United We Stand

Submitted by Christine on October 19, 2009 - 1:07am
Body: 

The recent exodus of several post-hysterectomy women from the forums has prompted a deep analysis of hysterectomy and the Whole Woman. The following direct and indirect complaints were offered as explanations for their departure:

1. It is difficult to accept the concept of being an unwhole woman.

2. We feel unsupported and not part of the family of women.

3. Why can’t you support surgery as a legitimate choice? Why are the arguments about surgery accompanied by anger and disdain?

4. We feel we have been labeled.

5. We want to be free of the concept of hysterectomy.

A fundamental assumption of Whole Woman is that the medical system is not to be trusted in matters of women’s health. The reductionistic worldview of Western medicine operates on the premise that “if we can’t measure it, it must not exist”. The biochemistry of the female is astonishingly complex. We know only a little about it. What we do know is that hysterectomy changes female anatomy and biochemistry in profound ways. Post-hysterectomy women are different than their unaltered sisters.

These differences are physical, emotional, relational and cognitive. It is a hard truth that post-hysterectomy women are something different than fully female.

It is hard because it forces women to realize that they have lost something of their essential nature.

The difficulty of dealing with this reality drives many women to create complex rationales for why it is OK to have been so damaged by a system that is insensitive to female reality.

The result is that by age sixty-five, half of the population of the developed world (the female half) has been split in two by the medical system, largely pitted against each other around this issue, which lethally compromises women’s ability to exercise their rightful power in the affairs of humanity.

This is not a feminist issue. This is a human issue. As a class, men do many things well. They also do many things very badly. As a class, women do many things well and other things not so well. It is the balance of Yin and Yang that brings harmony.

With the Yin side of humanity split in two and unable to work together to insure that future generations of women are not raped by an insensitive medical system, the whole of our species suffers. We are here to support All women. However, enabling is not a path to freedom. “Castration” is a fact not a label. Although there are gentler words, let no word obscure the reality of the large-scale theft of female nature taking place in our time.

Hysterectomy for anything short of a life-threatening condition is wrong. It robs us of our collective female nature and brings about the old adage, “United we stand, divided we fall.” All of humanity pays the price for that fall.

Christine

Judith

October 19, 2009 - 10:41am

Dear Christine

I am dismayed and saddened at the departure of the 2 Jackies et al from the hysterectomy forum and have been pondering a reply over the last couple of days. I’m a bit limited because keying at the computer tends to aggravate my back. Anyway, your post has rather taken the wind out of my sails because I am so shocked by it.

I actually agree with a lot of the content. The medical profession has a terrible history of malpractice perpetrated by male doctors on women patients; hysterectomy is a drastic procedure that innumerable women have had unnecessarily; there is a phenomenon whereby people generally may deny the reality of their experience and then try to persuade or compel others to undergo the same experience (eg fathers sending sons to public school, probably more of a thing in the UK), so women who have had corrective surgery for POP may try “selling” the idea to other women.

My analysis of why some post-hysterectomy women have left this board is similar to yours, but not identical. My impression was that they felt that (a) they were being told that they wouldn’t benefit fully from WW techniques, (b) that on here they are not considered to be whole women and (c) that they are labelled as damaged victims of the medical profession. My reply was to be along the lines that, if we want to have a hysterectomy forum, it would be useful to clear up this misunderstanding. Now I see that, as your post spells out clearly, it isn’t a misunderstanding at all.

Just to put my comments in context, I am a feminist and have worked for years in feminist organisations; I have worked in alternative healthcare for years and have myself felt violated by much milder medical procedures than surgery. So I totally understand how women may mourn the loss of their uterus, feel victimised, violated, invaded etc. However, where I strongly disagree with you Christine is in denying the experiences of those post-hysterectomy women who claim that they feel ok about their hysterectomies, who don’t feel as you describe - less than whole or less than female, that they have lost their essential nature; who feel well-treated by the medical profession. It seems to me that you are projecting from your own experience and feelings and telling these women that their perspectives, their reality is either dishonest or wrong.

One of several guiding principles that I use in my work is that there is almost no such thing as a universal perception of or reaction to an event so I never assume that someone else’s experience is the same as mine. For example, there are many events that I would find emotionally devastating that other people seem to just take in their stride and get over, including abortion, and hysterectomy, and vice versa. I know several women who have had hysterectomies who genuinely feel, not only fine about it, but that it was one of the best decisions they’ve ever made about their health because the conditions or symptoms they were experiencing were so debilitating. It may indeed be the case that homoeopathy or something else could have spared them the need to make that decision in the first place and that their hysterectomy could have been avoided; that they are ignorant of the possible repercussions of the surgery and that POP may be awaiting them in old age; that their doctor was unaware/incompetent/lazy. But the point is that these women do not feel less whole, less female, damaged or diminished, they do not regard themselves as victims, and I don’t think that it is up to anyone else to tell them that they are either being untruthful, self-deluding or misguided in their belief.

