Reclaiming my body

Aside from my doula work with postpartum mothers, I am also a student of menstrual medicine. As soon as the Red Tent launched this course, my body lit up and it was a fully body YES to learn more. As most of us, we learn to deal with our periods, we learn to deal with birth and postpartum. But for my final transition in this life, I don’t want to just cope. I want something different. Most of the women in my family have had hysterectomies. From my mother, all her sisters, extended relatives and now I am hearing about cousins who are my generation going under the knife to remove an organ which no longer has a use for bearing children. I remember my mum showing me the letter outlining the procedure and the implications it has. I must have been in primary school, maybe year 5 or 6 and the memory really stuck out. I didn’t understand the gravity of it, but I vividly remember how broken my mums body was after the procedure. She was in so much pain. I didn’t know it then, but I know now that if that surgery isn’t necessary for me, I want something different. Something different isn’t a reference point so I have to create it as my ambitions go beyond my own self interests. I have two girls and I refuse to let them walk the changes ahead of them unguided. The world is a noisy place with lots of opinions and advice from experts. But what birth has taught me is that, the most important person in the room is the birthing person, the mother. Her intuition needs to be nurtured and upheld and not sidelined. We need to reclaim what we gave away easily, and for this last rite of passage, embrace it for what it is.

If this speaks to you in anyway, listen to it. It’s a message and we all know we can quite easily be sold a lie to keep us in line or on track.