women Archives | The ManifestStation

Unicorn: on Loss, Jealousy, and Value

March 9, 2024

I had a sickening revelation.

It came after my friend Delphine texted me, saying she was going to join the 5 club. I have five children, and I immediately knew she meant that she was pregnant with her fifth child. “Congratulations!!” I wrote, along with heart and celebration emojis. “I’m so happy for you!” And I was, and I am.

But over the next few days, I began feeling melancholy and something else (wistfulness? sorrow?) about my friend’s pregnancy. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what I was feeling. Was it because after five healthy full-term pregnancies and children, I have had three miscarriages in the last two years?

With the first miscarriage, it was already happening before I knew I was pregnant. I wondered about the lateness and the heaviness of my bleeding, along with cramping, and took a pregnancy test. A faint line appeared, and the following day, another test showed an even fainter line.

With the second miscarriage, I was somewhere between 10 and 12 weeks. The miscarriage was messy. I had never seen so much blood coming out of a person, and my children banged on the door of our one bathroom while I sat on the toilet, wiping and wiping again, flushing and flushing again. I soaked through pad after pad. My husband took the younger kids to a birthday party while I spent two hours at the ob/gyn’s office and then another eight at the ER, where they wanted to make sure I wasn’t losing too much iron and blood. I lay on a table in the sonogram room, blood dripping onto the floor, weeping. Eventually, I was declared fine enough to go home. This miscarriage was more physically traumatizing than it was emotionally traumatizing, though I absolutely grieved the loss and still do.

The third lost pregnancy ended somewhere between 8 and 10 weeks, a 10-week ultrasound revealing the lack of a heartbeat. But my uterus did not expel the dead body inside me. I opted for a D&C and then wept for days. That was December 2021. I still sometimes burst into tears at inopportune times: during church when Ariel stood at the doorway, smiling at her infant baby girl Eleanor; when women in the Wednesday moms’ group began sharing their stories of pregnancy loss and secondary infertility.

My three pregnancy losses still crush me. For years, since my teens, I had dreamed of a family with six children, and I thought that that would be the life I would have. I don’t know if the idea of six children is something God-inspired that I feel a desire to fulfill, or if I created the vision of a family of eight on my own, and it became a dream that I’ve gripped onto all this time.

Hear this: I was, and am, profoundly grateful for the children that I have, but I still grieve the loss of three would-be babies, and the chance to raise a sixth precious child. When I cried to my friend Mara about how guilty I felt being so sad after my second miscarriage when I already have five healthy, beautiful children she said; “No! It’s completely fine to still be sad. You can be happy and sad at the same time. Two things can be true at the same time.”

Mara’s words were a revelation to me, so I continued to allow myself to feel heartbroken about that loss, and later, about my third loss.

But this time, after Delphine announced her fifth pregnancy, I wasn’t sure that I was just feeling sadness over my own losses. That was definitely part of it, yes, and I do not think it’s unreasonable or impossible to feel sadness for yourself and your own losses, even while rejoicing with a friend’s exciting news.

But there was more to my feelings than resurfaced grief.

What was it? I began asking myself questions and came to a horrifying conclusion. I had felt something similar to this when my friend Jill, who has birthed four bio children, adopted the child they had been fostering since infanthood. Delphine is very thin with gentle curves in the right places. She has thick, chocolate hair that falls in waves. Jill is also incredibly skinny with a thigh gap to die for, even in her early forties after four pregnancies. Jill is a gorgeous blond. And both Delphine and Jill are nice people too: kind, generous, friendly. But Delphine’s and Jill’s outward beauty and their body sizes are my focus.

Here is what my horrifying epiphany was:

I am jealous of these other women for having as many children as me and being more beautiful. I have never felt beautiful, and I am not what the world claims is beautiful. I’m average, maybe a Plain Jane. I’m not accomplished as far as career success, trophies, exploits – things that would gain me nods of approval from others. I never cared much about a career; I’ve wanted to write since childhood, and I was a public school teacher for a few years (which I was not very good at). What I did care about was being a mother. And that, I did. That I did (and do) very well.

My body is fertile, and I felt a self-satisfaction, pride, and achievement in carrying five pregnancies, vaginally birthing five babies, and raising them. I enjoyed, and still enjoy, being a stay-at-home mom, and I’m good at it. Here in New York City, having five children makes me an anomaly. I’ve had my fair share of obnoxious comments from commuters and people on the sidewalk (“Are all those kids yours?”, “You should have each of your kids plant a tree [to offset their existence]”), and judgmental looks.

But I also frequently hear, “I don’t know how you do it!” along with a sigh of approval. And once, a woman smiled from ear to ear, and said, “Five kids? You’re a unicorn!”

Let me make clear that I did not have children in order to one-up anyone else; I conceived each child with my husband out of love and for the love of new life itself. I value human life, and I don’t treat my children’s lives as checkmarks of “things I’ve accomplished.” But on the other hand, carrying, birthing, and keeping alive, five human beings into teenagehood and childhood does require hard work and a tremendous amount of involvement. I have done that, and I do take pride in it.

I would never diminish the work or value of motherhood and mothering. Mothers and mother figures are cornerstones of society. Mothers arguably have the hardest job in the world. Being a mother or mother figure is a worthwhile and worthy venture, a prized treasure, an invaluable position. It is both exhausting and soul-filling.

Somewhere in my head, I know that having children is not a measure of accomplishment. If it was, then women with infertility are worth less; women who choose not to have children are worth less. And that is obvious malarkey.

But also somewhere in my head, I must doubt my worth so much that I wonder if having children is my only value. Since I am not skinny and beautiful and since I do not have a paying career, I am laying all my worth on my children. Until my discovery, I didn’t realize that I was often subconsciously thinking, “She is way more beautiful than I am, but at least I have five kids, so I’m still worth something.”

I was, and am, disgusted by the fact that I feel this way. It is not fair to my children. It is not fair to me. It is not fair to any woman anywhere.

At the same time, I am curious about what brought me to this point. What went wrong in me or around me, that I dislike myself so much, that I feel like having children is all I’m good at? Why do I dislike my body so much, that I think I am not worth as much as Delphine or Jill?

Like the three would-be babies bled out of me or were scraped out of me and disposed of, may the flawed and damaging thought about my lack of worth also bleed away and be disposed of. It needs to go. Like I am grieving my pregnancy losses, may I also someday grieve the fact that I ever wondered about my own worth, that I ever wasted brain space on feeling like I’m worth less than the beautiful people. May I smile at myself in the mirror, from ear and ear, and like the lady on the sidewalk, say to myself, “You are a unicorn.”

Hope Kidd is working on her MFA in creative writing at the City College of New York. She lives in Harlem with her husband, five children, and an assortment of pets. Hope enjoys writing about motherhood, mental health, and body image; and she is currently working on a memoir about my childhood in Zimbabwe. She has been published in MUTHA magazine, and in the print anthology “Fish Gather to Listen” (Horns and Rattles Press).

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Guest Posts, language

Bad Bitch

January 7, 2024

On Friday afternoons I work at Bluestocking, a used bookstore in Hillcrest, a popular San Diego neighborhood and the center of the LGBT community. Next door is Breakfast Bitch, a relatively new and trendy brunch/lunch destination, people always massed around the entrance waiting for tables. Their schtick, which people seem to love, is that waitstaff call guests bitches, as in “Can I get you bitches something to drink?” Every birthday celebration, and there are many every day, is broadcast with a raucous rendering of the hip hop song “Birthday Bitch.” I hear it, again and again, blasting out their door and into ours—“One time for the birthday bitch, Two times for the birthday bitch, Three times for the birthday bitch…”—and two things happen. One, I start wondering about the reappropriation of the word “bitch.” Two, I bristle. I wince. I should be inured to it by now, but the reverse is true; it makes me increasingly uncomfortable.

From the Old English bicce, female dog, “bitch” is a term of contempt applied to women since the 15^th century. Originally to suggest rampant sexuality, dogs in heat, it morphed into women behaving badly—according to men and more recently to other women as well. Synonyms include floozy, harlot, hussy, slut, tart, tramp, vamp, wench, whore, and more, including witch, hellion, and shrew. A bitch was aggressive and belligerent, controlling and out of control. Threatening. Off the leash.

