Lunapads Blog

Win a  7 Day Pantyliner Kit!
Anyone have tips to share for honoring your period or the arrival of the Elder / Crone / Post-period phase of life? Or handling the darling little symptoms? Let us know in the comments below and you could win a 7 Day Pantyliner Kit for you – plus, a Teen Booklet to share with the next generation!

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED. THANK YOU ALL FOR PARTICIPATING!

It is a really interesting place in my life that I find myself in. I am in my mid forties and fully experiencing the “signs” of menopause. I am taking them in stride and, so far, it is not so bad. Kinda interesting what the body can do.

Remember being a teenager? Ever want to go back?

Well, some parts of menopause do make you feel like a teenager, just not necessarily the good parts! But it does make me ponder every period – are you the last one? How will it feel to no longer have my period? I will truly no longer be “fertile”. I have had my tubes tied for years so technically I have been unable to have children for a long time, but this is really, really the end!

As much as I have had my moments and many years of uncomfortable disposable pad and tampon use before discovering Lunapads; I started my period at the very young age of 8. My first period memories are of being reassured I was not going to die and a trip to our doctor who inserted a tampon in me and told me to walk around. I promptly fainted on the floor.

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Moon Mysteries Giveaway
Comment below telling us about why you feel like there’s more to our cycles than shedding uterine linings (ie having your period ;-) for a chance to win.

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED. THANK YOU ALL FOR PARTICIPATING!

I have just finished reading Moon Mysteries: Reclaiming Women’s Menstrual Wisdom (order here) and despite having my curiosity whetted for the past couple of years by our good friend and longtime Lunapads supporter Nikiah Seeds, was not disappointed. The book is truly a labor of love, written by Nikiah and Nao Sims, and illustrated and designed by Eyan Myers. There is so much that is rich and beautiful about this book and its authors and illustrator that it’s hard to know where to start.

I have read many useful books on the topic of women’s cycles, however none that inspire in quite the way that Moon Mysteries does. Reading it brought me back to a powerful place of reflection over my own menstrual history, leading me to realize how Lunapads itself can be read as a reflection of my own unmet yearning for honoring and connection as a menarchal girl. Moon Mysteries delivers this gift on numerous fronts, inviting meditation, celebration and awareness raising in every phase of the fertility cycle experience.

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HALLOWEEN GIVEAWAY
Find 3 Halloween Cats on our website this weekend and receive a free bottle of Lunablend with your order! Offer Expires Sunday, October 9th at Midnight. Sign up for our Monthly Newsletter to find out about future Lunapads sales and giveaways.

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED. THANK YOU ALL FOR PARTICIPATING!

All Hallow’s Eve is just around the corner so just for fun, we have created scavenger hunt style giveaway to those of you who place an order over the weekend.

Here’s how to play:

1.  Find 3 black cats on our website (see right). Hint: keep a close eye on our product photos.
2. Click + Halloween Giveaway in your shopping cart before proceeding through checkout.
3. Email info@lunapads.com the same day you order with the subject line “Meow!” and list the 3 locations where you spotted them.

You may be wondering: what do essential oils and cats have in common?  Both are a great help for menstrual cramping and all sorts of remedies.  Lunablend is a combination of orange, lavender and geranium essential oils and can be massaged directly onto your abdomen or you can use a few drops in the bathtub.  A hot water bottle used in combination with the oil can be quite delightful as well.  Even better?  Lunablend and a furry friend to purr on your belly.

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Names: Julie and her grandmother, Julia

Ages: 27 & 79

How did you hear about reusable menstrual products?
Julie: A visit to Drugstore.com

Julia: Julie!

Please describe your monthly needs:
Julie: Cycle is usually 1 light day then 3-4 heavy days (all night and day) and an average day. The rest of the month is a light discharge on average 3 days per week.

Julia: My grandma deals with mild to moderate incontinence. She has limited mobility and stays at home most of the time. Two to three times per week she goes to a senior citizens health club for physical therapy.

If you are currently using disposable products, which ones do you use, and for what needs?
Julie: I only use disposables if it’s an emergency. If I am at friend’s house or out in public I will borrow/buy whatever is available. I am not really girl who likes to carry a purse so I’m not always very prepared.

Julia: She has to purchase Poise pads on a weekly basis costing about $30 per week. She does not have complaints about using Poise except that during the warmer months she says they make her “uncomfortable” but she is a bit too modest to mention the exact nature of discomfort.

