I remember having this thought one day: what if my daughter starts her period and I’m not there? Not in some dramatic way. Just literally, what if I’m at work? What if she’s at school? What if she’s out somewhere and suddenly this thing happens to her and she doesn’t really know what to do?
My daughter is nine, so she hasn’t started her period yet. But I had friends whose girls started at nine, ten, younger than I’d expected. So I knew it wasn’t as far off as I’d assumed, and that was part of the point for me. I didn’t want to wait until it happened before we started preparing for it.
As mums, we spend so much time preparing our children for things: lunch, PE kit, the right shoes, a coat in case it rains, reminders about homework and water bottles. But when it comes to periods, something we know will happen to most girls, the preparation is often just a conversation and maybe a packet of pads somewhere in the house.
And I kept thinking, but what happens if I’m not there?
I work full time. I have a career I’ve worked hard for, I’m a mum, I have a family, and like most working mothers I’m constantly moving between all of it. I can’t physically be beside my children for every important moment, however much I want to be. That thought bothered me more than I expected.
I didn’t want my daughter’s first experience of her period to be panic, embarrassment, stuffing tissue into her underwear, or having to whisper to somebody she barely knows because she hadn’t been prepared. And that’s really where CalmKit started.
I started thinking about what I would actually want my daughter to have with her if her period started when I wasn’t around. Pads, obviously. A change of underwear. Something for disposal. Wipes. Something discreet she could carry without announcing to everybody around her what was inside it.
But I also wanted her to feel reassured, not just equipped. I wanted her to open it and think: okay, I know what this is. Mum’s already talked to me about this. I can handle it.
Somewhere along the way it stopped being just for her. I tried to find one I could buy instead of building it myself, but everything calling itself a “starter kit” was really just pads in different sizes, nothing I’d have wanted to hand my daughter for her first time.
So I asked around, a few girl-mum friends, some whose daughters had started, some who hadn’t, and they all wanted one too. That’s when CalmKit was properly born.
That part still catches me off guard, honestly, because I already had a career. CalmKit didn’t come from me deciding to leave work and become an entrepreneur. It came from motherhood putting a problem in front of me that I couldn’t stop thinking about.
Building it alongside work and family has been messy, if I’m honest. And for part of that time I was also going through cancer treatment. I think going through something like that changes what “being there” means to you. You start to think differently about what your children need from you if you’re not around, and that’s not a hypothetical for me the way it might be for other mums.
Some days I’m still going long after everyone else has switched off, wondering why I added another thing to an already full life. But then I remember why I started. My children are getting older. And I think one of the things I’m learning about motherhood is that “being there” changes as they grow.
When they’re little, being there means physically doing almost everything for them. As they get older, I think being there also means preparing them for the moments when you won’t be standing beside them.
I still hope that when my daughter starts her first period, she comes straight to me. Of course I do. But if I’m not there, I want her to know she’s okay.
Maybe that’s the job now. Not standing between them and every hard moment, however much I want to, but making sure they can stand in it themselves.
Adunni Akinduro wrote this essay for the November 2026 issue of Mothered Magazine.