When the second wave of the women’s movement came hurtling into the sixties, feminists began to reclaim the word, to make the designation a point of pride: a bitch was strong, independent, confident, assertive. Finally speaking up, sticking up for herself. Attorney and activist Jo Freeman published the Bitch Manifesto in 1968, saying that “A Bitch takes shit from no one. You may not like her, but you cannot ignore her.” Bitch magazine launched in 1996, calling itself a “feminist response to pop culture.” A Ms. magazine contributor in 2011 called on women to celebrate their bitchiness, and Gloria Steinem suggested in 2015 that “when somebody calls you a bitch, say thank you.” In a 2008 Saturday Night Live skit, Tina Fey observed that people were calling Hillary Clinton a bitch. “She is,” she said. “And so am I. Bitches get stuff done!”

I bought into the concept that women could be mean and merciless; we could be ruthless leaders like Golda Meir and Margaret Thatcher; we could stand our ground in any situation—we could be bitches. This was equality too. One of the few movie lines I ever memorized is from the adaptation of Stephen King’s Dolores Claiborne. “Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has to hold on to” was uttered three times, by three different characters, all fending off the patriarchy, grasping at empowerment.

Over the course of the 20^th century, the word’s usage has expanded, flipped sideways and upside down. It’s no surprise that a slur against women would be adopted by men—prisoners, gay men, macho hipsters—as an attack against weak or dependent men, sissies and softies. But in this context, the term ricochets. Rather than unmanageable women, bitches are women (and men) who do others’ bidding. In an episode of House of Cards, Remy, a Black lobbyist, and Jackie, a Congresswoman, are on opposing sides, but he reminds her that they’re both beholden to higher-ups, both someone’s bitch.

Atlantic magazine examined the trend in a 2015 article, “Meet the New Bitch: The curious evolution of a slur.” It noted that Ernest Hemingway applied the word to women, notably Gertrude Stein, who held her own against him, but also to bad editors and Spanish dictators, instances in which a badly behaving man has traditionally been called a son of a bitch. In the TV series Breaking Bad, the character Jesse Pinkman says “bitch” 54 times, sometimes as an insult or in anger, sometimes in camaraderie or as an expression of triumph. Sometimes he pronounces it in two syllables (“bi-atch”), and sometimes it serves as a meaningless filler, the way people use and abuse the word “like.” In hip-hop culture and music it’s been used to denigrate women who step out of line, while Beyonce, Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, and others have rebounded with “bad bitch” songs and memes to champion strong, independent woman, echoes of the 1968 Bitch Manifesto.

And yet. We’re told on many fronts that “bitch” is cool. That women can take pride in owning their inner bitch. But the meaning hasn’t really changed. The word is still used primarily to attack women who threaten the status quo, women in positions of power, as when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was called a “fucking bitch” by a white male colleague on the floor of the House of Representatives. It reeks of sexism, its hatred and misogyny undisguised. Women use it among themselves as an expression of support and sisterhood, but they still use it against each other too. Remember when Barbara Bush referred to Geraldine Ferraro as something that “rhymes with rich,” later insisting that she meant “witch.” I’ve been guilty of it myself. My daughter and I refer to a woman who wronged us, deeply and intentionally, as “the bitch.” Nothing else seems to adequately express our bitterness, but I cringe when I hear myself say it. I’d love to believe we can reappropriate language and wash it clean of its taint, but the rotten-egg stench clings to it.

I count the word “bitch” 35 times in this essay. An early-draft reader suggested substituting “the B word” or “the 5-letter noun,” but sometimes repetitiveness is necessary to hammer home a point. It was the frequent and irritating reprise of the birthday song at the restaurant next to the bookstore and my gut-level response to it that finally exposed my ambivalence, cemented my antipathy.

A former boyfriend once, decades ago, called me a bitch during an argument. It was the first time anyone had ever done that, and there was nothing ambiguous about his meaning. I was outraged. “How dare you?” I said, or “Don’t you ever call me that.” Or I may have called him a bastard, equally inappropriate and, when taken literally, also an insult to women, like “son of a bitch.” But wait—I was finally standing up to him, which was why we were arguing in the first place. There was a long period when I rehashed the incident and our subsequent breakup, wished I’d countered with a smartass response: “You say that like it’s a bad thing!” But I was offended then, and I’d be just as offended today.

Alice Lowe writes about life, language, food and family. Her essays have been widely published, including this past year in Big City Lit, Borrowed Solace, FEED, Drunk Monkeys, Midway, Eat Darling Eat, Eclectica, Fauxmoir, Idle Ink, Superpresent, and Dorothy Parker’s Ashes. Her work has been cited twice in Best American Essays and nominated for Pushcart Prizes and Best of the Net. Alice has authored essays and reviews on Virginia Woolf’s life and work and is a regular contributor at Blogging Woolf. She lives in San Diego, California, and posts at www.aliceloweblogs.wordpress.com.

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Guest Posts, Fiction Fridays

The Women Are Waiting

May 28, 2021

by Arya Samuelson

It always starts with a woman. Plunging into a clawfoot tub, burning her skin in waves. Or poised at the edge of her bed, head turned as if to pose for a portrait – only nobody else is there. What about the woman gazing at the rice fields, straw brim hat shielding her eyes from the feverish sun? She is not of this place and that’s why she has come. Because she feels freest in places where she has no history. (No history except colonialism, whispers a voice inside, which she swats away like the mosquitoes that form a curtain along the river.) A woman living inside a girl, furious and desperate because she can’t tie her shoes; the knot is slipping and she’s screaming inside, surrounded by a hovering crowd of her brother’s friends.

These women are waiting. Their story awaits. Hearts beat wildly, skin pulsing with the desire to be carried away on the boat of narrative that will give their lives, their pain, a purpose. The boats with engraved names like Plot or Character Development or Foil. Many will wait for a yacht to dock and hope for a big pay-off, others prefer a fishing boat (an ensemble drama,) while some settle for a sailboat: a self-published journey. It’s only the bravest and most foolish who dream of Transformation, the solitary ship that travails the rockiest, most violent waters. Capsizing is the deal you must strike. Body buckled beneath the current, black seaweed twisting your ankles. Heartbursting, striving for surface and a life beyond it. Survival is not a guarantee. Better to board the cruise boat that sails alongside and raise a cocktail glass to those morons. Sure, you only exist in glimpses – everyone’s attention fixed on Transformation, betting on the odds as if this were a horse race – but at least you’ll get to have some fun.

How to obtain passage on such a ship? Theories abound. Some say you need to cause a scene, shriek in the captain’s ear, and if it comes to this, grip your hands around his neck. Others whisper about underground bidding wars, where tickets are auctioned in exchange for unspeakable deeds. But another way is to climb inside an image – a woman plucking flowers, or lighting a house on fire, or climbing inside a bathtub – and sing the words that resound at the core of your pelvis. Just stay there, resting inside the frame or moving your limbs when the impulse strikes, entirely and completely yourself, until someone walks by with a thousand questions. A passer-by so moved with wonder they’ll invite you onto their ship. Though you must wait for the right person, someone who won’t treat you like a circus monkey or glaze over your words. Wait for the person who will instead feed you fresh bread and crisp apples, who leaves a bowl of silence after each question, waiting to be filled with your voice.

Arya Samuelson is a writer currently based in Northampton, MA. She was awarded CutBank’s 2019 Montana Prize in Non-Fiction, which was judged by Cheryl Strayed. Her work has also been published in New Delta Review, Entropy, and The Millions. Arya is a graduate of the MFA Creative Writing program at Mills College and is currently working on her first novel. She is proud to be part of Lidia Yuknavitch’s Corporeal coven of writers.

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Megan Galbraith is a writer we keep our eye on, in part because she does amazing work with found objects, and in part because she is fearless in her writing. Her debut memoir-in-essays, The Guild of the Infant Saviour: An Adopted Child’s Memory Book , is everything we hoped from this creative artist. Born in a charity hospital in Hell’s Kitchen four years before Governor Rockefeller legalized abortion in New York. Galbraith’s birth mother was sent away to The Guild of the Infant Saviour––a Catholic home for unwed mothers in Manhattan––to give birth in secret. On the eve of becoming a mother herself, Galbraith began a search for the truth about her past, which led to a realization of her two identities and three mothers.

This is a remarkable book. The writing is steller, the visual art is effective, and the story itself is important.

