Wednesday’s Bloom at 526 weeks: Hemorrhoids, and other holy labors of this mothering body
/// multitudinous mothering entity /// A mother who moves through the world and navigates spaces while attached to or in close, physical proximity of her children. Italicized words expanded on in the Glossary.
Wednesday’s Bloom at 526 weeks
Hemorrhoids, and other holy labors of this mothering body
by Mother Mother Binahkaye Joy
For Mama RK—Thank you for sharing your tender moments of living and laboring courageously with the pain. Thank you for showing us what it means to continue to make a way through to brighter, sweeter days. Thank you for everything it takes to believe there is a tomorrow. I witness you. I celebrate you.
I have hemorrhoids, again. I am learning to heal myself, to be with the journey and its pain. Every elimination after having a baby is another birth, another labor of breathing through whatever it will be. Soften, open, release. There is no way around this truth. The body can’t survive without routinely letting go.
I am in my Sacred Return, the season commonly simplified as postpartum. But I’ve adopted the language of Sacred Return, gifted to us by midwife and medicine woman Zindzi Aya. The Sacred Return is a holy sojourn to your new self, to the new you after giving birth, whatever kind of birth it is, and however that birth unfolds.
The Sacred Return goes for as long as you feel you need it to go. Our first 40 days of being these two distinct forms, of existing as we now do in these solitary bodies of Mother and Child, have just been the beginning of my beginning.
The Sacred Return is an extended ritual of pausing even when you have to stay in motion. As the outer world insists on getting on with it, with the business of life, the Sacred Return holds the line for your transitions, hormonal, spiritual, digestive and otherwise. The Sacred Return affirms, like a steadfast, old grandma, “That’s right! Take your time. We know you just had a baby.”
The Sacred Return embraces the discovery of who you are now. It is an honoring of all the ways you have expanded, of all the parts of you that will never, can never, be the same. It is that essential, internal witnessing that no one else can give you.
Inside my Sacred Return I am dancing with the little crumbs of time I have. This is what we are taught to throw away because they are considered too small to be significant. But any time is good time, so I eat it all. And that is why I am not starving for myself.
The dance helps me find some relief for the future appointment at the toilet. The movements increase blood circulation to the pelvic floor, and this generates a softening in all the places that have to stretch and open when the time comes for blessed matters to go their separate ways.
I only do good-feeling movements, movements that don’t hurt or stress my delicate, afterbirth body. I swing. I dip. I rock. I twirl. I bend. I lean. I sway. I glide. I lift a knee and stretch a leg. I twist a bit to each side, feeling the fullness of what is and what isn’t there anymore. I spin tiny orbits around my center. All gentle, all warming.
The small hip rotations alleviate some of the pain of the hemorrhoids—along with lots of water, and whole bags of spinach sautéed in coconut oil, and plenty of soaked flaxseed, and magnesium 3 times a day when I can remember. I’ve found in 8 years of navigating hemorrhoid life that eating foods that can pass effortlessly, staying abundantly hydrated, and moving my body in circles are the most expedient routes to recovery.
When you dance you feel it all, all of what this birth has left inside for you. Your more brilliant bones, and your more compassionate muscles. Your more voluminous blood and your more wise womb. Your precious, beating heart, more faithful than ever. You generous, devoted lungs, expanding in love with each new breath as you find that sweet, preferably hemorrhoid-free home within yourself again.
About this photo story
Mother Mother dances in her birthing altar with a sleepy Luminous Glory at the breast. The dance is a belated celebration of reaching their 40 days since giving birth and being born.
Wednesday’s Bloom: Moments in Motherhood is Mother Mother’s weekly-ish, textual experiment in capturing moments from her mothering journeys in 1000 words (or thereabouts)…
Originally birthed when her first born was 8 weeks old, the first iteration of Wednesday’s Bloom: Textual Portraits of a New Mommy lived for about a year and a half in another blog space, and then Mother Mother let the series rest for more than 8 years before beginning this second iteration, Wednesday’s Bloom: Moments in Motherhood, here inside of Notes On My Life As A Multitudinous Mothering Entity. Journey inside Mother Mother’s process of revisiting and archiving the first volume of Wednesday’s Bloom as an emerging constellation in Mother Mother’s Reading Room. Read on to try out Mother Mother’s Seeds & Sprouts practice inspired by her labors of crafting this week’s post.
Seeds & Sprouts
First Impressions: Threading & unraveling pain
Seed Prompt
A seed prompt is a short activity that initiates multiple openings for continuing exploration. This is designed to be something you can do in 5-10 minutes.
Make a list of 3 moments in your life when you felt pain, physical, emotional, or otherwise.
Consider each of your moments, and remember who you were and where you were at the time. Even if others were involved, do your best to just think about how you felt and what you experienced.
Use your language to author the memories in your mind. Write or record any notes you want to make about each moment.
Determine which statement is most true (or craft a more fitting statement) for how you initially experienced each pain moments on your list:
I stayed with the pain.
I numbed the pain.
I ignored the pain.
I ran away from the pain.
I healed the pain
I am still in pain.
I hid from the pain.
I revealed the pain.
I was angry with the pain.
I was curious about the pain.
I grieved the pain.
I celebrated the pain.
Sprout Practice
A sprout practice is an opportunity to expand on whatever most stirred within your heart during the seed prompt. Save this practice for when your time is soft and you can take your time being with the discovery.
Revisit your list of pain moments from the seed prompt. Have any more moments come to mind that you want to add to your list? If so, go through the seed prompt activity for any newly added moments before moving to the next step.
Select the pain moment that you feel the most unsettled, uncomfortable, or unresolved about.
Read over the statement again that expressed how you initially felt when you experienced this pain. Was this your truest statement? If not, revisit the statements listed above and choose a more accurate reflection, or write a clarified statement.
In your journal, reflect on one or more of the following self inquiries:
How did my initial response to this pain impact my understanding of the source of the pain?
How was my initial response to the pain an authentic reflection of what I had the capacity to endure at that time?
How did shame or fear of being judged initially affect my choice to ask for help or not with this pain?
How has my experience of navigating this pain evolved since initially feeling it?
What has living through/with this pain illuminated to me about my life?
This pain wants to write you a letter. Listen to what comes up and write or record what pain has to say.
Revisit this expanded practice daily, or as often as nourishes you, or until you’ve lovingly sat with every word/phrase from your original list.
