When she was in boarding school, surrounded by girls in her dormitory, Maryrose Simpson says she would read about periods in Cosmopolitan and Bliss magazine, soaking up information about the experience of being a woman. If you were stuck, you could count on Simpson having a spare pad or tampon.
This was in spite of – because of – the fact that Simpson was a "late bloomer" and hadn't gotten her period.
"I used to carry tampons and pads just to be that girl that nearly looked like she had her period, but also be helpful to other girls, which is so funny looking back to what kind of business I own now and helping women on a monthly basis."
Years later, Simpson would go on to launch Ireland's first-period subscription box, MyLadyBug – which also won her the regional title of Ireland's Best Young Entrepreneur before it launched five years ago – in an effort to increase access to period products, cater to each individual body and make the process of managing a period more convenient.
Inspired by similar boxes like Birchbox, MyLadyBug boxes arrive straight through your post box every month, each one tailored to your needs and including sweet treats as well as your choice of pads or tampons, or both.
She tells me that she wanted to create a "set it and forget it" solution, and it was largely inspired by her own experience of periods: "I've always been one of these people that it snuck up on me and I'm like, oh, not again."
There was also a core nonsensical equation at play, one that any woman will recognise: you start your period with one level of flow, maybe it peters off, maybe it increases, but you're stuck having to buy possibly two or three sizes of pads or tampons for one cycle.
Part of this stems from what young girls are told, or not told, about their body's needs once menstruation starts, often leading to using products that cause discomfort.
"I've had friends that were passed like, Super Plus [sized tampons] from their parents to them and told, yeah, that's what you need, it's a tampon, but not necessarily told what flow [it's for] or asked, because that's getting into too much detail, that's TMI."
The entrepreneur is one of a new generation of women intent on lifting the veil on menstruation. Speaking about how she was taught about periods, Simpson is aware that she grew up in a household bucking the trend for not talking about them. "I really have to thank my mom", she says. "She was very upcoming with information. She told me everything before, like, I heard whispers and bathrooms."
Simpson's mother, she says, "went through a very different story". "She remembers coming out to the kitchen and telling her mom, and she just rolled her eyes to the heavens and was like, that's the curse now."
For Simpson, however, her business was part and parcel of her own journey toward accepting and nurturing her period, a health and wellness approach that has seen many women and non-binary people switch from viewing their periods as painful and indecipherable nuisances to indicators of their own health.
Hormone tracking, menstrual training, and more methods of tracking your cycle have boomed in popularity in recent years, with many athletes in particular extolling the virtues of timing your schedule to your monthly cycle.
"I suppressed my period for nine years of my life through the pill", Simpson tells me. "And it's only in the last five years now that I'm completely free of it."
"I think it's a huge, powerful tool for women to use to understand. I know that if I have something really important in work, I know that my luteral stage of my period is where I'm going to feel the strongest and the most confident."
When it comes to confidence, Simpson says seeing both of her parents own their own businesses inspired her. "I grew up in an entrepreneurial family, so I understand that hustle", she says. From watching her mother run a newsagents to seeing her father create bespoke kitchens and furniture around the house, Simpson learned early on the commitment needed to be an employer.
"I'm kind of like a broken employee because I see it from the employer's perspective", she says. It's no wonder then that she's grown her TikTok following to over 284,000 people.
Laughing, she says that her friends call her the "ultimate slash person", having so many extra hobbies and hustles, not least featuring on RTÉ's The Great House Revival last year. Being an entrepreneur, Simpson knows intimately about the sacrifices needed to be a business owner.
"I think anybody that is entrepreneurial nearly has an innocence about them at the start because you don't understand what you're forfeiting in your life or what you're putting off down the line. Or how hard it is to be a solo entrepreneur at the start. Or how to get funding, or even how to get your friends to believe in you or for them to see you in a different capacity.
"I found it with my friends. They nearly went silent on me and they were like, we don't understand Maryrose anymore."
By creating a business where the arrival of pads and tampons in your letter box is a moment of comfort and reassurance, rather than anxiety or dread, you could say that Simpson is almost recreating the moment of connection she felt when she got her own period, in Transition Year.
"When it did happen, it was like a huge celebration in our dorm room", she remembers. "I came back on the Sunday night and I was, like, 'guess what, girls?' and stood up on my bed, and everyone went, 'You got your period!'
"If I could imagine it in like a Disney movie, I would say, like, confetti of tampons and pads, like, flew up in the air."