The women who have left wrote funny, interesting, informative posts. I would have loved to find out how much benefit they could get from WW techniques. I would like this board to be fully inclusive for all women who need it. I’m not interested in those women who come on and try and sell the idea of surgery being a good thing because I share your abhorrence of it, that’s why I come to this board. But the women who have left didn't try to do this and I can understand why they felt marginalised, offended and insulted by having their feelings denied and dismissed, their very femaleness called into question.

Christine, this board is a brilliant resource for support and information and a wonderful testament to your commitment to help other women. You are doing much-needed work and research in a neglected area of women's health and there is ample evidence in your posts of your kindness, compassion and generosity. There are times when you seem tetchy or impatient and I find this completely understandable because you must have to go over the same ground so many times and respond to the same recycling criticisms based on anger or ignorance. But on this matter I find your views offensive and I hope that they are not shared by the majority of members. You talk about woman being pitted against each other by the issue of hysterectomy. For me, the divisiveness comes from the sentiments that you express in your post, that women who have had hysterectomy are something different than fully female, that they have lost something of their essential nature, in effect that they are not really one of us whole women at all. Even when they are telling you quite plainly that this isn't how they regard themeselves. You have said that you want to have post-hysterectomy women on here and find ways of helping them to overcome POP symptoms,and I think that you are genuine and sincere in this. But I really can’t imagine how the statements that you’ve made in this post would do anything other than alienate.

Christine

October 19, 2009 - 12:34pm

Hi Judith,

There is no united, which is a serious problem for humanity. I totally understand the spectrum of post-hyst women. Some, like you say, do not feel their loss, while others grieve every day - with a wide-range in between.

I am sorry you are shocked. Why can we not say out loud what this is? Why cannot you see the cognitive dissonance that has existed all along with our past post-hysterectomy members? They were Never called victim, less-than, etc. Here is how the classical scenario usually went - as I remember it:

Some PT/mommy-with-prolapse would write in and say something along the lines of “Gee, what is wrong with you people! Pelvic floor surgery is OK for some women and the medical system is very effective at treating pelvic organ prolapse!” The usual argument would ensue with the post-hysterectomy woman jumping into the fray in defense of “choice”. Suddenly, the argument was directed against her all along and now she feels victimized by anger and disdain.

Louise was singled out as “poisonous” when the only things that have ever flowed from her “pen” are the natural writings of a whole woman.

I ask you, Judith, how can the post-hysterectomy woman be a credible witness in her own case? Certainly she can be healed of the psychic wounds of hysterectomy, adjust to her new self and get on with her life. But she IS different and not in a stronger way! This is one of the great tragedies of our time and one that is being completely ignored as gynecology moves around the the globe to hysterectomize third-world women in the name of humanitarian aid.

I believe we can love and nurture and strengthen our post-hysterectomy women in a very real way. I, too, am saddened by the loss of the Jackqui’s. But I also felt held hostage by reactions that contained more than a bit of denial.

You seem to buy the argument that the medical system, in its blindness, is victimizing women every day through surgeries misconceived at their core. At what point, then, does the “V” in victim become rationalized away? I hear loud and clearly that certain individual women do not feel that they have been victimized and I accept their reality completely. However, I want them to stand beside me when I tell other women - “You will be changed by this surgery! Your hormonal milieu will be radically different than the natural menopausal woman, which will make you weaker in ways you cannot even imagine.”

I would much rather focus on the far more universal and unifying realities of loss and impermanence and work together on developing life’s core issue of acceptance.

Christine

granolamom

October 19, 2009 - 7:40pm

I wish, I honestly and truly wish, that every single woman had the opportunity and support to explore all options prior to hysterectomy.
I wish that no woman have to feel that removing her uterus is her only hope at living a quality life. I wish that no woman feel that having had her uterus removed prevents her from leading a quality life.

christine, you know I love and respect you greatly. I wholeheartedly agree with most of what you say and write and I know beyond doubt that you fearlessly stand behind your beliefs and truly have Woman's Best Interest at heart.

I have no way of knowing what exactly happens to a woman post hysterectomy; I've not had one, I don't know many women who have. but I do know many people who have undergone serious loss of one kind or another, and I will assume that a hysterectomy qualifies as a loss. I will continue to assume, that post hysterectomy, a woman must figure out how to cope with this loss and I will again assume that each woman figures that out based on who she is and what she needs to get on with living her life. so I might assume that she's not admitting or being honest with herself or whatever, but maybe -just maybe- she is. and maybe -even if she isn't- that is what she needs to do to get on with living her life. who am I to second guess?

