Is This Really Help?

I work with Shiksharth in Sukma, deep in the forests of Chhattisgarh, as part of the SWAR Fellowship. Along with an incredible team, I’ve been working on Menstrual Health Management (MHM) identifying and training Menstrual Health Champions who will become voices of change in their tribal villages.

Our project began with a baseline survey in Manikonta and Mulaguda. We wanted to understand what people already knew, believed, and practised around menstruation. The questionnaire was straightforward. Name, age, knowledge about periods, access to menstrual products. And then, one simple question: “Have you ever helped another woman during her period?”

Most women says ‘yes’. They shared how they offered food, gave advice, or provided a safe place to rest. I smiled as I noted their responses. This was good, this was solidarity

But then, four or five women said something that made my pen stop mid-air. “Yes, I helped her stay in the forest… I helped her hide from men.”

I looked up from my sheet. Did I hear that right? My heart sank as the realisation hit me. These women with the purest of intentions believed that isolation was help. That hiding a menstruating woman in the forest, away from everyone’s eyes, was an act of care. Not cruelty. Not punishment. Care. And suddenly, I wasn’t sure what to write anymore.

Later, while entering the survey data, I came across responses that I had to reread just to believe:

One woman described how she helped someone climb a tree and sit there during her period so no one would see her.

Another shared, “My grandmother helped me too. She took me to the forest and I sat on top of a tree. That way, no one could watch me.”

A teenage girl said, “My aunt helped me she stayed awake with me because we’re not allowed to sleep too much during our periods. So she kept talking to me all night.”

These weren’t dramatic confessions. They were quiet truths, hidden between columns of data. But they screamed louder than anything else I’d heard. In villages like Gongla, I learned that women aren’t allowed to cook during menstruation. If they do, their families refuse to eat the food. So relatives cook and send meals instead  when they remember. Most of the time, women end up eating just once a day during their periods. This isn’t just tradition. It’s hunger. It’s isolation. It’s dignity stripped away, one cycle at a time.

What broke me wasn’t the cruelty of these practices. It was the kindness behind them. These women weren’t trying to harm anyone. They were doing what they were taught. What their mothers did. What their grandmothers did. They believed they were protecting menstruating women from shame, from judgement, from the male gaze. They didn’t see the loneliness. They didn’t see the fear. They didn’t see that hiding someone in the forest isn’t support  it’s stigma dressed up as care.

And how could I blame them? They inherited a system where menstruation is treated as pollution. Where a natural bodily process is turned into something shameful, something to be hidden. So they did what they knew. They passed it on. But does that make it right?