Origin Stories: One of my Own
This essay was more terrifying to publish than my book
Now that Womb Witch is officially launched, I wanted to use this space to explore some of the writings that didn’t make it into the finished product. The publishers I worked with on Womb Witch were adamant that I had to strongly veer away from using the space to discuss my personal story. Given that I didn’t feel I had enough space to fully expound on much of what I wanted to as was [which is more a testament of myself and my peroggatives], the following passages got the axe.
I’ve been asked dozens of times, “Why did you write this book?” And what I’ve really wanted to reply with is, “How much time do you have?”
I often discover that origin stories pre-date the birth date of the person involved [I mean, I suppose they technically ALL do]. But what I’m getting at here is that I find the inception of the moment where I felt the fire inside [literally, as you’ll see] bring me to this moment can truly be traced back generations, at least when I peer into its depths with guided intention.
Do not fear; an anthology of my family lore does not follow. I moreso mention the idea of that so you can redirect the notion to yourself. What is most pertinent in your human experience? What is its origin story? Go deeper. Go even deeper. Keep going until you’ve found the seed. Realize that seed came from another seed and another. And on and on.
Allow that to bring you to a place of deeper understanding, whether of yourself, your community, your ancestry, or your place on earth in this moment.
Okay. Here goes nothing. A part of the answer to the question, “Why did you write Womb Witch, Herbal Magick for Reproductive Health?” [You do know SEO -loves- good copy. My brain is trained.]
P.S. Publishing a book was terrifying. But publishing this essay? Even more terrifying. If this lands for you in any way, please feel free to share. It’s a long post, so buckle up.
TRIGGER WARNING: I speak of pregnancy loss during this post and the irresponsible and incredibly dangerous use of birth control pills. If this is a subject that doesn’t feel safe for you to read about, I strongly recommend you not continue. Please know that I am sharing this story as so that others may benefit from it. It is a cautionary tale and one I wish to no longer carry shame around. Also, I want to state this is also a story of deep privilege. If it can happen to me or if these were decisions I made [a holistic health practitioner], it can happen to you or someone you love. Please read this story responsibly and mindfully.
“Like many in mid-2022, when abortion rights in the U.S. degraded from coast to coast, I was enraged, fearful, and inspired. To say it lightly. How dare they take away our rights, which we’ve fought so hard for?
Then, the second wave washed over me: How dare I not do everything in my power to share that there is profound power in knowing our bodies intimately, and in learning how to find healing from within ourselves and our environment. Never had I felt more called to combine my degree in journalism and training in herbalism and birthwork. And so, I began the process of writing this book.
A week before I moved from the state of Washington back to Ohio, the place I was born and raised, my period failed to show up. With a history of ectopic pregnancy, I was terrified of what decisions I wouldn’t be able to make in Ohio if that situation were to recur. Would they let me die if it were to happen again? Would I be able to choose to terminate my pregnancy if I needed to or decided I wanted to? I physically stalled. Despite a negative pregnancy test, I lingered in Washington, frozen with fear. As I basked in the sun and lay on the earth day after day, my stress started to fade. With that, my monthly moon arrived.
What a privilege it was to have a refuge in the interim. My body was kept safe, and I wasn’t in danger of not receiving adequate healthcare. The horror stories I had heard of others who weren’t as fortunate as myself made my blood run cold. And when I finished my drive across the country, my fingers resumed typing with ferocity.
Our vaginas, uterus, and reproductive hormones are delicate forces deserving of attention, knowledge, and respect. Once upon a time, the subtle, and not so subtle, shifts our bodies experience throughout the life cycle were known and taught to us as readily as the colors of the rainbow. Give it to the colonialist patriarchal society to smother this knowledge into an ember that’s barely glowing within our Western society. But the spark IS there. The seed of this knowledge has been tended to by the ones who have come before me. The mothers, the midwives, the activists, the doulas, the healthcare workers, the wisdom keepers. All of those who kept the old ways in mind provided the path that germinated interest and yearning for those who have looked for other ways to approach the deepest parts of themselves. That’s what this book hopes to represent - a seed. A seed of the knowledge that has been preserved, tenderly gathered, and planted. With every page that is turned and every time its lessons are shared, may we proliferate the masses.
