Rachel Kauder Nalebuff was vacationing in Florida when she got her period for the first time. "I was water skiing, I was wearing a yellow bathing suit, and I was alone with my grandpa!" she tells Rachael. "The worst part is that I didn't tell anyone, so I was there in the bathroom stall trying to use paper towels and it was just a disaster!"

Now 18, Rachel is out with My Little Red Book, a collection of stories by women about their first period that she hopes will spare others from enduring the loneliness she felt. "I wish I had something like this when I was 13," she says.

At the time, she returned home from Florida to learn her entire family had heard the story, prompting an older aunt to share her own life-changing experience. "She got her first period while she was on a train fleeing Nazi-occupied Poland and going to France and it ended up saving her from being strip-searched by a Nazi officer," Rachel says. "First of all the story was crazy, but the fact that she never told anyone what she told me was sort of mind blowing."

Rachel decided to collect more stories, and managed to get contributions from women of all ages and nationalities for a book that's both serious and playful. And, she wants to tell all the young girls out there that this kind of openness will make a world of difference on that critical day. "The biggest and most important thing is to talk," she says. "If you feel uncomfortable asking other people or asking your mom, asking your friends, you really don't need to feel like you're alone in that sense. Get the conversation 'flowing'!"