My Hysterecto-versary: Lessons I Learned While Losing My Lady Parts

Photo Credit:  Gardner Edmunds

Photo Credit: Gardner Edmunds

At times you have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.

– Alan Alda

It’s my hysterectoversary.

A year ago, I had major surgery.  They opened me, took my womb.

Let them open me, I had thought.  Let them take a piece of me out.  It will heal all that is wrong in my world, the pain will be physical.  And then it will finally be healed.  I will be healed.  Not whole ever again, but free from the persistent sensation that my parts and pieces were scrambled up inside.  I had been feeling this way for years, diagnosed with a disease of the uterus called adenomyosis.  It creates a heaviness.  A fullness.  Pressure.  The options were to have surgery, or wait till menopause.  I jumped into surgery, desperate to make things feel light.  In order.  Pressure free.

The surgery did not go well.  It was supposed to be simple.  Heal internally.  There would be no knowing of the scars, no way so see the damage.  Just the emptiness.  They went through my vagina, to reach the uterus, the offending woman part.  They took it out, and repaired the damage, and my body still bled.  Not a dangerous, life threatening pace, but a slow, persistent trickle.  I laid on the operating table for two more hours.  They stitched and cauterised with no avail.  Finally, they felt they must take a more drastic step.  The bleeding was not threatening my life, but could not be ignored.

They opened my belly, exposing the tiny bleeding wound they could not find without light.  And stopped the bleeding.  I woke up with the internal wounds and a big, long, ugly cut.  Visible.  A constant reminder of my missing pieces.  A permanent talisman of the persistent trickling damage.

Once at home to heal, I burrowed deep into the dark of my room, wallowing in the cushy leather recliner.  I tried to hide from the funnel cloud of emotions that had moved into my space with me.  The pain of recovery and healing was a place to focus.  But I felt so… betrayed.  Visible scars were not what I had bargained for.  I did not want a sign, written on my flesh that stated,

“Someone took out your womb.  You gave them this power, and you knew it would not heal you.”

It is true.  I ran towards surgery at a determined speed.  I made the appointments, I talked to the doctors.  “There is more,” she whispered.  My intuition.  I did not want to hear her. So I locked it away.   I carried that intuitive knowledge around, smothered under a thick blanket of denial and simplicity  as I slipped on paper gowns.  Endured ultrasounds.  Vaginal exams.  Blood work.    I met with the surgeon, and walked out, turning the music up loud in the car to drown out the doubt, the voice that began speaking louder, “get another opinion.  She is not experienced enough.  This will not heal you.  It is more.”

I clung to the diagnosis.  It felt good to have something with letters and sounds to define my experience.  A name.  Adenomyosis.  Simple.  There is a physical discomfort.  There is a name for it.  We will surgically remove the offending part.  We will sew you back together.  You will experience great pain.  And then you will heal and it will be over.  I loved this idea.  It needed to be true.  I would make it true by going through with it.

Wounds heal.  I wanted healing.  If I had to give away a piece of me to do it, so be it.

 In my desperation for wholeness, I willingly ignored my screaming intuition…the deeper pain, the slow bleed that surrounded womanhood, hurts that needed much more than the scalpel of a surgeon.

For weeks after the surgery, I laid in a recliner, listening to the sounds of my family downstairs, their lives marching on as my layers of skin grew back together.  I slept.  And my dreams were filled with holes.  I woke and thought about what my body must do to shift and sift and fill the hole within me.  What my surgeon had to do to stop the slow, persistent bleed.  The belief that it would all be worth it, the pressure would be gone, the pain would heal, and it would be a distant memory was like holding water in my cupped palms.

Eventually it all ran out.

It’s been a year.  My parts have shifted, the hole filled, the bright purple line has faded from an angry purple to a more relaxed violet.   I have spent every day of this year healing.  From the hysterectomy.

 From the betrayal of my inner voice.

I was taught as a young child, that this inner voice was a gift from God.  A women must receive this gift from the priesthood powers of men.  I was taught that I must earn my worthiness, and that  worthiness would be determined by men in the church.  There were definitive measurements of my worthiness as a girl, before I could have this gift of the Holy Ghost within me, the still small voice.   And I was taught to use this gift as my most precious possession to guide me throughout my life.  I was also taught with great fear that I would lose this cherished gift if I did not receive guidance that matched those of my church leaders.  I could ask within myself, and their answers would always come to me.

I have always been aware of this pulse inside me.  The throbbing, persistent boom-boom-boom-boom of my heartbeat in my eyelids, my fingertips, the base of my throat, the top of my scalp.  The sensation is a drum beat, calling me to my truth.

