GladRags Gab

Jennifer sent us this little note. We thought it was cute and addressed of our philosophy at GladRags; a feeling of not only being okay with your period, but being proud, excited and inspired.

I started using your pads a few months ago after trying several reusable products, and have found yours to be the most comfortable and practical. I'll never try anything different again! I started my search for a reusable product to reduce waste, but hadn't expected the numerous positive side benefits. The soft fabric is so much more comfortable on my skin, and I find I am less cranky since I am so much more comfortable! I also feel like having to have such an intimate connection to my blood when cleansing the clothes has allowed some "sympathetic magic" to occur- I notice my cramps and general unhappiness while bleeding has decreased greatly. I tell all my friends to try your products and am convinced that this is the best reusable pad out there!

Thanks Jennifer! 

At GladRags, we recieve tons of customer feedback. Love letters are our favorite form of that feedback, I mean hey, who doesn't like a love letter once in a while?  We recently recieved this truly great story from Chrystie and loved it.  Her story actually inspired us to create a new Soaking Bucket Kit on sale in July.  We hope you like it as much as we did.

Thanks Chrystie!

Hi,
 
I know you get positive reviews all the time, but I couldn't resist sending one along with my story. I will be 25 in October and, until I stumbled upon your website, I wasn't aware of cloth pads. I liked the idea a lot and was won over by all the positive reviews. I wanted to try one, but I'm an inconveniently heavy bleeder and always hated my period. I wasn't sure if I really wanted to get friendly with it by having to deal with my blood after I'd gone and bled all over something. It always seemed right to just throw away the source of my pain and misery, usually chucking it in the garbage while making a face. It wasn't that I thought cloth pads were disgusting. I just thought I was disgusting for having a period and I was afraid to get something cute and fancy, just to bleed all over it.
 
I finally worked up the courage, though, to buy a night pad, feeling I would probably need the biggest one you had. Turned out it was a little too big for what I wanted and I decided that nighttime probably was the best time for it, if I ever decided to trust myself at night with a cloth pad. I put it away, feeling disappointed. What I needed was a day pad, but I questioned whether nothing but cotton could really stand up to the kind of bleeding I did. I hemmed and hawed over it for a long time before I finally tried again. This time, I was sent an adorable little camo-designed day pad that I promptly washed and waited two weeks to be able to use.

Since I only had one, I waited until the evening, one night, and took off my plastic pad, feeling a little nervous and put the cloth one on. As soon as I stood up, I felt the difference. It was soft, like a little extra wad of underwear at my crotch or possibly a small pillow, but smaller than the boat I was used to wearing. I didn‚t know what to think, so I just went and sat back down on the couch, readjusting myself the whole way, trying to get a feel for this smaller, softer pad. For four hours, I kept the pad on, feeling myself bleed and running to the bathroom to make sure it was ok. Four hours and then I had to take it off because it got saturated.

