This morning I read the words: If I created my week with my body as my ally, taking into consideration its needs, I might… (Jennifer Louden’s book The Life Organizer).  Being in a place where I view my body as my ally and not my enemy has taken me years to experience. Illness has highlighted a sense of my body as enemy, and illness has brought me to feeling my body is my ally. It has not been an easy path to this position and arriving here has been fairly recent.

            In January of 2009, after treatments for PMDD and endometriosis were no longer working and I had exhausted medical treatments I was willing to try, I was given the choice to have a total hysterectomy with bilateral salpingoopherectomy (TAH-BSO). This meant that every reproductive organ would be removed. Having dealt with the chronic pain that both endo and PMDD produced, the mental symptoms of PMDD, and the emotional toll that everything had taken on me and my family, I chose to go through with surgery.

            Making this choice and moving through the emotions that came with it prior to surgery brought  gratefulness for my body that I had seldom been able to feel before. As I took long walks during winter and allowed myself to mourn the pieces of my body I would soon be losing, I began to feel connected to it in a more complete way. I felt empathy and was able to acknowledge the gifts it had given me. These gifts included the things I took for granted, like a heartbeat and breathing, but also many years of good reproductive health, a pregnancy and child.  It took preparing for a hysterectomy and loss to stop being angry and bewildered by my body – a body I had previously viewed as almost deceiving me, as being something I could not trust.  I found myself trying to understand its perspective. I spoke with my body as I walked – You’ve worked so hard for me. You do so much just to keep me alive daily. And you’ve given me a wonderful history (periods, a sense of belonging in being female, pregnancy). But something has gone very wrong, and these once wonderful parts are harming me more than they’re helping me.

            I wish I could have experienced this before I reached the point of having a hysterectomy, because I think it could have helped me a great deal when I was dealing with endometriosis and PMDD. Before surgery, my fear and anxiety about what happened to me every two weeks  seemed to take a terrible problem and amplify it if not physically (but perhaps), absolutely on an emotional level. Instead of turning to my body and taking time to be grateful for the abundant ways it supported me and allowed me to be in the world, I braced myself for pain and emotional and mental turmoil. I buckled down with fear and worry and felt overwhelmed and out of control. I blamed my body for everything.

            How would I have thought about my situation if I had seen my body as my ally and not my enemy? How would I have prepared if I had seen my body as something going through what I felt emotionally, like a sick friend, a sick relative, someone who had been there for me in numerous ways and was there for me but had become ill? It wouldn’t have fixed everything or eliminated the symptoms, but I have to believe it would have helped. It would have been an enormous shift in attitude, one worth attempting to take. I say this because I continue to deal with chronic health conditions and have seen myself handling them with more energy and peace and much less fear since viewing my body as an ally. Life with chronic illness isn’t perfect, but I have found that there are ways to make it a little easier and to learn from the experiences as well.

            I remember a post on Jen Gray’s site where she and her partner wore pink hats that said Fuck Cancer. It made me feel a sense of strength and of not being alone. I did not have cancer, but I did feel incredibly alone in my pain, fear, and symptoms. What if I could have put on the pink hat and imagined my body doing the same, substituting the word cancer for my own conditions? What I know now is that whatever was wrong then and what I deal with now, we were and are in it together.

* I am a PMDD Advocate and CRC offering supportive services for women with PMDD and their spouses/partners. Please contact me with questions about services or to schedule a free, initial 20 minute consultation. You can also visit me here.