Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom (71 page)

Surgery

Surgical approaches to SUI are often very successful. Seek out a surgeon specially trained in urogynecology. Another excellent option for some women involves injections of Teflon or collagen into the urethra.

(For more information on incontinence, contact the National Association for Continence at 800-BLADDER or visit
www.nafc.org
.)

Regardless of where you currently stand in relationship to this area of your body, know that each of us has inherited the effects of generations of silence or misinformation surrounding the genital and urinary regions. The only way out of this legacy of shame is to talk about our needs, educate ourselves, and reclaim a healthy attitude toward our genitals. As we each begin to listen to and reclaim the wisdom of these areas, we will discover that, like all the other parts of our bodies, this part of our body responds beautifully to our care, compassion, and respect.

10
Breasts

I am . . . struck with how often women
sense
in their bodies, especially in the breast and heart area, when they are giving, loving and responding to the needs of others.

—Jean Shinoda Bolen,
Crossing to Avalon

The mammary fixation is the most infantile—and most American—of the sex fetishes.

—Molly Haskell, American film
critic and writer, in
The Quotable Woman

OUR CULTURAL INHERITANCE

B
reasts are the physical metaphor for giving and receiving. Many women who have breast-fed their babies in the past feel the same tingling “letdown reflex” in their breasts years later, when they are moved by tenderness and compassion, or even when they hear a baby cry. The instinct to nurture others can be an extremely powerful and desirable source of health and pleasure not only for others but also for ourselves.

How closely breasts are linked with physical nurturing was demonstrated well by the case of a woman whom I saw in the early 1980s. Jennifer, four years past menopause, had been referred to me with two very large cysts in her right breast that had manifested almost overnight. (They were five and seven centimeters in diameter.) When I asked her if anything was going on in her life in the area of nurturing others, she told me that her last child was leaving home for college and that a beloved cat, a pet for fifteen years, had recently died. Jennifer was grieving the loss both of her daughter and of her pet. The night before the cysts appeared, she dreamed that she was nursing her baby daughter—the same child who was now about to leave home. When I aspirated the fluid from the cysts, I found that they were filled with milk! Jennifer’s body had manifested the fluid of maternal nurturing in response to the change in her own nurturing role. This demonstrated to me that the phrase “the milk of human kindness” is more than just a metaphor. (Dixie Mills, M.D., a breast surgeon colleague, saw an increase in nipple discharge and bloody discharge after September 11, 2001, when the country was grieving.)

In addition to being organs of nurturance, breasts are also symbols of sexual desirability. The cultural ideal of the perfect breast size and shape changes depending on the time in history. Whatever the ideal is, most women won’t match it—and some feel that something is wrong with them as a result. I wish that every woman could have an opportunity to know how truly diverse breast sizes and shapes are, could see how much they vary among women. They would then realize how skewed women’s perceptions normally are about our own breasts and take steps to celebrate what we’ve got. I was at a women’s health conference once when a young woman got up and started complaining about her breasts (which were clearly beautiful). Another woman, who had had a double mastectomy and reconstruction, stood up and said, “Girls, we don’t have that kind of time.” We all realized in one moment that our task was to love the breasts we still had.

Undeniably, an occasional woman has a size discrepancy or other abnormality related to her breasts that is striking and a source of great psychological or even physical pain. Breasts can be so large that they cause back pain, for example. Plastic surgery can correct such problems and can be a blessing. But most cosmetic breast surgery is undertaken because women feel they don’t look as good as models in magazines or as good as their lovers want them to look, or because our current breast-obsessed culture so favors large breasts. This size concern is medicalized in plastic surgery jargon, which writes the indication for breast augmentation as
chronic bilateral micromastia
. That translates as “two small breasts that have been there for a while.”

As with their genitals, women often feel that their breasts exist for the pleasure and ben efit of someone other than themselves. And this perception is at the root of many problems. I’ve heard former colleagues of mine discourage women from breast-feeding because it would “ruin their breasts.” Some husbands forbid their wives to breast-feed because of their jealousy of the baby! Clearly, the current trend toward breast implants is a symptom of a much deeper, culturally supported discon tent. (I discuss implants later in this chapter.)

Overgiving: A Risk Factor for Breast Disease

Our culture has skewed the nurturing metaphor in such a way that women too often give themselves away to others, without nurturing themselves. Women give and give and give without regular replenishment until the well runs dry.

Mona Lisa Schulz, M.D., Ph.D., a medical intuitive and scientist, says that in women who have an “over developed nurturance gland” she can often “see” in their left breast, near their heart, the energy of significant people they’ve taken care of in their lives. She says the reason for this is that these women have learned nurturance as the primary expression of love. Though there is nothing wrong with nurturance, nurturance at the expense of oneself can set the pattern for ill health. Dr. Schulz doesn’t see this pattern in healthy women or men.

Much breast cancer is related to our need to appear to be self-contained and self-nurturing, which is impossible. Everyone needs the support of others to be fully healthy. Caroline Myss notes, “The major emotion behind breast lumps and breast cancer is hurt, sorrow, and unfinished emotional business generally related to nurturance.” Breasts are located in the fourth-chakra energetic center, near the heart. Emotions such as regret and the classic “broken heart” are energetically stored in this center of the body. Guilt over not being able to forgive oneself or forgive others blocks the breasts’ energy. (The other organs in the fourth chakra, such as the lungs, are also susceptible to this energy pattern.)

