A Workbook to Reclaim Your Period from PMS and PMDD
Your period doesn’t have to ruin your life! Sometimes our menstrual symptoms prevent us from showing up the way we want to, and there is not a lot of information about how to feel better. You may have had trouble finding resources that explain what’s happening in your body and mind. You may have even been disbelieved or blamed.
Our Sacred Cycle was created to help. Written by a therapist who specializes in premenstrual syndrome (PMS), premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), and other forms of hormone imbalance, this workbook offers accessible information and reflective exercises to help you understand the physiology of the menstrual cycle and how it affects you, harness your power, and live in harmony with your body. Whether you want to heal from patriarchal trauma or connect with yourself in a new way, this is the empowering, gender-neutral feminist resource you need to reclaim your cycle, take control of your symptoms, and achieve a transformative mind-body connection. You can feel better!
We’re all taking this election result differently here at Microcosm. Some of us are motivated, on fire, primed to rise to a crisis in proportion with its scope. Others are taking time off to cry, zone out, hold loved ones tight. Others are just getting through the days as normally as possible.
We remember eight years ago, when we didn’t see it coming: the shock, then grief, followed by focused action. We remember what hurt and what helped. One thing that helps, a lot, is to wake up knowing that our entire job is to put tools in your hands to counter the world’s bullshit. So we’ve made a new Care & Action Package of things that motivate us and help us deal and might help you too. We’ve also put together a selection of resources for all the different needs we can think of. Read on, find what you need, use the coupons you need to make it work for you.
If you’re having a hard time and need someone to talk to, write to us and one of our crew will write you back. Your voice, needs, and life matter. You matter. And together, we’ve got this.
—Elly and the MCP crew
Check out our recent toplists for other titles and resources that may be of use to you and your community right now. Read on to learn more about selected titles from our Care & Action Package.
From Conflict to Community: Transforming Conflicts Without Authoritiesby Gwendolyn Olton Experienced peacemaker Gwendolyn Olton shows you how to use your existing skills and intuition to transform a wide variety of conflicts into working relationships that meet everyone’s needs. In this practical, kind, realistic guidebook, Olton offers a variety of conflict analysis and conversation tools that you can use to navigate the most challenging interpersonal dynamics, and to better understand yourself and others along the way—all without calling HR or the cops.
The Courage Party: Helping Our Resilient Children Understand and Survive Sexual Assaultby Joyce Brabner and Gerta Oparaku Egy After escaping a playground predator, Danielle learns to understand what happened and how to carry herself with pride and conviction after five older women organize a “Courage Party” for her, sharing stories from their own lives. With realistic interactions with police, pediatricians, prosecutors, victim advocates, a community rape crisis center, and the courthouse, Danielle learns she is a “crime fighter,” able to protect other kids in the park, with many good grownups on her side.
Surviving: Getting Through the Shit Life Throws at Youby Dr. Faith G. Harper A zine for getting through it when life is piling it higher and deeper, the political and personal and social disasters that we know always come in waves. Getting Over It was about getting past whatever happened in the past; Surviving is about making it through the present. Even if you don’t believe you can survive this, Dr. Faith believes it for you, and offers some basic tools that anyone can use to make it one more day.
How to Get Your Period: A Guide to Performing Menstrual Extractionby An Anonymous Healthcare Worker In 1971, as part of their work with a feminist reproductive collective, Lorraine Rothman and Carol Downer invented menstrual extraction (ME), a suction process to pass the entire period all at once, ending any undetected early pregnancy. An underground network of providers has kept ME alive ever since, and in a post-Roe era, demand is surging. This book provides a short history of ME and detailed instructions and diagrams explaining how to safely and effectively perform a manual exam, use a speculum, assemble a Del-Em kit, and complete a menstrual extraction procedure.
Direct Action Handbook: A Guide to Organizing & Protesting Safelyby various contributors Have you ever wondered how to protest safely and effectively? It’s not just about showing up, chanting, and holding signs. You need to know what your rights are, how to handle the police, how to dress appropriately for all situations, what to do when tensions escalate, how to be an empathetic ally, and more. Packed with infographs and invaluable tips, this handbook is a must when you’re organizing your next protest or attending a rally or march.
If YOU have an idea for a book or a zine that might support people in the years ahead, we’re always looking for submissions of most any kind (especially zines!), but particularly about:
▶Abortion, birth control, sex ed, and reproductive health ▶Herbal medicine ▶Gender medicine ▶Queer and trans health, safety, and self-defense ▶How-to projects for resilient living (eg, gardening, building, energy, food preservation, mutual aid, online safety) ▶Activism and movement-building ▶Writing, publishing, and creativity in difficult times ▶Suicide prevention
Find out more about pitching and submitting to Microcosm HERE.
In a world of systems that aim to keep us feeling helpless, sick, and disconnected from our bodies and emotions, it’s crucial to learn how to care for ourselves—and each other. From reproductive freedom to recruiting herbal allies, from supporting your own mental health to offering support to loved ones, life is full of opportunities to take back our agency and see ourselves as collaborators in healing.