I stood in the bathroom, decked out in my new disposable, rinsing out my cloth pad and realizing how disappointed I was that I didn't have another cloth one to wear. I was absolutely shocked at how much blood came out of that pad! It didn't look like that much from the top. The cotton wicked my blood away from my skin better than all those fancy gels and chemicals. That was the beginning of my budding love for my Gladrag. I decided that I wanted to try to get at least six hours out of my pad, so I ran upstairs to my computer and ordered a third matching insert for it  - oh and another Gladrag and a third insert for that, too. That way I could switch off. Then, I waited  for my box to come  to see what the new one would look like ∑ I hoped for the zebra print I requested. When the box came, I was overjoyed to see my zebra pad, its third insert, and the camo insert I had ordered first. It was another long wait for my period to come back.  I mean, what the heck? I was waiting for my period to come? What was wrong with me? My period was bad, right? It came on a Wednesday afternoon, while I was helping my mother and sister get some boxes out of the shed. I ran inside and smiled. Yes, yes, today I would break in my zebra pad. So, stuffed fat with three inserts, it went around my underwear and I wore my zebra pad for the rest of the day. That night, suddenly remembering my night pad and pulling it out for the first time since I had put it away, months before, I wore it as I hand washed my zebra pad since we didn't have enough laundry to make a full load and I wanted it at the ready again. What I had liked best about it was the fact that it snapped instead of taping itself to my underwear. I happen to be a "front-bleeder", which means I seem to spurt ahead instead of down, so only the front half of my disposables ever got used and completely soaked, wasting the padding in the back. With my cloth pad, I was able to unsnap and flip it when it started to saturate in the front. That, coupled with the third insert, made my zebra pad last and last for eight hours. I rinsed so much blood out of that thing, I started to laugh at myself. That was when I decided to wear both my pads the next day, and also the night one again if I needed it, to try to go a whole day with cloth. I figured each day pad going eight hours a piece and then the night pad for bed time, I could probably manage it. Four days later, using only two day pads with three inserts each, and a night pad when I slept, I suddenly realized three things. One, I had gotten so spoiled by my camo and zebra cloth pads, that first day, that I had ended up washing them every single night because I didn't want to wear a disposable, which meant I hadn‚t used disposables at all! Two, the angry, red, itchy, bumpy rash I had gotten every single month since I was twelve years old and started my period - the rash I just assumed was part of my "curse" - had not shown up at all! Three, my period only lasted four days with spotting in the morning of the fifth, when it usually lasted seven with spotting all the eighth, plus two or three more days of waiting for the rash to clear up! I‚d had a great period, this time! As I pulled my two, little, hardworking pads out of the dryer at the end of my period, I lovingly smoothed them out, realizing I was really attached to them in a bonding sort of way. Without knowing beforehand what was about to transpire, we had walked through the fire together and kicked the disposable habit, way ahead of when I had planned. They were good to me and kept my lady parts healthy during my period, for the first time in my life. I reassembled them so they'd look nice sitting in the bathroom, because they deserved it, and I promised them I'd add to their family real soon. They were thirsty little suckers but there‚s no need for them to get old before their time. I just ordered 8 more day pads, with extra inserts, 3 more night pads, a pair of sea sponges, and a carrying case - all in one felled swoop. That should last me five days and four nights, which is how long my new and improved periods are, now. It helped that there was a sale on camo pads and that I had a discount code, so I could order more stuff than I might have been able to afford normally. It's not really a matter of being ready to take that step. It's about having already done so, accidentally, and needing more resources to take the load off the two I have. I'm done with hating myself for having a period. I don‚t have to be hot, angry, itchy, and irritable once a month. Instead, I will sit on my soft, little, menstrual pillows (because that‚s what they feel like) and wonder how much blood I‚m going to find in them when I rinse them out. Hey, the big reduction of cramps isn't anything to complain about, either. Chrystie

-owner of three awesome Gladrags and waiting for the other eleven

An exciting experiment is planned this Sunday, June 22nd in our neighborhood of North Portland. Sunday Parkways is modeled after the Ciclovias (bike path en español) event in Bogotá, Columbia where every Sunday streets are closed to cars so bikers, skaters, walkers and runners can enjoy the streets without traffic.  The event in Portland this Sunday is from 8am – 2pm and straddles 1-5 to connecting four neighborhoods in North Portland with six miles of streets closed to cars.  There is no start or finish to the event, so people wanting to enjoy the streets can fall in with the parkway at any point.  

Portland is the perfect place for an ‘experiment’ such as this, a town where the City Auditor estimates that at least 16% of people already use their bike as primary or secondary form of transportation to work.  We are the first large US city to achieve Platinum Level status of Bicycle Friendly Community from the League of American Bicyclists, and the community is open and excited for new developments made in the world of biking in Portland.

Yay North Portland.

Deanna Duke, who writes the blog, Crunchy Chicken, is being honored by her friends this month. This amazing woman started Goods 4 Girls and gave all of us who were floundering around, not knowing how to help, a great direction.  Goods 4 Girls collects cloth pads and sends them to school girls in Africa.  It's an amazing and wildly successful organization that GladRags is proud to be working with through our G4G Kit.  Her blog, Crunchy Chicken, is full of great info and inspiration and makes an entertaining read. She is committed to a better world and has the guts to speak her mind.

Deanna is a woman who can really turn thought into action. A Crunchy Tribute tells you how you can take some action too.  Our action for Deanna this month is a donation of four G4G Kits and we are putting the G4G Kit on 10% discount so you can help too!

Thanks Deanna for all your good work!

-Brenda 

We love to hear from our customers!

Read what Teresa from Oakland, CA had to say about her experience with GladRags: 

"Hi! I just wanted to fire off a quick testimonial. GladRags are a wonderful product on a number of levels. I am a new customer and have been using GladRags for about 3 months now. I am delighted that I am no longer putting disposable products into the environment, and I feel that the use of your product has improved my health and my comfort when having a period as well. The design is genius and well-executed; and you're absolutely right about cold water soaking doing the job, much to my amazement! And, it really isn't a lot of extra work. In just 3 months I've developed a simple routine to keep things flowing (please excuse the bad pun). The biggest challenge was finding a place in my small apartment to put the soaking container ! Thank you so much for working out this "technology" so that it was there and pretty well perfected by the time I was looking for it! Good work!"

