I am more than a body.
Losing a part of your body means you lose a part of your identity.
For an audio version of this essay, please click here:
Today I am sharing with you an excerpt from my journal on September 17, 2020, written the day before my hysterectomy and another when I was four days post-op. I realize its contents might be disturbing for some of you to read, as I discuss blood and my period and surgery. This is my gentle disclaimer upfront in case you decide reading this essay is not right for you.
September 17, 2020
One day. Tomorrow.
I went to bed last night with the strange notion that this is it. My period arrived yesterday with a vengeance, and all I could think every time I changed my pad or doubled over in pain was: It’s the last time.
Oddly, that admittance brought about a prick of sadness—or maybe regret—because all I’ve ever known for twenty-three years is menstruation and ovulation and PMS and pain. Could it be that all of this will end, and I might get my life back?
I still don’t know, which is excruciating, except I will know soon.
My meds are neatly packed in a gallon Ziploc bag. I’ve carefully organized a selection of books and articles and a thank-you note to Dr. Milburn. Today I’m nesting, which seems so strange. I’m doing laundry on a non-laundry day, cooking two meals ahead of time, and lugging boxes out of our bedroom closet to sort through.
Do women do such things before bidding goodbye or good riddance to the life-bearing part of their bodies? So many of us have tried desperately to carry on with the pain and bleeding, yet our bodies are weary. Depleted. Done. Some of them have wordlessly declared, It’s time to let go.
September 22, 2020
It’s hard to believe that, for most of my life, I never imagined children of my own. And it wasn’t because I’d understood what happens to a woman’s body or hormones or emotions during pregnancy. I didn’t know enough to be scared of what might happen after conception, if conception happened at all, and the myriad heartaches that could ensue.
Now that I’m keenly aware of these very real traumas and losses related to pregnancy, childbearing, birthing, and postpartum, I’m grieving a new loss: the loss of my ability to break open and bleed, to shed my blood as an offering of new life, or at least the possibility of one. Blood is a life-source. And now mine has dried up.
I am sterile.
Right now I’m scanning my fertility chart—the last one I’ll ever use. I shuffled through to the first, dated 2006, about six months before Ben and I married. I’ve never known any other way to live, except by my cycles of fertility and infertility. These charts are records of every miscarriage, every pregnancy, every sign of unusual bleeding or mid-cycle spotting. They’ve been used to substantiate my diagnosis of low progesterone and thyroid disease.
Now, I will tuck this last chart—dated 9/15/2020—with the rest, filed as a comprehensive story of a reproductive journey that caused both sorrow and euphoria. I struggle with this. I am fighting tears as I deposit this chart in its resting place and shut the file cabinet drawer for good. It will collect dust over time, become a relic.
It’s not that I wish I could get pregnant again. I don’t. It’s that I don’t have the option anymore, because my uterus has been permanently removed from my body.
Many might scratch their heads in befuddlement, since I have five children. But everything transpired so rapidly for me these past six months: Auggie’s birth, postpartum depression, unrelenting pelvic pain.
Maybe this is the sickening feeling of finality some women experience who have never carried a biological child in their womb and never will. What I feel now is emptiness. I sense the void where my uterus once was. A vital part of my body is vacant, and I know it. It’s not a tomb, not a place of death, just a chasm where I once held space for so much life, so much activity.
I know I am more than a body. Body parts don’t define me, but they all serve a purpose. Maybe this end is really the beginning of something new and beautiful and good.
I share this with you, because I want to put into language the experience some of us have when we lose a part of our essence. For me, the uterus was both a bane and a boon: a bane, in that I suffered silently for decades with undiagnosed endometriosis that caused heavy, prolonged periods and stabbing, debilitating pelvic pain; a boon, in that it housed all five of my children and safely brought them into this world.
Losing a part of your body means you necessarily lose a part of your identity. It does not mean you can’t go on living, or adapt to a new routine, or discover that neuroplasticity is your companion on shaping the way you will learn to live from now on. Still, you mourn for what you had—a limb, your sight, and for some of us, a uterus.
I consider losing a uterus to be a hidden type of grief, because it’s nearly taboo to speak of it. If you are born female, then it’s assumed that you have a uterus and that, at the onset of puberty, you will experience menarche. But this tends to unfold in a hushed, secretive manner.
And it shouldn’t.
Because when you lose a body part—whether visible or concealed—grieving for it is a sacred rite of passage toward healing and integration. To ignore or bypass this means you deny that an integral aspect of yourself did, in fact, exist and now has either abruptly been surgically removed (which can be a type of trauma for some of us), or has faded over the course of time (for some with sensory disabilities, like blindness or hearing impairment).
Mourning the loss of a body part means that you hold it in esteem, that you acknowledge the way it functioned and nourished and survived. You honor that truth, then somehow, some way, find closure to bury it.
My first step toward self-compassion involved me thanking my body for its strength and for keeping me safe and operating well in the world. Then, I apologized for the times I neglected my body, even mistreated it. And afterward, I was able to psychologically release my attachment to my uterus.
If you live in a body that is stricken with illness or pain or physical and psychological limitations, honor the ways your body has served you well. Attune your inner ear to the needs of your body. Nurture it.
Be kind to yourself, for this is the foundational path that paves the way for you to be kind to all living things.
Remember that the broken parts about you can be the most beautiful.
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Thank you for this! Your story is so different than mine that it was eye-opening to read all the emotions you carried. (I had two easy pregnancies and then an unrelenting fibrous uterus... I was glad to be rid of it as I was done using it anyway. Like I was dropping it off at GoodWill or something. )
However, your story is so important to me now as I'm walking along a cancer journey with a dear friend... she's been on the Pill for more than 20 years and has NO IDEA of her true monthly cycle. Her cancer treatments will push her into instant menopause and she's going in truly blind. Your essay will help me help her. Thank you!
This part resonated with me: "It’s not that I wish I could get pregnant again. I don’t. It’s that I don’t have the option anymore, because my uterus has been permanently removed from my body."
I'm glad you wrote about this. It's important that talking about these very real feelings and struggles not be taboo.