Tarita GANS THOMAS
I am Tarita. I was diagnosed with Endometriosis at 12 years old and have suffered severe pain with my menstrual cycle almost every month of the past 37 years. That is too much pain for too long, and I am not alone. Many, many women walk this same road. This journey has carried with it an impact on my schooling, career, and financial life that is seldom discussed, and if it were not tied so directly to our often undervalued wombs would be considered a disability.
Growing up it was not uncommon for me to miss at least one, and often several days of school because my menstrual cramps were so painful I could barely get to the bathroom and would spend days holding a heating pad to my abdomen, crying, and at times screaming, from the intensely violent pain in my body-that the gynecologists and advertisers refer to as “discomfort.”
The embarrassment a 12-, 13-, 14- year old girl feels having to explain why she has suddenly shifted from
getting gold stars for perfect attendance, to chronic absence can shake confidence, disempower you, and make you the target of unkind jokes and pranks at the hands of still maturing peers.
For me, it did not get better as I got older. In fact, it got quite a bit worse. By the time I was 15, my male gynecologist—who had never menstruated and had never been a teenaged girl—was writing prescriptions for what seemed like every powerful painkiller on the planet in an attempt to give me back a full life. But even the strongest narcotics were ineffective. There had to be another way.
At 17, as I was proudly preparing to go to college, a luxury neither my mother, nor my grandmothers were afforded, this same male doctor, still unable to ease my monthly suffering, declared that if I wanted to have a child I needed to get pregnant right then or I would never be able to do it. Wow! Talk about pressure! Of course I wanted a family. One day. Maybe even one day soon. But not today, not on the eve of my future!
I spent the next thirty years researching answers and seeking relief. That now or never pregnancy moment resulted in a decision that I’m still questioning well into my 40’s as I seek out fertility consultations and answers to why I’ve never been pregnant accidentally or intentionally, a common side effect of endometriosis.
As I crave motherhood, it feels very much like at age 17 I hit a crossroad and chose education and career over motherhood. I find this unique intersection of women’s bodies and our careers to be ripe with opportunity to look at education, opinions, politics, policy and moral judgment in our culture. Why are women and society so often over the course of decades and generations pretending as though there is a women’s issue here, as if we are having virgin births? We are all intimately tied to menstrual cycles, fertility, pregnancy, motherhood, abortion and indeed all things uterine. The Womb is our first home. It should not be treated as an inconvenience, a battleground, or a source of anything other than sacred life and joy. A woman’s dance with her uterus should be honored, upheld and incorporated lovingly into the lives we all lead. Periods equal people.
Growing up it was not uncommon for me to miss at least one, and often several days of school because my menstrual cramps were so painful I could barely get to the bathroom and would spend days holding a heating pad to my abdomen, crying, and at times screaming, from the intensely violent pain in my body-that the gynecologists and advertisers refer to as “discomfort.”
The embarrassment a 12-, 13-, 14- year old girl feels having to explain why she has suddenly shifted from
getting gold stars for perfect attendance, to chronic absence can shake confidence, disempower you, and make you the target of unkind jokes and pranks at the hands of still maturing peers.
For me, it did not get better as I got older. In fact, it got quite a bit worse. By the time I was 15, my male gynecologist—who had never menstruated and had never been a teenaged girl—was writing prescriptions for what seemed like every powerful painkiller on the planet in an attempt to give me back a full life. But even the strongest narcotics were ineffective. There had to be another way.
At 17, as I was proudly preparing to go to college, a luxury neither my mother, nor my grandmothers were afforded, this same male doctor, still unable to ease my monthly suffering, declared that if I wanted to have a child I needed to get pregnant right then or I would never be able to do it. Wow! Talk about pressure! Of course I wanted a family. One day. Maybe even one day soon. But not today, not on the eve of my future!
I spent the next thirty years researching answers and seeking relief. That now or never pregnancy moment resulted in a decision that I’m still questioning well into my 40’s as I seek out fertility consultations and answers to why I’ve never been pregnant accidentally or intentionally, a common side effect of endometriosis.
As I crave motherhood, it feels very much like at age 17 I hit a crossroad and chose education and career over motherhood. I find this unique intersection of women’s bodies and our careers to be ripe with opportunity to look at education, opinions, politics, policy and moral judgment in our culture. Why are women and society so often over the course of decades and generations pretending as though there is a women’s issue here, as if we are having virgin births? We are all intimately tied to menstrual cycles, fertility, pregnancy, motherhood, abortion and indeed all things uterine. The Womb is our first home. It should not be treated as an inconvenience, a battleground, or a source of anything other than sacred life and joy. A woman’s dance with her uterus should be honored, upheld and incorporated lovingly into the lives we all lead. Periods equal people.