Thanks Teresa! 

Dan is our monthly friend for June. He's been my best friend since my days at UCLA. And yeah, he's a guy, but guys can be monthly GladRags friends too (see Oct 07 newsletter).  Dan is a hiker, camper, wilderness loving, city dwelling, college professor, and is an all around brilliant and funny man. While I know he would be passively pro-GladRags even if he didn't know me, because he does know and love me, he is a very vocal GladRags advocate.  He guerrilla markets for GladRags  by asking for them in every natural foods market in New England. And if you have dinner at his house (he's a great cook), you can be sure that sometime during dinner, he'll get out his GladRags brochures and demo pads and educate you about the virtures of reusables. (This has disconcerted more than a few unsuspecting guests).  After a few martinis, he's been known to throw on some tighty-whiteys over his jeans so he can show exactly how they work!  He's our East Coast Rep extraordinaire! 

We've got some new faces at GladRags these days. One of the great benefits of owning the GladRags business is meeting great customers and getting to work with amazing women.  Elizabeth and Tanya continue the tradition of GladRags employees being forward thinking, trail blazing, interesting women.

Elizabeth grew up in California's Bay Area. She moved to Portland, Oregon to attend Reed College in 2002. Since graduating with a BA in Anthropology, in addition to working for GladRags, Elizabeth has led groups for teenage survivors of domestic violence and organized books at the public library. Her interests include: learning, music, art where animals wearing clothing is featured prominently, gender studies, road trips, and Anthropological theory. This summer Elizabeth is joining other activists as part of a bicycle caravan for reproductive justice called Wanderlust where she’ll ride from New Orleans to New York. Elizabeth loves working for GladRags because she gets to help create more positivity around our cycles.

Tanya moved to Portland late summer 2007 from Boulder, Colorado where she had worked for Pharmaca Integrative Pharmacy (a great place to purchase GladRags products!) for the past two and some odd years.  A graduate of The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington in 2005, she has wanted to move back to the Pacific Northwest since leaving the area.  Her interests include but are not limited to making and appreciating all art, especially visual art, biking around Portland, friends, bars, concerts, gardens, fish tanks, traveling and languages. She has always been a passionate bleeder and has been dealing with her menstruation alternatively as well as sharing her knowledge with her peers since late high school.  She can’t really remember what inspired her to do so, but she thinks it might have had something to do with common sense and the book Cunt by Inga Muscio. She is really excited for the opportunity to work for a small, local, proud-to-be-bleeding company such as GladRags and it ready to give it her all.

Dear GladRags.

 I've been a customer for seven years. I came across my first GladRags pad in high school while dusting shelves at the Knoxville Community Food Co-op (in Tennessee). After a few weeks, I braved up enough to try the Keeper. I've never looked back to plastic and paper since!  Meanwhile, I've seen Glad Rags products appear at a wider variety of stores, and found that more and more of my friends already know about alternative menstrual products before I launch into my self-inspired sales pitch.

This July, I'm leading a 2-hour discussion about women's lives and bodies for young women at the Southeast Unitarian Universalist Summer Institute in Radford, Virginia. SUUSI is a week-long intergenerational camp for UUs (and other quirky folks), and I've been going since I was a kid. This is my first year on Young Adult staff, and I'm looking forward to building a supportive community for other women ages 18-25. Much of the year, we cope with anti-woman advertising, strict gender roles, and sexual harassment, but SUUSI is a time for us to decompress, share hugs, and build friendships that are amazingly intense for only a week. The discussion is called Wonder Woman; meanwhile the guys have their own discussion called He-Manery.(he-he)

I'm writing to ask whether you can provide any materials for the discussion. I was delighted to find a lot of great links at your website that I'll be tapping into for discussion questions and information. My vision is to talk about some of the major issues young women face in a positive light, and I think having some GladRags around for show-and-tell would give us something concrete to celebrate. I believe that feminism is not at all abstract, and the way we treat our bodies is integrally related to the way we carry ourselves in society. I would love to show women pads and/or cups and sponges as a starting point for hearing their own stories about being women in the (southeastern) US today. Then at the end of the discussion, we would distribute the materials as door prizes. What do you think? Our budget is slim because the camp keeps costs low in order to be affordable, and the young adults don't exactly show up with bulging wallets. If you could provide anything, we would all be grateful (and excited)!

Thank you,

Isabel Call
 

And our answer to Isabel was a resounding "yes!" to her request for materials. We love articulate, caring women like Isabel who share the word about GladRags and other reusable options with other young women. Thanks, Isabel and have fun at camp!

This announcement below is from Marwin, who is doing a menstrual forum. Thanks Marwin, for letting women know about their options.