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I am all for Modern Art and think MoMa’s current exhibit, Talk to Me, on how our fast changing world is always in communication with us is brilliant.  As much as I am one of those who need to get out of the city every couple of weeks to recharge in nature, I love and value technology too.

My response to Ms. Magazine’s post about one of the pieces in this show, the Menstruation Machine, was a feeling in my belly much worse than your average period cramps.  The piece itself is extremely intelligently built, designed to dispense blood and stimulate the lower abdomen in a way that would feel something like menstrual cramping.  The artist, Sputniko, wants to allow men and anyone else (children or post menopausal women) to be able to experience menstruation and point out to all of us who are still bleeding for 3-7 days every month that this is an outdated and unnecessary part of being a woman.  “It’s 2011, so why are humans still menstruating?”

I am all for modern art and design but let’s not neglect the greatest designer there is, nature.  In case you missed Biology 101, women are designed with an incredible ability and purpose to birth babies.  Even if you choose not to experience childbirth or motherhood directly this time around, there is a place where we need to remember and acknowledge the creative power that comes with that gift.  To quote one of the greatest midwives of our time, Ina May Gaskin, “There is no other organ quite like the uterus. If men had such an organ, they would brag about it. So should we.”  Sputniko has another piece called Child Producing Machine, a song for girls who would rather become a cyborg than to cope with menstruation pain.  “If I have to suffer with my biology – I’d rather be a Cyborg than a goddess.”

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Apple Blossom Sampler Pack Giveaway!
How do you celebrate changes in the season & the harvest? Share what rituals you use to bring in the fall with us here and be eligible to win an Apple Blossom Sampler Pack!

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED. THANK YOU ALL FOR PARTICIPATING!

Here at the Lunapads office, we are all about celebrating cycles. As with the Moon Cycle, the cycles of the seasons are great teachers for us and have been reason to celebrate for many millennia. When I was teaching yoga full time, I taught a quarterly meditation on each Equinox and Solstice. Each season is a great metaphor for phases in our lives and the only constant in the world, change and a great opportunity to reflect on the macro and micro cycles in our everyday lives.

A few years back I took an amazing trip to Ireland and Scotland to research my ancestry and visited an amazing site Brú na Bóinne in County Meath, Ireland. While there, I really got how important these cycles are, they have been very important in ceremonies and traditions around the world much earlier than Hallmark. Newgrange is one of the heritage sites there. It is an ancient tomb and temple that has an incredible design. It was built with the doorways opening to the sun at high noon on the winter solstice. Pretty brilliant neo-lithic culture! This site even predates the Great Pyramid!

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Stephanie’s LunaRevolution Video
Watch More LunaRevolution Videos >>
I recently went on a week-long hiking/backpacking trip to the Wind River Mountains in Wyoming and my period came the first day we were on the trail.  While I wouldn’t say it was entirely pleasant to be doing business in the woods during the peak of mosquito season, having a DivaCup and Lunapanties (along with a pStyle) was the best thing I could ask for.

With all the sweating and walking (the longest day was nine miles, which was also my day of heaviest bleeding), I’m sure I would have been chafed and in pain if I were still using disposables (not to mention probably picking up a pretty bad yeast infection from the lack of breathability).

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To say that we were blown away by the response to our LunaRevolution Video Festival & Contest is a seismic understatement – it was literally one “WOW” after another at yesterday’s staff viewing. Thank you so much to all of you who participated; we are deeply honored by your efforts.

The overall experience has been more complex than “WOW” suggests, however, and I want to address that it was not as easy as sitting down with a bowl of popcorn and basking in the Luna-love. I cannot go any further without first acknowledging the efforts of Nancee, our Video Intern (here for her second summer, woot!) and our IT wonder Lisa. Nancee is a fabulous tech-geek workaholic super-smart/nice person who is constantly seeking more ways to be helpful (if you can’t think of them, she will!) and then executing them with dizzying speed and efficiency. With equal dedication the perennially brilliant Lisa waded through the maze of technical issues with her consistently calm and sensible demeanor.

Clever Lunagals and all, were there flaws? Oh yeah! We have not had a video contest in years, and naturally technology has advanced a notch or two. We decided to go with a Facebook application called Wildfire, which involved a bit of a learning curve and proved to have its shortcomings. Thank you to all of you who were smart enough to point out the not-totally-clear bits and have been patient enough to bear with us while we worked it out.