My Story
I tossed my last pack of birth control pills away shortly after graduating college. I was sober for the first time in years. With this sudden wave of clarity came the realization that the one thing I had been taking religiously for over 9 years may be seriously contributing to the demise of my mental health.
In the trash that packet of pills went. Aside from a five-month period where I tried out an IUD that made me rip and roar with pain, I never looked back.
It took time to configure my body and mind into a place that felt like how things ‘should have always been.’ Fewer mood swings, instant weight loss, headaches disappeared, my energy stabilized, and overall, I felt more clear-headed than ever before. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t turn from a ghoul into a pretty pretty princess, but my internal landscape shifted drastically and put me into a place where I could start the process of healing. As the muck of being on birth control pills for almost a decade washed away, my body resumed its natural processes. I was given the gift of reading my body's signs for things like ovulation, and I was aghast that the Fertility Awareness Method [FAM] was something we all weren’t taught. Honestly, I was horrified. I was bewildered that this whole time, I could have been reading my vaginal fluid and noting my body temperature shifts to decipher whether or not I was in a fertile window of my cycle. What?! How. How. HOW! ← That was my internal dialogue, enraged that this is not information being shouted from every rooftop far and wide. When I was first taught this method, I felt like a crazed, cloaked prophet, shaking my staff at anyone who would listen. “Learn the wild ways!” I would plead. [And frankly, I still do, but with less eye twitching.]
The strong pulse that showed up alongside my awareness of my body was a vivid and resounding intuitive voice, which had felt either fuzzy or painstakingly loud during my years of being on birth control pills. A river of knowing flowed from within that set me forward on a path that felt led from my belly-button instead of from my head or outside of me.
There is much to say about my process of the great remembering that has been my relationship with my womb and womanhood. Finding my roots in Herbalism, Animism, Paganism, and through the Wheel of the Year saved me and baptized me in the waters of the wild within. With these new eyes, I saw that the sacred was everywhere and within me. The power from within my womb was one I learned slowly, and then all at once.
In a hasty response to the 2016 election, I fled to the jungles of Costa Rica. Through the inner workings of a Facebook group, I found myself living in Tinamastes, an adorable mountain town that was a quick hitchhike to the beach or to the nearby small city of San Isidro. I lived in a casita adjacent to the local Tinamastes Soda [restaurant], owned by the most lovely and welcoming Costa Rican family. [I miss you, Angel! Ahn-Hel]
[Things get a little XXX here as it’s necessary for the story. If you don’t want to read that, move along to “Thump. Thump. Thump.” also in bold]
My partner at the time lived at the end of a long dirt road forty minutes from my casita at the top of an incredible mountainside property where he lived and worked. Upon reuniting, after being apart for weeks, and in the heat of passion, he decided to use coconut oil as a lubricant. We were using a condom as protection, as I was almost certain it was the 24-hour window where I was ovulating. The condom broke. (1) But we didn’t know that fact until it was entirely too late. Instantly, I placed my hand on the inside of my thigh (2) to feel for the vein that pulsates when one is ovulating, praying with everything inside of me and to any and every god that would listen that it would be quiet. (3)(4)
“Thump. Thump. Thump,” it loudly confirmed.
There’s a lot to unpack here. And many things to learn. If you’ve made it this far, please read:
Coconut oil degrades latex. It will cause latex condoms to rip, tear, or burst. Do NOT use oil-based lubricants during sex while using latex condoms. I repeat. TELL A FRIEND.
Yes, there is folkloric wisdom that tells you to feel for a vein in the inside of your leg, which will pulsate when you are ovulating. It corresponds to whatever ovary you are ovulating from. I read this in a book over a decade ago and have yet to find the book or a current-day resource to back it up. However, spoiler alert: My personal anecdotal data states it’s the truth. To this day, I test this regularly, as with most cycles, I also experience Mittelschmerz. While this isn’t failproof, I have suspecting intuitive feelings that it is oftentimes very accurate. In this instance, it was 100% accurate [as you will soon find out]. SAFETY NOTE: Please do NOT use this as a sole method of birth control.
Plan B was illegal in Costa Rica at this point in time. But, comfortable with the reproductive freedoms I was used to in the US, I didn’t know that.
While I detest the over-prescription of birth control, there ARE places and people it is for. I will never deny that. Plan B has saved me and many, many others from unwanted pregnancies. If it is legal where you live, please remember how fortunate you are.
