I covered my mouth sores with red lipstick and went to a Bitcoin conference.
A few months ago, I was in Nairobi for Bitcoin++, a pretty technical conference in the Bitcoin space. I had already been feeling sick for days, and by the time the conference started, my period had arrived too.
Sores on my lips and inside my mouth and nose. Headaches. Fatigue. The kind of exhaustion that makes you want to stay in bed, in a dark room and not speak to anyone.
Instead, I went to the conference.
I had conversations. I shook hands. I met people. I listened to talks. I spoke about my work. I spent hours around people without most of them knowing that I was physically struggling.
Then I'd get back to my hotel in the evening, order room service around 8pm, turn off the lights by 9pm and sleep.
And wake up the next morning and do it again.
I told nobody.
Not because I was trying to prove something. It just didn't feel relevant to the work I was there to do.
Today, I am in the same exact physical situation, except I dont have to leave in the morning to attend sessions and listen to talks... but i still have deadlines to catch and projects to finish. I was reviewing something I learned from the June conference and I remembered exactly I felt each day... And that got me thinking about something we don't talk about enough when we talk about women working (in tech).
Women work through their periods.
We have deadlines. Meetings. Conferences. Presentations. Client calls. Travel. Networking. Long days. And sometimes, all of that is happening while our bodies are dealing with something that is completely normal and completely capable of making those days harder.
Most of the time, nobody knows.
You can be sitting across from a woman having a completely normal conversation about software, Bitcoin, AI or whatever else, while she is quietly calculating when she can get back to her room, whether she has enough painkillers, whether she can eat or how much longer she can stay on her feet.
And she will probably still do the work.
I think that's worth acknowledging.
Not because women need to be treated as fragile. Quite the opposite.
I don't want someone to look at me and think, "She's a woman, maybe we should lower the expectations because she might be on her period and give in less work"
I want the same expectations. I want to be judged by my work, my ideas and what I bring to the room.
But I also think we should be honest about what it sometimes takes to meet those expectations.
That week in Nairobi, I was sick, on my period, exhausted and still showing up.
The red lipstick was just my way of covering the evidence.
Nobody at that conference needed to know.
But I think it's worth remembering that sometimes the woman confidently speaking to you, asking questions, networking or giving a presentation has spent the previous few hours convincing her body to cooperate.
And then she showed up anyway.