Reclaiming Our Womb, Reclaiming Our Self~

Something that came up in one of our early “Alchemy of Menopause” gatherings was around how women store things in their wombs. We store secrets, unprocessed emotions, and the unprocessed emotions of others. The things we swallow down end up stuffed into our womb, and the things people close to us do not want to carry end up there too. We carry for the people in our lives and for the collective, the grief of the world and the trauma of the Earth. On a cellular level the past and the history of the womb is stored there too.

Women are connected at the level of womb in a deeply attuned and resonant way. Our wombs are a hologram of the original archetypal womb, the great void from which everything emerges. We are particularly connected to the vibration of our mother’s womb, our grandmother’s womb, and right back down the line of our matrilineal story. Mother-line work is for me strongly accentuated during menopause, and I know it is for other women too.

It is not only children that are gestated and born from the womb, but also our creative projects, our remembrance, potential and ability for cosmic connection, woven as we are into the web of life.

When the womb becomes a repository of unclaimed unnamed things, things too terrible to be brought into the light of consciousness, or things that just need a safe refuge because there is nowhere else for them to go, the channels of source energy become blocked and the waters become stagnant. It is no wonder that there are so many uterine imbalances and diseases. In the States approximately 600,000 hysterectomies are performed each year, and in the UK about 60,000. That is a lot of wombs.

The medical practices that treat these womb imbalances is a greatly important topic that has been largely unexplored from a feminine/womb-centred perspective.

Because of the Alchemy of Menopause work, I began to wonder what happens to all these untold, unlived stories and hidden emotions that have taken refuge in the womb during menopause. The uterus gets smaller; there is less space to hold all these things. I learned that after menopause, the uterus shrinks to the same uterus cervix ratio that it was before puberty. Reflecting on this symbolically, I wonder if this is why during menopause, women sometimes experience connecting with their inner child, or young girl, remembering who they are on an essential level. All that holding for other people is released and a return to the self is finally able to happen.

The release of all that shadow material, ours or other peoples, makes space in our wombs and a gateway is opened.

The flow and interconnectedness with our soul essence is freed up. This might look ugly; what do we do with all the stuff that we had previously stored in our wombs. Where does it go? This may account for why some women report bouts of rage and a decreasing lack of tolerance for other people’s BS in menopause.

Something inside of us refuses to be the shadow mule any longer, and to purify our inner waters we rinse a lot of gunk out of us.

This to my mind is the sacred invitation of menopause. It is a reclamation of the self at the core of which as women is the womb. Menopause is a reclamation of the womb.

If you are called, I would love for you to join me on this journey of discovery and reclamation.

“Reclaiming Our Womb, Reclaiming Our Self”, words and image by Karen Mullen Smith © Digital Art for the Alchemy of Menopause. Original artwork: Alchemical image from the 1582 book Labyrinthus, medicorum, chimistarumby Janus Lacinius, titled “Elixir Æylehim” & Echidna sculpture by Parco dei Mostri 1555.