Wendy K. Laidlaw

Ten years ago, I was pretty ignorant about my body, full stop.

Still, I remember having some curiosity about what was happening inside my body.

So on my sixth surgery, I asked the surgeon to take a video of the surgery and the operation and show me the recording of my insides.

I was not prepared for what I saw, and what I saw required a lot of grimacing and bracing.

I witnessed the searing hot tongs cut through adhesions, a mass of them, and pass dangerously close to my intestines.

My uterus was so matted down by a thick and intricate structure and layer of adhesions, much like a spider's web, that it was barely visible and caused me to initially mistake it for an ovary.

The video revealed what my insulins looked like and how inflamed and pained they were, and it forced me to stop and pay attention, finally.

Well, to some extent.

I very much continued on in my original ways.

My conscious mind wasn't paying enough attention.

And so therefore, my body went on strike.

Literally.

My unremitting mind and my dominator parts, the pusher, the perfectionist, the people pleaser, were exercising their strengths to try and to defy what was happening physically.

Mentally, I told myself I should just be able to get up and get back to work.

In other words, I should put up and shut up.

It was just a matter of being strong enough and pushing through is what I used to tell myself.

That old and faulty conditioning came down to my early childhood environment, which in turn has been shaped by many generations of my ancestors down the line since time immemorial.

But that environment, which was predominantly toxic, masculine energy and relentless in its pursuit of excellence and perfectionism, did me no good.

It is interesting to read the book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts by psychologist Gabor Matti, who talks about how the environment we are born into and grow up in literally shapes ourselves.

A child's early home environment should foster a feeling of safety and security.