Broken Heart, Broken Cervix
The epidemic of unnecessary butchery in modern gynecology and obstetrics
Every day in my practice I speak with women about their pussies, cervixes and wombs, and the intense treatment they’ve received in a world that doesn’t honor their female gifts.
It’s part of living in this dystopia, disconnected from earth and lunar rhythms, to have abnormalities with our cervixes and wombs. We are grasping to cope with modernity and it’s toxic load. Even the most health conscious and holistic among us struggles to maintain reproductive vitality.
Yet women’s bodies are heavily pathologized by western gynecology, as if the body is the problem. Potential Cancer, they say. It’s like they made this devious button they can push that will make us forget our minds with fear. The”C” button. Extreme surgical measures are suggested to women, playing on their fear. Colposcopy, LEEP, Hysterectomy, Cesarian. Very risky band-aids that often lead to further dysfunction.
The complete lack of interest as to WHY the body is growing abnormal cells on the cervix, WHY the menstrual cycle is painful and erratic, WHY the body is growing uterine lining cells outside the uterus, appalls me. Every day new ‘ism’s are invented because somehow naming things makes the diagnosis real… to convince us that we are broken and need to be fixed by their solutions.
Then that pathology is adopted as an identity.
“I have endometriosis”, she says, like a prison sentence.
When women ask their providers why the most important system in the female body is seemingly malfunctioning, it’s blank stares. Western gynecology doesn’t know why, it doesn’t study that or give a shit about it, all that matters is how can they profit from women being sick. They make us believe in a broken system with fear.
The allopathic system of gynecology is predatory. There I said it.
I’m not saying all people within the system are predators. I am saying the machine of western ‘healthcare’ is, and it’s designed that way intentionally by a few men at the top. It’s masked quite intelligently so that most people carrying out the design do not see this. One way it’s masked is with authority. It’s a patriarchal design that puts certain people (the insurance companies, the lawyers, the bankers, the hospital CEO, the big fertility industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the DOCTOR…) in a hierarchy above others, above women.
Another way is dismissal. Women are dismissed, scoffed at, told they are imagining it, and that their bodies aren’t trustworthy.
Medicine isn’t researching the WHY, because if we solve the root problems that plague women, that would remove a massive income stream. The top two surgeries performed on women have to do with their uteruses being ‘faulty’: cesarian and hysterectomy.
We live in a culture that has normalized this. It’s heartbreaking to me. This vital-spiritually-charged-portal-organ, is often unnecessarily removed or cut open, often out of convenience for a complacent medical authority, with little to no regard for the life-long consequences for the woman (or immediate consequences for that matter.)
Quoted in the Los Angeles Times, NWHN Executive Director Cindy Pearson says, “I advise any woman who is not in a life-threatening situation to see someone else besides a surgeon to explore nonsurgical options first.”
The NWHN believes that unnecessary hysterectomies have put women at risk needlessly and that health care providers should recognize the value of a woman’s reproductive organs beyond their reproductive capacity and search for hysterectomy alternatives before resorting to life-changing operations.
From the National Women’s Health Network:
Removal of the uterus and ovaries at a young age (early forties and younger) may increase the risk of a heart attack, stroke, and (even when ovaries are not removed) the chances of experiencing an earlier menopause. Hysterectomy has also been associated with urinary problems, such as increased frequency of urination, incontinence, fistula, and urinary tract infections; sexual function problems, such as a decrease in sexual sensations and lack of lubrication; depression or psychological stress (stemming from feelings associated with losing reproductive organs); hormone deficiencies (which may be caused by removal of the ovaries), or a decrease in blood supply to the ovaries. There is not enough consistent evidence to know what the effects that a hysterectomy has on sexual function.
Stats on hysterectomy:
About half a million hysterectomies are performed each year in the U.S.
Approximately 20 million American women have had a hysterectomy.
By the age of 60, more than one-third of all women have had a hysterectomy.
Urinary incontinence and vaginal prolapse are well known adverse effects that develop with high frequency from hysterectomy.
Approximately 35% of women after hysterectomy undergo another related surgery within 2 years.
Why are women’s uteruses sick?
I think it’s because women are heartbroken. Our earth is being destroyed by patriarchy, capitalism, war, greed, and we feel powerless. We are losing connection with our mother, the earth, and we’re suffering for it.
What’s more, the medical and gynecological systems want to separate women from their power. They want us subservient and disconnected, and the best way to achieve that is to remove the seat of our power, to douse our creative fire, to cut up or cervixes, and cut out our uteruses.
The cervix senses this danger.
