women with "wrong" bodies and attempts at healing

Lilly and I: May she never be
told her body is "wrong."

Women are constantly bombarded with imageries that tell them there's somehow something wrong with their bodies; that they don't measure up. But this post is not about those kind of "wrong" bodies. This post is about when Western medicine tells women their bodies don't function right; that they're "wrong."

I got this message from an early age. Feeling unsafe at home, I suffered from insomnia from an early age. I had headaches, frequent colds, and in general a poor constitution. There were concerns I would go deaf when I grew up because my hearing was "poor" (I think it was selective). And they wanted to test me for diabetes since I was "too thirsty" all the time (see, I've always been a swiller.)

The real problems started when I "failed" to get my period. I maybe had a little spotting at some point late in middle school, but it never developed into anything. When I was 18, this was cause for alarm. There were frequent hormone tests and attempts at jumpstarting my period with strong birth control pills; pills that were later taken off the market because of near fatal side effects.

the miracle of life

Because we're trying to conceive a child, and because Lilly is in a constant awe of babies that are in the womb and then come out of it, we checked out The Miracle of Life with timeless photos by Swedish photographer Lennart Nilsson. Then we all sat down to watch it last Sunday afternoon. We expected the video to feature pictures of a growing fetus, but as it turns out, the video is more about what happens before anything turns into even an embryo.

Amazing internal photographs capture living, functioning reproductive systems as the camera follows an egg from its follicular development in an ovary, through the delicate, flowery fallopian tube for fertilization, and on to the uterus for development and eventual birth. Likewise, we follow the shorter journey of millions of sperm as they develop and strive desperately to reach the egg.

We explained as best as we could what the images were featuring. It helps that Lilly already knows all the correct words for the external genitals (both in English and Norwegian, though she's inclined to use the colloquial terms "tiss" and "tissemann"); now we moved on to the internal ones. And we kept waiting for the appearance of a fetus; something more recognizable to a three-year-old.

more business of being born

More Business of Being Born premiered this week in Los Angeles. I loved Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein's first documentary The Business of Being Born with its empowering messages for women to claim their power to birth on their terms, and this promises to be a solid follow-up.



About the film: Executive Producer Ricki Lake and Filmmaker Abby Epstein follow their landmark documentary, The Business of Being Born, with an all-new, four part DVD series that continues their provocative and entertaining exploration of the modern maternity care system. More Business of Being Born, available on November 8th, 2011, offers a practical look at birthing options as well as poignant celebrity birth stories from stars including Alanis Morissette, Gisele Bundchen, Christy Turlington-Burns, Cindy Crawford, Molly Ringwald, Kimberly Williams-Paisley and Melissa Joan Hart.

go the fuck to sleep

I am returning to my Sleep Question book this week. In that spirit, I'm posting this You Tube video of Samuel L. Jackson reading the parody childrens book, Go the Fuck to Sleep, which has seen a runaway success.

If The Sleep Question won't be as laugh-out hilarious, I can promise you that it will make you feel as unjudged and not alone.