There’s nothing easy about being a Mom. After nine months of morning sickness, hormone swings, and prenatal care, you’re rewarded with childbirth that is certainly no cakewalk. You hear your baby cry and from that point forward, you love hard and worry harder. First steps. First words. First “Mama.” First “No!” First day of school. First little league team. First kiss. First prom. First graduation. First job. First wedding. First chance to see your baby with a baby of their own. Endless firsts. Not always in that order. There’s nothing easy about being a mother. But as it’s said, “it’s the best, hardest job you’ll ever have.” And it’s nothing any of us would trade for any amount of money.
There are birth mothers. Adoptive and surrogate mothers. Foster mothers and the aunts and grandmothers who stepped in when actual mothers couldn’t. There are elephant moms and tiger moms. Dolphin and Jellyfish Moms. There are helicopter, lawnmower, snowplow, and bulldozer moms. Think about your own childhood and the friends you had. There were the Moms who could cook, the Moms who drove carpool, the Moms who worked, and the Moms who seemed to do it all. There were also lots of single Moms who heroically did all of that primarily on their own. The kind of sacrificial maternal love kids only understand much later in their lives.
At She Supply, we celebrate Moms and the girls who will one day become Moms every single day. There’s nothing easy about being a mother. But imagine doing everything a mother does and having to choose between buying food for your children or period products for yourself. Imagine having to explain to a daughter that she can’t go to high school this week because you can’t afford the pads and tampons that would save her from a mortifying mishap. Imagine struggling to keep a job because one week every month, you couldn’t afford the protection you needed, and toilet paper or paper towels only got you so far.
Right now, those are the scenarios playing out for more than 150,000 female led households in North Texas and for more than 2,500 homeless women and girls in our communities. No woman should suffer because she can’t afford period products and basic menstrual hygiene.
Six years ago, She Supply set off on a mission to restore dignity and cleanliness to women and girls in need by collecting and distributing free period products. We made it our mission to help end period poverty in North Texas and to date we’ve distributed more than ONE MILLION period products to those less fortunate. But that’s just a drop in the bucket.
Our immediate goal is to be able to provide more than one million FREE period products to women and girls in North Texas EVERY year. But that only happens with generous gifts from our partners and people like you.
For all their plusses and minuses, periods unite us in a bond of sisterhood that few other things do. Menstruation is something uniquely feminine and universally familiar no matter your race, religion, social status, or where in the world you live. Most importantly, our periods are the reason we’re able to be mothers in the first place. And for that reason, we are ultimately thankful for them. Just like we’re thankful for mothers everywhere and all they do to hold our children, our families, and our country together.
From all of us at She Supply, Happy Mother’s Day to all the Moms out there. If you’d like to honor your mother (or anyone else’s) in this month we celebrate Moms, please consider making a donation to help mothers in need throughout North Texas. One $25 gift provides period products for one women for an entire year. But even more, it changes a life. What could be a better celebration of Moms than that?
To make your gift, visit us here.