To celebrate the release of new zine How to Get Your Period, here’s a collection of works that embrace a radical understanding of “self care” as an empowering ethic for healthier individuals and communities.
In 1971, as part of their work with their feminist reproductive collective, Lorraine Rothman and Carol Downer invented menstrual extraction (ME), a suction process to pass the entire period all at once, which has the side effect of ending any undetected early pregnancy. An underground network of providers has kept ME alive ever since, and now, in a post-Roe era, the demand is surging. Written by an anonymous medical professional, this book provides a short history of ME and detailed instructions and diagrams explaining how to safely and effectively perform a manual exam, use a speculum, assemble a Del-Em kit, and complete a menstrual extraction procedure. You’ll also learn when not to perform ME and find an overview of other safe and effective options for bringing about menstruation or ending a pregnancy in the first trimester. In addition to heralding the incredible discovery of these historical heroes and affirming the need for abortion rights, this book offers menstrual extraction as a method to understand and protect our own bodies, choices, and reproductive rights even as they are under attack.
Alive With Vigor! compiles stories of surviving—and thriving—from a wide spectrum of contributors. Deeply personal essays recount matters of preventative health care, the hard decisions we each have to make, Do It Yourself health care, and how to deal with extracting health care from government/corporate health care systems. Alive With Vigor! has a special focus on queer, youth, and transgender people, recognizing that everyone has different health care needs. Finally a how to book where you can put the advice directly to use in your life!
A guide for practiced herbalists and midwives to better serve their communities with herbal abortion options. Beautifully illustrated with botanical drawings from Gerard’s Herbal and other early texts. The time is now for us to learn from forgotten knowledge and keep ourselves and the people around us healthy and fully in charge of their own reproductive health and rights.
If you’re the sort of person who takes on every project and responsibility until suddenly it’s one thing too many and you get completely burnt out and drop everything and start the cycle again from scratch … this zine is for you. Includes hard-won pointers on how to train yourself to have more sustainable work habits (using tricks from dog training!), shore up your professional boundaries, and get more organized so you can have a better handle on all the things you are very likely to continue taking on. Stress and overwhelm are tough to live with every day, and the go-getters of the world could use to take better care of ourselves and have more fun.
A thorough and classic examination on tried and true herbal treatments for common gynecological problems, as well as great basic sexual health info for anyone with a uterus. It begins, “Patriarchy sucks. It’s robbed us of our autonomy and much of our history. We believe it’s integral for women to be aware an in control of our own bodies.” Diagrams and herbal remedies teach you how to diagnose and heal many basic problems from bladder infections to inducing your period to ease cramps to even dealing with pregnancy. Learn herbal remedies to ease every stage of the menstrual cycle. There’s references to further reading, descriptions of herbs, and even a section on aphrodisiacs. The sections include: Body Mapping (in brief), About Menstruation, Love in the Age of Aids, 35 years of fertility, STDs and Other Aliens, The Ovaries and the Uterus, Aphrodisiacs, How to Prepare and Use Herbs, Picking Your Own Herbs, Herbal Properties and Dosages, Interesting Reading, Useful Addresses. This book deserves to sit next to your copy of Our Bodies, Our Selves.
Support encourages everyone to take a step back, listen, think, and talk about sex, consent, violence, and abuse. If you or someone you know have ever been assaulted or victimized, how to be an ally can be confusing. These words and the connection they offer can help. With ideas and encouragement to help yourself and others cope with, prevent, and end sexual violence and abuse, this collection of personal experiences, advice, guest articles, and comic excerpts wants to help.
For decades, the U.S. has been obsessed with “self-esteem” or rather with our lack of it. But self-esteem isn’t actually that great, and getting all puffed up about yourself isn’t exactly a recipe for the good life. How about self-compassion instead? Bestseller Dr. Faith explains the difference between the two and offers some helpful exercises in developing more compassion for yourself. It’s actually very different, she explains, than letting yourself off the hook for your bullshit. It’s more helpful to accept that you’re human so that you can learn and grow rather than push aside your problems or wallow in your mistakes. Also, kindness to yourself helps you be more kind to other people as well. Everyone wins!
Fireweed, as the full title implies, is all about introducing your kids to plants. It’s about teaching young children the joy of gathering edibles, and making them into candies, teas, jellies, or even medicines. There’s tips for going on plant walks, and suggestions for good introductory plants like ginger, mint, and marshmallow. There are recipes for prickly pear crisp, catnip tea, and simple fermented herbal infusions. The authors conduct a couple interviews with parents about their experiences sharing plants with their children. This zine is really inspiring.
In activist circles and elsewhere, it has become commonplace to speak of self-care, taking for granted that the meaning of this expression is self-evident. But “self” and “care” are not static or monolithic; nor is “health.” How has this discourse been colonized by capitalist values? How could we expand our notion of care to encompass a transformative practice?
Following “For All We Care,” analyzing the contradictory currents within the category of care, Crimethinc presents “Self as Other,” combining that text with three more essays in which individuals recount their personal struggles with the concept and practice of care.
Shop the list for even more of our radical self-care titles, or check outsomepacks. Keep taking care of each other!