Pick up a copy at Bookshop.org or Amazon and let us know what you think!

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Guest Posts, writing

Becoming A Brave Artist

September 29, 2020

By Chelsey Drysdale

I read his memoir in two sittings, watched his prerecorded online class, took a cozy afternoon workshop he led, and savored a rainy-day lunch across from him, surrounded by mutual writer buddies. To close friends, he was my “literary crush.” Single for eight years, loneliness my unflinching shadow, at 43 I believed the swift jolt of infatuation was resigned to memories. I basked in this fresh fascination because it reminded me someone new could still light me up.

When I handed him his book to inscribe for my mom on his book tour, he buried his face in the title page with a sharpie.

What the hell is he writing to my mom? I thought.

“When are we going to do this again?” he asked.

Any time you want.

He said he and his wife had a guest room in their house if my friend and I ever wanted to visit.

That’s a wonderful and terrible idea, I thought.

At home, I opened the book and saw these words: “Donna: I have a secret literary crush on your daughter. Don’t tell her!”

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I’d experienced chromosome-altering heartbreak, a sham six-month marriage, a gut-wrenching broken engagement, ill-timed encounters, and problematic flings. Scared of more loss, my subconscious demographic of choice is a man like him: a smart, creative father with a stellar sense of humor, tall, with dark hair, muscular but lean—and taken. Inaccessible men are the tantalizing cheese wedge poised on a trap. I wanted to know him, even if I couldn’t have him.

***

When I read the author’s inscription, my inner, dormant teenager emerged, ready to flourish on false potential. I danced around my studio, swinging my hips, snapping my fingers, singing a wordless, made-up tune.

I still got it, I thought.

I broke the words into meaningful segments, scavenging for crumbs on a trail to nowhere, nibbling tiny bites, wishing they’d provide nourishment. The word “secret” gave me chills; the word “literary” suggested he was a fan of my work; the word “crush” implied he felt a stirring in his belly when he saw me too; “don’t tell her” was wily because the message was for me.

I showed the dedication to a handful of girlfriends.

“Oh no he didn’t! Oh boy! Buckle up!” a fellow career single woman texted back.

“Oh, that’s adorable,” another friend said, having been a mistress.

“Dangerous,” my sister said, having been a wife.

His note propelled bawdy, unfulfilled fantasies for weeks—the perfect sidetrack to block any real chance for intimacy elsewhere.

***

While his memoir was a mesmerizing concerto, the author’s latest novel was wildly inventive. I read it inside three days, then devoured his other four with the same intensity. I starred words about the inevitability of isolation and relinquishing expectations about what life should be. I sat slumped on the hardwood floor sobbing for a boy ignored by his mother. I underlined phrases about truth and love at all costs. I shared my desolate bed with his tomes in an intimate act with no adverse consequences.

This is the kind of writer I want to be, I thought.

In recent years I’d been plowing through unending trepidation in a flurry, writing like a madwoman, angst cresting on publication days alongside rare pleasure. Before, I’d been consumed with an innate lack of conviction and debilitating fear of failure—the same lifelong anxiety that had led to unsolicited singledom and childlessness too.

After whittling an essay collection for three years, I was mystified by the ending. How was I supposed to finish a book about romantic love when I’d never retained it?

***

Motivated in part by increasing amorous reveries, the tug of creative kismet propelled me to email him.

“I’d be stoked to help you finish your essay collection,” he wrote. “Plus, I really dig that piece you published in WaPo. Double-plus, you have cool hair.”

“You had me at ‘you have cool hair,’” I replied.

We moved a racy tale from page 76 to page one, and we were off on a fruitful journey. Bonus: His editorial notes were delivered via video chat. On days we connected online, I awoke with childhood Christmas morning enthusiasm, ready to unwrap hidden treasures. I took extra time fixing my hair and makeup and made sure I didn’t wear the same shirt twice. I treated our cyber encounters like scholarly dates in an otherwise solitary existence.

During our meetings, I gazed at him on my laptop screen, admiring his handsome face and calming voice, relishing in his golden counsel. He read his favorite words of mine back to me in a measured tone that suggested they mean something. He said I wasn’t afraid to be “brazen.” He told me to “play up moral ambiguities” and be “fucking serrated.” My jaw dropped with recognition when he called three important men in my life a “triptych of superimposed happiness.” When I turned in a revision of chapter six, he said, “This is what Chelsey’s capable of. Every scene is dialed in.”

I floated two inches off the ground.

In eight weeks, we covered eight chapters. In the process, he became privy to private details and facilitated my emotional voyage on the page. All the while, my feelings for him grew stronger.

Is this like falling for your therapist? I wondered.

I addressed emails to the Book Whisperer, Fairy Godmentor, and Unicorn. Despite my fawning, he remained a professional, nonjudgmental friend. His book inscription proved to be an innocuous gesture. As a result, I adored him more.

Before our time was up, we mapped the rest of my manuscript, now a memoir.

I got choked up during our last online exchange.

“You don’t know how much this means to me,” I said.

“Are you going to make me cry on a Monday morning?”

“You’re a really special person.”

“We’re kindred spirits,” he said.

“That doesn’t happen very often,” I replied.

The absurdity is not lost on me the unattainable editor I chose to guide the unpacking of my love life is someone I wished, in an imaginary world of impeccable timing, played a starring role in it.

***

In the coming months, our contact was relegated to Instagram likes, retweets, and the occasional email. I felt special when he wrote, “Wanna hear a secret?” and told me about a book deal he wouldn’t announce for another four months.

When I was in San Francisco, he commented on an Instagram photo, “Maybe we can see each other this weekend!”

When we realized I was flying out as he was flying in, he emailed, “We’re like ships in the night.”

Months later, I finally hit him up for the coffee get-together he’d promised more than once. He suggested walking around the lake by his house. We hadn’t seen each other in person since the Festival of Books before our video chats. There we’d walked side-by-side to his signing booth, our arms draped across each other’s lower backs. I felt unanticipated electricity shoot through my hands.

Even so, I sensed a demarcation that protected the commitment he had for his precious family unit. I respected it. Yet, driven by curiosity and what I considered an extraordinary connection, I tested it anyway.

At the lake, alone for the first time, he gave me a stiff side-hug. Then we strolled the circular three miles slowly, discussing his recent career feats and the material I added to my manuscript post-mentorship. I told him an acquaintance’s recent seedy encounter I thought might work in his fiction. We laughed and locked eyes when he cracked a dirty joke.

At an opportune moment, I broached the topic I’d been stewing about for months: this essay. He hadn’t read it yet, but knew it existed. He’d emailed, “I utterly trust your talent and conscience. We are pals, and don’t worry…”

I didn’t think it was possible to feel this way about someone again, I told him at the lake.

“Then I met you,” I said.

He was quiet, staring at the ground as we walked.

“Meeting you gave me hope it’s still possible to meet someone else,” I said. “I realized I’m not dead inside after all.”

He laughed. “I’m glad I make you feel not dead inside!”

He asked if he could read the essay.

“Of course!” I said. “I want your approval. I’m terrified.”

He stopped to use a nearby restroom. Then I changed the subject.

After we finished circumnavigating the lake, I asked, “Do you have time for lunch?”

A knot formed in my throat, a familiar feeling of short-lived excitement giving way to unrelenting seclusion.

He declined and hugged me goodbye. When he pulled away, my hands slid down the arms of his black leather jacket, a natural motion meant to lead to the intertwining of fingers. He tensed. I froze and awkwardly gripped his forearms instead. Then he left.

When I think about men from my past, I envision a man-shaped cartoon-cutout in a brick wall where they’ve each leapt to a hasty escape, as if my gift is making men disappear, when really my brand of magic is orchestrating ludicrous, unworkable scenarios to set myself up to be snubbed as a way to reinforce the false notion I’ve long suspected: I’m not lovable.

This felt like that.

Back at my computer, I sent the author an earlier version of this piece. He’d made me feel safe. After I hit send, I no longer did. Now I risked feeling rejected as a person and a writer. I lost sleep.

***

After our last video chat, I stared at a blinking cursor, with six more chapters to rewrite. I panicked.

I can’t finish this book without him, I thought.

