Did you know that you actually started your life inside your grandmother?
I know that’s a mind-bender isn’t it? The egg that eventually became you was inside the ovaries of your mother while she was a fetus inside your grandmother’s womb. I didn’t learn this until my mid-30s. There are a lot of mysteries about the female body that I never learned growing up.
Looking back I can say with certainty - if I had learned *real truths* about my body earlier, I would have had an easier time navigating the confusing world of puberty, menstruation, and my first sexual encounters. If I had learned even a few simple things back then, I would have had more reverence for the amazing female body. I also likely would have felt less disempowered by the changes that happened as I entered adolescence.
I probably wouldn’t have had such crushingly painful periods that persisted, I would have known what the symptoms meant, and thus what I needed to change.
I wouldn’t have been embarrassed and surprised every time my period came during a basketball game, I would have known when it was coming.
I wouldn’t have been so dissociated from the sensations in my pelvis about danger, and would have known the cues of my true ‘gut instinct’.
Instead of wishing I was a boy who didn’t have to deal with all this mess, I could have known how to celebrate my body’s ability to release and create anew each month.
Instead of feeling crazy while trying to fit into programs that were the same every day, which was not how I experienced life, I could have known how to live in harmony with my cyclical body.
There’s a huge gap for most adult women in these areas as well. Many women I see in my Living Pelvis practice do not know how to heal their cycles, how to live in rhythm with them, and how to harness their innate superpowers. Instead, they end up feeling depressed, broken, and exhausted, with only western gynecology solutions like birth control pills and invasive surgeries.
Many of these solutions seem, okay I’ll say it, barbaric to me, knowing what I know, and what Traditional Chinese Medicine and Folk Gynecology have been teaching for thousands of years. These holistic and empowering reproductive health models existed waaaaay before the invention of western models.
Now, before we get our panties in a bunch about how western medicine saves lives - because I know it does, we all do - it’s been beaten into our heads every time a woman survives labor because of a cesarian procedure… I want to make the point that our traditions of women’s folk medicine have been all but erased - on purpose - so that we are reliant on a system of control and profit.
We need to wake up. They’ve got us on the ropes. We are being humiliated and pathologized, spoken to as if we are broken or dirty, and then profited upon with ‘cures’ that have 10x more side-effects and very poor success rates, if they are even studying long-term outcomes at all.
I’m saying it wasn’t always this way. We used to have wise women and healers in every community, rituals and spaces around menstruation, child loss, and childbirth that were empowering. There are still many cultures around the world where women’s folk medicine lives and breathes, and it’s making a comeback.
I’m saying we can learn about how our bodies work, learn about simple and effective self-care practices, and teach our children how to revere their female bodies - and overcome the narrative of being Damsels in Distress needing rescuing, in the first place.
There are some very simple ways to become cycle savvy, to learn about the wisdom in your menstrual cycle, learn how to heal yourself, and prevent major invasive procedures. Things I can teach you in a 2 hour workshop. Folk Gynecology and Traditional Chinese Medicine Gynecology practices that if you begin to implement them, could help you return your fertility, stop having painful and irregular menstrual cycles, and potentially avoid worst-case-scenario procedures as your only option.
The key to all of this: you have to be willing to stop making your body into an enemy
You have to be willing to slow down and listen inward, and most importantly, to REST.
You have to be willing to gather up your inner teen, smooth her hair, hold her hands, and care for her like you, perhaps, weren’t.
We can change the game for ourselves and empower our lineage with this vital information, right down to the future ancestors in our ovaries.
Join me tomorrow for an online workshop - Sunday, March 19th 1-3pm EST | $20 - Body Literacy for Teens.
This is for you if you have an inner teen who, like me, was overlooked at a pivotal moment of reproductive development.
This is for you if you are a mother who wants to empower her daughter - at any age.
This is for you and your daughter to attend together, to bridge a gap and build deep trust about having conversations that matter.
This is for any woman, any age, who wants to learn about the magic and mystery of her female physiology.
love love,
Sarah WM