Life after a hysterectomy

In a woman’s world there are few words that are unmentionables, especially as moms, we’ve seen it all, heard it all, and experienced it all. One word however has the crushing ability to send the strongest of women into a cowering state of fear and uncertainty.

Hysterectomy.

There, I said it. I don’t know when or why this word began to strike fear into the hearts of women, but it does. We’ve somehow given our uterus, ovaries and fallopian tubes ALL the power when it comes to how we define ourselves as women. Our entire being is centered on those 3 rather small cogs of a much larger machine. Yes they play a huge part in our lives, they are the key ingredients (for a woman obviously) in making little people, they inform us when we haven’t, if we’re going to, and if there is something lurking in there that shouldn’t. They are important, but they aren’t the end-all of our existence. In fact, for some of us, they are the very worst part of being a woman. They are the life crippling, tear inducing, soul crushing, and pain producing monsters that keep us from living a normal life.

Why then, when the word hysterectomy is introduced, do we fall into this pit of sadness with seemingly no end in sight?
Because somewhere along the way, someone taught us to believe that without those 3 things, we’re no longer *real* women.

Let me lay this to rest for you right now. Since my hysterectomy, I’ve NEVER felt better, more alive, more womanly or freer. I was terrified, deeply depressed and agonizing over the surgery, its implications, what impact it would have on everything… so focused in fact that I didn’t even consider the other possibility; delight. I am delighted. I am happy. I am overjoyed in fact, to be without a part of my body that aside from (barely) helping me bring two precious babies into this world caused me nothing but pain and misery.
Nobody ever even suggested that my LIFE would be better. Sure they said the pain would stop, that certain aspects of my life would improve, but never said that I would come out on the other side of a hysterectomy with a 100% improvement applied to every single corner of my life. I spent almost every waking second prior to the surgery thinking about my pain, feeling my pain, planning around my pain, pain pain pain pain! It was a real…. Pain. I haven’t felt that pain for 5 months, it’s just gone, disappeared, wiped off the face of the earth, never to be seen or heard from again. Have you any idea how freeing that is?? No, of course not, and I hadn’t a clue either which is why I am still so caught off guard by how happy I am.

I don’t swim in a pool of sadness and what ifs like I *knew* I would. I don’t cry whenever I hear about birth announcements or pregnancies. Sure I feel a little melancholy, but it isn’t crippling or crushing like the pain I had was. I’m just grateful I have my children and relieved I’ll never go through the agony of years past, ever again.

A hysterectomy isn’t a bad thing. It’s not a sad thing. If it’s anything, it’s your friend. It doesn’t take away from you; it gives you back your life. For the first time in my adult life I feel like I’m finally able to be the woman I was meant to be and that couldn’t have happened without the surgery. I wasn’t me, I was a version of myself bound by pain, bound by complications, bound by limitations that wouldn’t otherwise exist if those 3 cog pieces didn’t.

So to anyone facing this reality I say this: embrace it, accept it, don’t fear it, don’t hate it, rather love it and all the possibilities it will offer you. I promise you there isn’t just life after a hysterectomy, there is a GREAT life full of hope, promise, freedom and happiness. You’re not a lesser woman, you’re a better, stronger, pain free woman with zero limitations. You don’t need a uterus to be complete, sometimes to become whole we have to be dissected, reassembled and have things taken away. It isn’t about the parts you have, it’s about what those parts do to you as a person, if they hurt you and take away from your quality of life, then removing them is the only way you’ll experience your true self. I promise when you come face to face with that person in the mirror, you’ll never feel better about being down a couple of cogs.