they ask their daughters to pretend to pray so that the men in the family, especially the husband or the brothers of that child, won’t know that she is of fertile age now. Because as soon as they know that the girl has started menstruating, they’re going to pull her out of the school, if she goes there, and they’re going to marry her off to a man double or thrice her age. And that is something we have seen so often. It just breaks my heart. Mothers are usually very helpless in these situations. The link to child marriage contributes to the secrecy around periods and makes it an extremely isolating experience.

As a guy I hadn’t really made that connection to how menstruation would become so stigmatized. Thats gutwrenching…