I’ve Decided to Name Her

I’ve decided to name her. She is teaching me. And all good teachers need a respectable name. I need to honor her, not hate her, because if I hate her, I hate me.

Life keeps throwing things at me. Really hard things. Crappy, painful things.

My latest hit came from out of nowhere on Friday and completely blind-sided me. I felt accused (because I was). And I am not allowed to face my accusers. And decisions are being made on the basis of alleged events. Awful decisions which devastated me.

And then I became wildly more symptomatic on top of it. Well, pooh.

I THOUGHT I was keeping WW posture. I THOUGHT I was doing my WW work. But, after two days of deep depression and pain, I realized I had slipped. I hadn’t fallen away, just slightly slipped. Not a lot, but just enough. Depression brought my body into a depressed postural version of WW. The weight of it pulled me down, literally.

So, what is she teaching me?

I can’t be depressed and be a Whole Woman.
I can’t be devastated and be a Whole Woman.
I can’t step in to the role of victim and be a Whole Woman, not even if I AM being victimized.

I can’t stop the stuff of life, and yes, it impacts and can cause me pain, but pain doesn’t HAVE to give way to depression, devastation and victimhood, even if circumstances invite those things. It’s OK to be sad, to be hurt, to be disappointed, but I cannot allow myself to be un-done, I’m stronger than that, because (pulling myself into posture) I’m a Whole Woman. Prolapse *requires* me to be stronger than that. It’s not optional. That’s the “gift of the wound” as my mentor would say. Because of prolapse, I MUST tap into strength, into self and pull myself up tall.

I wish we each had an enameled pin to wear on our lapel or collar. It would be a pansy, and it would be purple. Because I love alliteration, and I love purple and I love pansies. A purple pansy pin for prolapse. And only we would be able to see the pins. Only the Whole Women. No one else would be able to see it, just us. Only we would know what it means. And we would recognize one another by the pin. The sisterhood of prolapse. In airports or the grocery store or the mall, we would see and acknowledge one another with love.