with the help of you-tube, she was raving about it.  Another asked how you removed and emptied it. By which time another girl was cringing and said ‘I NEVER thought I would be talking about this (slightly embarrassed pause), but I am learning so much!’. Given a safe space and a little nudge, sharing between these girls helped them figure some stuff out and even encourage them to try something new. 

And finally, there’s the judgement.  Let’s not pretend that we aren’t all Mr or Mrs judgy-pants a lot of the time – its human nature. And it’s really, really hard not to cast judgement when you don’t have a lived experience of what someone else is going through.  We hear it a lot in sport. I’ve had a female coach say, ‘I always trained through my period pain, so why can’t my athlete?’, and a male coach question, ‘heavy legs – really – are you sure she’s not just being lazy?’  Because all menstrual cycles are experienced differently by every woman, it’s really easy for other women to judge because what the other is describing isn’t their own lived experience. And for men, who have no lived experience at all, it’s often even harder not to place judgement on something that you don’t understand.  That’s when trust and empathy come in.  If an athlete says they can’t drag themselves from bed because of menstrual pain, you think about a time that you’ve been bed ridden by some aliment, and you say ‘that sounds awful, I hope you feel better soon. When you do, I am sure we can work together to find something that might help’. When an athlete is missing her lap splits and says that she always seems to feel bloated and heavy on this day of her cycle, surely the best thing to say is ‘lets work on something else today, and leave this session for a couple of days and then you’ll really be able to get the benefits from it’, rather than chastising her for being a slow-coach. 

So let’s get rid of the silence, secrecy and judgement and create a space where we can discuss our amazing bodies and what they might be doing at any given time, and how it’s affecting us, and how we can use its super powers  The second Brené nugget I wanted to share with you is from her book ‘Braving the Wilderness’.  Walking into these conversations, creating these spaces for girls and women to share and discuss these topics, it’s not always easy. You will encounter naysayers. You will encounter misogyny. But you will also encounter a whole lot of well-intentioned folk getting it wrong but trying again.  Brené says ‘I summon up men and women who have shaped the world with their courage…who have knowingly walked into hard moments’.  That’s what we’ve got to do here.  We got to be brave, and walk into conversations and spaces that may be uncomfortable at first, but once we are there – opening up the conversation, empowering those around us, lifting others up with our support, empathy and encouragement, that’s when the magic happens. That’s when our athletes will show up, take chances and fulfill their potential.   Go for it, as Brené says, the walk out there is hard, but the authenticity out there is life.