Finding Fear, Science, and Love Through a Hysterectomy

When I began this story, I shared an image of the stone I made that represented my fibroid. On that stone, I painted an image that signified transition.

The Image:

When I originally made this clay representation, I wanted an image on it that represented how I was feeling - that encompassed all of the before, during, and after-ness of the emotions. I wanted a tangible something that I could visualize as I was going through all of these feelings that I couldn’t.

A google search led to the above image, which has been connected to many things. What stood out for me was the continuous cycle of nature (the waxing, full, and waning moon), the concept of transition (no beginning nor end),

and the idea of this representing the maiden, mother, and crone.

A hysterectomy. Offering away my uterus. The image was perfect.

As I prepare to move into another phase of my life - one well beyond childhood youth, one beyond being able to have children - I walk with uncertainty and yet a strong power that calls me forward. It feels as if I’ve been heading here my entire life - practicing, gathering experience and wisdom so that I might finally claim this throne of the crone.

The Neuroscience(ish) of New Age

The throne of the crone … poetic, but allow me to elaborate.

I believe that there is far more to this universe that we currently understand through science. I’m quite willing to accept energy in many forms, particularly unseen energy. I fully embrace the unknown.

And - I grew up in a household built on logic. I grew up in a school built on science and critical thinking. I grew up in a culture that valued quantitative over qualitative, numbers over emotion, productivity over contemplation.

So I could be forgiven for cringing at my own longings.

This beautiful idea of the maiden, mother, and crone calls to me, even when I roll my eyes. And because I can’t ignore this siren song that accompanies the very practical steps of preparation for surgery, I instead try to translate them for my brain.

Through this image of the maiden, mother, and crone, I’m telling myself a story, one that is deeply embedded in the history of our collective humankind.

This seems appropriate, then (from Harvard Business Publishing):

Lisa Cron, in Wired for Story, speaks to additional benefits of sharing stories in business settings, “Stories allow us to simulate intense experience without having to actually live through them. Stories allow us to experience the world before we actually have to experience it.” Leo Widrich, citing Princeton neuroscientist Uri Hasson, writes that “a story is the only way to activate parts in the brain so that a listener turns the story into their own idea and experience.”

I’m weaving the story of transition, of the strength and fluidity of womanhood, into the surgical procedure of the hysterectomy. I’m offering myself insight before I experience it (wisdom of those who have told this story many times) and turning this journey into my own, unique, embodied experience. I’m taking the hand of many ancestors, reaching out for my own present-day hand, and guiding us all through this adventure.

My heart swells.

My brain scoffs and raises my eyebrow like I would when my daughter tells me, “no, really, my room IS clean”.

So I offer up this, for further validation: the workings of mirror neurons. Those are the beautiful little parts of our brain that help us to feel - in a very real, physiological way - something that we witness (but aren’t physically going through ourselves). Neurons in our own mind fire as if we were acting when we see something else being done.

It’s why we cringe or cry when we see someone else being hurt, or feel joy when we watch someone else succeeding.

Now, consider this exploration of mirror neurons in relation to the experience of stories:

When we read fiction or see a movie or a play and even when we see a painting, we map these fictional humans' actions, emotions, and sensations onto our own brains' visceral, motor, and sensory representations. That accounts for our emotional experience, which comes before our cognitive experience.
- Norman N Holland Ph.D.

In telling myself stories of powerful transitions as I prepare for this surgery, I am, in a way, creating the rich depths of that emotional experience within my own body. I am allowing the thoughts around the surgery - thoughts of the final few moments before drifting off from the anesthesia, thoughts of the hours in the hospital with the beeps and the blood and that definitive hospital scent, thoughts of the days and weeks after as I adjust through healing - to be transformed.

I’m not ignoring the anxiety that accompanies those imagined experiences, nor ignoring the slight shaking as I go through the daily preparations.

Instead, I’m engaging with my neuronal pathways to create new connections as I think of “hysterectomy”, “hospital”, and “recovery”.

When those words are evoked, so are feelings of the moon, of the goddess, of the wisdom of the quintessential crone, moving through her life with an awe-inspiring ease …

I take the stress hormones and mix them in a cocktail with awe, with feel-good chemicals.

I get myself drunk on the fullness of the experience.

Whether I am tethered by tubes and IV’s, free in body but weighted by emotion, bed-bound by healing stitches, moving slowly through life infused with pain, or skipping free with strength and vitality through the streets of my neighborhood, … my mind and body work together to keep me safe (and, at my best, feeling good) throughout my experiences. I work with what I know, what we know, and embrace what we don’t know, and try to be in love with it all.

For if this is the life I have to experience, why would I choose any differently than to experience it?

I am reminded of this quote by Rumi:

The Lover is ever drunk with Love. He is mad. She is free. He sings with delight. She dances in ecstasy. Caught by our own thoughts, we worry about everything. But once we get drunk on that Love, Whatever will be, will be.