Well, it affected my life in every way possible. Not only physical. It affected my emotional life. It affected my relationships. It affected my ability to work. Or, in the earlier days, to go to school. Endometriosis is a condition that affects 200 million women worldwide. It's a reproductive disorder that develops with your period. And literally, what endometriosis is, is when the uterus cannot expel its lining. And that lining is called the endometrium. Okay, so when a woman has her period, that lining, if she doesn't get pregnant, gets expelled by the body. And that lining is really juicy, fertile tissue because it's designed by Mother Nature to house an egg, an embryo, into a bouncing baby, right? It's to protect it, it's to nourish it, all of these things. So, when a woman's body can't get rid of it every month, it becomes reabsorbed, or it pools in the bottom of the reproductive cul-de-sac. And then it becomes reanimate, and it grows, and it attaches itself to all your inner organs and it wreaks havoc. It causes digestive problems. It causes lower back pain. It causes numbness in one leg. It causes headache, nausea, fatigue. It's very, very, very painful.

I went through this for 23 years. I got my period when I was 13, and I didn't get a proper diagnosis until I was 36. So 23 years, 12 months a year, one week out of each of those months — do the math. I was in bed, I was taking really heavy prescription pain medication, I was using a heating pad, I was having acupuncture, I was drinking teas, I was doing breathing exercises. Anything and everything I could. And if your mother or sister has it, you are seven times as likely to have it. And because you're used to seeing them in pain, you just expect it as your lot in life. And that's what my mother told me when she had that conversation. She said, "You know, some women get it, some women don't. It's just our lot in life. ... Try not to let it affect more of your life than it has to."

And that's what I did. I didn't want to use it as an excuse. I didn't want to be passed up for jobs. But on the other hand, I knew if my period was coming that week, that I couldn't take some swimsuit shoot in a faraway land because I was scared I was gonna leak through. And [endometriosis] comes on when a girl's period is there. So it's puberty, it's a time that's really vulnerable for all women and girls. And nobody wants to talk about their period; it's so personal, it's so private. It is, also, one of the reasons I think, that women are discriminated against. That, "Oh, you know, women are hormonal," "Women are, you know, hysterical." Well, we're just in pain. You know, the word hysteria comes from [hysterika], which is an ancient Greek word for the uterus. And it's because we didn't understand it.

Pain is your body's way of telling you something is wrong, and I've gone to so many doctors. I've even had a surgery where the doctor just said, "Oh, you had a cyst." Okay, that's the truth, but he never said to me, "You have a condition called endometriosis. It is something you need to monitor, and it's something you need to check every few years. And it will diminish the quality of your life significantly. It is dangerous to your health, and it may make you infertile." None of that was said to me, and I went to a really good gynecologist, who I'm sure was very well meaning. There's hormonal treatment. There's treatment through laparoscopic surgery. Once I got on the other side of my diagnosis and a year had gone by after I had all the surgeries, I saw what life was like for normal women. And I went from being relieved and happy, to actually being angry and enraged because I could've had this surgery in college.

