An Update from the Womb
At the Women’s Herbal Retreat last week, I led a meditation to heal the womb that I’ve been leading since I was at least 18, maybe younger. I don’t quite remember when it crossed my path, but it was by a sweet elder guide of mine that I’ve since lost touch with. Her teachings to me were deeply resonant and familiar. Womb connection is something that has always come naturally for me. Oftentimes I am inclined to take for granted the profundity of its power. But, like most times I lead this meditation, many women were in tears at the end. Moved. Connected to a part of themselves they had long thought dead - or actively tried to kill.
It is not by accident that women feel so disconnected from this space. It is by design: a world in which every woman was equipped to yield her vast creative energy would tip all the scales of power.
It got me thinking about how much “womb work” has guided my life. It’s very full-circle for me, in this moment. My curiosity about Her led me to explore birth and sex so young. Harm inflicted upon Her, by trusted partners and also medical practitioners, led me to deeper awareness and understanding of Her needs. Through yoga, movement, meditation, knowledge of the female cycles and anatomy, I began, slowly, slowly, to heal.
Then I had a partner who rejected me sexually. Nothing tests your fault lines like rejection. And so, back to healing, again. Where were my boundaries weak, where was I still taking less than I deserve? Where was I seeking acceptance, looking outside for pleasure? Who was She challenging me to be?
This time, healing came through Buti yoga. My Womb space began to show to me her playful side. No longer did healing have to be so serious. Healing was spiraling to reggaetone music. Healing was learning the dances of ALL of our ancestors - the hip gyrations that have been the mark of the female ritual since the beginning of Human time. This time, Healing was exploring the marriage of the prostitute and the Mother Mary - both archetypes fundamental to understanding our womb space. Both archetypes we must learn to nourish in ourselves to find total, blissful acceptance and unleash creative potential.
Through healing my own relationship to my womb, I attracted other women yearning to do the same. I led naked yoga retreats and ran a nonprofit on sex education for high school girls. I got a tattoo of a goddess, mid-birth, legs spread, vagina exposed, front-and-center on my shin. I captured my own naked body in more photoshoots than I could remember. I thought this would always be my way of living with Her: raw. Obvious. Front-and-center. Confronting.
But as we heal, more layers are peeled back: more fault lines. Where can we still be broken down? Where are we still not living in Right Relationship to our wombs?
Sufey Chen said, “A whole woman supports a whole woman.” Sisterhood cannot be created without Wholeness and authentic relationship to Her. The most recent lesson my womb had to learn was sisterhood. Without wholeness, Sufey eloquently says, a woman will fear she might be Eclipsed by another woman, and so she will disparage another woman’s Light.
A bold leap into “womb work”, female “liberation”, without the groundedness, understanding, and the humility required by Her, led me to a full Eclipse experience. I lost most female friends I had and my entire identity in relation to women’s work. Once a Moon, I wanted to become a Black Hole. I erased all evidence of Her from others seeing. I relived the Witch Hunts in a karmic way that my body remembered. I still dealt in relationship with my womb, but secretly, in dark hours - nowhere anyone could see and recognize.
But She was ready to send me on my next healing journey, because by the time this happened, I was pregnant. With a daughter. Out of my womb rose a deep and primal fear - what if I was not in Right Relationship with women enough to raise her? What if my own errs in the dealings with my womb would become hers? How does one raise a woman in a time like this… a time that hates women (and, women hate themselves)?
But my body, my Womb, led the path to Healing once again. In relation with my husband and with God, She created life. She sustained a LIFE. A consciousness. She fed my daughter, nourished her, and birthed her perfect body. That pregnancy and birth taught me trust, forgiveness, courage, and letting go.
I remember that the last meal I shared with my best friend, I told her I was pregnant. Now, because of that same friend and the lessons she gifted me, I get to model more courageously and confidently for my daughter what true female sisterhood feels like in her body. What boundaries are for. How to treat her womb with the sacredness it deserves. How to heal. And how to birth ALL of her desires.
During this most recent workshop, we all let out a primal yell together. It still gives me chills just to think about. The musculature of the throat is so similar to that of the pelvic floor. How we use our voice mirrors where we are in our Womb’s journey. Do we trust Her enough to give voice to all of our wisdom and desires? Just this week I heard someone say, “When we don’t speak for fear of being “cancelled”, we tie the noose around our own necks”. And we tie the noose around Her, too. Womb requires us to speak our Truth. She rewards us for doing so.
Whether you have an anatomical womb, if you are a woman, you have access to Womb energy. Womb Energy is playful, spacious, forgiving, comforting, and in a constant dance with God.
Because I no longer post photos that model “liberation” by pushing comfort zones, or spend most of my days gyrating to seductive music, and because my womb spends most of its time getting kicked by little baby feet, I thought She was taking a backseat these days. But teaching that workshop, I realized my relationship with Her and the long journey of healing we’ve been on together is evident all over my life.
The evidence is in the way my husband and I have loving, safe, creative, playful sex without hardly a thought. It’s evident in the blissful birth experience I had. It’s evident in my peaceful relationship to eating and my body, and in my body’s physical health. It’s evident in the quality of the female relationships I now keep and the women I choose to surround myself with. It’s evident in my ability to manifest dreams and wealth. My relationship with my Womb (vagina, cervix, sacral energetic center, pelvic floor, ovaries, and all) is the guiding force behind all of these subtle pieces in my life.
Womb healing IS sexual healing, and sexual healing IS physical healing. The two cannot be separated.
So what will womb work look like for me going forward? I don’t know. I know She will keep channeling through me, and I will keep sharing. How that happens will evolve. I’ve learned to trust Her. We will see.