Where the Eff is My Red Tent is a visceral, unflinching memoir-in-essays about what happens when a person grows up believing their suffering is just part of life.
For decades, Heather Hendrie lived in a body and mind she couldn’t quite trust. Each month, like clockwork, a storm rolled in—one of despair, self-doubt, and disconnection. Doctors dismissed it. Culture normalized it. She believed it was her fault. It wasn’t.
Told with startling clarity and lyrical precision, Where the Eff is My Red Tent traces Hendrie’s journey through the unspoken, misunderstood world of PMDD—Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder. Part medical mystery, part feminist reckoning, and part love letter to anyone who has ever felt “broken,” Hendrie unearths the systemic silencing of menstruating people and shines a light on a condition that affects 1 in 20 people with cycles—yet remains dangerously underdiagnosed.
From panic attacks in the backcountry to therapy sessions in snowstorms, Hendrie—a wilderness therapist and clinical counsellor—writes with deep compassion and sharp insight about what it means to heal in a culture that gaslights and mistrusts what’s commonly seen as “women’s pain.”
A love letter to anyone who has ever felt hijacked by their hormones, misdiagnosed by the medical system, or alone in their suffering, this book is a lighthouse. Unapologetically honest and quietly revolutionary, Where the Eff is My Red Tent is not just a story of one woman’s diagnosis—it’s a call to listen to our bodies, name our truths, and reclaim space for stories we’ve been told to keep quiet.
