PERIODs ON SURVIVOR: What happens to them?🏝🩸

#WOMEN BUSINESS: That’s right boys. The realities of being women are going to be bluntly explained here.

Over 30 days living on a bowl of rice and beans per day on Australian Survivor.

Naturally, living on a deserted island in the jungle being filmed 24/7, the ladies were concerned about the logistics of managing a period. Having access to sanitary products was not a problem at all, but were they even going to be needed?

To understand, we need to talk about what goes into your body to understand what comes out. As this directly impacts what happens to your period.

While on Australian Survivor your body goes through an intense set of phases. It is striving to survive on a coconut bowl of rice and beans twice a day. You also compete in physical and mental obstacle courses almost every day. Your body is under intense circumstances.

First, you're relatively normal, feeling the hunger everyone feel when we skip a meal or forget to eat until dinner. It gets very VERY intense as the week goes on.

Talking about bodily functions became a key topic of conversation. As things, you would do every day were not happening eg. going to the toilet.

About a week in, your body realises WAY less food is coming its way. It starts preparation for shutdown. You feel your body evaluating essential and non-essential survival organs.

Your body/brain thinks… ‘well this body isn't getting what it needs… maybe if I yell at my human it will do something… nope okay… if the human isn't getting me more food, how will we share what we have if another being comes along? Nup, I’m not sharing! No need for reproduction, turn off.’

You don’t know it but your body has made the decision without you. You know you are feminine but you feel that internal feminity energy flow away.

This happened to everyone around week 2, if not in week 1. It became obvious period weren’t going to happen. Seemed like such a relief really, but strangely it was missed. But surely it will be back as soon as I get home… right? No.

After a month at home, I thought… I’ve been, eating, low-intensity exercise, and had solid nights of sleep. I was providing my body with the essentials to survival in a good environment. But still no period. It felt like something was still gone.

It’s a bizarre experience because once you get your period, as a teenager, it's like those hormones always exist in your body. But that didn’t feel the care. I was waiting for that liberating fire of hormones that I new was fuelling part of my sense of femininity.

My whole like I thought no longer having pains and annoyances of a period would be the best ever! And I’d got it. But I wanted it back. I’d actually told all of my close friends, I told them an extended version of the above.

Waiting.. 1-month post-show, 2 months, 3 months… 3 and a bit months… HALLELUJAH. I had never been so excited in my life to get my period!

The first thing I did, called my friends and said: “WE’RE GOING OUT!!”. It was time to celebrate the crazy flood of period hormones that was now flooding through my veins. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d be celebrating having my period. Beyond excited is the only way to describe it.

I was so thankful after experiencing losing it, to anticipating its return, to the joy it brought when it finally came back! So much, that it changed the way I looked at period.

Although I still get horrendous pain for a day, it also gives me an energy that radiates in different ways across the whole month. For that, I’m happy to have you back!