Jessica Biel Thought She Was Dying When She Got Her First Period At Age 11
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Jessica Biel has so much going on right now that it’s easy for the general public to forget that she’s also a mother. The 42-year-old is mom to sons Silas, 8, and Phineas, 3—and they’ve inspired her next career move.
Jessica is author of a new kid's book called, A Kids Book About Periods.
“It was kind of an accident,” she says of writing the book. The idea came after a business meeting with her producing partner, Michelle Purple, and the founder and CEO of A Kids Co., and grew from there. “It was the fastest process, which is unusual because everyone who I've ever spoken to who's written a book, they talk about it being like a five-year lifelong Odyssey,” she told Women's Health.
A Kids Book About Periods
amazon.com
$17.99
Jessica says the book came together quickly after talking about her first period experience with friends and colleagues.
“We hammered it out in an afternoon over Zoom after a good cry session,” she says. “I bawled my eyes out trying to tell my story and why it's important to me. And we were all crying and it was so fun and cathartic."
Jessica says she asked her mom if they discussed menstruation before she got her first period. “She said, ‘Yeah, we totally talked about this. I absolutely prepared you.’ I said, ‘You did? I don't remember it at all.’”
In fact, Jessica says she “thought I was dying” when she got her first period. “I literally was like, this is it. It's been a good run,” she remembers thinking. Now, Jessica says she’s not sure if she just didn’t listen to her mom or was “just feeling a lot of embarrassment and shame” around periods.
“We have to change the feeling around how we talk about this thing and how we can accept 50% of our population having a period that even people like my mom who were doing great and preparing me for it and helping me, but I wasn't open to listening because I think I was probably like, ‘Oh my God, no—ear muffs’, because of the cultural shame around it,” she says.
Fast-forward to now. These days, Jessica wants to make sure that other kids are better informed—including her sons. Jessica dedicated the book to her sons, but she says they haven’t read it together yet.
“We're ready to read it for sure,” she says. “I've shared with them other things, like they've seen my tampons, they've seen my sanitary products. They've asked me, ‘What are these?’ And it's interesting, every time they ask me, I'm in a moment where I'm trying to do something, get out of the house and I got to run to work or this and that, and I haven't been able to give them the time to sit down and be like, ‘All right, I really want to tell you what this is.’”
Still, Jessica says she’s talked to her kids about how she feels when she has her period. “I've shared with them, ‘Hey, I'm on my period. I'm not feeling great today. My patience level is really low. I'm just warning everybody,’” she says. “We've had that conversation.”
Jessica says she’s also said that a period is “something that women go through every month that I'm going to talk to you about later. I just don't have the time right now.”
“I think we're creating a very calm and kind of normalized feeling around it,” she says. “So when I do get to read the book with [Silas] and talk through all of the details, I think he'll be like, ‘Wow, this is kind of cool and weird and wonderful, and okay, I'm done. Can I go watch my movie now?’” she says.
That, Jessica says, is the vibe she's after.
"The feeling I want the book to feel is, like, ‘All right, it's what it is. Let's not make that big of a deal about it. Let's keep it moving.’”
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