Breaking the Painful Cycle: Female Solidarity and Womb Healing (Part 1)

This morning was the first day of my monthly cycle. For me, each cycle is different-and feels different in my body. Today, I had painful, almost debilitating cramps that left me moaning and groaning for the majority of the morning.

As I lay in bed writhing with my hand on my stomach, looking up at my ceiling, begging some invisible entity to take my pain away, I paused for a moment to think about the other female animals in the world who experience womb pain-mostly their entire lives without relief-experiencing pain far worse, and more debilitating than my own.

I thought about Dairy cows who are repeatedly raped (forcibly inseminated), their udders painfully clamped onto machines draining the milk that is intended for their young-whom are also in turn stolen from them immediately after birth… How so many of these cows suffer from mastitis, a painful udder infection that causes pus to seep into the very milk we drink in our morning coffees or sprinkle as cheese on pizza.

I thought about female chickens, who are forced to lay so many eggs that their uteri prolapses, all whilst living in cages for their brief, (albeit excruciatingly long) years, painfully bearing extra weight on their feet in cages with wire mesh floors. I thought about female sows, who are confined in cells so small they cannot move or stand up, eternally lying down on a filthy floor to feed their young, until they are released into their violent fate of being slaughtered for “bacon”.

I connected my womb pain to the millions of other female creatures, mothers, women, around the world who feel just as deeply, just as fully as I do. Who also deserve to be healed and treated gently when they are experiencing the natural pains of womanhood, but will not be given the opportunity to lay in a comfortable bed and heal, with herbs and amenities, as I am.

But like me, like many other women, they are also experiencing the oppression that comes with living in a patriarchal, white supremacist, capitalist society-which exploits our natural gift-giving life force-the ability to bring new life into the world.

For non-human females, this often means your body will be used as machinery in the industrialized farming complex. The children you bear will be repeatedly stolen from you, chopped up and fed to the ravenous masses of another species. Your body is merely a cog in the wheel to feed human gluttony, addiction, luxury product, fast-food. Your body is not your own.

As you toil, they feed. As you birth, lay, milk, and wither, the pockets of those wealthy few who placed you here only get fatter. And once your body is worn and tired-when your womb has been worked to its exhaustion-you are rendered useless and dragged to slaughter.

It reminded me so much of the sex trades-where the female body is utilized and exploited for male pleasure. Men adopt a consumer culture towards women’s bodies…waiving personal responsibility to care about the person inside the body or product they are consuming. Until we are old and spent-which will be the time that the most vulnerable and exploited of us will be rendered useless and left for dead.

In the same way, female farm animals rank lowest in the Patriarchal-Capitalist system, whores are amongst the lowest caste of human females who are forgotten-whose lives are deemed the least valuable.

Trafficked women in particular who are enslaved for prostitution-pad the pockets of men who gain material wealth from their rape-which, like food-is a natural human need. It is no surprise that both the food and sex industries are some of the wealthiest in the world. In this current social climate, they are the ultimate hotbeds of greed and patriarchal oppression of females- both human and non-human.

I see these connections. It is important for me to remain aware of how these dynamics are interrelated. How important it is for us to heal the world through healing ourselves-our bodies-which are in fact, microcosms and reflections of the world at large. When we consume violence through our thoughts, words, and actions, we perpetuate violence done unto us, and in turn, continue the cycle of pain, oppression, and grievance within ourselves and in the world.

As women, we carry the gift of life-giving…not just for babies, but for all Creation, Cosmic Art, Energetic and Cultural shifts in the Universe. It is time for us to honor, respect, and show solidarity with all creatures who share this gift.