Our story
It started at the wrong house on the wrong day. One of our daughters got her first period at our house, and her kit was at her mom's. So dad did what he could: drove to the store, stood in an aisle he'd never had reason to read before, and understood none of it. Somewhere in there, genuinely lost, he thought: this would be a lot easier if one of these had a toy in the box.
He bought one of everything. Brought it home in a gift bag, and since he was already out, put in the small thing she'd been eyeing for weeks. She kept the bag. Not the supplies — the bag. An afternoon she'd been dreading turned into something else, and we did it again the next month, and the month after, until it stopped being an apology and became a routine for us.
The creatures come from somewhere else. I travelled a lot for work, and I'd come home from India or Egypt or the Philippines with some small carved thing in my bag. Weeks later I'd find it again — tucked into a potted plant, standing at the back of a little cupboard, put somewhere on purpose by somebody who never mentioned doing it. That is the whole idea. Something small enough to hide, and worth hiding.
Fortune Coochi is that gift bag, made properly. Organic tampons, pads and liners, because that part should simply be good. And a creature sealed in every box, because a cycle does not have to be something you get through. It can be something you are looked after in, with the care you would give a goddess.
Four of us build it, in Springfield, Missouri.
