Endometriosis: emotional and spiritual meaning

What endometriosis is

Endometriosis is tissue similar to the lining of the womb that grows outside the womb. It may sit on the ovaries, the lining of the pelvis, the bowel or the bladder, and sometimes further away. It answers to the monthly hormones, so it can swell and bleed in a place that has little room for blood. The usual picture is painful periods, pain with sex, pain when opening the bowels or passing urine, heavy bleeding, and, for some, difficulty conceiving. Others have little pain and find it another way. The cause is not settled. It is not decided by wanting a child or by not wanting one. Care is pain relief, hormone treatment, and sometimes surgery, chosen with a clinician. Period pain that takes over a life is a reason to be examined, not a reason to wait.

The emotional meaning of endometriosis

The tissue is womb lining that has taken a place outside the wall of the womb. The reading gathers its questions there, around motherhood, a mother, and whether there is a nest you can trust.

Often the relationship with your mother, or the inheritance she left, in the body and in the feeling, sits in conflict with who you are and with the place you want in the world. You may not know how to stand in relation to a woman who was so influential. Speaking brings the fear of turning her against you. A question follows that is only a question. Your parents may have loved each other, and you may be denying that.

If you come from a family that broke apart, the fear can be that the family you would offer a child would not be perfect, would not be good enough. It is as if that child's nest were somewhere else, and you could not welcome them properly at home. Is there a doubt about the couple? A fear that you, or your partner, might look elsewhere? Do your hopes, and the life of the couple, make you afraid that a child would change everything? You may doubt your ability to be a good mother. You may fear that the home of a child still to come would be outside your house. The example given is a child who would spend most of their days in someone else's care, and the fear that they would come to feel that other place, or that other person, was the real home.

It can also be that you do not accept the world you live in, or do not dare to take part in it. If you cannot accept this world, how would you bring another being into it? And yet you chose to come here before you were born. The question turns toward yourself. What makes it hard to accept yourself as you are, and to give your creativity a channel?

You may let people walk over you, and swallow everything without a word. The impression is of having no strength to stand up and assert yourself, and of living one failure after another. Aggressiveness can rise because you know you are stopping yourself from doing things, and because staying with an aim is hard.

A gentler way to hold it

• See the link between the fear, the doubt, the uncertainty, and the situation you are in.
• Say openly what you feel.
• Assert yourself as a person. Recognise what you are.
• Stop handing your place away. If someone is harming you, get to safety and get help. Respect is something you are allowed to require.
• Let creativity express itself.
• Keep the medical plan. Pain care, hormones, and any surgery a clinician recommends stay with them.