Journey to Womb Writing

From the ripe age of 11 years old, I have been compiling my writings in little diaries, notebooks and folders.  Writing has pulled me through my parents' nasty divorce in my early teen years, my mother's coming out as a lesbian (which occurred days later), and my polymorphous High School years.  I have the power to connect and heal myself, challenge my fears, question my intentions, then look back and see how far I have (or haven't) come.  Naturally, womb writing birthed itself into my healing process during my first pregnancy in 2007.

It was not until last year, thanks to a healing circle with my collective, Ticicalli Yahualli, that I realized the importance of it for every wombyn.  We began with a series of prompts:

Is communicating with your womb important?
Are you friends with your womb? Why/why not?

As the prompts forced us to dig deeper:

Ask your womb to tell us her "herstory",

I felt a deeper connection with my femininity and the struggles I've endured because of it.  As we read our wounds and triumphs aloud, I could hear my own voice in theirs, and our bond of sisterhood flourished.

I share this so we may heal the 500 year-old wounds of neglect, abuse, rape, abortion, and any other traumas against our wombs that inhibit our full potential as indigenous women.  We mothers are the base of a strong family, community, and nation.  Staying healthy and healing ourselves must become common knowledge put into daily practice.

For more information on Womb Writing, email ticicalli20@gmail.com, or read Sacred Woman, by Queen Afua.  You can purchase a womb journal with writing prompts at http://www.facebook.com/ticicalli. Try including your moon cycles, dreams, art, sexual or celibacy experiences, plans of healing, and affirmations.   May you, the healer, be creative and productive in you womb writing!


Excerpt from Panquetzani's Womb Journal
Today's entry--

I knew you were a little ball to the right.  I felt you tighten up in the ambulance. I wasn't scared. Just...tired.  We both gave up.  After pushing that 8lb 12oz precious stone of jade.  Why the right? Were you dehydrated?  Why did we both give up and wanna SLEEP sooooo bad?  There's something you're not telling me.  A shameful secret, maybe in our DNA, or genetic memory, or maybe it's all those years we were apart- disconnected from what really is.  I hold you, you hold my babies, give me all I need...I should've drank that liquid iron.  Liquid iron. LIQUID IRON, that sounds like regret, over and over. We can't change a few pints of lost blood, an ambulance ride, a two hour hospital stay that's going to cost $5,000- plus $500- for a bunch of newborn procedures we REFUSED. 40 bucks worth of LIQUID IRON seemed like so much more before these expenses. Okay, you're worth it...I'm worth it.  Lying naked on my bed without nosy 6 foot white boys in overalls staring at my pieces and asking a billion questions would have been worth it.  You were so exhausted, I felt you give up, and so did I.

My current womb journal

Womb journal while pregnant

Guest entry: my brother's experience of witnessing my birth