This blog post is a transcript of my reflections around both International Women’s Day & Endometriosis Awareness/Action Month in 2024. I recorded this as a little bonus episode for my podcast, which you can watch/listen to below. Or you can continue on reading.

March brings us International Women's Day as well as Endometriosis Awareness or Action Month here in the UK. These two events have stirred up some powerful reflections for me which I would like to share with you. 

What has been coming through for me is the fact that when it comes to our health and wellbeing:

WE NEED TO DO BETTER

Hear me out! Let me explain myself:

It was 2016 when I had my hysterectomy as a result of endometriosis. I had this surgery like the many surgeries before it as a result of my lack of choices . The decision came from an uninformed place, a place of fear and confusion.  Yet eight years later it's very much the same experience and messages for women with symptoms of endometriosis 

This month I'm seeing lots of fabulous posts relating to endometriosis and although this is doing an amazing job of raising awareness of the condition. I find myself feeling both sad and angry. 

It deeply saddens me that the message is still the same as it was for me back in 2016. And it angers me that the ‘solutions’ are no better. There is so much focus on raising awareness for diagnosis, but where is the help and the solutions for those women getting diagnosed? Focusing on gynaecological medications and surgeries is not good enough. Not good enough for me at least. 

It angers me that the western medical approach is still the one most entrusted by the thousands of women affected by endometriosis in positively addressing the symptoms of  this disease. And that in many cases it is the only model women will explore. Yes I am speaking from experience here. 

This remains the case despite its failure to actually make any progress in terms of understanding the disease and helping women to overcome the symptoms. 

It is not good enough. 

Ladies we need to do better because we deserve better.

What do I mean by this?

I mean that as women we need to start to realize the power and the capabilities of our bodies. We need to step away from this over reliance on the medical model when it comes to supporting our health and our well-being as it is ignorant of the intelligence of the body. We know that endometriosis is a chronic systemic inflammatory disease which affects the entire body, yet still sends women to gynaecologists and ignores the rest of her body.

We are not respecting how the body works and the fact that no system in the body ever works alone, ever gets injured alone or ever heals alone. 

As women we seem to be putting all of our agency and our power into the hands of a system that doesn't understand the female body. And is not prioritizing research or efforts into improving their understanding. 

We need to do better and we need to reclaim our health and wellbeing. We need to stop over relying on the doctors to do all the work for us. We need to get reconnected with our bodies, with ourselves and listen to our intuition. 

We cannot expect a medical model that ignores the impacts that our emotions, our environment and our connections / relationships are having on our physical health and wellbeing. We cannot expect that model to provide all the answers to our challenges with endometriosis. 

We deserve better. We need to get ourselves informed. We need to be more open minded to the many ‘alternative’ or holistic approaches to endometriosis and start to trust that there are other ways of addressing this condition. This of course can be alongside the medical model.

I believe that when we start to do this, we will start to change the narrative around the condition and the whole of women's health and wellbeing. 

These are my reflections. I welcome you to share your thoughts and feelings about what I have shared here as well as your own reflections. 

Much love Amy x