Period Stains: A Response Or A Reaction – By Anike-ade Funke Treasure, Guest Writer
-Dealing with Period Stains
PROLOGUE:
I was in a pew in church a couple of Sundays ago and noticed one of the two young ladies in the pew directly in from of me with two stains on her pretty off-white dress. I knew what it was immediately and knew I had to look for a way to speak with her since no one around us looked like they would do anything. Luckily beside me was a senior Rev. Sister who quickly invited the young lady to the side, whispered some words to her and the lady went somewhere to sort herself out.
How does one respond to such accidents without embarrassing the victim or creating unwanted attention? It could include what each person involved – victim and friends and onlookers – should do.
Anike-ade Funke Treasure is a broadcast journalist and entrepreneur. She runs ‘Illuminate Nigeria Development Network’ & ‘Yellow Bloom Consulting’. An author of three books, she is the Convener, ‘Sanitary Pad Media Campaign’, which is targeted at combating period poverty, enhancing period dignity and promoting reduction in the rate of out-of-school girls in Nigeria.
Funke wrote this piece:
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Period Stains: A Response or a Reaction – By Anike-ade Funke Treasure, Guest Writer

Period stains are embarrassing. No woman or girl ever gets used to being stained from menstrual blood, even when she has experienced it again and again. The menstrual cycle changes, sometimes in response to external conditions, trauma, or of its own accord, meaning that the bleeding can be a day or two earlier or late. So sometimes, no matter how prepared, or fortified one is, you still get stained as a menstruator.
There is a certain kind of shaming, personal and societal that goes with period stains. If it is consistent, it becomes a stigma. At that stage it is accompanied by a steady, hefty erosion of self-confidence.
There are three layers to this: the one who is stained. The ones who witness the staining. And the custodians of appropriate social behavior who do the labelling. There is hardly a woman or girl who has never had period stains. It is the very nature of periods to sometimes defy carefulness and proceed to do the obvious, draw a bloody attention to you.
A friend shared with me how she was invited to a church to speak. And right at the middle of her talk, she felt the familiar seep which quickly became a trickle travelling down her legs to hit the floor. She made her laps embrace each other to abort the trip, for a while before another trickle starts a defiant journey. She then asked the congregants to shout ‘alleluia’, I think she said seven times, to shift attention from her. She then made her way to the back of the church and out through the back door where her husband and the organisers met her. They had to hurriedly find her a pad. She was suffering from fibroids. It usually comes with heavy and indiscriminate bleeding.
Empathy and support is needed at times like this, not judgement and ridicule.
In A Play of the Cosmos: Script of the stars, Tshetrim Tharchen said “Menstruation is a price you pay for being blessed with the grandest gift you can ever wish for, and that is, to have the privilege to give birth.”
Another friend shared with me how she got on the car of a male friend and stained the seat, and how the man joined her to clean the bloody stain, with such empathy, she was touched. She also bled indiscriminately from fibroid.
Recently, at the onboarding of the one-year pad scholarship for girls, at the Yoruba Tennis Club Lagos, I asked the beneficiaries, girls from a school on Lagos Island how they treat those who get stained in school. The girl beneficiary replied that they help a menstruator who is stained, source a pad immediately, get her a cardigan to cover the stain and lead her to the school toilet. No, they do not sneer nor jeer. You shouldn’t too.
Anike-ade Funke Treasure can be reached on sharingwithtreasure@gmail.com.
I love the write up on menstrual cycles and embarrassing stains and the response from the beneficiaries is very comforting.Every woman should as a matter of ‘truth’ protect and support any woman who by no choice of hers or carelessness or not got stained and not do any ‘labelling’