It is that time of the year when we remember our mothers, and I want to share a story with you. As I started the journey of healing my body, I had to take a deep look at my family history to figure what similar experiences my family members had to determine what “normal” looks like.
My mother had eight pregnancies. Three healthy babies, a miscarriage, a still birth, then three more. When I asked her about how the pregnancies were, she was able to account each one. Her miscarriage was very difficult. Just after the thought of baby #4 brought more joy than fear, she was at the hospital with the retained products of conception (RPOC). Baby #5 stopped moving in her womb. Even though the doctors could no longer hear the heartbeat, she carried the baby two more weeks until her water broke. The baby never came home, but my mother did. She had another three babies.
I always thought I’d have just as many, but after two pregnancies and two healthy babies, the universe repeated told me no more. This last fight with the universe removed the possibility of carrying another pregnancy for good by deciding to have a hysterectomy, and this journey is slowly healing my entire being. My baby #1 was a surprise, not because I was in a bad situation, but because I was just starting out. I was a baby and even though I knew how to keep a baby alive, there was still so many things that I didn’t know. We grew together. We learned together. We survived together.
Baby #2 was the complete opposite. They were planned, and they still had me guessing and learning and just trying to do what I could to keep them alive. They were only a couple months old when they learned how to slide down the stairs on their tummy. We learned together. We played together. We started to thrive together, and then my body started to shut down. Not all at once, but slowly over about 150 monthly cycles.
Each month as my body would expel the lining of my uterus, some of these cells would escape the exodus and started to make camp outside of uterus and within the uterine walls. The next cycle would happen and the hormones would interact with this tissue along with the new lining and the process would continue, slowly building up an increase of all this tissues in places where it shouldn’t be. My amazing OB-GYN, who heard my concerns and really listened to my needs (a process of going through MULTIPLE OB-GYNs over 13 years), laid out my options and together we made a plan of care.
You see individuals with a uterus have this crazy super power to carry life and death in our bodies at the same time, but the only individual who truly knows which is occurring at any given time is the individual in possession of the uterus. It is not a matter that we take lightly either. Whether we are praying for a child that we don’t know yet, praying for the children in our lives, or praying for the grace to go through life without giving birth, each one of us approaches the possibility of life and death at least once a month. The answer of whether it is life or death is only up to the individual in possession of the uterus.
Right now there are a lot of people trying to make it more difficult for individuals with a uterus to get the care they need, and what it really comes down to is a matter of resource management. Whomever owns the uterus owns the future, and because of this individuals with a uterus are bought, sold, and traded. They are manipulated, controlled by fear, and repeated forced to look into the face of their children, only to be reminded of the individual who took their power away from them.
It is Mother’s Day in the United States. It is easy to say that our mothers are free, but unless they are free to say “no” without the fear of repercussions then are they really free? Freedom to act means the freedom to be still. You cannot have one without the other. Either all people are free to make their own choices or equality is a fallacy.
Happy Mother’s Day and remember to vote for your mother’s right to choose.
Storyteller Energy 