Fibroids are a Call for Presence

Is the body calling for spiritual evolution, or is it just a random tumor?

Uterine Fibroids are not a pathology. They’re a Portal.

Take that in. Breathe into your belly and relax the tension you find there. Your body has been giving you big information (for years perhaps) that you haven’t known to listen for.

Uterine fibroids are a wake up call for my clients. An un-ignorable message from their most spiritual female roots to pay attention. It’s time to be present to whatever we have been burying.

Many women never hear of Fibroids until they experience the growth of one inside their bodies. It can be alarming to discover this tissue growth, varying in size from a pea to a melon. Years of fertility issues, pelvic pressure, painful sex, frequent urination, hormone disruption, heavy periods, and exhaustion suddenly have an explanation. Often the path to healing is far from clear once diagnosed.

According to the NIH, Uterine Fibroids are the most common benign pelvic tumors in women. Prevalence estimates range between 4.5% to 68.6% of women. I look at that range and wonder, what are the determining factors that these stats are based on, exactly? Does ethnicity play a role, access to fresh healthy food, genetics, family trauma history, childbirth? It’s not very precise for a government agency… especially one that regulates and dictates nationwide treatment protocols. But okay. I’m used to government health agencies disappointing me when it comes to women’s health. It’s fair to say that our medical system in the West doesn’t really know what causes fibroids or why.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine however, the uterus is known as the ‘second heart’, validating with thousands of years of study that women’s womb-spaces are a seat of emotional intelligence. When women override their internal wisdom due to survival patterns learned in childhood like people-pleasing or burying their emotions, the womb-heart must compensate. It must grow larger to house this energy. Or she must grow ‘pockets’ for it. This can result in FIBROIDS.

In my practice, I’ve seen patterns and similarities in the stories that women with fibroids tell me. I have observed that uterine fibroids are associated with the inhibited expression of emotions and creativity, particularly in relationships.

One client was trapped in an emotionally abusive marriage for 10 years while her son was a child. She was continually having to swallow her fright, frustration, and urge to flee, to provide stability for her son. She grew an 8cm fibroid to store the energy of grief she had accumulated. She felt safe enough to work with me once she had left her husband and could begin to unpack all she had endured. We worked at the pace her body told us to go, which was s l o w. Her fibroid is changing over time and is slightly softer, more mobile, and seems to be shrinking. We understand that it took over a decade to grow, and it might not be an overnight process to release it. She feels a sense of lightness around her fibroid, and feels gratitude growing for her body and its capacity to adapt and survive in emotionally toxic situations. She’s at peace with a holistic path and timeline.

Body literacy is a superpower.

Menstrual cycle imbalances show the first signals of mismanaged energy. The menstrual cycle is the 5th Vital Sign for a woman’s whole body health. Becoming body literate, and learning healthy vs. unhealthy function, women can discover early warning signs about their overall health, as well as specific organs and systems of the body. This is an autonomous superpower. I want this power for every woman and girl.

Biologically speaking, procreation is the female body’s first imperative. Whether females choose to have babies or not, or even chose to identify as Women or not, pregnancy is what we are designed for - because our ability to get pregnant and cary life is the only way that the species will continue. Millions of years of cells uniting and dividing brought us here to this moment, where suddenly we have the opportunity to choose, to some degree, whether we express this biological design.

Nonetheless, the body’s process of preparing for becoming pregnant each month is a herculean effort requiring harmony and flow in multiple dimensions. Our culture (and historically most cultures) has an unfortunate missing reverence for this responsibility and what it costs women.

Women therefore lack the knowledge to interpret the symptoms of their cycles, to know that if a woman’s menstrual cycle is too short or too long, if the blood is anything but bright red and evenly flowing, if there are clots or cramps or mood swings, this is important information! This dis-ease in the cycle can quickly or eventually spiral out and trigger other systems of the body to compensate.

And here’s what they won’t tell you at your annual with the OBGYN: most pathology can be detected and resolved by attuning to the reproductive and womb-heart connection. (See my last post about some nuances of this womb-heart connection.)

If you go to the gyno with complaints of brown blood, heavy flood bleeding, or vomiting due to pain during your period, you will likely be dismissed, given birth control pills, or offered to have your uterus cut out of your body. These are all possible early warning signs of fibroids by the way, but they will likely be missed.

We are operating under a false narrative that all women’s cycles are different, and that therefore it’s difficult to understand them. But there is a standard healthy cycle, or has been for the majority of human existence anyway, and we need to understand normal vs abnormal to understand these early warning signs.

This confusion about the existence of a healthy cycle is due to the lack of deeper research, inherent misogyny in the Western medical system, and the short-sightedness of the toxic impacts of modern life.

Fibroids are pockets for other imbalances too - they also store excess toxicity. When the body becomes laden with phytotoxins, microplastics, endocrine-disrupting chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and forever chemicals, it needs a place to store this material. This happens when the consumption of these pollutants overwhelms the capacity of the liver, lymph, skin, and monthly menstrual bleed to expel them. It’s common for the body to create storage by growing excess fat, cysts, and fibroids. This is not Normal, however.

Uterine Fibroids grow in several different ways, as the image below illustrates. I believe it’s useful for women to understand the anatomy, to visualize their fibroid in order to build a relationship and move towards releasing and healing the fibroid. If you have a fibroid, I do recommend going to the gyno to get an ultrasound image for this purpose.

