how my hysterectomy marked the start of a return to myself

my wild & unruly edge | plus Zoom link for our call tonight

Hi friends – for those of you new here – you’re so welcome – I’m an Irish writer and tender to many things living at the foothills of the Wicklow mountains in south eastern Ireland. I’m interested in exploring how it feels to write, hold and (m)other on this beautiful, tattered planet right now.

The beauty & bone community is a small (yet mighty) gathering of like-minded souls, determinedly fumbling towards a brighter future. You’d be so welcome to join us. For more info, check out the membership hub or click button below.

Tonight I’ll be talking with

Lindsay Johnstone

&

Chloe George

&

Caro Giles

about our relationship with our midlife bodies. It’s at 19:30 GMT, tonight 15 Nov on Zoom, here’s the link:

In preparation for this call Caro recently wrote about how she gets out of her head and into her body, sharing images of herself that capture how she is feeling into her wild, strong self. In her piece she shares photos of a body that she has come to be proud of, come to love. And it got me curious about the images that I have recorded on my phone. I flicked back through them yesterday, going back in particular to times around the birth of my last child, and my hysterectomy.

Here is my body on the night before I know I will give birth after 92 days in hospital. It is taken in the mirror of a hospital bathroom cubicle. My body is swollen, throbbing, expectant. I remember taking the photograph to mark both an end and a beginning. I remember being amazed at how changed my body seemed, how unfamiliar, I hadn’t seen it head to toe for many months, it surprised me. It felt alien to me then, I see its beauty now.

I have many photos too of my body in and around the time of my hysterectomy in 2021. I wanted to record my body before my uterus was removed. Capture the last blood that fell from it, picture it whole for the last time. I recorded it afterwards, too, bruised and a little swollen. I’m surprised looking at the photos now how little change has happened before and after. I remember the images as being more brutal than they now seem. I am also struck by the many photos I took of myself during my recovery. I don’t remember taking these. Images of my leg, my belly, an arm, my pale face in bed. Pictures of the parts of me. It is like I am exploring myself, putting myself (back) together.

Deciding to have my hysterectomy, the experience of listening to and understanding myself from the inside out and ultimately granting permission for this part of me to be removed was the start of my truly being part of my own flesh. I write more about this experience here. It is a journey that has continued since. It is a journey I think this midlife season is all about. Yes everything is a bit different, achy, less juicy down there, more lines, but for the first time I’m slowly allowing my body to be mine not something desired, or suckled from or needed in ways that involve giving or performing or exteriority.

I got my first tattoos in my 40’s. It was only then that I felt I knew my body enough, was comfortable enough in it, to mark it. I love them!

In my memoir I write a lot about the cartography of my body and the memories that have been carved and stained into me, that have blessed the topography of my skin; an unwanted touch, the sweaty weight of my baby’s head, a stone still in my elbow from a childhood fall. I write too about the subterranean emotional inner landscape of my body that I have for most of my life suppressed or ignored or been afraid of. My body feels now like a landscape I am slowly starting to reclaim the territory of.

my first hike after the surgery - I felt so free, no more pain!

Last night, driving over the mountains in the dark, the fog heavy, unable to see anything beyond what my headlights could cut through I listened to Bayo Akomolafe and

Katherine May

speak about the distance we place between us and the natural world, about how even when we speak of entanglement, we speak of a separation, a Cartesian divide that we want in some way, but which is a fallacy. It struck me that it is the same of our body and our mind. They are not separate. Listening to my womb before my hysterectomy was the beginning of me learning that the wisdom I needed was in this dark velvet place and not in my head.

I wrote recently about how I am conflicted about taking the HRT I take, about how it feels like a sticking plaster, a support not a solution. I do wonder am I suppressing messages my body wants me to hear. I think I probably am. If I’m honest with you, right now, mine is a body that is screaming at me, asking for things I’ve not granted, I’ve ignored, pushed through. I think of the conversation I had with Mari Kennedy about Samhain and the Cailleach that comes and tears everything apart, breaks it down. The Cailleach who, once her work is done, transforms into Brigid, and new life in spring. I feel I am being taken by the Cailleach. I feel much in my body and in my life is being torn down. But for the first time, ever, I think I am willing and able to listen, to take ownership, to fess up, to be kind enough and loving enough, fearless enough to allow that in. To allow in the wildness, the messiness, the crumbling, the destruction. To tend to it, mother it, meet it, get to know it, wear it from the inside. Because, at the same time, I also feel a strength and a bubbling power within that I have never felt before. It is not time to unleash it yet, but that time will come.

For now, taking the HRT, feels like a kindness rather than a failure. I feel I am listening enough to hear the messages that are getting through. It is a leg up, a support while I titrate myself back into the skin and bone, the corporeal glory of me. While I meet my wild and unruly edge.

What about you? Where are you at with you body right now? I’d love to hear in the comments below, or join us live for our conversation tonight. I’m really looking forward to seeing where our chat will lead. Here’s the link again:

Layla x