Yahoo Lifestyle 
Woman bleeds proudly during her first marathon
The night before Kiran Gandhi's first London Marathon in April, she started menstruating.
It was her first-ever marathon, and although she'd trained for a year, she had never practiced going the distance while on her period.
So Gandhi decided to just "take some midol, hope I wouldn't cramp, bleed freely and just run."
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And after making it to the finish line, she wrote an essay about the experience, highlighting the struggle of women around the world who don't have access to tampons or support because of the taboo around periods.
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"As I ran, I thought to myself about how women and men have both been effectively socialised to pretend periods don't exist," she wrote.
"By establishing a norm of period-shaming, societies effectively prevent the ability to bond over an experience that 50% of us in the human population share monthly."
"By making it difficult to speak about, we don't have language to express pain in the workplace, and we don't acknowledge differences between women and men that must be recognised and established as acceptable norms."
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Kiran ran with two female friends and describes it as a positive and empowering experience.
"We ran for women who can't show their periods in public and for women who can't compete in athletic events.
We ran for our friends who have suffered through period cramps at work and for women who have survived breast cancer.
We ran in sisterhood side by side and we crossed the finish line hand-in-hand."
