Reproductive Health Leave Could Save Lives. I Know, Because I’ve Been There.

One regular Tuesday morning, when I was in my twenties, I found myself flat on my bedroom floor, unable to move. My work computer lay open on the floor next to me. Every few minutes, I flicked my finger against the trackpad to keep my status set to online. I didn’t understand why my body wouldn’t move. I didn’t understand why I felt so bad. Nothing was wrong, yet suddenly everything was wrong. I felt something like panic, or fear. I begged myself to just move, then continued to lay on the floor instead.

A few minutes before our morning meeting, I messaged my manager and told her that I wasn’t feeling well. “Is it urgent?” she asked. I hesitated, unsure how to respond. “Yes,” I wrote back. “I think it is.”

I wrote her an email handing over my work, then continued to lay on the bedroom floor, my computer still open next to me. For the rest of the day, my partner popped in and out of the room, checking on me, worried, though I hadn’t moved. I took one week off work, then two. By the end of that second week, I had exhausted my personal and annual leave. I returned to work, still shaken, and a little bruised.

Over the past few months, Australian Unions have been campaigning the Albanese Government to embed reproductive health leave into the national healthcare standards. Under the proposed entitlements, all workers (regardless of their gender identity) would be able to access 10 days of leave to manage serious health conditions. This leave would be available to everyone: people seeking fertility treatments, prostate or ovarian cancer screenings, or people in need of abortions. People managing endometriosis would no longer have to work through severe pain. People navigating the loss of a pregnancy would also be able to take time to grieve, no questions asked.

Currently, workers managing menstrual-related issues are required to take leave through their existing personal or annual leave entitlements. I know this, because I have been there. When I first read about this campaign on my commute to work, I felt my body still. I felt a flood of grief for that younger version of myself, still lying on her bedroom floor. The morning of my breakdown, I had started a new contraceptive pill. Within hours, I wanted to die. I now know that my body had likely reacted abnormally to the progesterone in the contraceptive pill, causing my downward spiral. I live with premenstrual dysphoria disorder, or PMDD, a severe form of premenstrual illness (think PMS) that affects between 3-8% of people who menstruate. Of those diagnosed with PMDD, some 30% will attempt suicide. 

My return to work was one of the most challenging and professionally embarrassing experiences of my life. I was defeated. I felt useless. I felt completely and utterly incompetent. There was more than one instance in which I turned my camera off during meetings and cried. It was mortifying and pathetic. I didn’t understand why everyone else seemed capable of managing their periods while I wasn’t. I started working odd hours to catch up. It didn’t help. When my boss told me that I needed to be clearer about what I needed, I could understand her frustration. I didn’t know how to help myself. I wasn’t ready. I needed time. I also needed to pay my rent. I was running on empty, unable to keep up with the regular pace of the world.

The reality is that, while conversations about menstruation are becoming more common (thanks to icons like Lorde), the topic of periods is still taboo for many. Many women don’t have a clear picture of what a so-called “normal” period looks like, and many are still too embarrassed by taboos or stigma to ask for time off work when they need it. While I was writing my book, Periodic Bitch, I spoke to so many women who had never heard of PMDD, and yet identified with all of the symptoms. “That sounds like me,” they said. “I thought that was normal.”

Embedding reproductive health leave into the employment standards is essential for the very reason of demonstrating that these symptoms are not normal. It is not normal to suffer through debilitating physical pain before every period, as those with endometriosis do. It is not normal to be suicidal before your period. It is not normal to tough it out, go to work, and suffer through it. I stayed at the same workplace for months after my breakdown. Over that time, my relationships corroded. My manager started scheduling meeting after meeting to get me back on track. It felt punitive and micro-manage-y, but also like I deserved it. I believed myself to be untrustworthy. I thought that I would be fired at any moment. I thought I would never work again.

In reality, I was still vulnerable. I was recovering from the most severe episode of suicidal ideation I had ever experienced. I needed time to rebuild my sense of self. When someone is navigating a crisis, they are not equipped to be their best advocate. Crisis muddies the water, even for those who might be practised and privileged enough to take care of themselves on a good day.

I think back to how my manager asked if my problem was “urgent”. Now, I could answer that clearly: Yes. Something is happening to my body, and I need to step away so that it doesn’t get worse. Back then, I interpreted the question entirely differently: Was I at risk of killing myself right now, or could it wait until later? This was (clearly!) not a healthy way of thinking. 

Surprisingly, when I eventually handed in my notice, it was not because I had run out of energy. It was because, after months of treatment, I was finally well enough to stand up for myself. I quit not because it got worse, but because I finally got well enough to put myself first. I knew that I deserved better, and I trusted myself enough to be able to get there. Having reproductive health leave ready and available would mean that people in crisis don’t need to question whether they deserve the time. They don’t need to fight for it. They don’t need to be their own best advocate: The leave is available, and they can take it.

If reproductive leave had existed when I was unwell, I would have had two additional weeks of time and space with which to recover. Two weeks that I was entitled to, that didn't feel like an undue accommodation. Two weeks that I could have taken privately, and without fuss.

Two weeks that I want any other person to have access to, too.

Emmy Hardy appears at the Melbourne Writers Festival from 7-10 May. Tickets available via mwf.com.au.