Fibroid Types:

• Subserosal: Growing on the outside of the uterus and can extend into the pelvis

• Intramural: Growing within the muscle wall of the uterus

• Submucosal: Growing into the uterine cavity, in the muscle layer beneath the lining

• Pedunculated: Growing on stalks that extend into the uterine cavity or out from the surface of the uterus

Investigating the root cause

According to Western gynecology, fibroids are growths that do not belong, and therefore they take the approach that they must be eliminated, often before doing the delicate work of understanding the root cause of why they grew in the first place. It is taught in every institution to approach these tumors with several means including, birth control pills, IUDs, oral pharmaceuticals, and surgical procedures including hysterectomy, uterine ablation, myomectomy, artery embolization, and more.

Often, attempts to remove fibroids result in other problems, in addition to the possibility that they might grow back. When you ask a gynecologist or surgeon why, they cannot tell you. They know pathology markers, what surgery or pharmaceuticals they are trained to offer, but don’t seem to be interested in the long-term efficacy of their recommendations. They don’t know the root causes and don’t care to consider anything psycho-spiritual or emotional. They do not believe in the perfection of women’s reproductive design. Many believe it’s just a random growth.

The female body does not grow fibroids randomly or by mistake. This is an intelligent adaptation. There is a reason, and to truly heal, deep investigation is necessary.

I have a client who underwent a hysterectomy (the surgical removal of her vital uterus) at the suggestion of her doctor. She came to me with complications they never warned her of - bladder prolapse and incontinence - preventable tragedies all too familiar for women who have this procedure without healing their root cause. I suspect she had undiagnosed fibroids, due to the family of origin abuse she suffered, and her symptoms of extreme heavy bleeding before the surgery. She wept tears of betrayal and regret over losing her uterus, for never having her care providers ask her deeper questions about her symptoms, because when I did she instantly knew it was all true. The physical and emotional shock of losing her organ (and the fibroid pocket she grew to hold her trespass story) was too much for the rest of her pelvic tissues to withstand. We worked through her pelvic timeline, and held her through the grief and loss she endured all the way back to her childhood. We worked with her tissues to release scar tissue, regain supplicity and revive the nerves and blood flow patterns. It took time and diligence, but eventually her pelvis released tension, scar tissue melted, and bladder returned to its rightful place.

Healing fibroids at the root is slow and steady.

When clients do this deeper healing work with me, they often discover feelings of anger, resentment, betrayal and disappointment are held in their fibroids. These emotions stem from an overarching lack of freedom and sovereignty. Somatic practices that support and release these emotions and create safely greatly impact the fibroids' stagnation and rigidity.

There are also many food and lifestyle approaches to consider, including dietary and food-based habits, bad seed oils that mimic estrogen, unstable metabolism, nutrition and mineral deficiency, sluggish elimination channels, unhealed sexual trespass history, and exercise not focused on building muscle.

The movement of tissues is imperative for the liberation of fibroids. We want tissues to become mobile and supple, for nerves and blood vessels to free up, for the waters and lymph and energy to flow, and for vital essence to be restored. This process of enlivening the fibroid can lead to the shrinking, and eventually dissolving the fibroid entirely.

I believe fibroids are a consequence of years or decades of repression and toxicity. Initially, they usually grow slow, so it can take time to clear them. Occasionally, they can grow rapidly if they gain momentum, or if a woman is exposed to a heavy dose of emotional or environmental toxicity, but usually not. I believe in a slow and steady protocol to support the shrinking of the fibroid, especially within a container that offers psycho-spiritual support that accompanies.

Western medicine approaches can seem appealing because they promise “quick results”. Yet, there are many looming disadvantages of taking that shortcut including:

• The release of all that toxicity back into the body

• Failure to reconcile the held emotions

• No integration or safe containers

• Fibroids returning

• Dangers of anesthesia and surgery

• Infection

• Scar tissue

• Abdominal trauma

• Perforated organs

• Unsuspecting unsanctioned hysterectomy

We are not cadavers.

Medicalized reproductive care robs women of important rites of passage from birth to death. When our only options are to medicate or surgically remove fibroids, there are no opportunities to Mother our inner Maidens who have been wronged, no container to work with the ancestral lineages that our mothers passed on to us, no opportunity to learn discipline and self-care, or to reclaim our health by our own hands and reap the rewards of knowing ourselves deeply. At every turn, we are bullied into giving our power away to institutions, agencies, and corporations that are bent on keeping us unwell, and filling their coffers.

Western medicine is amazing for acute injury, and I will go in that direction if I ever get into a car accident or have a crisis. But it is failing women in all walks of life by pathologizing female biology.

We are not cadavers, we are not small men, nor inanimate flesh that can be cut and rearranged. We alone hold the power to birth life through our bodies. We bridge the ever-growing chasm between human and divine. Our fascia hold the memories of our grandmothers. Our organs have extra-dimensional intelligence.

Our entire being expresses itself through ‘symptoms’ as a way to keep us on course with our unique agreements in this life. There is so much we don’t know. So much to magic we are yet to discover (or remember?), if we promise to listen to our own body wisdom.

My hope with this essay is to encourage women far and wide who have been diagnosed with Uterine Fibroids, or who may one day be, to stand in your power. This is a brilliant opportunity to evolve. Your body, nay your SOUL is begging you stop burying your voice, to come out with your truths, to let go of these resentments, and to live a life that is authentic to you. For the sake of your daughters and nieces. In honor of all the women who lived before you who could not. It’s TIME.

Blessings on your beautiful womb-heart, sister. I’m here for you if you need a guide.

Love, love

Sarah WolfMother