But I forced myself to trudge forward. I wrote as if he would still read what came out of me, his closing remarks echoing in my head: “I’ll be in the front row when you publish this book. Keep going keep going keep going…”

I began to trust my instincts as I tried to make sense of my past. Glimpsing my empty studio apartment, absent of all the men I’ve worshipped, I finally understood what it meant to be my own advocate. Succinct sentences were tiny miracles. Exploring secret scenes was freeing. The author no longer needed to commend my creation for me to see it was working. For the next two months, I wrote with an uncharacteristic determination and finished my manuscript.

But intrepid writers stumble eventually. A year later, when all publishing progress had stalled, and the author had read this essay without comment, whatever creative energy I’d tapped into ceased. I couldn’t write, and I began to question whether publishing my memoir was worth the agony of upsetting its unsuspecting participants.

I’ve dedicated much of my adult life to seeking validation through the sultry eyes of lovers gazing back at me. When I write, I substantiate myself instead. While the soft glow from my computer screen is no substitute for eye-to-eye moments shared with another human being, a self-directed liaison with words incites a confidence I’d only expected to have as a result of being one half of a duo. Conversely, when I don’t write, my self-esteem plummets, and my monkey brain goes into overdrive: You’re not good enough. You’re alone because no one loves you. Give up.

After months of immobility, I heeded the author’s earlier advice to finish this essay: “Get out of your own way. There’s no reason not to write more.”

***

I rebroke my heart to have an unforeseen love affair, not with a man, but with my manuscript. Publishing my memoir has to be worth it. Self-sabotage is a death knell, and writing is the road to contentment over which I have control. I can’t send a shout-out to my nonexistent husband for his undying support. I am unable to thank my unborn children for showing me the true nature of devotion. I can, however, render self-awareness my superhero trait. I will never be a mother, and I may never be a wife again, but I have become a brave artist.

If I ever fall in love again with an unattached man, I’m sure it will be a direct result of living an authentic authorial life, building my self-worth without another person’s adoration. Even on the bleakest days, as I work toward publication, I return to the same thought: Someday I will create the life I’ve always wanted, and I will deserve it.

Chelsey Drysdale’s essays have appeared in The Washington Post, The Manifest-Station, Bustle, Brevity, Ravishly, Green Briar Review, Black Fox Literary Magazine, Luna Luna Magazine, Reservoir Journal, Book Lovers: Sexy Stories from Under the Covers, and other international publications. She is a Best of the Net Anthology nominee and has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

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Guest Posts, Chronic Illness, chronic pain

Hysteria & Me: An Ancient, Misogynistic Disorder is Killing Women

September 27, 2020

By Elizabeth Land Quant

On a December morning in 2017, I woke up face down next to my treadmill. The week before, a rheumatologist at Cleveland Clinic had diagnosed me with fibromyalgia, which she described as an “exercise depravation syndrome,” and told me that aerobic exercise would help my symptoms. “As long as your heart races a little and you sweat,” the doctor’s handout advised.

Now, as I lay on the floor, my heart raced like a trapped bird banging against my chest. I couldn’t take a deep breath. My pants were wet, from urine and sweat, and the nerves in my hands and feet were burning. I needed to throw up. Between the gray-tinged double vision and shaking in my legs, I couldn’t stand up, so I crawled across the floor and slowly pulled myself up the stairs.

After cleaning up my vomit, I vowed to follow my doctor’s advice and try even harder. Her handout said: “First, it is very important to know that even if the pain is worse after exercise, no injury to the body occurs.” But the next day when I tried to exercise things got worse. As the days wore on, I was unable to chew food. My neck muscles would not support my head, and I had to drink my dinner though a straw with my husband’s help. My chest hurt with every breath. I was incontinent, and my intestines became immobile. The burning in my hands and feet got so severe I couldn’t wear socks or gloves. My anxiety and depression were no longer controlled by my meds. I developed double vision and my left eye sagged. I couldn’t take care of my family anymore, or myself.

My husband worked a fulltime job, and we had three teenagers with medical and school needs. With my mother’s and sister’s help, we cobbled together a way to keep everyone fed, up on schoolwork, and attending most doctor’s appointments. Our daughter ran errands for the family after she got off work. My father-in-law picked up our boys from school as much as he could, with Uber as our back up. Dinner was made by anyone who had time that night, or we ordered. I missed countless school events like my son’s football games and my daughter’s high school homecoming coronation, memories we should have made together. I was so thankful that we could get by, but I constantly felt like a burden and a failure.

To get help, I traveled from my home in Minnesota to the Cleveland Clinic with the hope of finding answers for these symptoms. I chose this clinic because its website advertised a clinic that works “collaboratively with multiple consultants and departments.” But instead of finding answers, after I told her that some of these symptoms had started in childhood, my rheumatologist focused her questions on whether I was traumatized as a child. I didn’t know it at the time, but the rheumatologist that I was seeing is a renowned expert in fibromyalgia, and was head of the Fibromyalgia Clinic at Cleveland Clinic.

“You’ve got severe fibromyalgia. I’m recommending intense psychiatric rehabilitation,” she said.

I found out years later that this rheumatologist conducted a study on how past abuse can indicate the severity of fibromyalgia. Her conclusion was to “recommend that abuse should be inquired about in all patients evaluated for FMS as this may give more clarity to the nature and severity of the FMS presentation and prompt the need for psychological interventions.” This doctor also recommended that severe fibromyalgia patients should not be evaluated for other diseases.

Soon after, back in Minnesota, I was erroneously diagnosed with somatic symptom and related disorders (SSRD), a psychiatric condition that is “characterized by an intense focus on physical (somatic) symptoms that causes significant distress and/or interferes with daily functioning.” They claimed my symptoms were caused by a mental illness and not a physical disease.

For decades, my anxiety, depression and physical symptoms had been attributed by doctors to my own actions. For instance, I was told by a gastroenterologist that my inability to swallow food and my intestinal motility issues were most likely brought on by limiting certain foods from my diet, like gluten and dairy (but if I ate those foods, I got hives and threw up). Other doctors said that my symptoms were present because I “worked and exercised too much and didn’t rest,” or that I was “resting too much” and became deconditioned. I was scolded for being underweight. I was scolded for being overweight. I focused too much attention on my kids and not enough on myself, causing unneeded anxiety. Another doctor said that I focused too much on myself by meditating and googling which vitamins to take, causing an unhealthy obsession with my health. I was told that I just “didn’t like getting older” and was depressed about it. So, all my physical problems – double vision, throwing up, falling down, urinating all over myself – were my fault, and all my therapy sessions, meditation, medicine, exercise, and healthy diet weren’t helping nearly enough, and somehow were making me worse. I had wondered if my kids and husband would be better off without me.

***

I started researching my new diagnoses, and found out that the diagnostic criteria for fibromyalgia and SSRD placed a red flag on patients, primarily women, who have multiple symptoms. Because I fit the criteria for these two diagnoses, I was no longer a candidate for further testing or referral to other specialists. An article in the American Academy of Family Physicians’ magazine states that SSRD “should be considered early in the evaluation of patients with unexplained symptoms to prevent unnecessary interventions and testing.” With approximately 12 million US adults misdiagnosed every year, and women and minorities 20 to 30 percent more likely to be misdiagnosed, how many women are having their “unexplained symptoms” dismissed as part of a somatic illness?

How did we get to this point in the twenty-first century where women are still repeatedly dismissed and misdiagnosed? Women are less likely to be administered pain medicine than men in emergency room settings. Women have a 50% higher chance than men of getting an incorrect diagnosis after a heart attack, and they are 30 % more likely to have a stroke misdiagnosed. Black women and other women of color face even larger disparities in the health care system compared to white women because of racial bias and discrimination. Stigma and discrimination against Transgender people limit their access to healthcare, negatively affecting their mental and physical health. A study “Women With Pain” found that “women with chronic pain conditions are more likely to be wrongly diagnosed with mental health conditions than men and prescribed psychotropic drugs, as doctors dismissed their symptoms as hysterics.”

This brought me right back to college, where a professor asked the question “what is the Greek word for uterus?” When no one answered, he paused for a dramatic beat, and then said, “Hystera. Where we get the word hysteria.” As the women in the class shifted lower into their seats, the men laughed, loudly. There even was a celebratory high five. I will never forget the absolute mortification I felt, and how instinctively I hurried to cover my scars under my shirt from multiple endometriosis and ovarian cyst surgeries. I felt betrayed by my own body.