We received 21 (TWENTY ONE!!!) submissions, which we considered to be totally amazing. Twenty-one Lunagals felt inspired enough to take the time to tell us how our products have changed your lives: how incredible is that?!?

It was a massive challenge to choose the top picks, and if we have any regrets it’s that we didn’t create more categories and/or Honorable Mention spots in the first place (it would have looked pretty silly if we had created a dozen categories and only had three submissions, for example). Finally, we didn’t all agree about, for example, what made a video particularly “creative”, and so I want to highlight what we felt was uniquely awesome about the videos that may not have fit into a particular category.

Our 5 Honorable Mention Prizes:
another drum roll, please…

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Lunapads was so proud to host this year’s LunaRevolution Video Festival and Contest! The contest was a highlight of our summer and we hope you all enjoyed it just as much as we did.

Since the voting period ended, we have been busy in the office watching (and re-watching!) all the videos and trying to pick out the winners. We felt every video was superb in its own way and deserved recognition. You all did an amazing job, and made it extremely difficult for us to choose the winning submissions – more on that in our next post!

Alas, winners had to be selected – and so without further ado *drum roll please*

People’s Choice Grand Prize goes to Ashley Larson >> Staff Pick Grand Prize goes to Carla Schmidt Holloway >> Most Creative Grand Prize goes to Nicole Gottuck >>

To be clear about how the winners were chosen: the People’s Choice awards were based solely on the number of votes through Wildfire. The Most Creative, Staff Pick and Honorable Mentions were chosen based on lengthy conversation and general consensus between the Lunagals. That said, as the song goes, “Everyone’s a winner, Baby” (didn’t take 1 of the top 8 prize-winning spots? keep reading!) – please check out all of the entries, and share your favorites with your friends!

The fact that Ashley’s video got so many votes speaks for itself – she was the hands down People’s Choice winner. Our Staff Pick went to Carla. We loved her funky editing style, amazing facial expressions and irresistible enthusiasm and charisma. Top it off with a wonderful musical choice at the end, and you’ve got a winner. DIVA!!! We chose Nicole’s video as Most Creative due to her choice of a multiple interview style, great music, and totally authentic girlfriend conversation about all the stuff us Lunagals dislike about disposables. A little something awesome for everyone!

Aside from announcing the top winners, we would really like to give a shout out to our People’s Choice runners-up. In fact, the top 3 contenders were so close in votes we couldn’t believe it! Coming in with the 2nd most votes was long-time Lunapads fan Holly Pluchinski, followed very closely behind by Kendra Gabert. Excellent work, ladies!

Stay tuned for Madeleine’s follow-up blog post naming our 5 honorable mention prize winners, as well as special mentions for everyone else who participated! For those who did not win, keep an eye on your mailboxes for a thank you treat from all of us here at Lunapads! Please send your mailing address tous at info@lunapads.com (use the subject “Lunapads Video Contest: My Address!”)

Everyone give a final round applause for these lovely ladies and their video creations – and don’t forget to share your favorites with your friends.

Want more video fun? We got you covered. Subscribe to our Lunapads YouTube Channel today for videos on reusable menstrual products, women in business and how-to’s. Thanks again so much from all of us at Lunapads!

 

It’s great to be back at Lunapads after an entire school year has passed. Last summer I had the opportunity to work on the Lunapads Pads4Girls video. It was a great experience…not only to create the video, but to learn about Pads4Girls. If you haven’t heard yet, Pads4Girls is the name of Lunapads’ philanthropic project which sends reusable menstrual pads to girls in developing nations. The project has an enormous impact on the lives of girls living in developing nations. Having adequate menstrual supplies ensures that these girls don’t miss school when they get their periods. Without these supplies girls miss up to as much as 20% of their education because of their periods. Pads4Girls is currently being featured on Mothering.com this month.

Interning for Lunapads this year, one of my fun tasks is to keep the Lunapads Youtube Channel updated and lively! While browsing Youtube today, I came across this truly uplifting video about the Pardada Pardadi school for girls, located just outside of Delhi, India. Surprisingly, the story has a common theme with our Pads4Girls effort- Cloth Pads.

In rural India, where the Pardada Pardadi school is located, the idea of a financially independent woman is still not the social norm. Luckily, the Pardada Pardadi school is making efforts to change this. The school’s goal is to train girls to become leaders in their communities.

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