Cycles

The proceeds from this t-shirt help provide menstrual hygiene kits to people experiencing homelessness

I only get my period four times a year now.

It is part of the agreed plan to control my endometriosis, fibroids and cysts. 

It has been working well, and retarding growth on the current fibroids and any creation of new ones.

It has also allowed me to keep my uterus instead of having the suggested hysterectomy.

At first I thought it was like being neutered; taking away something so sacred as a monthly cycle.  The monthly pain left me unable to stand upright, or eat or sleep, so the idea became a welcome retreat from pain and in many ways a space to grieve my lost fertility.

I had to walk away from my efforts twice in 8 years of trying to make a family. 

When I first went off the monthly pill to dive into the pool of trying, I was almost immediately faced with a wall of pain and only after half a year was I able to advocate for further testing which first revealed my fibroids and the sudden growth had me at an oncologist. 

Back on the pill to shrink them and try to give me a window to try to get pregnant again.

The second dive into the pool had me in the ER and multiple trips to the doctor to find answers to the miscarriages. Suddenly 8 years passed and it was too much loss and too much pain to live.

I went back onto the pill after my removal of a large chocolate cyst, and an ovarian cancer scare;

that confirmed my stage 4 endo that had head-locked my ovary behind my uterus, a septum in my uterus and calcified fibroids.

The road was shut.

I grieved and celebrated this information at the same time.

I did nothing wrong in my efforts to get pregnant, but my body that I had lovingly cared, for had decided that no child shall survive in me.

Now 5 years later, I am facing a new kind of knowledge.

My periods which only come quarterly,  will eventually stop coming all together.

I am prepared to grieve that as well.

a bitter sweet party

I have my period now, I have always been a full moon bleeder.

I guess I am a druid that way, an earthy girl, a wolf woman.

I can now not have to decide if the pain is bad enough to need to go to the ER, 

instead I can sit on the couch or sleep away the mood and aches.

Still honoring the need to take care of this body.

My period arrived later than normal this cycle, and for the first time in a LONG time, 

my mind did not go to the "maybe I'm pregnant" thought...

in fact it never even entered my mind.

Instead I thought, soon there will be no more.