-Brenda 

Hey everyone!

I am hosting an event called “On the Rag”.  It's a forum night….about your period!This event is taking place on Monday, April 14 2008 at 7:30 PM.  It will be at SUNY Albany in Albany, NY in the Humanities building room 116.
I am going to give a talk about the history of disposable feminine products, the problems with them, and alternatives that are available to women.  Then, a forum-style discussion will follow.  I received donations of cloth pads from women who make their own pads, as well as Gladrags pads!  The ladies at Gladrags made a generous donation of several pads in various colors and styles which I am going to raffle off at this event.  I also received a sample Keeper and Mooncup that I unfortunately cannot raffle off.

I am so excited preparing for this event!  A lot of the preparing I had to do for this forum was looking back into articles I wrote a few years ago from a zine I made.  It featured several articles about radical menstruation.  One was about finding out about cloth pads, buying a few, and then moving on to making my own cloth pads!  These experiences really changed my views about menstruation and my body 180 degrees.  I used to hate my period so much, but I felt a lot better about it after putting the effort into taking care of my body.  Making pads was fun for me, improved my sewing skills, and it actually made me excited to get my period because I wanted to try out my new Hello Kitty island print flannel pads!  Come to think of it, the first pads I actually bought were Gladrags seconds and I based my own designs off of Gladrags.

I wanted to do this forum because I really want to promote the usage of cloth and/or menstrual cups/sponges to other women.  SO MANY women do not even know that these things exist!  Or, if they do, they have negative views about cloth (it's dirty/smelly/leaks/it's gross etc.)  I want to dispel these myths with people by providing them with information, and giving them a hands-on experience with really beautifully made cloth pads which were generously donated by several companies.  Having the pads is great; there are so many styles to show people!  I also want to hand out patterns or websites with printable patterns and encourage women to make their own pads as well.

I am going to write another blog entry after the Forum night, so check back within the next week for more info (and possibly pics!) of how it went.

Anyone in the Albany area hopefully see you there!

–Marwin Margolies

Did you know that your liver is one of the most important players when it comes to hormone production and balance?  It is the liver's job to help make our hormones as well as clear any excess hormones that might be overstaying their welcome.  Those of us who experience PMS often have a slight hormone balancing issue and with a bit of support to the liver can resolve the common complaints that we experience monthly.  Cramping is a great example of what I am talking about.  Much of the time cramping is a result of excess estrogen in the body.  By supporting the elimination of this excess, the estrogen levels can be returned to normal, often times diminishing cramps.  Of course inflammation also plays a role in this, but again through offering the liver some support inflammation can be lowered as well.  Irregular periods, breast tenderness, spotting and menstrual headaches might all be lessened with a good liver support treatment protocol.

Some of those treatment protocols would be:

1. Dietary guidelines - following anti-inflammatory diet, and look up those great liver loving foods!

NUTRITION

Food to Include:
    Dark green leafy vegetables, beets, endive, cucumbers, garlic, onions, artichoke, sprouted seeds, grains, tahini, vegetable products (raw or juiced only).
Foods to Exclude:
    All processed and refined foods, salt, strong spices, sugar, alcohol, drugs, synthetic vitamins, fats/oils, non-organic meats and dairy (due to hormones), coffee, heavy starches (potatoes, rice, bread, cereal), heavy proteins, chicken, eggs, milk or milk products, and  vitamins and herbal supplements (except as directed by your physician).
    Condiments except lemon juice and a little salt.
    
    
JUICE/TEA
    Red beet mixed with carrot (1/2 cup) once a day.
    Dandelion root tea: steep 1 teaspoon in 1 pint boiling water for 20 minutes.  Take once a day.

OTHER
    Deep breathing, 30 seconds each time, 10 times a day.
    Brisk walk or other exercise 20-30 minutes a day.
    Drink clean filtered water (at least 2 quarts a day).
    Do not use aluminum cookware.

2. Liver herbs - burdock, bupleurum, celandine, dandelion root, oregon grape, milk thistle, dang gui - go to your local herb store for a nice daily tea tonic, or liquid drop preparation.

3.  The ever famous castor oil packs

4.  Detox season is upon us!  The spring is the appropriate time to cleanse the liver.  Just as new shoots come up from the ground, this is the season the liver awakes from its winter slumber and shoots forward — creating motivation and movement.  Do your research before initiating any detox/fast protocol.  Best to work with a qualified practitioner as it is important to find the right type of detox for you.

Be well - and be happy!

Dr. J.J. Pursell ND, LAc.

The Herb Shoppe 2410 E. Burnside Portland, OR 97214

503-234-7801