I think that openly and honestly stating facts and opinions about the potential risks/side effects of hysterectomy is important, primarily for those who are considering the surgery.
for women who are post-hysterectomy and find themselves here, I think they deserve nothing but our support and respect. for they are facing some hard facts about what's been done and trying to work with what they now have. I'm not talking about women who come here to stir the pot and promote surgery as a fix, who mock alternative options, etc, but the women who join up same like I did. honestly seeking support, acceptance and some help.

We need to be kind to those who've experienced loss, regardless of what type of loss that is or why/how it came about. reality check without kindness is not very useful.

just my $.02

louiseds

October 20, 2009 - 3:38am

Been thinking about some basics.

If a woman feels a lot better after hysterectomy she may well have been in *really* bad shape beforehand. Therefore, assuming that the woman really believes it, to say that having a hyst is the best decision she ever made could be quite valid! The question that we cannot answer is whether there could have been less invasive means of relieving her suffering than hysterectomy. It just cannot be answered because 'you cannot go back through the door' to find out.

My take on women who have had a hysterectomy being 'different' is that of course women who have had a hysterectomy are different. The uterus, and possibly the ovaries have been removed, endopelvic fascia has been pruned severely and rearranged, so that the pelvic organs are held in place by different structures, and the blood supply to any remaining ovaries has been tampered with, and possibly damaged to the point where it will stop working (sooner or later) and the ovaries will die and cease to produce the hormones that support other functions in the body. The research backs up this statement. This potential hormone loss may affect the way our conscious brain works, if PMT and the fuzzy thinking of peri/menopause are any indication of the effect of oestrogen and other hormone changes related to the menstrual cycle!

Deep changes to the soul? Not sure about that. What is the soul? There are many different answers to the second question.

Deep changes to the person as she relates to those around her? It could be either positive or negative, or not at all, depending on how bad the woman's overall wellbeing was before hysterectomy. It is all relative.

The changes listed on the HERS Foundation website are hard to dismiss, although I admit that it is possible to tell lies with statistics if you really do have an axe to grind. Does Nora Coffey have sufficient axe to grind to induce her to lie on her website? You decide.

Some of these differences may be significant re the degree to which women who have had hysterectomy can make effective use of Wholewoman posture. Some may be totally irrelevant to Wholewoman posture.

The uterus is the hub of the Wholewoman pelvic region and the centre of Wholewoman posture. IMO, to say that removal of the uterus does not change a woman and make her different re the way she uses Wholewoman techniques is nonsensical. You cannot put a wheel on a bike if the wheel has no hub. If you want to ride the bike you have to manufacture a hub from bits and pieces in the workshop and somehow join the ends of the spokes to it, without the little knobs that you cut off the ends of the spokes in order to remove the hub. It will never work the same way as the original hub because, unlike the hub of a bicycle wheel which turns in a single plane, the hub of the pelvic cavity is 3D and moves through three dimensions during its movement. The concept of replacing the hub is one thing, but the complexity of the engineering would be overwhelmingly difficult, if not impossible. That's why hysterectomy is so damaging. Only trial and error will tell a woman who has had hysterectomy whether or not it will help. I certainly don't know.

We are all women. We all need to look after each other and help each other along the way to the end of our womanly lives. In this way we are united. We also need to make personal decisions about what we listen to and take on board, and what we dismiss as having no benefit for us.

I cannot remember ever hearing that WW posture, diet, clothing style, appropriate exercise and the way we use our bodies in the environment we live in were the exclusive tools for managing POP without surgery. I have always understood that these are the *key factors*, that Christine has identified, that we have for using our bodies. Lots of women have found other things that have helped them, be it body work, herbs, homeopathy, pessaries and the like, nauli, my jiggling upside down thing, mayan massage etc. They are not a part of the central WW message but they have been contributed to the Forums by Members and left there for discussion and use by anybody who reads them. They are not deleted as inappropriate.

If ordinary women's contributions were not accepted and valued it would be much easier for Christine to shut down the Forums and make the WW site a non-interactive information source. That would make the site a much less valuable site for all of us. It is Christine's generosity that allows such open discussion and contribution for the benefit of all. It is free for the taking by all.

I am sorry if I have offended anybody with this post. I am getting used to offending people just by opening my 'cyber-mouth', but like others, there are things I need to say. It really doesn't bother me if people are offended. It does bother me if I hurt people. It also bothers me if a woman reacts in a strong negative way to something I have said. I put a lot of thought into what I say, and turn myself inside out before I decide that a complex post is finished and ready to submit. Sometimes words I have written are understood differently from how I intended to come across. That's quite easy to solve by further discussion. But if a woman 'overreacts' to an innocently written statement, ie her reaction is driven by a strong emotional force from within her own self, it is harder to work through because I don't know where it is coming from, and often the woman doesn't know where her own strong reactions are coming from either. I sometimes don't understand my own strong reactions. I guess others are the same. You can't please all of the people all of the time. Somebody will always be offended or hurt if it is a 'hot' topic. Nobody has to read my posts and nobody has to agree with them. None of the comments in this post are addressed backhandedly at individuals, so please try not to be offended if you think I am talking about you, and attacking you, because I am not.

