First of all, what is it? A non-cancerous growth that develops on the uterus. Mine was a pedunculated fibroid, meaning it grew on a stalk attached to the outside of my uterus, rather than embedded within the uterine wall itself. I had no idea this lived inside me, or that it was growing.
Of course, as a woman, I experienced some discomfort in my womb and had been on a journey with that… but I didn’t think anything was out of the norm. Or maybe I didn’t want to know.
Three years ago, I was returning from a girls’ trip in Tulum, where I couldn’t fully be present because of my own tumultuous romantic relationship. It pulled me away from really being in my joy and presence. That was the dynamic, and I let it take a toll on me, because let’s be real, that’s what relationships do to our lives, for better or worse.
I had returned home, and we snowballed into not being able to communicate, into working through some pretty traumatic things happening to my nervous system, including a betrayal. That night, I felt a sharp pain on my right side, and we went to the ER. Through an ultrasound, I found out about this fibroid on my uterus… one that was pretty large. They mentioned it being the size of a grapefruit. I felt so much anger and like everything was out of my control….
Who knows how long I had it, or how much it grew, or if it grew alongside this particular partner. But I didn’t feel safe in my own body, and that is so important when you are sharing intimate space with anyone.
I didn’t feel supported or resourced enough to deal with it, so I made myself disassociate and forget about it until further notice. I thought I could shrink it through less stress and lifestyle changes, but increasingly that year, everything fell apart. And it was meant to.
Four months later, it did, and that was even more stress on my body. I was just in fight or flight. I had to figure out a storage unit, where I was sleeping for the next three months while working a ton, and I was having more caffeine than protein. I think I cried more than I laughed, and everyone knows I really like to laugh.
It didn’t really affect me day to day, but it did cause some bloating, pressure, and pain during sex, especially with a regular partner, in certain positions. That’s still enough.
This year, another wave of events happened, and I realized my health was no longer something I could compromise. Everything was an accumulation of my body speaking to me, asking me to heal her and find the root causes. So I decided to get a myomectomy to get it out of my body.
I knew I needed a cozy home, resources, a regulated nervous system, and most important… help. Community. Sisters. Someone to pick me up and help me to the bathroom, help me shower, help me through the waves of pain.
I am healthy. I eat a relatively healthy diet, I exercise… but I’ll admit there have been many stretches of time where I really stressed my body out, whether through unhealthy jobs or unhealthy relationships.
I didn’t want this to affect my future fertility, and to be honest, I don’t believe you should feel pain during pleasure.
Energetically, I feel a lot more freed up space now. This was attached to me, and now I can feel detached from something I was holding onto. Healing the ways of embodying power.
There’s a history in my maternal line of women loving men who couldn’t meet them, men whose own unresolved pain became abuse, in one form or another. Sitting in my healing nest, I’ve realized how much I’ve compromised, and how deeply my partners patterns imprinted on me. I take full accountability for the ways I let that happen. That pattern is no longer welcome in my life.
