Steamy Story (personal)
Here is the handmade throne (read:pelvic steaming stool) where I sit, knees open wide allowing full access to the portal of my creative center. It wasn’t always this way. When I first came to pelvic steaming I was desperate for a way to explore and resolve all the things that felt wrong with my reproductive system and organs. I sat over the steam with my legs closed. My entire pelvis was tense, often in pain, storing my disappointment, anger and need for stability.
I had seen a steam box on the internet and the words: vaginal steaming with herbs. I had two of those things but needed a steam box to sit on. With the help of my life partner, I made one with a native cypress board from a local woodworker…I sealed it with homemade pine-infused oil (see above photo).
In the beginning, I was cautious about letting in the steam. It felt amazing but I had become so distant and disconnected from my pelvis. This wasn’t intentional and I didn’t think I was disconnected. I’m still in the process of healing a myriad of pelvic issues and I won’t go into detail about each one of them yet, but I will say that I have been slowly undoing the disconnect that began 34 years ago when I started menstruating. In this post, I’ll give a brief highlight of what I brought to that first pelvic steaming session.
At age 11 I just wanted to plug it up and make it go away!! There were reasons I had body dysphoria at age eleven that I didn’t understand, but I did understand that bleeding didn’t feel good and it was an out-of-control mess. As soon as swimming season came around I started plugging with tampons and even though it never felt “right” I kept that up for NINETEEN years. After my second child at age 30, I switched to a menstrual cup which was 〰️worlds〰️ better. I didn’t feel plugged, or full and heavy while bleeding. I couldn’t smell myself bleeding anymore and no more waste!! I was in HEAVEN. I started to “let in” my period, let it into my heart. I could see exactly how much I was bleeding, the consistency, the color and I began to see its beauty. Blood is really beautiful. That cup was worlds better BUT, it was still reading to my body, to my brain, as a plug…and I’m still undoing that damage. No plugging at all is best. I recommend using a menstrual cup for swimming only.
In my late teens and early twenties, I was being reckless with my body and experienced multiple STIs, including HPV. I experienced emotional and psychic trauma from blurred boundaries, and I was storing all of it in my pelvis. This I intuitively knew, but I wasn’t sure how to get rid of it.
During the birth of my first child, I almost died, we almost died. In the saving of our lives, I suffered 3rd-degree tears the entire length of my birth canal. I thought I would need to be celibate for the rest of my life because that pain was so excruciating. Even after I worked for a long time on the scar tissue it never felt the same, I could always feel that 4-inch long scar…until I began to steam.
About six years into using the cup to stay further disconnected from the fact that my body bleeds, I began to have pain and a new erratic period pattern. Always spotting starting five days before every period...but also random flood bleeding that filled up and spilled out of the cup in an instant. My body was like a blinking alarm trying its hardest to get my attention. During this time I would also have pain during sex, my cervix was always irritated and inflamed with a little spotting after. What once brought me pleasure was also joining in the effort to get my attention and care. My ovaries would alternately really hurt during ovulation. I had massive PMS where I “circled the drain” holding on for dear life...doing everything not to get swept down. The flora of my vulva was always “off”…maybe ok for only a couple of days each cycle…and then I began to get excruciating cysts on my tailbone and pain deep in my hip, my sciatic nerve, and lower spine ached endlessly. My whole pelvis was now working together to get my attention!
It was finally too much to avoid dealing with. Surprisingly, Gynecologists could do nothing. They offered antibiotics. The pap smears came back fine, maybe slightly “abnormal” but come back in a year just to be sure, they said. Ultrasounds and MRIs revealed nothing. There was nothing to account for any of the pain and they didn’t have anything to offer.
Often I find women who regularly visit their gyno with great confidence! They will try any pill or contraption recommended, and going on this journey of trial and error with a gynecologist works for them. I encounter this every day and I am not judging it! It simply did not work for me.
The only thing left was to try plant medicine combined with ancient practice. I had no idea what it would do, what could be done, but why not just try...just begin with what I know to be really safe elements from nature. Wood, water, and plants that I’ve grown and tended. Maybe it would do nothing...maybe it would heal everything. What did I have to lose? I stood to lose all the pain and problems I have just written about and that seemed tremendous! What if?! I was actually SO EXCITED to begin steaming.
...More coming soon!
(I am going to lead you along my pelvic steaming journey in future blog posts, plus go back and discuss in more detail the issues that led to pelvic steaming. I’m looking forward to it!)
HEAL THE ROOT - composting, regenerating, transforming!