Behind the Hidden Door

Written August 27, 2023

It's quite a thing to go through life changes and if we live to see them, we will all go through them.  As a young person my body changed from a child into a woman's body, then a mother's body. Now at 50, sans womb, it's changing into yet another woman's body: a middle aged woman's body. Changing too are my emotions and abilities and desires on how to spend my time. 

It's all hidden from me: the ideas of who I will be now that my focus has changed in life and that I'm not just a mother any longer- not needed as one either. That's a big change. I love being a wife but my heart is a bit sad over no longer being a mother to young people. It's not the same to love my grandchildren and hand them back to their parents without as much of myself to pour into their lives. I know my time of that is gone, and it's bittersweet. It's a blessing to get to love them I know, but it's also hard to know I can't keep them as they are not mine and it's the time of their parents and not of us grandparents. 

It's a mystery to me that my emotions and physical health seem to be tied together. It probably always has been but I never saw it like this before. I realized just yesterday morning that I had had a bad attitude for weeks and also had been feeling physically bad for weeks. Exhausted, sleeping in, not sleeping at night, not finding much for my hands to be busy with, a general feeling of dissatisfaction with everything and everyone around me, wanting to escape my life for.... for what? Nothing else seemed to be satisfying so what was the use in doing anything whatsoever? I was really in a depressed state and a feeling just hovering above illness where you have to just go to bed and wait it out. Nothing feverish or dire- just a sense of being sick. And maybe I was sick but it wasn't any kind of virus or bacteria, but sick of myself and my own misery over nothing. 

Over the past year there has been ebbs and flows of emotion over having had my womb amputated. Yeah, I know there's a sterile and scientific word for it (hysterectomy) but I want to say what it really is. It was the first home of my children and a big part of the purpose of me as a woman made by YHWH for this. Even though there had already been two and a half decades of infertility (I had my tubes tied after our second child) I never felt that it was completely a done thing, and that at any moment I could become pregnant due to my body just doing what bodies sometimes do: repair itself for the sole purpose of creating life. You see it in nature all the time: the lone dandelion growing out of the sidewalk crack, the tree growing on the cliffside boulder, babies conceived while on birth control, etc.... I even have a cousin who had a child after a tubal so I always held out hope that would happen to me too. But it didn't. When I was nearly 25 (and honestly too young to know I would regret it later) my husband and I chose to have the tubal done. We had signed the papers during my pregnancy and I suspected that they would do it at the 6 week postpartum appointment. Then I had an emergency c-section so they just asked if we were sure because I was already laying on the table cut open and they had a great view of everything. I knew myself: I thought I had time to change my mind even though I'd signed the papers and decided before holding the new baby that we were just done with growing the family. I thought once we had had her a while we would just not go back to that appointment for the tubal and could kick that can down the road forever if we wanted to. Well my husband and baby were not in the room so I said yes, I had signed the papers as he did too and I didn't have the time to really ponder it nor talk to him about it. So they went ahead with the sterilization and while I was relieved to not have to think about future surgeries, I also dreaded it right then and there. I didn't have any kind of convictions about family size or the world we live in being horrible or how much it costs to raise children or really anything. Neither me nor my husband were religious at all and we had no idea what being parents to now two daughters would entail. We didn't know anything about the emotional and mental differences between the sexes or any kind of thing like that. We hadn't considered that we would one day no longer have our children at home and become empty nesters. We literally had no concept of time or future or planning whatsoever. We were just ignorant of long term anything. So, all these many years later, barreling towards menopause anyway (the pathology report indicated I may have already hit that mark and passed it but only YHWH knows), surgery ensued and left me knowing there would never be any more children for me. I mean I knew it but now I know it for sure. And who knows? It may be that I am postmenopausal and that's part of the ebb and flow of emotions surrounding this?

My own mother worked until she wasn't about to any longer due to health issues. She had dementia and heart disease and we had no idea she was having problems with her heart until she had a massive heart attack. She had had a hysterectomy in her late 20's and I never saw anything resembling HRT so she suffered greatly without what should have been there. Many studies show that ovarian failure is more likely in women with hysterectomies than without which also has the effect of causing early onset Alzheimers in some people. Here's a study and Here's a bit more information but it's easy to see the this could easily have been a catalyst in my Mother's early onset Alzheimer's. Many see the uterus as just for having babies, and perhaps that's why the world views it as not necessary if you don't want babies. (Just look at all the young women having this procedure thinking they don't only not want babies but also that they can become men without a womb). Research seems to indicate that the womb does much more than just provide for babies who grow there. It also has some protective qualities for the women.

Mom was a busy woman. She and my Dad worked together until they retired early. He stayed home with her to be her caretaker until she passed away. Really until she was no longer capable of self care, you would never find her lazing about. We never talked about her hopes and dreams or what she thought of getting older. It's likely that she never thought of herself as getting older. Maybe she never saw herself as someone who was heading towards retirement. Maybe she too never considered the future. If she did she never talked to me about any of these kinds of things. Many women without dementia really don't consider themselves as older women. 

I saw a talk recently about the differences between men and women. One was that when an older man met a younger man he would see himself in that younger man and take him under his wing and try and help him navigate life into a wiser man. However when an older woman saw a younger woman she saw her a competition and wouldn't even consider helping her. I think that may be true. I've heard other women talk about becoming invisible in society. I believe it has to do with no longer being perceived as fertile which comes as a shock to many women. It's as if we spend our time tying to attract a mate. We style our hair, get ourselves in our best order, and flirt. But one day it happens the we don't do those things anymore, or we do, out of habit, then we aren't seen as attractive to our potential mates anymore. I say this without the personal knowledge since I am a married woman and while I don't do the things I once did to "look beautiful" my husband says he thinks I'm beautiful anyway. There's a joy and appreciation in commitment that you don't find without it. In the years before when I was still unsure about whether or not my husband only saw me as attractive for that time I worried that I'd get old and he would no longer want to be with me and would leave me. But he's been here through surgery, my becoming older and really not as attractive as I once was, and even my bad attitude with waning hormones and lack of good sleep! I never would have considered that I didn't have to be "perfect" in all the things in order to be loved. 

And there it is. How many women are out there feeling like you have to be superwoman to everyone and with everything you do in order to be worthy of love? The little glimpse I have had behind the door shows me that this just isn't true at all. We are human beings and none of us are perfect. I’m glad we have a perfect Savior because He knows what we are feeling and going through in our losses and emptiness.