Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom (148 page)

Then I sit with my arms and legs uncrossed, hands in an upright, receiving position. I take a deep breath, hold it for a second, focus on my thymus gland (just under the breastbone), and simply ask to be a channel for Divine Love and send that to my sister (or to whomever I’m praying for). For more information, see the website for the World Service Institute (
www.worldserviceinstitute.org
).

Because the thought of surgery is so terrifying for many people, it can be used as a sort of wake-up call—a time to reprioritize your life. If you approach it with an open mind and an open heart, and if you go through the steps above sincerely—with a sense of surrendering yourself to the process— you may actually heal on your own and find that your surgery will no longer be necessary. I’ve witnessed this several times in my practice, and Peggy Huddleston gives some examples of this in her book. But don’t go through the steps in order to avoid surgery. The key to healing on all levels is that you must proceed with complete willingness to go through with the procedure if necessary. In twelve-step programs they refer to this as “letting go, and letting God.” It can work miracles.

After your surgery, notice and acknowledge whatever feelings arise. When a part of your body is removed or when the integrity of your body surface is marred through an incision of any kind, you may need to grieve the loss of your former state.
¹²
None of us likes surgical scars on our body. It matters little whether you ever did or ever will wear a bikini. We
all
care about how our bodies look.

Old memories may surface after surgery that have been stored in the tissue itself. Surgery has the potential to bring cellular memory to conscious awareness. Incest or other abuse memories may arise in the recovery room or in the days or weeks following surgery. These memories won’t surface until you’re ready to deal with them, so you need not worry about this. The body’s wisdom about when to release infor mation is exquisite.

Allowing yourself to feel emotions connected with surgical removal of tissue is important. Caroline Myss teaches: “When you pull cell tis sue out before any of the data have been finalized, the body gets out of synchronicity.” Many people have most of their energy tied up in the past and very little available in the present for healing. When an organ or cell tissue is removed and the body messages associated with it are not acknowledged or processed, then part of our energy will remain in the past like an unpaid account—a part of our personal unfinished business. So if any emotions or other data surface before or after surgery, feel them fully and let them work their way through your system.

When one of my patients had her fibroids removed, she wanted to be awake during the procedure, so she was given a spinal anesthetic. It turned out that she had severe adenomyosis, a benign condition in which the endometrial glands inside the uterus grow in the uterine wall, causing excessive bleeding. A hysterectomy was the optimal treatment for this. Her doctor gave her the choice of stopping the operation and leaving the uterus in, since there was no malignancy.

She had been chronically anemic from her condition and experienced some pain. She had tried dietary change and acupuncture with out much success. As a mother of three relatively young children, her time for taking optimal care of herself was limited, and so she wouldn’t have time to prepare again for a further surgery. She realized that it was time she let go of trying to save her uterus.

Before the uterine removal began, she asked the staff to hold up a mirror for her so that she could see her uterus. She then thanked it for providing her with three healthy children, blessed it and blessed
herself
for trying to preserve it, then said goodbye. Only then did her surgeon begin the hysterectomy. She later told me that the process of letting go and being able to thank her uterus was a key part of her healing. She ended up feeling empowered by this surgery, not devastated.

June, who had the ovarian cyst, also had a spinal and was awake during her surgery. “The operation took less than an hour,” she wrote. “I had a spinal block so that I could be fully aware during the surgery. I had a mirror hooked up so that I could watch. It was fabulous. My body is healthy-looking and young for my age [forty-two]. Being able to see the very good condition of my body did me a lot of good. I had lost a lot of confidence in my ability to assess what was going on in my body. [This was because she hadn’t realized that her cyst was growing larger. She couldn’t feel it.] This showed me what was right about it. The cyst was almost as large as a softball, but instead of being inside my ovary, it was just on the outside wall. Chris said my ovary looked perfect, and asked me if I wanted to try to save it. She did.”

Postoperatively, June’s friend Carol spent the day and evening with her. June wrote, “She was so supportive and caring. I am so glad she was there.

On her way out, she gave me permission to cry. And I did. It was great.”

After two and a half weeks of recovery at Carol’s house, June’s body yielded yet another piece of healing information. She wrote: “Finally I made it home. I still had one more related realization to make and feel. One night I was touching the numbness above the incision, feeling unspeakably sad about the loss of feeling, when I started to cry. Chris had said that if this should happen, to stay with it and explore the feelings. I was crying about the feeling that no man has ever loved me for being the person I really am. Suddenly I realized I was crying about my father. The only two men who have ever loved me for the real me are my cousin and my father. And it was my father who was always there for me. I had never grieved this loss when he died. So I did.”

Acknowledging grief and loss is only one part of creating a healthy surgery. Another equally important step is looking forward to a life free from the problem that required surgery. Think of the surgical loss as a cutting away of the old so that there is space for the new to grow.

Another patient of mine, a highly intuitive artist, had a hysterectomy for a large fibroid uterus when she was about forty-four. She had visualized the energy in her pelvis and fibroids as very erratic and unhealthy. Postoperatively in the recovery room, she told me that she realized that the static energy in her pelvis was gone. In its place she sensed an even spiral of healthy energy, a vortex in her pelvis. This surgery was a healing for her.