***

In ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, hysteria was considered a women’s condition whose physical symptoms were thought to be attributed to a wandering uterus. Over time, the blame of these various hysteria symptoms shifted from a physical cause to a mental one. In the late 1800’s, the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud posited that a woman’s psychological stress “converted” into physical symptoms that caused a hysterical state. Also during the Victorian Era, new diagnostic terms like “Briquet’s Syndrome,” named after French physician Paul Briquet, were given to women experiencing hysteria symptoms such as nausea, dizziness, fast heartbeat, pain all over, blurry vision, and weakness. Briquet’s Syndrome was renamed somatization disorder, which eventually became somatic symptom and related disorders. Hysteria was officially removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1980, but the stigma of a woman’s illness with a name meaning “melodramatic or attention seeking behavior” still remains.

***

At numerous doctor’s appointments, I was given the Patient Health Questionnaire – 15 (PHQ-15), a tool frequently used to diagnose fibromyalgia, SSRD and multiple mental illnesses, which has symptoms that are also associated with diseases that primarily affect women. The tool listed 15 symptoms and a rating scale of how severely these symptoms affected your life. Each time I checked off most if not all of the symptoms listed, including chest pain, fatigue, heart pounding, nausea, pain, shortness of breath, and stomach pain (refer to chart for complete list). In filling out the PHQ-15, I thought I was helping the doctor get closer to a diagnosis and treatment. Instead, I was checking off a list of “somatic symptoms” that pointed them away from a physical illness and toward a psychiatric disorder like SSRD. Small fiber neuropathy, autoimmune disease, ovarian cancer, autonomic dysfunction, heart disease, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Ehlers-Danlos syndromes, and now long-term Covid 19, conditions that affect millions of women, all have symptoms listed on the PHQ-15, and on screening questions for fibromyalgia. Another devastating problem with this set up is that more and more women are afraid of speaking up about their mental health symptoms, like I was, for fear of their physical symptoms being overlooked, or labelled as psychosomatic.

Women with mental illness, and I include myself in this group, are at risk of their mental health diagnoses being used as a red flag, halting the diagnostic process of their physical symptoms being looked into as part of a physical disease. More than 1 in 5 women in the US have experienced a mental health condition in the past year. In our modern understanding of mental health, we believe that physical symptoms often manifest as a result of a mental health disorder. The problem is not that doctors identify mental health disorders as one potential cause of physical symptoms. The problem is that those same physical symptoms could also be caused by a number of physical diseases. This is the point where the effective process of a proper diagnosis breaks down. Instead of testing and ruling out physical disease, many doctors jump to the assumption of the absence of physical disease. Having a mental illness does not make us immune to having a physical disease.

Seventy-five percent of Americans with autoimmune disease are women, according to the American Autoimmune Related Disease Association and it takes on average three years and four doctors to get a diagnosis of an autoimmune disease. The study “Frequency of Symptoms of Ovarian Cancer in Women Presenting to Primary Care Clinics” shows that even though 89% of women with early stages of ovarian cancer have a distinct set of symptoms (bloating, abdominal pain, urinary symptoms, fatigue, back pain, constipation) that they report to a doctor, “only 20% percent of cases are caught in an early stage.” How many of these women were dismissed by their doctors because their symptoms fit a somatic illness or were written off as general reproductive issues that halted further testing?

***

About a month after the Cleveland Clinic appointment, my family and I went on vacation in Florida. I almost didn’t go, but this was the only time we could coordinate a trip with all five of us. I spent most of my time in the bathroom, throwing up sips of water I kept trying to swallow. I took anti-nausea meds, Tylenol, Ativan and Imodium to sit with my family by the pool, until I would have to lie down on the bathroom tiles again.

By the time we flew home, I was severely dehydrated and doubled over in pain, but refused to go to the ER for fear I would be accused of faking my symptoms for attention or told that this was my fault and I needed to exercise more. My husband begged me to go in, and it was there that a doctor first mentioned “autonomic disorders,” and autoimmune nerve diseases that could be causing my various symptoms. When I got home from the hospital after getting IV fluids, I looked up my medical records from Cleveland Clinic. The doctor who diagnosed me with fibromyalgia wrote in my appointment notes, “has not been diagnosed with small fiber neuropathy,” a disease that could explain most of my symptoms. It would have been so easy for this rheumatologist to refer me to one of the few nerve labs in the country for a biopsy, right in her same clinic.

***

The diagnosis of fibromyalgia has helped many women get symptom relief and disability services, but has also prevented countless women from receiving a correct diagnosis. Studies show that half of fibromyalgia patients are thought to have small fiber neuropathy, a disease that Johns Hopkins describes as damage to the peripheral nervous system, the nerves that send information from the brain and spinal cord to the rest of the body. This damage can cause symptoms ranging from pain, to gastrointestinal issues, to difficulty breathing and an irregular heartbeat.

Fibromyalgia shares many of the same symptoms of small fiber neuropathy (SFN), but the main difference is that SFN can be definitively tested for and treated, whereas the underlying causes of fibromyalgia are unknown and treatments only address symptoms. A quick and painless skin biopsy can confirm the SFN diagnosis, and if positive, further diagnostics can find a medical cause of the neuropathy in the majority of patients. Prompt treatment can prevent further damage to the nerves, and in some cases, the medical cause of small fiber neuropathy can even be cured.

After researching my symptoms, I convinced an open-minded neurologist in Minneapolis to conduct testing including a skin biopsy and a tilt table test. The biopsy revealed severe small fiber neuropathy, and further testing found Post Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (an autonomic disorder that affects heart rate, blood pressure, and causes many other symptoms). I was also diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis, a progressive, potentially life-threatening neuromuscular disease which can be fatal with too much exertion (so much for “even if the pain is worse after exercise, no injury to the body occurs”). A year later I was diagnosed with a hypothyroid disorder and asthma, both of which I was told I have had for years. I could not have fought for and received the right tests if I didn’t have a good health care plan, time to research, and money to pay for thousands of dollars of out of pocket costs.

I had missed out on so many of my kids’ events, as well as countless birthdays, anniversaries and holidays. If I had been given a tilt table test or a nerve biopsy instead of being continually misdiagnosed, maybe I could have started the right medications and been more present in my children’s lives while they were still growing up.

***

Being disabled itself doesn’t upset or scare me. I learned that I can live a full and happy disabled life by watching my father work and travel the world with his portable oxygen tank in his backpack. I’m angry about all the time I wasted blaming myself for a disease that was not my fault and all the years fighting for tests and medicine that could have slowed down or stopped the progression of these diseases. However, I am privileged to have the resources I need to live a comfortable life that allows me time to take care of myself. It is unacceptable that in this country only well-to-do people with disabilities are able to live comfortably, while so many people are forced to fight to obtain correct diagnoses, assistance, adequate health care and safe housing.

When doctors are taught to hold back diagnostic testing based on the number of symptoms a patient has, and considering that so many illnesses that affect women have multiple symptoms, including potentially deadly ones like ovarian cancer, it’s not hard to understand why so many women have been misdiagnosed.

Elizabeth Land Quant is an autistic, queer, disabled writer, wife, and mom to three grown kids, two cats and a very spoiled dog. She studied Latin, Greek and political science at St. Olaf College, and splits her time between Minneapolis and Hot Springs, Arkansas. She researches and writes about her experiences with disability, autism, family, and her undying love for TV. Elizabeth writes poetry, fiction and nonfiction and is currently writing her first novel. She has been published in Disability Acts.

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Guest Posts, Compassion, Fertility

The Mindful Mother – When are you having a baby?

September 15, 2020

By Denise Castro

I recently attended a lecture on mindfulness a few months back and it stopped me dead in my tracks. I learned from our professor that about 46% of our mind wanders when having a conversation. As I write these words I am already going down my to-do list of work, dinner, laundry, mismatched toddler socks and back to these words. Our professor collaborated in neuroscience research that explores the efficacy of mindfulness training on attention, emotional regulation and working memory in high stress professions. He draws upon this expertise in the infusion of mindfulness into the learning environment. As a new mother I am constantly learning about what it means to be me in this new role in addition to the various roles I have played before. My mind wanders even more now that I am a Mother. I realize that I tune in and out of conversations because I am trying to constantly multi-task and cram all the things I need to do in a day which really can lead to program overload. Think Sad Mac symbol used by older-generation Apple Macintosh computers with the black screen of death. Followed by the little annoying horn that you just want to curse out. You keep clicking incessantly, nothing. Okay, time to re-boot. And sometimes that’s necessary. Forcing yourself to re-boot and or even shutdown. Command-Option-Esc.