My intuition is not a sleeping beast, needing poking and prodding to come alive.  It is a roaring beast, tantruming inside me, fighting to be heard.

My intuitive voice has never been hard for me to hear, but almost always terrifying to acknowledge.  Because the whispers, and persistent shouts of my inner voice have been in opposition to the voices of those that claimed to bestow me with this great spiritual gift.

Herein lies the bleed.  The tremendous heaviness.  The healing process is long and repetitive.   I am learning, ever so slowly, and not without pain, that  ignoring my own intuition has brought me into my darkest moments, and finally being brave enough to do what I feel called to do inside has been the light to guide me out of those dark times.

I signed the consent forms, I put on the paper gown, I laid my head on the hospital gurney, and I allowed a surgeon I did not fully trust take out my womb.  In the end, the adenomyosis was confirmed, and the offending part, the center of my womanhood, was taken out.  But in the process, I ignored the loud, intuitive voice that begged me to find a more experienced surgeon. So I could avoid the myriad of complications that have arisen since.   And I denied the voice that was begging me to stop denying the knowledge that there was already a slow, trickling bleed inside me.  A wound that no surgeon could heal.  There are emotional and spiritual wounds that  I was tired of addressing, so I chose to ignore them.

And now, I have the outer scar to remind me.  And maybe, that is what needed to be.  A tattoo, calling me to this healing:

We all have the tremendous, powerful gift of intuition.

-I am a woman, and women are powerful.

We are all worthy of this gift.  Always.  Worthiness is an inherent birthright.

-I am worthy.  I have always been worthy.

The ability to connect with one’s inner knowledge gets stronger with consistent practice.

-No one can give or take away this ability from me.

No other person can provide you with answers.  If you are seeking to only confirm what others have found to be their truth, you are denying yourself access to your own inner wisdom.

-I can trust myself.  The answers are within me.   

 

One must be open.  It is easy to be blinded by desire, or the need to be safe, or the need to please others.  There are many ways to be dishonest with one’s self.

-Living in defiance of my inner compass will leave me lost in the dark.

 

What Can You Know for Sure?

know

verb (used with object), knew, known, know·ing.

1.  to perceive or understand as fact or truth; to apprehend clearly and with certainty

2.to have established or fixed in the mind or memory

3.to be cognizant or aware of

4.be acquainted with, as by sight, experience, or report

5.to understand from experience or attainment

What do you know for sure?

My entire life has been driven by this question.   KNOW… the most powerful word that exists in mormon culture.  When I say or even think this word, I hear the definitive crack of a slamming of a gavel.   It is done.

I left my faith because of the misuse and abuse of this word.

As a mormon girl, I ached to know.   I wanted it so much, the need swirled, undefined and cloudy within me until unmet, it settled itself into my bones.  Infused itself into my muscles and fibers and tissues.

“I know the church is true.”

“I know the scriptures are true.”

“I know Joseph Smith is a prophet of God.”

 These declarations of truth are scratched into my psyche. Imprinted.  The desire to make those words my own drove me to the brink of despair.  I followed all of the mormon formulas, but the words were not mine to profess.  To be surrounded by people with such concrete proclamations burrowed a deep well of failure inside me.

Once a month, mormon worship includes  holding an open mic testimony meeting, where members of the congregation go up the pulpit and declare what they know is true.

tes·ti·mo·ny

 [tes-tuh-moh-nee, or, esp. British, -muh-nee]  Show IPA

noun, plural tes·ti·mo·nies.

1. Law. the statement or declaration of a witness under oath or affirmation, usually in court.

2. evidence in support of a fact or statement; proof.

3. open declaration or profession, as of faith.

4. Usually, testimonies. the precepts of God.

Although there is no script, the conditioning that begins in the preschool years leads to the inclusion of certain key phrases that most people use while “bearing their testimony.”  It almost always begins with

“I’d like to bear my testimony…I know the church is true.”

There is no age restriction, so usually the open mic hour will begin with children in the congregation.   Parents will lead their toddlers and preschoolers up to the mic, hoist them onto their hips, or let them stand invisible behind the thick wooden lectern.  They whisper the words to their tiny children.  The little ones must hold their breath with the strain of listening to their mom or dad’s sentences, which they repeat in a breathy burst.

I know this church is true…

I know the scriptures are the words of God…

I know Heavenly Father loves me.

