My lower belly has been numb for ten years
and other things women have normalized
I nearly choked on my salad when one of my friend’s told me her birth story.
“I tore straight through!,” she laughed, using her knife for emphasis, “And now I pee myself. But hey, we all do. It’s normal!”
At the time of this graphic lunch, I wasn’t only childless, but completely disinterested in anything having to do with children or motherhood. Honestly, I rejected womanhood in general. I was secretly thrilled to not have a period, despite the extreme measures it took to stop getting one.
Obviously things have tectonically shifted since that cloudy day in Los Angeles. Now, I’m the one wielding the knife for emphasis when explaining my fourth degree tear. Although I like using the term, “stem to stern” when describing my experience—perhaps because I live blocks from a marina.
The difference is, when I talk about my incontinence, I don’t capitulate to it being “normal.” Common, yes, normal, no.
In the years since my first pregnancy, I have dove deep into the world of the pelvic floor, core health, and women’s mental health. It’s all related and it blows my fucking mind how many dysfunctions women have been gaslit into thinking are “normal” and then told they are just being crazy when symptoms of those dysfunctions arise.
Like, the myriad C-section mamas who tell me they have zero sensation of what’s happening in their lower abdominals. One woman told me she hadn’t had any sensation there in ten years.
From a yogic perspective our abdomen is our third chakra, manipurna. It is our power source and sense of self. Interesting how so many moms report having lost themselves in motherhood.
You don’t even have to be a birthing parent to be told these lies. A friend was recently diagnosed with “menopausal rage.”
I don’t doubt that she’s feeling rage about entering menopause. We live in a country where youth is elevated and aging is considered shameful. A country where birth control (which makes your body think it’s pregnant 24/7) is the answer to any medical symptom a woman presents with, so by the time she gets to middle age, she feels like she’s been hit by a mack truck when her hormones naturally start shifting.
The men have probably stopped reading this by now (if not after that second line), scoffing “Bitches be crazy,” or some other belittling and diminishing joke that I hear all too regularly from my guy friends, and even my husband at times.
Women are not crazy.
This is all very real and it deserves to be shed light on, for the sake of our mental health and for the holistic wellness of our entire families (scoffing husbands included).
Alisa Vitti, author of Woman Code, writes, “many women fall into the trap of believing that suffering is an inevitable part of being born with a female body.”
Suffering is not normal. It really isn’t. But in order for us to find the freedom and lightness and health we all have a natural born right to, let’s dispel a few bullshit myths, shall we?
Like, is it “postpartum rage”? Or is it the shock of being thrown out of the hospital with zero paid family leave, the absence of a village, no medical support for healing post-birth, and the huge drop in hormones that occurs days after birth when you’re supposed to be nesting and recovering with your new baby, but many women are back to work or taking care of their households?
Is it “mom rage”? Or is it the lack of universal preschool, lack of affordable childcare, infantilized partners, unequal pay, and late-stage capitalism which says our worth is determined by our productivity?
Is it “menopausal rage”? Or is it a country that values youth and beauty above wisdom and aging? Or maybe it’s the utter lack of holistic health support for women as they go through a hormonal shift that lasts years.
Women should be angry. Moms should be angry. You should be angry.
Anger is not a bad thing. It’s activating. It’s how we catalyze change. Who cares if someone calls us a bitch or says we’re being “crazy”, if it means advocating for our right to health and wholeness?
None of this shit is normal and you deserve to feel healthy in every part of your beautiful body. Especially your mind.
Let’s all take a deep breath into our belly and lower abdomen and connect with this place of power and life-giving. Put your hands there. Feel it balloon with your inhale. Exhale fully, even squeezing the last bit out. Repeat this two more times.
It is your birthright to heal.
I love LOVE THIS!! After birthing eight children (naturally because, according to my kid’s dad, “women have been giving birth since the beginning of time. You don’t need any pain killers)
I was so young and so dumb. I didn’t know anything other than what I was told.
No, as I’m moving into menopause, I want my five daughters to know that normal is not what some
Men tell us. Normal is what our bodies tell us. We need to take back our bodies.
It's so hard to learn how to express healthy anger. I tend towards anger even though (or maybe because) I was always told as a kid not to be angry. It took years to realize that was my sense of power and justice speaking. I hope that over time, we can all find ways to express that anger in the most meaningful way, rather than just ignoring it or spiritually bypassing it💜