Please allow me to introduce a guest author, Faith whom I met at the Blogher confrence in San Jose. Like me she has a passion to help women with a personal medical problem that is not so easy for us to talk about.
Here is Faith's story…
I first started having vulvar pain back in 2004, but it wasn’t until 2013 that I found other women with the same problem. I guess on some level I knew other women must be out there – I had by this time managed to find a great pelvic pain physical therapist, who obviously must have had other patients – but I didn’t meet anyone in the flesh until just last year.
It was amazing.
When I look back over all the things I have done to improve or try to improve my health, joining a somatic psychotherapy group for women with pelvic pain had one of the most profound effects on healing my heart and soul.
The previous nine years hadn’t just been tough for my body, though they definitely were. My emotional self had also shriveled. Unable to work full-time, my previous identity as an energetic go-getter slipped through my fingers. Chronic pain left me so exhausted that there was no room in my life for ambition, for challenges. I was in my twenties, and my friends were climbing career ladders or backpacking the globe, going to bars and going to grad school, while I was curled up on the couch. I was so ashamed of my pain that I kept it from all but a few people, leaving the rest to wonder why I suddenly stopped being myself.
And then, I met Them – a room full of eight women, all in their twenties and thirties, who were beautiful, smart, vibrant… and in an incredible amount of pain. Suddenly I wasn’t the Freak, the Failure. I was simply one of many people with a health problem.
Over the course of six months, we met once a week or every other week. Our stories unfolded. In so many ways I learned that I was not alone. I stopped taking my suffering personally.
Since then I have grown so beautifully, and in so many ways. The group no longer meets, but its impact lingers.
Thank you for reading this blog. It may seem like a solitary act, but by reading and commenting on NeurogenicBladder.me you create community, and it is within community that we spread the knowledge necessary to heal our bodies and the compassion needed to heal our spirit.
Faith Cornwall
Support & Sisterhood for Women with Pelvic Pain
If it hurts down there, come on over here!