In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Then the adults get up.  They will often tell a story to illustrate their “knowing.”  They often cry.  I remember my mother’s soft hands, twisting tissues around her fingers, dabbing her eyes.  She is moved to tears with ease.  My father, sitting straight and attentive, was less emotive.   Neither of my parents brought me to the pulpit.  I never felt their lips and their breath tickling my ear, feeding me their words to declare.  They did not pressure me as I got older to participate in this public ritual.  I felt weak with relief that they never required it of me.  But, the opportunity to “bear your testimony” was presented with great regularity throughout my upbringing.  Sunday school, scripture studies, youth activities, church camp, and family gatherings.  I have witnessed my grandmother, aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, parents, mentors and friends all tearfully bear their testimony throughout my life.

My best friend through middle school and high school was not a mormon girl.  She was delightfully agnostic, and her life was not an internal storm of powerful statements and concepts  (God, testimony, truth, sacred, salvation, purity, modesty, worthiness).   She came with me to a youth overnight camp for teens ages 14 + when we were juniors in high school.   It was one of the few times I ever invited her to a church activity.  At the end of the overnight trip, there was a testimony meeting.  I sat next to her, feeling as if I might erupt with expectation, as one by one, my peers and friends got up and declared their testimony.  My friend began elbowing me, urging me to get up and do it.  “Go.  Go.”  She prodded after each teenager sniffled their way back their seat.  She wanted me to do it, she wanted to hear what it was that I knew.  I shook my head in refusal, and finally,  I turned in my seat and caught her eyes.  I let her see it, for just a brief flash…the devastation I felt in not knowing.

I decided to give the mormon church one last chance when I was a young student teacher, writing to a mormon missionary whom I felt I was falling in love with.  I wanted the door to be opened to me… the door that seemed to close me off from the knowing that my family and peers all spoke of so reverently… I had been knocking until my knuckles bled, and the mantle of shame, being shut out of this special place, was crushing.

I read the Book of Mormon.  It took a while, because every few verses I would be overcome by doubt.  I would read a passage and feel resistance.  I would drop to my knees every few minutes and plead with Heavenly Father to release me from the doubts, to open my heart.  To let me in.  A steady stream of tears dripped from the end of my nose onto the flimsy pages of text.  I finished the whole book this way, reading, weeping, pleading, praying.

I waited for the affirmation that what I read was “true.”  I waited for the burning in my heart, the warmth and knowledge that had been declared to me by everyone I loved.   It was a knowing I would not be granted.

It could not be formed out of my desire.

Over the weekend, Rick and I  watched the fifth Harry Potter movie with my girls.  In the story, Harry has to write “I must not tell lies”  on a sheet of paper with a magic quill.  As he does this, the words are painfully etched into his flesh.  When he asks how many times he must write the words, the professor responds, “Until it leaves a mark.”

There did not need to be a magic quill like Harry’s to wound me, only the continual and absolute declaration of truth and knowledge by everyone important to me…and their insistence that my inability to join them was my own retched failings.  The etched over words “I know this church is true” were not a delicious imprint, but a searing scar I carried.

They had left their mark.

I was never allowed to shape my own personal testimony.  There is only one answer to  arrive at… the church is true. How is a child supposed to explore and come to their own ideas about God, spirit, worthiness, sacrifice, scripture, and prayer, when the answers are whispered into their ears, etched into their souls since infancy, and kept there with the fear of losing their culture, their identity, the acceptance of their people?  The notion that what one knows to be personal truth should also be accepted or can be experienced as universal truth is limiting, damaging, and confining.  People need opportunity to explore who they are free of shame and fear.  Children must not be spoon fed what we feel is our truth.  It is our job to be witnesses to the unfolding of their own knowing. To present all the possibilities we can and watch with fascination as the differences and similarities emerge.

What do you know? What IS knowing?

I have known things.  That knowing came in a flash of recognition, the way a deep breath fills your lungs and then is carried into every organ, every tissue, every cell, through your beating heart.

When I comb through my life for the most significant moments, KNOWING are the shimmering stones on my pathway.  The moments I KNEW.   They vibrate with tension and energy….  The moment I knew I would marry Rick.  The moment I knew I was pregnant.  The moment I knew the force of a mother’s love.  The moment I knew that I must look for my own knowing.   The moment I knew I must reclaim myself.

The only thing that we can truly know is ourselves.  Knowing oneself is a work that spans a lifetime of inquiry and analysis and forgiveness and fortitude, and what I believe, is the purpose of our life.

To know oneself, is to know God.

“He who knows others is wise; he who knows himself is enlightened.”  – Laozi