When I first started writing about my struggle with vaginal pain, I wrote that it felt like one of my greatest fears was materializing: that I am stuck with this unprovoked pain forever. Seven months later, the pain persists. I am discovering what it feels like to live in tandem with one of my greatest fears. Some days, […]
My life isn’t so much peaks and valleys these days. It’s more prairies and valleys. Since this pain nightmare started in June, I seem to cycle between total despair and a little less despair. When a loved one kindly offers, “I hope you have a good day”, it feels like a monumental disconnect from my reality. Semantics are powerful, and […]
This story is about a series of childhood experiences that, until March 2012, I’d long dismissed as not that relevant to my life. Not long after I was born, I was catheterized for a suspected urinary tract infection (UTI). That post-birth infection was the first of what turned into a long chain of unrelenting UTI’s and […]
For months, I’ve been ignoring an urge to start writing again because the thing I want to write about is extremely personal, even for me. So I repeatedly reminded myself that in this case, the personal is political. If I can turn this struggle into something of use to other women despairing alone and in silence, then the suffering […]
Gutsy Beautiful Complicated 