First off, you know you’re a crone when you post a picture of yourself in a witch hat on Facebook, and people say “This is the best picture of you I’ve ever seen,” and “Don’t take this the wrong way, but that suits you.” Ha! Y’all, it might be the makeup I almost never wear.
It’s been a lot of months since I’ve posted here. The last I posted, I was facing hysterectomy, and aware of some of the challenges I would face as a result (I was right about those, they were indeed challenging). What I didn’t know was that my hysterectomy would not go as planned. I had endometriosis so severe that the 40 minute procedure took 3 hours, in which my most excellent surgeon had to extricate my lady parts from my intestines. I thought I’d have three tiny laparoscopic incisions. I ended up cut hip to hip. I thought I would recover in six weeks tops. I am still recovering, three and a half months later, but I think nearly out of the woods? I thought I would get to keep my ovaries and enter menopause naturally, but it all had to go, and I was slammed into menopause. That, let me tell you, was an adventure. My husband is a saint. I am now on a hormone patch and reasonably sane or at least, as sane as I was before, which is to say, sane…. ish.
In addition, I lost enough blood to almost need a transfusion, and until I went to see my family doctor a couple of weeks later, no one told me I wasn’t going to get that blood back fully back for three months. Y’all, I look like a person again, not a grey-ish zombie, which might have something to do with how stunning I look in a witch hat and makeup. The hat would have been more convincing when I was greenish?
The hysterectomy is only half the story. As I mentioned, I was supposed to be recovered at six weeks post-op, and I was decidedly NOT, but classes started again at that point, so I stuffed myself into a pair of panties that are made to hold everything together (ladies who are looking at hysterectomy, listen to me, get some of these!!), and off to class I went.
The previous Sunday, my husband Russ thought he was getting a kidney stone, which is a not-uncommon occurrence for him. But he was really ill on the first day of school, with alarmingly shuddering chills (“rigors”) and an off-and-on fever, so while I went to class, his mom took him to the family doctor, who sent him directly to the ER, who put him in ICU for kidney stone/kidney infection/sepsis. He stayed there the better part of the week, then came home.
I found myself in crisis mode, and it took me these months to process it all. You know what I’m talking about? You kind of shut off your emotions and deal with The Thing(s), until you can get to the other side and ask yourself what the hell just happened. I had class to deal with too, plus a busy craft show season, which is just now over, and I’m taking a breather now to get my bearings.
One thing I have learned and am immensely grateful for, is that my support network is astonishing. Friends came to help every day when Russ was gone for a convention and I was still not recovered, and other friends offered to come and take me to church, and some brought meals, and lots sent cards, and people Russ doesn’t even know showed up to see him in the hospital and support both of us. My family here in Tennessee is amazing, and my church family is awesome, and my D&D family loves us too. If you’re reading this and you helped or showed up for us in any way, then I haven’t thanked you enough for all you’ve done.
You don’t know the strength you have or the support network you have until you fall hard. The net caught me. The strength let me climb back up out of it, and I am still here, still whole, and ready for the next chapter (SO ready…).
I had the idea to ask my Pagan/UU sisters to join me in a cronehood ritual. I have not done that yet, but I still want to. We mark a lot of the changes in our lives with ritual, why not the passage into menopause? This time of year is very much about cronehood in Pagan tradition. Women discover their magic when they become mothers, and I think when we can no longer have children, we discover that the magic isn’t just in reproduction, it’s in us. It’s not in a body part. It’s in mothering ourselves when we feel orphaned. It’s in reaching out and touching the lives of others. It’s in saying to our sisters in this experience of womanhood, I’ve been there. I understand. Tell me your story.
Loving the Questions 