An important 1995 study found that the risk of developing breast cancer increased by almost twelve times if a woman had suffered from bereavement, job loss, or divorce in the previous five years.
¹
It is im portant to note that long-term emotional difficulties were not associated with breast cancer. Another researcher also showed that severe life stress (determined before the diagnosis of breast cancer was made) was associated with increased risk for the disease.
²
Similarly, severe losses occurring after the diagnosis of breast cancer have been shown to be associated with increased risk of later recurrence of the cancer.
³

As far back as the 1800s, the medical literature has noted associations between breast cancer and loneliness, sorrow, and even rage and anger.
⁴
Women with breast cancer frequently have a tendency toward self-sacrifice, inhibited sexuality, an inability to discharge anger or hostility, a tendency to hide anger and hostility behind a facade of pleasantness, and an unresolved hostile conflict with their mothers. There is evidence that a woman with breast cancer who perceives herself as having high-quality emotional support from a husband or other source will have an enhanced immune response.
⁵
In one study, breast cancer patients were more likely than women without breast cancer to be committed to maintaining an external appearance of a nice or good person. They were also more likely to suppress or internalize their feelings, particularly anger.
⁶
In fact, one study found that the suppression of anger over many years is correlated with ad verse changes in the immune system.
⁷
Given our society’s tendency to suppress, ignore, or denigrate women and their anger, it is easy to see why so many women have breast problems. A nurse-practitioner once told me that several months before one of her friends died of breast cancer, her friend had the following insight: “I finally realized that I didn’t have to die of cancer in order to rest.” Studies have demonstrated that severe emotional losses such as divorce, death of a loved one, or loss of a job may set the stage for cancer, depending upon how a woman deals with the loss.

It is not the loss itself that causes the problem—it is the inability to express one’s grief fully, release it, and respond to the situation in a healthy, adaptive fashion. In the 1995 study noted above, the researchers demonstrated that the coping styles of women influenced whether or not they got breast cancer. Compared with the control group, those with cancer were more apt to have a type of coping strategy characterized by engaging with the problem, confronting it, focusing on it, working on a plan for action, and lobbying for emotional support in this process. What the researchers noted is this: In most se verely stressful life events (loss of a loved one, loss of a job, or serious family illness), the person has no control. Therefore, engaging in efforts to change or control the situation and recruiting others to support one in this strategy, as opposed to letting go, ultimately doesn’t work and actually increases stress (and risk of cancer). Examples of this would be working tirelessly with organizations that seek to eradicate breast cancer rather than spending time and energy investigating what you need to do in your own life to grieve, let go, and heal. Severe loss is inescapable and part of the process of life for most of us. What helps is grieving fully, making meaning of the situation, and surren dering to something bigger than we are. This is a painful and difficult process that I call radical surrender. (It’s beautifully demonstrated in the 2009 movie
Love Happens,
with Jennifer Aniston and Aaron Eckhart.)

Ryke Geerd Hamer, M.D., an internist and oncologist, has done extensive research on more than twenty thousand cancer patients and has demonstrated that in every case the development of cancer followed a severe emotional shock or loss within a year or two of the di agnosis. (Dr. Hamer understands the mind-body connection in cancer on a personal level as well. He was diagnosed with cancer following his son’s death from a random act of violence.) Most important, his research shows that “the tissue starts to augment from the time of the onset of the actual conflict and will stop growing as soon as the con flict has been resolved.” To read more about Dr. Hamer’s research, go to
www.newmedicine.ca
or read
The Cancer Report:
The Latest Research in Psychoneuroimmunology (How Thousands Are
Achieving Permanent Recoveries)
by John Voell and Cynthia Chatfield (Change Your World Press, 2005). (For more information, visit
www.cancer-report.com
.) This book is a compendium of the work of many experts in the holistic treatment of cancer. It is the most practical, helpful, and uplifting manual on the subject I’ve ever seen.

ANATOMY

The female breast is designed to provide optimal nourishment for babies and to provide sexual pleasure for the woman herself. The breasts are glandular organs that are very sensitive to hormonal changes in the body; they undergo cyclic changes in synchrony with the menstrual cycle. They are very intimately connected with the female genital system: Nipple stimulation also stimulates the clitoris and increases prolactin and oxytocin secretion from the pituitary gland. These affect the uterus and can cause contractions there and also in the pelvic floor muscles. Breast tissue extends up into the armpit (axilla), in what is known as the tail of Spence. Lymph nodes that drain the breast tissue are also located in the armpits. After a woman has had a baby and her milk comes in, she may develop striking swellings under her arms from engorgement of the breast tissue in that area. Breasts come in all sizes and shapes, as do nipples. Most women have one breast that is slightly smaller than the other. Some women (and men) have a third nipple.

BREAST SELF-EXAMS

One of the sacred cows of women’s health has long been the monthly breast self-examination (BSE). For many years, women have been told to do it as a way to “save their lives.” But in November 2009, new guidelines for breast cancer screening from a government-appointed task force recommended that doctors no longer teach BSE, based on findings from two large studies showing the practice not only does not decrease breast cancer mortality rates but also results in more breast biopsies and more frequent diagnosis of benign lesions.
⁸