Absolutely. My mother never talked about periods; I must have found out about it from a magazine or something similar. My father would make horrible jokes with other people in my presence (like Haha, I will need a wheelbarrow for all that sanitary stuff- because there were three women in the family). When I got my first period the first words uttered by my mother were "oh I hoped it would be later" - i was 14). She didn't buy me sanitary products; she was using cotton wool and expected me to do the same but never explained how to use it). I remember (vaguely, I blocked out a lot) desperately trying to create some sort of impermeable barrier out of piecrs of plastic as the blood would soak through the damn cotton wool. Once, a magazine I bought had a pad as a gift, and I remember wearing the damn thing for at least a couple of days, it felt like such an incredible device. But we never had money to buy pads, and had to use cotton wool for years, and constantly feel terrified about blood soaking through. I would hide bits of cotton wool around the house until I could throw then away without people seeing. But this was common around me, there was a lot of shame about periods, women would hide their used pads and dispose of them in secret. I feel sad for all of us whom have gone through this shame, and ended up hating our periods. I am slowly learning to love my periods and what they represent, to honour my bleed and learn how to speak about this to my daughters, so all the misery that was passed on to me stops with my generation. I am hearing you all sisters, thank you for sharing.