Lord, grant me the strength to change what I can change,
the grace to accept the things I cannot change
and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen

Louise

Oceanblue

October 20, 2009 - 8:26am

Thank you to all, especially Christine,

Every time I come onto this forum, I learn.

Thank you,

Oceanblue

Christine

October 21, 2009 - 12:40am

Thank you all for your deep and thoughtful responses. It was not all easy to read, but I thank you all the same. I felt I needed to hold up the hysterectomy mirror for us all to look into, heavy and treacherous territory that it is.

I don’t have much to add except that many of the old arguments for hysterectomy no longer stand up to the growing body of research currently available on the subject. No longer the exclusive propriety of gynecology, we can thank many other biological sciences for providing quality research into the endocrinological state of the post-hysterectomy woman. The statement, “It was the best thing I ever did” is now reflected against hard science revealing the tremendous oxidative stress, hormonal imbalance and systems malfunction resulting from the surgery.

A woman needs her uterus for her entire life and the best way to ensure that outcome is to naturalize birth. Maternal birth injury is the inciting factor in so many cases of prolapse, which includes seemingly innocuous practices such as episiotomy and induction of labor. Cesarean is not protective.

Once prolapsed, surgery is a terrible solution simply because natural pelvic dynamics cannot be recreated through any of the operations currently being performed. Therefore the uterus is placed at greater and greater risk with each procedure. This is why the gold standard of treatment takes it out at the start.

One hundred years ago there was no hysterectomy. Yes, there was death from childbirth, but how much death occurred as a result of fibroids, endometriosis and prolapse? I think there is no question that we have traded slightly lower maternal death rates for a sky-high prevalence of hysterectomy. And we are not the better for it.

Hysterectomy is not curative surgery. Sooner or later it leads to the most serious of structural and inflammatory processes. The uterus with its ovaries is an endocrinological system that is tied in with every other system in the body. All attempts should be made to preserve it throughout the lifespan and those efforts should begin in the teenage years with education.

The very best women with prolapse can do is to change the way we hold our organs so that the breath can work to move them back toward their natural positions. This is not a magic cure or quick fix and has never been promoted as such. However, for many of us it has made the difference in our comfort level and ability to function normally. There is no question that we need a greater variety of pessaries so more women might benefit from them. There is also no question about the therapeutic value of massage, acupuncture, etc. The rest of the healing work most certainly revolves around acceptance - like so much else in life.

I look forward to joining hands with as many women as possible to end the age of reconstructive pelvic surgery.

Christine

Judith

October 22, 2009 - 3:39pm

Dear Christine

Everything you say in this latest post is absolutely true and needs to be said.

I wish that all your views were ones that I could support wholeheartedly because I respect your crusading spirit and mission to save women from this. But however much it is undoubtedly true that hysterectomies and other “corrective” surgeries do hideous damage, I can never accept that this equates to post-hyst women being “something different than fully female” and having “lost something of their essential nature”. I know that you are coming from a place of compassion, not condemnation, but nevertheless, to describe a woman in this way is to strike at the very core of her self-identity that she’s had since early childhood. It may be how many women feel after hysterectomy, or after mastectomy for that matter, but if that’s the case I would suggest that it’s a state of mind and can be addressed with therapy, if so desired. I have several friends that have had hysterectomies and it would just be a nonsense to describe them in this way. It may be your view but it’s not “hard truth”. Femaleness does not reside solely in the uterus, it's in who we feel ourselves to be.

I’d like to thank Louise for her heart-warming post and to add to her assertion that we are all women the sentiment that we are all equally female, with or without a uterus.

BTW Louise, I think that everyone on here knows full well that you do your very best to be empathetic and diplomatic, even on the most contentious of threads, and would never intentionally offend. Judith

Christine

October 22, 2009 - 4:37pm

And I, Judith, understand your natural desire to protect and defend against the hard reality of hysterectomy. Do you believe a castrated man has lost something of his essential maleness? Of course he has and that is why testicles are preserved at all costs. Again, I do not believe it is in our best interests to sugar-coat this reality. The uterus/ovaries contain not only our woman-nature and mother-nature, but also our grandmother-nature. Substances are secreted by the ovaries after menopause that science still hasn’t a clue as to what they do or what they are good for. However, ask any traditional culture about the special nature of their “grandmamas”. This is not something therapy can restore. I agree that women are still women after the surgery. But something of their essence is gone.

It could be me, Judith, and it could be you. And we would go on with our lives as valuable members of society. But something would be different. Louise is right, we could never know exactly what or exactly how different because we could not go back through the door.