WOUNDS AND THE WOMB

JULIE PETERS explores how to heal a relationship with the sacred womb, a place of death, life, and possibilities.

- JULIE PETERS

THE WOMB IS A SACRED and powerful place in a female body.

It’s the source of potential life and also a place that, for many women, monthly sheds its lining, creating anything from mild discomfort to excruciating pain. It’s a place where conditions like endometriosis or polycystic ovarian syndrome can wreak havoc on our body systems. It can grow from the size of a pear to a watermelon in pregnancy, and then it can return right back to its original size. It can be a place of miscarriage, abortion, child loss, or child birth. It is the location of the second chakra, an energy center related to pleasure, creativity, joy, and passion. It can also be a place where we store our trauma. The womb is the center of both death and life.

Many of us don’t think too much about our wombs until something happens there—or doesn’t, if we are waiting for a late period to arrive. Some women don’t have physical wombs, but instead a space that may be felt energetically or imaginatively. Whether you have a good, bad, complex, or neutral relationship with this part of your body, how often have you thought about it?

I thought about mine the most, perhaps, when I was newly pregnant after having had a miscarriage. I had a hard time understanding that this was a place of both nourishment and growth for a new baby when it had felt like a graveyard just a few short months ago. I sat with it, meditated with it, placed my hands over my belly and tried to feel and breathe and understand this part of me. It felt very strange to be creating life in a place that had so recently brought me death and devastation.