In Norway, the uterus is directly translated as “life mother”. The cervix is the “life mother spout”. The spout at the center of life force energy, the creative portal, the vessel that births all human life.
Cut it out.
How could we actually be at the point where this is normalized? Where is the curiosity of mind-body connection, of the psycho-somatic-spiritual causes of reproductive dysfunction?
From my sister Carly Rae Beaudry:
I’ve walked the path of horrendous periods and still do experience pain some months. My pain levels used to get so high I puke, faint, could barely move, explosive diarrhea and felt like my asshole was going to fall out of me. I experienced bleeds like this month after month for years. It’s truly incredible how loud the body needs to be to get our attention sometimes.
Not once did I think, “fuck it I’m cutting out my uterus.”
My uterus will stay in my body and decompose in the ground with me when I die.
We are at this point because the men in the white jackets have told us that we are broken. They say, cervix you are broken, obsolete, peripheral. Uterus, you too.
We are at this point because for the last 150 years we have been systematically heartbroken, beaten down, and humiliated by obstetrics and gynecology.
We are at this point because we forgot there was another way. Before, when well-woman care was administered by women.
Every day I lay my loving hands on female bodies that have been cut open by scalpels unnecessarily, and the women were told it was their only choice.
I’m enraged. IT MAKES ME FUCKING CRAZY.
Women, maimed for life. Dishonored by their providers, missing their breasts and uteruses and cervixes. Because the men of the patriarchy believe them to be inferior and insignificant.
Women’s bodies are becoming sicker snd sicker, the more power the western medical machine gets. How does it get it’s power? From us.
We give it away.
In my office I hold space for women to feel their outrage, to wail and weep, to scream and scorn, to grieve their losses, and to reclaim their bodies. We feel goddamnit, and we become alive again. We take our power back.
We must take it back.
If we allow ourselves to feel the heartbreak, the cervix doesn’t have to hold it all down. She’s clamping the spout closed so hard she’s locked off, desensitized, numbed, or screaming in pain, or growing cysts and fibroids…
It’s truly incredible how loud the body needs to be to get our attention sometimes.
All that “pathology” - it’s just your sweet sacred body p l e a d i n g for your attention and care.
What is your body doing RIGHT down there, to get you to wake up, to take your power back, to embody your Living Pelvis?
What if none of it’s wrong? What if the endometriosis is really happening because your uterine lining is so toxic from never completing a full uterine cleanse in your life, that your body is trying to grow new uteruses elsewhere in your pelvis? What if your pelvis is so full of heartbreak that your body has to grow fibroids to hold the grief safely locked away? What if you’re so angry that your body boils up cysts to contain all that acidic rage?
There is so much wisdom to uncover, when you slow down and listen to the heartbreak you’re feeling. Please, don’t keep pushing it down, your body is brimming over with it.
Your cervix is heartbroken, that’s all.
The helplessness we all feel at the impossible task of turning this ship around, it’s going to make you want to shut down, to stop feeling, to numb out. And they are giving you every opportunity to do so, with the endless dopamine-stimulating social media hooks, the pills, and the ‘simple surgeries’… but you must resist, sister!
The overwhelm you may feel at peeking into that well of grief deep inside your pelvis, it’s going to make you want to take their advice… to just cut it out.
But sister, please resist. Please know that you’re not alone. That there’s one small step to take, and another after that, and with each step you take on your journey of reclamation, of sovereignty, you feel lighter and more brave.
And if you were bamboozled and you opted for their advice, and you lost your life mother, and you cannot fathom the repair needed… take a breath, you’re also not alone, we have you. We are holding you tenderly, and loving your scars, and reminding you that the energy of your beautiful parts are still within you. Keep feeling, keep pouring your loving energy back into your body and feel.
We gotta feel the heartbreak to heal the heartbreak. To heal our wombs and cervixes. We gotta safeguard our sacred bodies. We gotta stand together and resist the fear tactics that steal our dignity.
Women’s bodies are where we all came from, and whether you choose to bring life into the world or not, as a woman, you have that power. It’s ferocious and feral and fecund and beautiful and ugly and contains life and death and all the miracles!
Women are a force to be reckoned with because we can hold all of that, we are built to love fiercely, and we are capable of rising from the ashes after loss. We hold life and death in our bodies. We are magic.
If you want to embody your living pelvis, to heal, to have space-holding and route-finding support, I am opening my calendar back up in the New Year to offer Womb Wisdom Immersive Mentorships. Applications are open, see more here.
Loving you so deeply,
Sarah WolfMother