A Life of Not-So Secret Secrets

I’ve reached a point in my life where I want to spill the tea on so many things, not because I’m a gossip, but because I see how keeping quiet about the difficult truth is actually hurting others. There are so many things you are told not to talk about because it will hurt your employability or just generally society will consider you a pariah. I never fit in, not anywhere, not really. I grew up in a misogynistic, religious town and read graphic news stories about women and children being murdered by men repeatedly in the same hometown. Some of the kids even went to my school. One story made it all the way to Oprah, but not all of them. Not all women and children were murdered, most were hit and bruised and cussed out. Many others were told how fat and ugly and worthless they were. They were the same people I saw at church every Sunday. Unsurprisingly, there was also a drug and alcohol problem in my town. I saw friends and family negatively impacted by it. You may be reading this and saying, “So what? It’s the same story in my hometown. Deal with it.” I don’t think dealing with it is the solution. I would much rather have children grow up in a world where the people causing all of the harm were the ones getting therapy and not the ones being abused. That would be a nice change of pace.

I eventually left that small town and spent the better part of a decade in the big city, thinking to myself, I’ve finally gotten away from the place that caused me so much grief and turmoil. No such luck. Turns out, people can be shitty and self-involved wherever you go. Then it occurred to me that a recurring theme was a lack of empathy. The more I spoke with people, the more most of them were just looking out for number one. You might ask, “Who could blame them? It’s a dog eat dog world out there. If you don’t look out for yourself, no one else will.” I’m sorry to say, after decades living on this planet, you’d mostly be right. It makes it incredibly difficult to trust anyone. I work in an industry where women are kind of treated like unicorns. Some men see us and immediately assume we couldn’t possibly add any real value because a woman well-versed in this industry couldn’t possibly exist. Others put us on a very weird, uncomfortable pedestal and want to treat us like pets. Very few see us as human beings capable of the same things they are and even fewer are able to see that we can do better than them. Not all women are that great either, actually. I’ve met plenty of women in and out of my industry that do nothing to make our gender look any better. It’s simply exhausting. I’d love to live in a world where a person’s outward appearance is not the first thing a person sees when considering them for a position at a company or really anything. I’d rather the person be considered for their credentials and abilities. This is the part of the story where every person of color reading it rolls their eyes and pats me on the head and says, “Okay white girl.” And I 100% appreciate that. You all deserve better.

To make matters worse, I was diagnosed with endometriosis, adenomyosis, and PCOS in the Fall of 2020 after a decade of unexplained discomfort and eventually massive, debilitating pain. The last two years were the absolute worst because my partner and I decided it was time for me to go off birth control and try to conceive. Turns out that birth control masks many of the symptoms of these diseases. After a while of trying with no luck, I thought I’d give myself a break and go on the copper IUD since it didn’t have hormones. A couple of months later, my body snapped the IUD in half and rejected it, the blood loss and clotting was significant. I later discovered that many women with endometriosis experience this, but endometriosis isn’t easily diagnosed and many doctors are not aware that women with endometriosis should avoid copper IUDs. So there’s a huge lack of knowledge from the community at large and in the medical community. At that point, I had experienced continued blood loss for over a year and had to go to the hospital during COVID for iron transfusions. If the doctors weren’t able to stop the blood loss, I had three shitty options. The first was going back on birth control for the rest of my life with no real chance of conceiving. The second was a hysterectomy. The third was dying of organ failure from blood loss. Luckily, I had excision surgery that removed the endometriosis and a month later I had a uterine artery embolization that removed the adenomyosis. I’m also on a custom blend of supplements that are reducing the symptoms of PCOS. All of the doctors involved in my healing process are a team of some of the most bad-ass women I have ever met. I am proud to know them and they literally saved my life.

If I’ve made you cringe and you are now very uncomfortable, good. That was my goal. You are the person I’m trying to reach. So what does any of this have to do with the members only challenge? Well, I enjoy storytelling and I’ve been sitting on some pretty intense, detailed, real-life stories that could be beneficial to the community at large. I am in the process of writing them and with a community supporting me, I would not feel like these stories are falling on deaf ears. These stories are conversation starters that may help the population at large see things from a less-discussed perspective, because let’s be honest, my life story isn’t unique, it’s a common problem that is grossly under-represented in the media.

In the meantime, I will continue writing my Anthology of Ancient Heroines series that shines a light on some pretty incredible women that time has forgotten. Tune in from time to time to learn about real-life women from hundreds and even thousands of years ago that accomplished great things under difficult circumstances. I do not plan on writing about Elizabeth I or Cleopatra or Joan of Arc. I think they’ve gotten enough attention. There are even more amazing women from our world history that go under-discussed if discussed at all.

So if any of this resonated with you or if you are intrigued, support me and let’s change the world together.