I considered myself rebooted when I attended this Mindfulness lecture. It purposely brought my attention to experiences occurring in the present moment without judgment, and allowing true reflection on my life altering occurrences. I remember mine in that very moment. The voice came and it said Denise – when are you having a baby? I know exactly this person’s voice, the intent behind their question and eyes searching for an answer. Perhaps the voice is merged with mine re-asking the question. The question still remains unanswered. When are you having a baby; always seems like the question your waiting for your biology to answer. “Presently Kendra, my husband’s sperm is pinpointing the egg from the ovulation cycle that I semi tracked and will have 7-28% chance of fertilizing the egg. Will forward you the meeting minutes of that event ASAP”. Did that answer your question? Is that a satisfactory answer? Or simply put whenever the hell my husband’s sperm wants to hook up with the egg. Period. However, instead we always answer cordially with “oh, who knows, maybe soon, we will see what the future holds”. However, what we really mean is it’s none. Of. Your. BUSINESS followed by slight spike in blood pressure, mild twitch to the eye and excusing yourself to the bathroom so you can scream a couple F bombs out loud. The truth behind this question has a multitude of repercussions within our subconscious. I would know because I once asked a Mother this question. Not being one yet myself I realized it’s actually a really intrusive question. It’s not asking about where she got her cut and color done? It’s so private and deeply personal. To that Mom – I am sorry, I just didn’t know what I was asking.

Sometimes friends and family will ask this question very candidly in an – as- a-matter- of- fact kind of way. I must’ve heard this question a million times for almost a period of two and a half years. When are you having a baby? Perhaps I should’ve written a rap song in response “When are you having a baby – featuring NUNYA – None of your Business Inc. I swear if I had a money jar for every time it was asked I’d probably be a millionaire by now secretly cursing and smiling under my breath. The truth is, that it hurts. That question hurt me. It hurt my very core and it still hurts. When you have a miscarriage this question is your worst enemy. It menaces you like a dark figure in the corner waiting to punch you in the gut. I had been punched several times until no breath was left inside of me. Just when I thought I had recovered it’d be inserted somehow in a conversation that was totally unrelated. Nobody would know that I had miscarried my first baby and had chosen to keep this information to myself as a way to cope and the memory still haunts me. So when asked, it was as if lightning struck; allowing electric shocks to travel to all the nerve endings in my body and a finishing blow to my heart. Now, this question may pose no immediate threat except- have you ever considered that this person may already be asking herself this question over and over again. Why turns into when, when will it happen turns into what’s wrong with me, and then back to how am I going to answer the why is this happening to me. This turns into a vicious narrative that leave us emotionally depleted and unable to answer. No one in particular may ask you anymore but it doesn’t mean that it stopped it from triggering the auto-renewal of these questions to yourself. It’s like that subscription you never signed up for. Reappearing is our Sad Mac symbol with the little pop up window that reads “When are you having a baby?” Now it’s multiplied into a million damn windows; followed by the super annoying prompting horn. Yes or No reads the little window? F#*@#*# just STOP. Go away! You click incessantly; nothing. Command-Option-Esc. Shut down. Reboot.

Being mindful of ones journey is so important; I can’t stress it enough. So stop yourself before asking this question. Our emotional regulation is similar to the lines on a seismic chart after an earthquake, erratic upward and downward lines mimicking our fluctuating feelings on the verge of collapsing. We need to train our attention to body language; and being a silent but present comfort to women who may be navigating this period in their lives. Finding a sense of normalcy and peace during the period of conception was one of the most challenging things ever. My mind was like a radio with too many talk show hosts talking over one another essentially asking the same thing. My husband silently watched me month to month doing the math in his head for any signs of a missed period and/or ovulation kit purchases. He never asked the question and I wholeheartedly appreciated it. His silent understanding is what we needed to get through this – together.

At some point we may be the woman at the baby store sobbing into a baby blanket and cradling it when she only meant to get a quick gift for a baby shower, the woman staring at the trash can questioning the three ovulation sticks with smiley positives for ovulation that just didn’t work, the woman whose crippling infertility is breaking her spirit and she’s not sure she can endure anymore needles, the woman who is now considered geriatric after the age of thirty five and has her biological clock ticking fiercely away implying she better hurry or simply miss the motherhood train. There’s the woman who cries out Why?! Dear God. Why! she was unable to carry her baby to full term and bring it home to the now empty bassinet. There’s the woman who has one child and never intended of giving it a sibling; yet we divulge about the “only child syndrome nonsense” or maybe she is trying to conceive once again but your questions just weigh her down; as she is perfectly aware that her body is not the young vessel it was before. Deep breath. Just take another deep breath. And finally the woman who simply did not want children, misjudged and scrutinized for choosing a career instead, simply put -it’s her body and her choice therefore- no baby. There are so many scenarios that need to be considered when we want to ask this question. So perhaps don’t ask it all, instead turn your attention to making it your business in blog and being mindful; you don’t know the power it may give a person to persevere; because at some point in your life you were in their shoes too.

Denise Castro is a Cuban American, a working mother and photographer, who currently resides in Miami. In response to unsolicited advice about how to handle her body after pregnancy, Denise began to blog about what it really means to be a working mom. She has previously written for Scary Mommy and Motherhood: The Real Deal. Denise blogs here. She can also be found on Instagram and Facebook.

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Women, Health

We Must End Period Poverty For All Women And Girls

September 10, 2020

By Rita Serra

I chose to backpack around the world as a 22-year-old, pierced-nosed, May You Stay Forever Young-tattooed, Hubba-Bubba pink, blue and purple-haired, flower child. Equipped with a degree in US history and ample youthful exuberance, I was ready to feel the unparalleled freedom of solo travel. My only armor for this eight -month endeavor was my blind faith in good vibes. What could go wrong?

Four months into my wanderlust pilgrimage, airport security procedures had become a mundane chore rather than a cause for stress. With off-handed indifference, I referred to the time spent waiting in lengthy passport control lines as, “the traveler’s tax.” As I stood in the diminutive security line of Lombok International Airport (LOP,) I was pleased to pay these meager taxes that evening.

Measuring forty-seven miles across, the tranquil island of Lombok, Indonesia is relatively untraveled by tourists compared to its neighboring island of Bali, allowing the landscape and pace of life to remain much closer to its organic form. The majority of Lombok consists of rural villages separated by large swatches of undeveloped land. Although LOP is the only airport on Lombok, a single terminal is apt for receiving all domestic and international fights.

I stood in line with a placid smile as I watched the female agents check every pocket of every traveler’s bag with a Swiss watch-maker’s precision. But then, like Isaac Newton and the infamous apple he took to the head, I was struck with a sudden realization that overtook my idle thoughts. In the top pocket of my backpack was a plastic bag that contained; a brick-sized stack of Laotian currency, US dollars, Euros, Cambodian Riels, anti-malaria medication, traveler’s diarrhea pills, and a smaller zip lock bag containing off-brand Advil. The lack of original packaging making it seem as if the Advil could be any drug. In my effort to maximize packing efficiency, I set myself up to look like a suspicious character while attempting to enter a country that regularly applies capital punishment to drug traffickers and drug dealers.

Light-headed, my mind went into a hazardous spin. I oscillated between berating myself for committing such a blunder and conjuring ill-fated visions of myself sitting in an Indonesian jail cell. Stress-induced sweat droplets rose to a beady line of attention along my brow. I pushed past these negative thoughts and began to practice my explanation. Yes ma’am I know this looks weird, but I purchased all of the Laotian money from a friend to save him from a bad exchange rate, as if my inherent altruism would help me out of this situation without issue.

My turn came and an Indonesian woman with soft brown eyes and dark hair pulled into a tight bun, started to rummage through my bag with silent diligence. Standing at 5 foot 10, I towered over this woman by nearly a foot, yet I felt as if I was small enough to fit in a front shirt pocket standing in her authoritative presence. I attempted to hold a pleasant, unsuspecting smile as I wondered if this agent would believe the reason for this money and various pills, some unmarked, was due to my naiveté and not because I was a drug dealer.

