Turning My Period Into Power: How I Reclaimed My Body After Diagnosis
How endo, adeno and a lifetime of dismissal pushed me to design a new kind of power, one that starts with listening to your body.
There was a time when my period ruled my life. Not in the cute "I need chocolate" way… more the cancelling-plans, unpaid-sick-days, smile-through-a-haemorrhage way. I grew up believing pain was the tax for being female. Then, somewhere between a fourth surgery and another "it's just bad periods" brush-off, I stopped accepting that narrative. This wasn't normal. It was endometriosis and adenomyosis, and it was taking over everything: my body, my plans, my confidence. So I took it back.
Step One: Stop Trying to Be a Hero
For years, I wore resilience like armour. I could host a meeting while seeing spots. But chronic pain turns "pushing through" into burnout. My first power move was rest, not as a reward, but as a requirement. I re-built my calendar around pain management, physio and Pilates. I stopped apologising for needing space and started living with my cycle instead of against it. Hormones are a rhythm. When you listen, you get your life back.
Step Two: Learn the Language of Your Body
After enough dismissals, you become fluent in your own signals. Mine whispers before it screams, a dull ache pre-ovulation means slow down; a sudden fatigue means cancel and reach for heat.
Symptom tracking turned chaos into patterns, and patterns into power. Call it biohacking if you want. I call it listening.
Step Three: Redefine What Power Looks Like
I don't romanticise illness. But surviving what tries to silence you brings clarity. Naming what was happening - endo and adeno - turned suffering into data. I wasn't broken; I was rebuilding.
That's where Scarlet came from. I was done with leaky heat packs, clunky plastics and shame-coded "solutions." I designed the rae Heat Pad, a sleek, rechargeable heat device developed in Melbourne, Australia, that's safe, discreet, and built for real movement. I didn't want just a gadget. I wanted a companion. Scarlet proved that design can honour women's bodies instead of asking us to hide them.
Step Four: Make Peace With the Messy Bits
Healing isn't linear. Some weeks you're unstoppable; others you're horizontal. The work is letting that be okay. I used to hate my body for "betraying" me. Now it's my fiercest collaborator. Every symptom is information. Every rest day is a strategy. Every scar is a receipt for a battle I won.
Step Five: Build a Better World While You're At It
Once I spoke publicly about my experience, my inbox filled with the same story in different handwriting. This isn't just medical; it's cultural. We're conditioned to treat women's pain as weakness and design as an afterthought.
Scarlet is my small rebellion: proof that empathy and engineering belong in the same sentence. Turning my period into power didn't happen overnight; it happened through a thousand small acts of defiance and care. If that's not power, what is?
_
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.
