Ode to the Memory of my Womb

A Poetic Post-Hysterectomy Reflection

A portrait of me before the surgeries, at my renaming ceremony. By Emily Shotwell

Preamble

Beneficiary of ancestral legacy, benefactor of progenic life.

My womb served and loved me with honor and grace, to a depth far beyond commonplace.

She burst forth within me as a babe, excised from my mother’s own, violently but urgently a pubic hair’s breadth from ending us both.

Breech and placenta previa, all that could alleviate my mother’s agony, prevent our joint demise, and save our lives was the sharp end of a surgeon’s knives.

Life in the balance, I’m grateful for the concoctions that ushered mother’s slumber and anesthetized her body.

Yet forceful removal leaves a scar. Honorable badge by far, resented by legions of matriarchs and birth giving beings. I worship the scar that saved my mother and me.

Separation

My mother’s womb can weave her tale, as here ours do diverge. No longer one, we separate — so I’ll regale and splurge.

Dormant a dozen trips around the sun before my lady in waiting awakens. The first whisper of impending womanhood from my womb celebrated with mama as a joyous rite of passage.

The message clear that I was different, now magically mature. My modern ritual rites replete with my first denim miniskirt, and my first grownup bra. Oh I knew I was a woman now. Transition appropriately honored, my fertile womb and I set forth on our newfound path into the great unknown.

Crescendo

Five year climb, expanding pain, cycling unlike my peers. Nights of anguish, restroom gore, oceans of my tears. Ruined sheets and clothes and trips, burdened with a pain score ten. Longing for my ending days, never knowing when.

Sweet oral contraceptive, sister friend, galloping by steed. Made life worth living again, slowing down the speed. She slowed the flow, eased my woe, and regulated length. Her power gave me eagles wings, I cherished my new strength. Champion athlete, academic star, artist extraordinaire. Victories seem inseparable, life unbearable save for her reproductive care.

Multiplication

Not all wombs bear fruit. Not all people want produce. I longed for a fruitful garden and conception was available to me, until it wasn’t.

1x (1+1)

Conceived a son on my first time with a man I hadn’t known long. I sensed my son the next morning and no, I was not wrong. My boy, now man, my gift of god — so kind, and smart, and strong. I could not be more proud of him, He’s still my heart’s sweet song.

2x (3+1)

No time to cycle, 17 months later, my nonbinary femme. She/them. She came to earth via home birth. Water labor near my bed. Doula (Thérèse!!), midwife (Nancy!!) altered my whole life.

I became unstoppable when I caught my baby at at her birth, which I had planned. Bob Marley and his band, candles, and the comfort of my home. “No Woman, No Cry” became my birth anthem as I roared like a lion. Agency and dignity in tact, I knew after for a fact, hypermedicalized birth is a crime — robbing parents of power in their vital hour. It’s reclamation time.

Some births (like my own) require intervention, but most truly do not. So I became a doula to proclaim the unknown word so people don’t get got. Empowered birth is all that counts, you should get what you want. And my child will now change the world — my beautiful savant.

3x (4–1) + (3–1)

Chose loss twice. One abusive spouse and one pregnancy unviable. Choices vital to my life and to my survival.

Love returned and my final living child joined us 8 years after the last. My, how she came fast! 17 minutes flat and… kersplat! My feisty final filmmaking phenom. Renaissance baby took the world by storm. She tackles art in every form with genius beyond the greats. I cannot wait to cheer her as she her mark she makes. A spark of delight as she takes flight, and me, I lose my womb.

4x (4+1)(6x-6)

My three children and I married a final time, a man of wild domesticity. I provided in my masculine and he in his femininity. Traditional roles be gone, so I won the bread and he baked it — and we mostly got along.

Great until we were a mess and failed in union to conceive. A reflection of the deeper rooted rot of incompatibility. 6 miscarriages in 3 years nearly broke me. Needles, tests, hormones, scans, assurances, disappointments and post (miscarriage) partum depression. Post divorce I became a death doula for people who lose babies, pregnancies and children.

Seven

Life cycle. Life path. Losses. Years from last divorce to hysterectomy.

All of my cells have turned over. My womb has been released. This is not what schools teach. We learned mitosis and meiosis not endometriosis.

Add hysterectomy to IBS-C, gluten free, depression/anxiety, ADHD and woe is me. The list of disabilities includes seven more I cannot cure but do not claim nor always name in ways that test my capacity to manifest more pain. To what gain? But yes, they exist according to those who persist with diagnosis. No limits on my mind, so I find ways to pull through and make the best of what’s left on every good day.

Seven. Tiny spirit guides reside by my side. The infants lost were really gained after the pain of letting go of my attachment to what I wanted. I needed more angels to hold me through life and they do.

Seven. Days since my womb was removed. My colon unfused from my vaginal wall, unfused from my uterus. Answers to the excruciating pain from menses to menopause. Sure, I was diagnosed with stage 4 at age 23 and refused sterilization as reparations for the ones who were forced. 25 years I chose to go on, and my final child and angel squad would not be here had I complied.

The surgeon untied a knot in my bowel, repaired a prolapsed consequence of vaginal birth, biopsied the mass in my womb, and robotically excised 25 years of endometrial adhesions post stage 4 diagnosis. Prognosis TBD but as for me, my quality of life has already improved. Much healing to do. All is not resolved, more questions remain, results awaited, and I’m not on bated breath. I’m living life. I always have. I find out more in seven days.

Ancestors In My Cells

My cells spoke to me two days ago and told me they remember. They started with my womb, reminding me that everything is everything and that in this holographic universe all is One.

My cells and DNA hold space for my physical uterus in absentia. They spoke of her inextinguishable power. They reminded me that my wholeness is never incomplete and that my femininity and woman-ness is not defined by nor tethered to an organ.

Strange for my cells to tell of sex and gender when nonbinary is my choice of labels for ease of communication. Perhaps I’m lucky not to be dissociated from any aspect of gender identification. Mine happens to be expansive, and expensive and I glide between gender lines in expression and action undaunted.

Why are wardrobes gendered anyway? How about clothes and accessories for all shame-filled and non-shame filled humans with a legal obligation to cover their sexy bits and an aesthetic obligation to adorn themselves as they see fit?

My cells showed me the violence against thousands of wombs across time, my ancestors, both perpetrators and victims. I felt the crimes against my people in every violent form I will not fully enumerate here, but no gender or sex was spared. No familial bond sacred enough to be safe from the harms of men, steel, lash, law, lust, race, place, greed, or cruelty.

So no, I do not miss my uterus. I honor her and what she did for me, with me, as me. She was likely boggy and dysfunctional, like many of us, she had her good days and her bad. Her greatest achievements include an unbroken line of mitochondrial material ensuring Black feminine legacy that is the indisputable origin of humankind.

My womb may have expired, but my legacy as Black Elder Crone is just beginning.

Your Radiance, aka Ra’e

(The author formerly as Doc Jana)

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