The agent used her thumb and right index finger as a pair of tweezers to pluck a tampon out of my bag. Mystified, she raised the tampon until it was even with her eyes and after a few moments of greater inspection, she inquired in English, “What is this?”

I surmised that it must have been unfamiliar packaging throwing her off, so I gave what I though was a simply yet efficient answer, “a tampon.”

The bewildered expression remained suspended across her caramel-toned face. I wondered if my bluntness had been misinterpreted as curt, but then it hit me; she had never seen or heard of a tampon before. A piece of my innocence expired as I explained to this woman, who was at least ten years my senior, what a tampon was and how it is used. Her cheeks pulled back like an accordion, forming elongated, vertical smile lines and the austere formality of her uniformed appearance melted away. With an enlightened sounding, “ahh” the woman placed the tampon back in my bag, forgetting to check the final pocket, and sent me on my way.

I walked through the sliding glass doors and was greeted by the hot, sticky, humid night air like an impassioned lovers kiss. I breathed out a sigh of relief, and inhaled sharply making my lips form a tight O as my mind unpacked what just transpired. What did this woman use while on her menses? Will this woman tell her friends about what she just learned? Her mother? Her sisters? Her daughter?

I had never considered that a tampon was not basic knowledge for all women. I sat with this profound knowledge for some time, not knowing what to do with it. But the unanswered questions remained, so I launched into conducting research on women’s reproductive health among different countries. In doing so I came across the topic of period poverty.

“Period poverty” refers to the estimated 500 million women and girls around the world who lack the monetary funds and /or access to menstrual products each month. For a myriad of these females, the root causes and devastating effects of period poverty extend much deeper. In developing regions of Africa, Asia, Central, and South America there is a substantial lack of education about women’s reproductive health, what sanitary products are, and how to use them. This issue is often compounded by the absence of hand washing stations and other sanitation facilities, leading women and girls to not be able to manage their menses in a safe, dignified manner. Extending deeper for many women and girls, the crux of period poverty is caused by the long-standing cultural stigma that menstruating women are dirty.

Within numerous communities around the world, the topic of menstruation is taboo. Women in rural India are perceived as impure and unholy, leading to them being treated as lepers and banned from entering temples and participating in prayer during their menses. Considering that the overwhelming majority of India’s population are either devout Hindus or Muslims, two religions based upon praying multiple times a day, the act of menstruating is debilitating to Indian women’s daily lives. In Nepal, woman and girls are forced to undergo the custom of “Chhaupadi” in which females are ostracized from their family homes and made to live and sleep in cramped, window-less huts because they are seen as unclean while on their menses. Due to poor ventilation and snake bits, this practice has claimed the lives of many. Chhaupadi continues today, in defiance of a 2018 law forbidding the dangerous practice. For young ladies in Uganda, they feel they must hide their periods from their brothers and fathers for fear of crippling shame and utter embarrassment.

The disempowerment millions of females suffer through every month is marked by bitter irony because without the act of menstruating, the creation of life would halt all together.

Adding to the gravity of this gender inequality issue, is the fact that period poverty impedes girls’ educational endeavors and constricts their future prospects. Worldwide, millions of girls stay home from because they lack sanitary products and/ or fear becoming a social outcast. One in five American girls have reported staying home from school due to the inability to afford sanitary products. Across Africa, it is estimated that at least one in every ten girls will miss up to fifty days of school a year because of menstruation. These habitual absences cause girl’s grades to suffer and for them to fall behind their male counterparts. Even more damning is the fact that a multitude of girls will drop out of school because they are not able to adequately manage their menses. This is the case for at least twenty percent of girls in India.

Navigating the dust-kissed, stone streets of Morocco, I often happened upon a group of school children walking in their uniforms of white coats, casting the illusion that every one of them was a young scientist on the verge of discovery. In Luang Prabang, Laos I was always tickled to see a young lady zipping through traffic on motorbike with two of her female compadres riding side-saddle, (a feat much more difficult than they made it look.) Their long ponytails waved wildly like streamers in the wind, making them seem so free, despite their school attire of navy-blue jackets, knee-length grey skirts, and nylons.

Of all my carefree experiences interacting with locals, I most fondly reminisce on a day spent in Koh Rong, Cambodia on the beach with a cohort of travelers. Three Khmer children, two boys and one girl, stopped by our blankets after spotting our idol tennis ball. The kids ushered us to our feet by means of animated hand gestures and arranged us in a large circle. Captivated by the childlike-wonderment that marks the lighthearted days of travel, we played a laugh-filled game of catch for nearly an hour.

I occasionally look back with concern at the array of silly-faced selfies of myself and the little girl on the beach in Koh Rong. It is disheartening to imagine her, the girls on the motorbike, or the young ladies in Morocco, who bubbled with life and were free from inhibition, are now routinely filled with shame for simply menstruating. I cannot help but think about all the bright, young ladies around the world whose academic standings have slipped due to the constricting realities of womanhood imposed by their cultures.

Before traveling to Indonesia, I had never equated a tampon with freedom. Awareness is the first step in bridging inequality. From my experience in the airport, I became aware that hygienic products allow women the ability to play sports, receive a full education, work a steady job, participate in religious events, go about their daily life unencumbered, and to rise to the same playing field as male counterparts.

We have made great strides in America in the field of women’s equality and reproductive health thanks to the activism of Margaret Sanger and our other feminine predecessors. In 1960, the FDA approved the use of the pill as contraceptive which was a divisive issue at the time. Many women took the pill in secrecy, afraid of being outcast or labeled as promiscuous. After decades of continued activism, these same women now lead women’s gatherings with pride and conduct ceremonies that celebrate young ladies’ menstruation, and empower them as they cross the threshold into womanhood. Today young girls are taught about menstruation health in school and women have access to an array of contraceptives and sanitary products. Furthermore, there is a Red Tent movement sweeping the nation, where menstruating women and girls are invited to come together and celebrate their menses on a monthly basis. Nevertheless, we still have ground to cover in America when it comes to eliminating period poverty.

Ending period poverty is a matter of accepting and normalizing female biology.

One way to get involved in the movement is to vote. In recent years there has been a large push to remove the “tampon tax.” Although the FDA considers tampons and other menstrual products as medical devices, in forty states they are still subject to sales tax unlike other medical devices. For the women who live in poverty or work low income jobs, removing taxes on sanitary products would make managing their menses less of a struggle. Georgia House of Representative member Debbie Buckner, presented a bill in January 2019 that would make Georgia the eleventh state to remove the “tampon tax,” As of today, activists in Georgia are still working to have this bill passed. Scotland made history in February 2020 by becoming the first country to make period products free to all women.

Supporting organizations such as, Alliance for Period Supplies, is another way to get involved in this movement. This organization was founded by U by Kotex and aims at ending period poverty in the US. Support can be a simple as shopping for your own sanitary products. For every U by Kotex purchase, sanitary products are donated to women and girls in need through Alliance for Period Supplies. For people who want to go a step beyond, consider hosting a period supply drive. This is done by linking with your local allied program, (which can be found online through allianceforperiodsupplies.org) food bank or women’s shelter to distribute the collected products. This might be of particular interest to women who have stopped menstruating, but still have unnecessary sanitary products.

On the international level, donating to organizations such as WASH United or the World Bank is a way to help end period poverty. These organization partner with groups such as UNICEF, UN agencies, the Global Water Security and Sanitation Partnership, and other NGO’s to promote advocacy and provide menstrual hygienic management (MHM) education designed to empower woman and remove cultural taboo. They also provide woman and girls with hygienic products and improve conditions for women to manage their menses in a safer, more dignified manor such as providing clean water, constructing hand washing stations, and sanitary facilities.

Finally, spreading the word is a way to promote advocacy and transform period poverty into “period positivity.” Since writing this piece, I have begun discussing period poverty with my male roommates who have all been receptive to discussing the topic. May 25^th – 31^st 2020 is period poverty awareness week, by sharing stories on social media and using hashtags such as, #EndPeriodPoverty #EndPeriodStigma #WithUSheCan #eachforequal #NoMoreLimits and #MenstruationMatters, we can normalize the topic of menstruation.