Panic set in, and I soon discovered I was stuck at the end of that dirt road for the week. The property owners had taken their vehicles and ATVs to a job site, leaving us stranded on the other end of the jungle's beautiful, dusty dirt road.
Desperate to avoid pregnancy, we paid an astronomical price to a neighbor who taxied me hours away to a pharmacy where I bought birth control pills.
I consumed not one, not two, not three, four, or five birth control pills. But… 13. Thirteen birth control pills. I, the person who had spent years pleading with others not to ‘Google’ solutions to their health issues. But, vulnerable and in a foreign country where my womb had little sovereignty, I was undeniably desperate. The internet whispered, “Here. This. Swallow,” to prevent implantation, and I said, “Yes. Anything. Please. Help.”
[NOTE: USING BIRTH CONTROL PILLS IN THIS WAY IS EXTREMELY DANGEROUS AND NOT AT ALL ADVISED. PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS AS A MEANS OF BIRTH CONTROL OR PREGNANCY PREVENTION. I CANNOT EMPHASIZE THIS ENOUGH.]
The weeks that followed were horrific in many ways. I was not released from this scenario scotch-free or easily. The headaches, mood swings, and deep depression swung back into my life like a wrecking ball. One does not swallow that many birth control pills with safety in mind. An awareness within me bloomed. I was forced to fully grasp the truth that I was a woman in a world that does not fully understand nor respect women.
A few weeks later, I lay awake as an earthquake cracked the belly of my bedroom wall in my casita in half. That same evening, an earthquake from within rocked me with pain I had never known nor fathomed. I wouldn’t know it for another five days, but I was pregnant. And it was ectopic. A slow bleed from within mimicked my menstruation enough that I believed that I had my answer: I was not with child. Maybe I hadn’t ovulated. Maybe the birth control overdose worked. Maybe the horrific pains that would not stop jolting through my torso and into my limbs were nothing more than cramps, which I had only experienced half a dozen times in my 14 years of menstruating. I was horrified that people routinely felt the way I was feeling. How did they survive? How did they carry on? How did they stand upright?
I had wondered if I should get a pregnancy test to confirm, but my nearby tienda did not have one, and the next closest tienda was an hour away. I continued as if nothing was happening. The crack continued to spread.
Days later, I received a message from a dearly close friend: “Holy shit, dude! Frances is six months pregnant. We just found out today. We had absolutely no clue.” [Her name isn’t Frances. But it’s not your business what her name is.]
As I read this message, I wrestled with my body. That intuitive voice? The one I had been learning the language of? It tapped. “There is no such thing as coincidence.”
Hitch-hiking down the mountain, I scoured every tienda until I found a test. And then, as I had feared, a glaring positive stared up from the plastic white stick. I spent the next day in a crowded bus for hours, my only means of transportation, and made my way to the local gynecology office where my ectopic pregnancy news was delivered. The fetus had implanted outside of my uterus, awaiting my discovery, and in hopes that I would make this discovery before it was too late.
Within the day, I was preparing for emergency surgery in a private practice with a machismo doctor who stopped speaking English to me once he had my credit card on file. Upon performing the surgery, it was discovered that I had endometriosis, the reason for my ectopic pregnancy. Using fire to remove the endometriosis, he blazed my path as a new woman. [May I add, unconsensually.]
There is a deeply evocative thing about wildfires: They enact the process of rendering seeds fertile. The seeds await the fire. As without it, the seeds could not grow. From this day, I am reminded of this metaphor for every menstrual cycle I have experienced. And with every remembering, I recollect the wisdom within my womb, of the stories it begs to tell.
The surgery left me penniless, in debt, and in a relentless chronic pain that rendered me in a state of despair for the two years that followed, but pain which I now currently have more managed. While I am still overcoming this experience's upheaval, I know I am lucky. I have my life. And because of my dedication to steeping myself in the wisdom of the old ways, I have fought like hell to have my health for more days than not.
There are others who have not been so lucky. And I think of them often. The others whom I cannot unsee the energy of. The ones who were not so fortunate. The ones who didn’t catch it in time. The ones who didn’t have a doctor to assist them. The ones who were too fearful to admit they were pregnant in the first place. I weep for them, and I write for them.”