Saying GoodBye to the Uterus I Never Used

You’d think that by the time a woman reached the ripe wise age of 61, that she would be at peace with innumerable realities including the glaringly obvious such as not being able to bear a child. The door was closed years ago for the potential of birth.

And yet, when I learned that both my Nurse Practitioner and Oncologist wanted to take my Uterus and all of its accessories my first response was, “but those are my girl parts.” Yes, of course, I know that what makes me female is way beyond my uterus but we, my uterus and I, had never had a complete conversation about our relationship.

I had been pregnant in my ignorant youth but knew enough about my own ineptness and out of control environment to make the decision to terminate. Barely in my twenties, I did this three times over a three year period. Back in the late seventies my friends and I didn’t talk about the impact of my decisions. Each time I was struck to the core by the miracle of life starting in me and simultaneously scared to death that birth would not only repeat the dysfunction of my life but also perpetuate its continuation into the next generation.

Three times I promised my uterus that it would be able to fulfill the potential of its creation and three times I whisked it away before the process had engaged fully.

A month after my last pregnancy, I further traumatized my body when I fell asleep at the wheel and drove off an overpass. Ribs were broken, jaws wired shut, ankles pinned and a pseudocyst developed which enveloped my stomach like an airbag to protect it from further damage. Six months later during a Christmas visit with my family in Belgium, I had emergency surgery to remove, by then, a gargantuan cyst. They also took my spleen, the tip of my pancreas and some of my intestines.

Maybe that was the reason my ovaries were not able to fully form a follicle afterward. After one month of fertility drugs and raging hormones, my husband and I agreed to leave it up to the Universe as to whether I got pregnant or not.

I never did.

As much as any part of my poor abused body deserves amends regarding my crazy life choices, my uterus certainly deserved a dose of love and thanks. Even if every single period was painful from fibroids, my uterus remained hopeful. Someday that white knight of non-existence would ride in and remove all deficits to allow a thriving life to take hold.

The battle I had about the life I wished I’d led and the life I actually lived, played out in the theater of my womb. Now as I sit on the healing side of a full hysterectomy the echos of longing from my uterus can still be felt. The shadow puppets of love not actualized, at least where the womb is concerned.

Perhaps where I can focus my thoughts now is on all the work I’ve done through 12-step programs, therapy and other points of self-realization with the help of a Higher Power. Over time, I’ve learned how to consciously activate my maternal love on all kinds of people who didn’t come from my body!!

Still, the relationship with my uterus has definitely come to an end. No fantasy dream possible unless years down the road, a synthetic womb is created that can carry a fertilized egg to birth.

Now I get to fully wear the body of a woman in their sixth decade and allow my soul and heart to fully expand with no edges stuck in the shadows.