As the torch is carried forward in the women’s health and equality movement, we must ensure some women are not getting left in the dark.

Rita Serra graduated from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill with a degree in US history with a special interest on the social and political moments of 21st century America. For two and a half years, Rita backpacked around the world, often solo, on a quest for human connection, cultural enlightenment, historical intrigue and natures wonderment. After her period of Rolling Stone Embodiment, Rita found herself in Northern California where she currently spends her days writing prose & poetry and farming.

Anti-racist resources, because silence is not an option.

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Upcoming events with Jen

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Guest Posts, aging, Women

Law And Yoga

September 6, 2020

By Jennifer Lauren

I’m lying on the floor in the basement of the Washington Conference Center, my back pressed against my cork yoga mat, wearing Lulu Lemon tights. My feet are bare. I hope no one notices that the snowflake manicure I got before Christmas is starting to chip.

“Extend your left leg. Pull your right knee into your shoulder. Squeeze in to stimulate your right ovary,” the teacher says.

She’s teaching a workshop on “yoga for hormone balance” to 24 over-40 women, all of us lying on our yoga mats, seeking answers to questions we can’t articulate.

“Uddiyana Bandha …” Sanskrit for Kegels, where you pull up your nether-regions tight like you’re trying to hold in pee. “Transfer your attention to your ovaries, and release….”

Two dozen women release breath together. It sounds like a prayer. I translate, their thoughts are my thoughts:

We have everything. We should be happy.

I look out the window, where I see the bottom of the sky scraper next door. I had my own office, with a view, in that building. I was a lawyer. A really good lawyer. I wore designer suits and clutched Starbucks in my perfectly manicured hands. I was 27 and gorgeous and ready to take on the world.

At 41, I teach yoga and write novels no one has published yet. In December, just after I got snowflakes painted on my toes, I put my law license into inactive status so I could …. I’m not sure. Follow my dreams?

I didn’t realize my dreams would lead me to the basement of the Conference Center, focusing on my ovaries. Yet here we are, together.

Before 40, we were brilliant. Beautiful. Now we’re strangers to ourselves. We’ve tried acupuncture and green tea. Yoga and meditation. We quit jobs and took vacations and got divorces. But we still feel “off” in a way we can’t explain.

If we were men, they’d call it a mid-life crisis. We’d buy Porches and sleep with 20-year-olds. But we’re women. We can’t afford Porches because we’re paying for dance team and soccer tournaments. We have no time to sleep with 20-somethings because we’re doing laundry and driving our kids to Taekwondo.

“We’re tired, we’re cranky, we’re doing too much, but it’s never enough,” we say to our doctors. They offer us anti-depressants and tell us to find “me-time.” Go to therapy.

None of it works.

So we sign up for hormone balancing through yoga. We read the Goop website when no one’s looking, although we mock it with our friends. We immerse ourselves in the culture of Elizabeth Gilbert and Brene Brown. Follow your dreams. Manifest your magic. Love greatly.

But most of us have no idea what we want to manifest, much less the power to manifest it. So we flounder to find The Thing We Should Do. Maybe we leave good men. Maybe we sell everything and move to Italy, India, and Indonesia for a year.

Maybe we walk away from well paying, prestigious careers just as we hit our prime.

I was a lawyer. I argued in front of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and externed for the Chief Justice of the Washington State Supreme Court. I second-chaired three jury trials, all with eight-figure demands. We won them all.

At 27, I was on top of the world. At 40, I was buried beneath it. I never saw my babies, even when I went “part time.” When I was home I was on my phone, sure I was one missed email away from a malpractice suit. I watched my babies grow into tweens and teens after work, from the driver’s seat of our SUV.

I’d think, what’s wrong with me? I have it all! I should be happy!

But we aren’t happy: stay at home moms, doctors, preschool teachers, artists. We all stare down 40 and ask, what’s wrong with me? We joke about first world problems because we feel guilty admitting we are miserable in our prosperity.

We stare at our phones. At Facebook. Instagram. Twitter. We see the world fawning over British royals in size two suits and something called a “Kardashian.” We look down at our own thickening waists and download the newest couch to 5K ap.

We’ll be happy when we can run that mile/fit into that dress again/the kids go off to school.

Quit that job.

One gorgeous May afternoon, I left my pretty office with a water view behind. I decided I wasn’t a lawyer anymore.

I took yoga teacher training. I signed up for a writer’s retreat. I purposefully ignored the little voice in my head screaming, what the Hell are you doing?

My friends were jealous of the unimaginable indulgence of spare time. “You’re so lucky,” they said.

But who am I? I wonder. Who am I if I’m no longer a lawyer and my kids will be soon able to drive themselves to soccer.

When we were kids, well-meaning adults said we could do it all: career, kids, sexually satisfy our partner, size two jeans, a plush bank account of our own earnings. As we face middle age, it’s no wonder we’re neurotic. We’re all floundering, trying to find our place in a world where we are increasingly irrelevant.

We smile while making homemade gluten-free soy-free cookies after work for the fifth grade picnic at 11 p.m., work deadlines be damned.

We ask, why can’t we be happy?

We meditate. We take more vitamin D. We blame perimenopause, and try to balance our hormones through yoga.

We lie there, pulling our knees against our ovaries and visualizing and end to the unrelenting cycle of do, do, do. Be, be, be.

And we think: I’m so lucky. I have everything. I should be happy.

Jennifer Lauren is a recovering trial attorney living near Seattle, Washington. Ever since she wrote her first masterpiece, The Creature, at the age of five, she wanted to be a writer. But life happened, sidetracking her with pesky bills and peskier, but well-loved, children. Jennifer has worked as an award-winning reporter at a nationally recognized newspaper; fundraising director for inner city schools; and civil litigator for 13 years. In May 2019 she quit her day job to write, teach yoga, travel, and chase her dreams.

Anti-racist resources, because silence is not an option.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Upcoming events with Jen

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

THE ALEKSANDER SCHOLARSHIP FUND

Click here to learn more or to donate.

Guest Posts, motherhood

Is Motherhood the Loneliest Time of All?

April 9, 2019

By Claire Fitzsimmons

“I need new friends.” That’s what I was thinking as I sat in a café in San Francisco in the middle of the afternoon. I was on my own. Soup and salad. And my two month-old son on my lap.

I expected to feel a lot of things when I had a baby, but not lonely. My childless friends were all at work. My family was all the way in the UK where I’d left them a few years before. It was just my husband, myself and our son, Sam.

I needed mummy friends. But how to do this when my boobs were leaking, I was grumpy from no sleep and I had nothing to say that didn’t begin with my child’s name? I’d tried a couple of things already that clearly weren’t working. I walked through my neighborhood smiling clumsily at new mums. I sat in the playground looking approachable, hoping I’d get picked up. A local playspace had the prospects of a nightclub; tea had replaced vodka tonics and circle time the dance floor. I made eye contact, feigned interest, but it wasn’t happening.

As I was in the United States, this was clearly the moment to be proactive and to join a playgroup, which have become as necessary here to modern parenting as baby yoga, birth announcements and Bugaboos.

I’ve never been on a blind date and I’m not a natural joiner, but I found myself turning up, late (as I always am now), to a playgroup formation convened by my local mother’s group. Faced with a room of 60 women, some with babes in arms and each filled with the bubbling expectancy of new relationships, this was speed-dating, mummy-style. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, Pregnancy, Relationships

Someday, Baby

September 26, 2018

By Alayna Becker

It’s wildfire season in Spokane, so I’m stuck inside Crosswalk, the teen homeless shelter where I work. I’m the summer employment specialist, hired to help the homeless kids in my group learn to get a job and hopefully keep it. 12 kids are supposed to show up, but only two, Jessica and Reya are here and a third, Makayla is on her way. Usually we go outside to do the job the city gave us a grant to do – measure the slopes and accessibility of streets all over the downtown area, but today the whole city is obscured by the haze from fires on the edge of town. Walking feels like wading through a swamp.

My title, employment specialist seems ironic because for the past couple of years I’ve been pretty much unemployed. Mainly I participated in medical studies while co-conspirator roommate sold her plasma. I had a job working for a place that did digital investigations on people that were accused of looking at child porn, but when I accidentally saw a picture of a little girl in her pink underwear over the shoulder of one of the other employees, I left and never went back. Continue Reading…

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