The Queen Who Couldn't Have: Surviving Life After Hysterectomy

"Once upon a time...there was a queen who couldn’t have..." -Terri Windling

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

Anna Swir, trans. by Czeslaw Milosz, from The Selected Poems; “I Do Not Accept,” (x)

[finita-la-commedia]

What does it mean to love the life we’ve been given ? To act well the part that’s been cast for us ?

Suzanne Buffam, from “Enough” (via finita-la-commedia)

[minuty]

You are not accidental. The world needs you. Without you, something will be missing in existence and nobody can replace it.

Osho

Top of the list of things I want to believe but can’t...

[finita-la-commedia]

And God will start crying over my book: these are not words — convulsions compressed into lumps.

Vladimir Mayakovsky (Russian, 1894-1930), from “And Yet …” (1914)

[luckyhome01]

UNE BONNE FÊTE DES MÈRES A TOUTES LES MAMANS !

A GOOD MOTHER’S DAY FOR ALL MOMS!

[bookmania]

Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet (via blancheparish)

[thebookthieves]

The perennial sadness of a girl who is both Death and the Maiden.

THE BLOODY CHAMBER, ANGELA CARTER (via doll-death)

This is the best description I’ve ever read of a being a virgin who goes through a hysterectomy. You can no longer conceive and carry a child so they want to call you a Crone, but you’re not a sly old woman who’s glad her bleeding days are behind her - you’re still a (relatively) young woman who hasn’t even experienced your sexual awakening, let alone that lush and bountiful expanse of time in which you’re supposed to be a lover and a mother.

[porchwood]

If anyone’s interested, this past weekend was the first time anyone touched my hysterectomy scar since it was made, almost four years ago (notwithstanding a few indifferent self-applications of lavender oil for the first few weeks after the surgery, in hopes of reducing said scar :/). I was attending an intense three-day women’s bodywork (massage) continuing ed course and the first day was a lot of palpation of pelvic structures, so there were several (respectful) pairs of hands on my belly. (My scar is right along my pubic bone, so this was also the first time I was able to show it to anyone, which is huge. Having a wound you can never show anyone makes the grief even worse.) On the second day of class the instructor demonstrated some friction techniques on my scar (for breaking up adhesions, etc), which felt surprisingly nice at the time (scar work is not usually pleasant), but when I went home for the evening my body felt like it had jettisoned back to my immediate post-op recovery days. I couldn’t even sit upright without getting out of breath (if you’ve had an abdominal surgery/C-section you’ll know the feeling - it requires more strength than your abs possess to keep you standing or even sitting up) and was so tired I could barely function, even drinking quad-shot lattes and Dr Peppers. (I’m still trying to figure out if it was a weird somatic memory or something because there had been no strain on my abs whatsoever in the classes - the only real factor was the scar work. Nothing should have made my abs tired, let alone post-op fatigued.) The third day was mostly complementary therapies and I felt surprisingly perky at the end of it, but there were a few things I found difficult or even impossible to do (to my surprise) because they brought back trauma from my hospital experiences.

I felt like the course was a good personal step, albeit way beyond me professionally, but the class members were very sweet and expressed gratitude for the experience to work with me (?!?) and learn about my experience - somehow, they didn’t think it was a misstep for me to take the class. And it was the first time since my hysterectomy that I expressed my grief at being unable to have children and no one - NO ONE, not even once over the course of three full days - said, “You can always adopt.” I can’t even begin to express how huge that is.

[finita-la-commedia]

What happens to a dream deferred ? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun ? Or fester like a sore – and then run? Does it stink like rotten meat ? Or crust and sugar over – like a syrupy sweet ? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load Or does it just explode ?

Langston Hughes, “Dream Deferred”  (via finita-la-commedia)

[abiding-in-peace]

Blackbird’s nest in the folded hands of a statue on a graveyard in Berlin, Germany, 1932. National Archive.

[finita-la-commedia]

… but to forget one life a person needs, as minimum,  one more life. And I’ve lived through that portion

Josef Brodsky (1940 -1996), from “To M.B.”, in “Contemporary Russian poets: a bilingual anthology”, translated from Russian by Gerald S. Smith, published in 1993. (via finita-la-commedia)

[adrasteiax]

(…) now she’s down to two words, never and only, to express this sense that life’s cheated her.

Louise Glück, from March in “Poems 1962-2012″ (via adrasteiax)

[finita-la-commedia]

I just want such a humble, murderously simple thing: that a person be glad when I walk into a room.

Marina Tsvetaeva (Russian, 1892-1941), from notes. (via finita-la-commedia)

[finita-la-commedia]

You hold an absence at your center, as if it were a life.

Richard Brostoff, from “Grief’  (via finita-la-commedia)

[kaygilles]

OLD. ALONE. DONE FOR. OLD. ALONE. DONE FOR.

[apotatoflewaroundtheroom]

As kids we hated Hook

but now

we ARE Hook

*I cry*

[finita-la-commedia]

Every morning the same big and little words all spelling out desire, all spelling out                                             You will be alone always and then you will die. 

 – Richard Siken, from “Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out” (”Crush”)