Tending The Dead

A Halloween Message from my Ghost Uterus

Earlier this week I was having a conversation with a client about a lot of things (as is somewhat typical in my sessions, which offer a neurodivergent affirming support, tangents are welcomed as they arrive). The conversation danced betweeninto ancestor reverance practices at this thin veil time of year and building and supporting pleasure practices.

Many of us, especially those of us raised to be caregivers can find our way to pleasure a little bit easier when we get there through service. For example, preparing a delicious meal to share, or nourish your loved ones is almost always easier that doing it just for your own damn self.

I’ve encountered this a number of times.

Many years ago I adopted a cat- and in doing so started keeping the surfaces in my space more organized, so he could traverse them without knocking my clutter to the ground.

When I moved into a house that was still holding the energetic presence of it’s former resident, I began noticing that the presence would become noticeably less chill if the flowers on the mantle were ready to be swapped out for fresh ones.

Building routine into my life as a parent has some self serving aspects to it, when my kid has the structures she needs to thrive, my load is easier.

But in all of the cases, I am supported by an action that I might not have been inclined to initiate for myself.

So back into that session; I was asked about what kinds of things I do at this time of year in regards to working with ancestors and lineage. I shared about tending and freshening altar spaces, cleaning up and getting rid of things that have served their place and don’t need a dedicated space in curated surfaces of my home.

When we looped back around, I connected the dots. I could see the ways that sometimes a barrier to pleasure practice comes from an inherited approach of tending others first. There can be layers of, “do I really deserve this?” and “nice things can exist as a reward for completing a task but shouldn’t stand in the way of doing the important tasks” and even, “the rewards for our hard work will await us in heaven”. Delayed (or displaced) gratification is a learned and inherited pattern that has roots in patriarchal systems of control and dominance.

So… what if we approach pleasure practice AS ancestor reverence? Like taking a rest that your great grandmother craved but wasn’t allowed to take. Can you twist the “DO FOR OTHERS” programming in such a way that allows you to claim self pleasure on behalf of the parts of your lineage that were denied such “indulgences”?

I sat with this idea over the week and rolled it around trying to figure out what my own ancestors needed from me. What was the care and tending I could do for my body in their honour?

This morning I woke up crampy. One of the ghosts in my body is my uterus. It was sent to it’s final resting place in the medical waste almost 3 years ago now, but since I kept my ovaries and am not taking any extra hormones, my body still (on occasion) goes through the motions of the big monthly purge. Now without an actual living uterus, a period lacks the gore aspects, but can still go all out in bringing the drama. When the uterine lining sheds, the physiology of that extends beyond the uterus itself. The process is hormonal and impacts muscles and fascia all over the abdomen (as well as into our brains and emotional centers, but that’s another post). Even if the uterus itself is a scar (or a ghost), the cramping and digestive effects can persist.

And in this experience, my body told me what it needed. Which, honestly is something a lot of my ancestors (especially those who were running households with heaps of kids, strings of pregnancies spanning decades) probably needed and didn’t get.

A morning to do what I needed to do from bed. With a heat pack. And dark chocolate.

I am able to do this in this present moment because of social safety nets that make it possible to offer myself this care. After writing this I was reminded that thousands of people in the US will be trying to scrape by without food assistance starting tomorrow. The idea of taking a relaxing morning to recouperate and prepare for a busy next few days is something that isn’t universally available. My taking it, knowing that it is something to not take for granted, and offering it back in time to those in my ancestral and political lineages that made & kept it possible for me to take the rest my body needed is what I can do.

Without rest I would have less to contribute to the organizing and advocacy work required to maintain these structures of support. Without taking the rest when we can, we have less capacity to contribute to the community driven mutual aid that is so urgently in demand when the systems are imploded as an act of war by an authoritarian regime. The patriarchal systems of domination and control want us tired, hungry, and hopeless. Feeling pitted against each other, being embarrassed or unsure about “flaunting indulgence in the face of suffering” is an angle that also serves the dominating system. In taking the morning, tending my disabled body and the ancestral wounds that try and convince me that I don’t deserve to take it easy, I’m not flaunting indulgence- this type of care should be universally available. The fact that it isn’t is a horrific injustice that wouldn’t be corrected by my pushing my body through or keeping my mouth shut about it either.

If your body can tell you what it needs or desires, can you listen to it?

If you don’t have that sort of open line of communication with your body (or maybe you don’t hear it until it is a loud, shut down level pain) are there things that you can offer it as a pre-emptive gift?

Are there ways you might use this spin to offer your ancestors things they may need or want, through your body?

If you can’t access the entirety of what your body is asking for (like for example I think I would really benefit from a full week of sleeping in and being cooked for- but that feels a bit outside of my reach) can you find ways to microdose it? (following the example, a slightly delayed or softer alarm, pre-making breakfast to lower the morning load, ordering in or doing a soup share with a friend)

If there are structures that help you meet your needs, like for example food benefits, do you communicate with your elected officials to let them know the on the ground importance of their choices?

If you have more than enough and can help support others in being able to do what their bodies and ancestral wounds need- find ways to share.

I’m also excited to share that one of the jobs I did from bed today was meeting with Sherwin from Pink Sheep who is my website guy about some exciting new things on the horizon. I’m not about to drop links for you quite yet, but I did want to tease. Stay tuned and make sure you are subscribed to updates here because there are some very exciting new things coming your way.

Image by Manuela Jaeger from Pixabay