But I Had Surgery Years Ago and
Didn’t Know About This

If you’ve had surgery in the past, reading through this chapter may cause you to feel sad for missing the opportunity to be more fully involved in your healing process. (Stay with this feeling—it is not too late.) Many women who have had hysterectomies had few choices available to them for alternative treatments. The choices for treatment that I’ve mentioned were not nearly so available even a decade ago as they are now. Each year anesthesia becomes safer, and the techniques to preserve pelvic organs have improved—largely through infertility surgery techniques.

It is natural for women who have had unavoidable surgery in the past to feel some loss, especially now that things have changed. I can’t prevent you from feeling grief over events that are past and organs that have been removed. I do know, however, that it’s never too late to grieve properly and fully over your loss, if this comes up for you. If you are feeling sad now, stop reading, lie down, and see what comes up. Stay with your emotions or whatever you are feeling in your body. This is the way you process data in your body and bring all of your cells into the present so that you can finally heal. Remember, part of what keeps us stuck in our lives is thinking that we should have known years ago what we now know—and beating ourselves up for not knowing it at the time.

Removing an organ doesn’t necessarily heal the energy blockage associated with the problem in the first place, though it can be a step in the right direction. Some women, years after surgery, still have ener getic attachments to tissue that was removed and have not grieved fully. These attachments can still be read in their energy fields. The electromagnetic field of the body contains a pattern of the whole, even after a physical part is gone.

Our healing ability is not limited by time or space. We can heal our past at any time, even fifty years later. Our past waits in our bodies until we’re ready. Learning about the female energy system in the body can bring up delayed feelings that a woman never dealt with at the time of her hysterectomy or other surgery. Better late than never. That’s the nice thing about understanding energy and medicine. Healing on the energetic level is always a possibility, regardless of what has gone on at the purely physical level and regardless of how long ago it happened.

A powerful example of this is described in a personal letter sent to me by Doreen Martin, who had a hysterectomy in 1994. Her surgeon removed her uterus, cervix, and fallopian tubes but left her ovaries. Eight years later, she had the following experience:

On a beautiful Sunday morning, in my kitchen preparing coffee, I was suddenly overwhelmed with an emotion that felt as if it was moving up through my body from my pelvis. I gripped the sink and held on for I didn’t know what. I began to sob uncontrollably until I dropped to my knees and lay on the floor in a fetal position, crying from a deep wounded place. From within, I began to ask, “What is this? Please tell me, what is this?” The best way I can describe what happened next is that it seemed like a symphony of “quiet voices” that were not voices as we know them. I asked this time, “What are you trying to tell me?” The response was, “We miss them.” I asked, “Them who?” The response was, “The ones that were taken!”

Something like a flash glowed in my mind. I was vividly aware that my other internal organs were grieving the loss of my reproductive ones. I continued to sob with them, after which came a peace, very soothing, like a smile.

My mentor, Rev. Dr. Eloise Oliver, during many of her lessons on Sunday mornings, speaks to the life within, teaching that all living organs are “alive” with intelligence, skills, and power. My own knowledge of science confirms that as well. My experience that Sunday morning revealed to me the exactness of that truth, and also exposed a deeper, more complex truth. Each and every organ within the human body has a specific function that it joyously performs without knowing why. It just does. Each function is independent. Simultaneously, these individual organs all know their unique functions for the interdependence of the entire body. These organs form a relationship, a connectedness of some sort. When loss occurs, there is a voice and an awareness that each remaining organ experiences, resulting, I think, in reduction, depletion, overproduction, and depression.

I share this with you in hope and prayer that doctors will prepare other women who may for whatever reason need a procedure such as mine so they can receive some form of counseling and support surrounding the overall impact this surgery and other types of surgeries will have in and on their lives.

The few doctors who have a spiritual foundation and who embrace this know that it is not they who do the work. It is the divine presence within them. I pray that they will, as you do, come forth and educate their peers, colleagues, and patients about the miraculous spiritual presence within us all and its relationship with the physical body temple— and, more importantly, the active, live, intelligence expressed through and from every physical body part.

This powerful story illustrates the mysterious nature of healing and time, as well as how the body’s intelligence makes itself known in individual and unique ways. Removal of an organ need not cause depression or depletion. It all depends upon the consciousness that you bring to the situation.

Understand that many health care options and choices are available to you. Know that there is no one monolithic “right” way to care for your body. Most important, I hope I have encouraged you to listen to your inner guidance when choosing partners in health care. Albert Schweitzer once said, “It’s a trade secret, but I’ll tell you anyway. All healing is self-healing.”

17
Eat to Flourish

If women are truly to enjoy food, it must become one of life’s freely experienced
sensuous pleasures. By eating well, women take care of themselves
on the most basic level.

—Dr. Karen Johnson

No matter how developed you are in any other area of your life, no matter
what you say you believe, no matter how sophisticated or enlightened
you think you are, how you eat tells all.
Bummer.

—Geneen Roth,
Women, Food and God,
(Scribner, 2010)

T
he act of mindfully enjoying high-quality, delicious, health-sustaining food is one of the simplest and most powerful ways to flourish on a daily basis. Our bodies evolved over millennia to assimilate foods that are found in the natural world. Therefore, we function at our best when we eat these natural foods much of the time, not imitations. In the process of eating well and nourishing ourselves optimally with high-quality food, we all have an opportunity to honor our own bodies, as well as the body of the planet as a whole. Optimal nourishment involves eating the right amount and type of protein, fat, and carbohydrates. And it also involves understanding that your body’s metabolic processes are profoundly influenced by the following seven factors: