I bled for weeks, fainted from cramps, lost so much blood I was changing tampons and pads every hour, but still leaking through. One doctor suggested yoga; another offered antidepressants.

No one said the words that changed everything: endometriosis and adenomyosis. By the time I was diagnosed, my organs were fused. I left the appointment numb, then angry, then determined.

The Breaking Point

There's a particular exhaustion in being disbelieved. You learn to mask: work through flares that feel like contractions, laugh at parties while your insides burn, perform "fine" until you can't.

One night, with a wheat bag that long turned cold, I realised I'd built a life around survival. I didn't want to just survive anymore.

Rage Meets Purpose

I couldn't shake one question: Why are we still living like this? Why are we expected to cope with pain that would send anyone else to the ER? Why do solutions look like afterthoughts? Waiting for the system to change felt like a second illness. So I changed what I could: I built Scarlet. No business plan-just lived experience, design standards and a refusal to accept "good enough."

I started designing in defiance. My hero product is the Rae Heat Pad, born from necessity and irritation. Everything I'd tried either burned, leaked, or died in minutes. I worked with engineers and designers in Melbourne, Australia, to create a wireless, rechargeable heat device: slim, safe, splash-resistant, washable, with thoughtful safeguards so relief could move with you.

Entrepreneurship wasn’t glamorous; it was expensive, exhausting and lonely. But the first working prototype made me cry - not because it was perfect, but because it was the first time something had truly worked for me.

Finding My Voice (and Refusing to Whisper)

Talking about bleeding, surgeries, and infertility still feels taboo. But every time I hesitated, I pictured the girl in the waiting room who thought she was alone. And then when I spoke up, hundreds answered. That's when Scarlet stopped being a product and became a platform: honest, design-literate conversations about periods, pain and the systems that minimise both.

We live in a world where men get billion-dollar fixes for hair loss and erections, yet women get crappy pink plastic heat packs and blue liquid in ads. Comfort, safety, and style shouldn’t be luxuries; they should be baseline. Scarlet exists to prove it: functional, sustainable, beautiful tools, without shame and without shortcuts.

The Invisible Revolution

Endo and adeno still shape my life. I still have scans and off days. But I'm not powerless. Advocacy isn't always loud; sometimes it's a quietly perfect object that helps someone sleep through the night. If that's not activism, I don't know what is.

I’m not trying to be an inspirational story. I just want women’s pain to be believed - AND designed for - as a matter of course. When we stop accepting invisibility, the system has no choice but to see us. Until then, we’ll keep building our own solutions: beautiful, functional, and unapologetically ours.

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Jo Barry owns Scarlet Period, a 100% self-funded, female-owned Australian brand creating design-led products for real bodies and real pain. Living with endometriosis and adenomyosis, she developed the Rae Heat Pad, a wearable heat device that recently won Australia’s Good Design Award for Consumer Product of the Year. She believes that we can positively change women's health with better design and more honest conversations.

VISIT SCARLET HERE: https://scarletperiod.com/

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