The Cycle Journal

About this journal

Your body has been keeping notes for years. This is where you finally write them down.

An app tells you what it predicts. A period tracker on paper tells you what actually happened, in your own handwriting, on the day it happened. Those are two different things and only one of them belongs to you.

Most cycle tracking apps want a login, a subscription and your data. This one wants a pen.

Twenty-six cycles, which is two full years

Every cycle gets a full spread. On the left a 35-day grid you fill in with a legend you write yourself: bleeding, cramps, sleep, skin, headaches, whatever you actually want to follow. On the right a mood scale and an energy scale for each day, marked in seconds, and three questions at the end of the cycle.

Thirteen cycles is enough to notice something. Twenty-six is enough to be sure it was not a coincidence.

What is inside

• 26 cycle spreads, two full years of tracking
• A 35-day grid with a legend in your own shorthand
• Daily mood and energy scales, one mark each
• Three end-of-cycle questions: what stood out, what you told yourself, what to remember
• Three short guides on reading a pattern out of your own pages
• Eight lined pages at the back for anything the grid missed
• Undated, so you start with the cycle you are in

Who it is for

• Women who want a menstrual cycle journal instead of another app
• Anyone charting symptoms before an appointment and wanting dates rather than memory
• Perimenopause, where the changing pattern is the whole question
• Coming off hormonal birth control and wanting a baseline to compare against
• Anyone who has been told it is probably nothing and would like a written record

Why paper

Nothing syncs, nothing is shared and nothing is sold on. No algorithm guessing at your next cycle, no notification at nine in the evening.

Writing it by hand is slower, and that is the point: you notice while you are doing it. Most people spot their own pattern somewhere in the third or fourth cycle, long before an average would have caught it.

Questions people ask

Is it dated? No. Start with the cycle you are in. Skip three months and pick it up again without a run of empty dated pages looking at you.

What if my cycle is longer or shorter than 35 days? The grid runs to 35 and most cycles finish well inside it. A longer one runs on into the notes column, and irregular cycles are exactly the case this book was drawn for.

Can I use it alongside an app? Plenty of people do. The app predicts, the book records, and when the two disagree the book is the one with your handwriting in it.

Is it discreet? Yes. The cover says The Cycle Journal and nothing else. Nothing on it announces the subject.

The details

• 6 x 9 inches, 76 pages, matte cover
• Undated and discreet: nothing on the cover says what it is
• Printed in colour on white paper
• Light enough to take to an appointment

A record, not a forecast. It will not tell you what is coming. It will tell you what happened, and that turns out to be the more useful of the two.

This is a personal record and not medical advice.

Also from Mara Linde

The Stress Log, ninety days of finding out what actually sets you off, and Still Here, a ninety-day gratitude journal for the person doing the caring.