An Ode to the Memory of my Womb
A Deeply Personal, Lyrical, Poetic Post-Hysterectomy Reflection
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.