G Day Stories: Amy

13 Mar G Day Stories: Amy

Amy Beeman is Mom to twins Lucy and Sam and is part of the Morning Show with Jonny, Holly & Nira on The Beat 94.5 FM. Thank you for sharing your story, Amy!

Amy with Lucy

I was an incredibly happy kid. I had a lot of friends (many of whom I’m still friends with!), I loved school, I had a great family; life was good. I remember playing at the park and walking to the store to get screamers (it’s a total Prince George thing… a slurpee with soft ice cream on top… so good!) and spending countless hours at the dance studio. I was loved, I was happy, I had no reasons to doubt my abilities or question that I could do anything that I set my mind to.

I got my period the summer after grade 6. I was the first one of my friends to get it. And around the time I got mine, Darlene got hers on the TV show Roseanne. I knew my mom had told my dad that I had gotten mine when my dad hit me on the arm and said “Way to go!” (which is exactly what Dan said to Darlene when she got her period).

I remember the biggest issue with getting my period was changing at the dance studio: all of a sudden I felt the need to change in the bathroom instead of the change room in case anyone saw anything. And the bathroom at school was a problem… Did you know a lot of elementary schools don’t (or at least didn’t at the time) have garbage cans in the individual stalls? So if you had any wrappers or anything to discard of, you had to try to sneak it out of the stall and put it in the garbage can by the sinks without anyone seeing you.  That was a very big deal in the 7^th grade.

I was thrilled when one of my best friends got her period two weeks after I first got mine. It’s great to be able to talk to your mom or aunt or teacher about your period (especially to get the facts!), but it was really important for me to be able to talk to someone who understood what I was going through in that moment; someone who understood exactly what I was feeling (someone who understood changing in the bathroom and the lack of garbage cans!). I will encourage my daughter to talk to me and any other adult she feels comfortable with whenever she needs to discuss anything (period related or not), but I also hope she will be blessed with amazing friends who she can talk to, like I was.

For more information on Amy, visit TheBeat.com.