The Tornado
As I move deeper into this new chapter of my life, I’m beginning to understand something I never could have prepared myself for. You can be grateful that you survived while still grieving everything you had to lose in order to survive. Both feelings can exist at the same time.
I knew surgery would hurt physically. I knew there would be pain, exhaustion, recovery, scars, and changes to my body. What I underestimated was the storm that would begin inside my mind.
When I had my final period, I called her Miss Rose, and I cried. Not because I was going to miss having a period. I cried because I knew what it represented. It was the last time. The last time my body would do something it had done for most of my adult life. The last physical reminder that the possibility of carrying another child still existed inside me.
Whether I ever choose to have another child wasn’t really the point. The choice had always been mine. Now that choice was disappearing forever. Miss Rose wasn’t simply my last period. She was goodbye, goodbye to my uterus, Goodbye to my ovaries, goodbye to my cervix and fallopian tubes, goodbye to the possibility of carrying another child, goodbye to a body I had known for most of my life. And, in ways I didn’t understand yet, goodbye to a version of myself.
I had my ovaries, cervix, fallopian tubes, and uterus completely removed. Sometimes I think about the space inside me where those parts of my body once existed and I feel hollow, gutted.
It’s an uncomfortable word, but sometimes it’s the only word that describes how I feel.
I know why I made this decision. I know I was choosing my future and giving myself a fighting chance at having more years ahead of me. But nobody tells you how complicated it is to be grateful for survival while simultaneously grieving what survival required you to sacrifice.
Then came the tornado. At first, it wasn’t violent. It was one small thought. Why did this have to happen? Then another. Why can’t you handle this better? The wind picked up. Other women have gone through this. They’re okay! Why aren’t you okay?
Then another gust. Maybe you’re weak? And another. Maybe you’re not enough anymore. Soon the thoughts weren’t arriving one at a time. They were circling me. Faster, louder, closer.
Every fear I had tried to bury was suddenly being ripped from the ground and thrown into the air around me.
My womanhood, My body, My future, My ability to have another child, My scars. My relationships, My fear of being abandoned, My fear of being looked at differently. My fear that the people I loved would eventually see me the way I had started seeing myself. Broken, Damaged, Sick.
The tornado kept growing. And somewhere inside of it, my own voice became almost impossible to hear. Instead, there were hundreds of voices screaming at once.
Why would anyone love you now? You’re not the woman you used to be. Something is missing from you. You’re weak, You’re a burden, You should be handling this better, Stop crying, Be grateful, You’re alive, aren’t you? Other people have it worse. Get over it, Be stronger.
The faster the tornado spun, the more things it picked up. The memories, the insecurities.
Things people had said years ago that I thought I had forgotten. Every mistake I’d ever made. Every time I’d felt rejected. Every moment I’d questioned whether I was enough. Every fear I’d ever carried quietly.
Suddenly they were all flying around inside that storm. And I couldn’t dodge them anymore. One would hit me, Then another, Then another. I tried to outrun it. I tried distracting myself. I tried smiling. I tried telling everyone I was okay.
I tried convincing myself that because I had chosen this surgery, I wasn’t allowed to grieve it. I tried reminding myself that I was lucky. I tried being strong.
But you cannot outrun a tornado that is happening inside your own mind. Everywhere I went, it followed me. I could be surrounded by people and still hear it.
I could be laughing and still feel it turning. I could lie in bed exhausted and feel the wind getting stronger. There were moments when the outside world was completely quiet while inside my head everything was being torn apart.
And eventually I couldn’t tell which thoughts were true anymore. That’s what the tornado did. It didn’t just make me sad. It distorted everything. It took fear and made it feel like fact. It took grief and convinced me it was weakness.
It took physical loss and turned it into a question about my worth. It took exhaustion and whispered that I was failing. It took my changed body and tried to convince me that I was somehow less of a woman.
It took away the people who loved me– made me question whether I deserved their love. And somewhere inside that storm came the darkest questions. Maybe I deserve this. Maybe everyone would be better without having to deal with me. Maybe I’m too broken.
Those thoughts frightened me. But the tornado didn’t care. It just kept spinning. Faster, Faster, Faster. Until eventually there was nowhere left to run. I fell completely, Emotionally and mentally.
I couldn’t keep pretending I could stand against the wind. And then something strange happened.The tornado finally began to slow.
Not because everything suddenly became okay. Not because I suddenly became stronger. But because I finally admitted that I wasn’t okay.
For the first time, instead of running from the storm, I looked at what it had done. And there was wreckage everywhere. Pieces of myself scattered across the ground.
My confidence over there. My sense of femininity somewhere else. My hope buried underneath fear. My self-worth tangled up in everything I had lost. My identity sitting somewhere in the middle of the destruction, almost unrecognizable.
When a tornado passes, everyone talks about the fact that you survived. But surviving the tornado is only the beginning.
Nobody talks enough about standing in the aftermath. The silence afterward can almost be as overwhelming as the storm itself.
Because now you can finally see the damage. Now you have to decide what can be repaired. What needs to be rebuilt, What needs to be mourned, and what you have to finally let go. That’s where I am now. Standing in the aftermath.
Therapy has become part of helping me walk through that wreckage. Some days we find another piece of me underneath everything. Some days I pick it up and recognize it immediately.There you are.
Other days I find pieces that don’t fit anymore. And I’m learning that maybe they aren’t supposed to. Maybe healing isn’t rebuilding the exact same person who existed before the storm. Maybe some things will be rebuilt differently.
Maybe some parts will be stronger. Maybe some will be softer. Maybe there will always be cracks. And maybe the cracks don’t have to make me ashamed.
The clouds haven’t completely disappeared. Sometimes I still hear thunder in the distance. Sometimes an old thought gets picked up by the wind. You’re not enough. But now I’m beginning to recognize it for what it is. A thought, Not a truth.
I am learning that I can feel grief without becoming grief. I can feel broken without believing I am broken. I can miss what my body once could do without believing my body has betrayed me.
I can mourn the possibility of another child while still loving the life that remains in front of me. And I can struggle without calling myself weak.
I am still a woman, I am still worthy of love. I am still worthy of being held, I am still worthy of tenderness, I am still worthy of looking at myself and seeing more than everything I’ve lost.
I don’t completely recognize the woman standing in the aftermath yet. But I’m getting to know her. She’s tired, She’s bruised, She’s carrying scars, She’s been through a storm she never expected to face, but she’s here.
And every day, she picks up another piece. Some days that’s all she can do. One piece, One breath, One therapy session, One honest conversation. One moment when she chooses not to believe the tornado, One more morning when she gets up.
Maybe someday I will look back at this place and barely recognize the destruction. Maybe some of it will always remain. I don’t know yet.
But I do know this. The tornado came through me. It shook everything I believed about myself. It ripped pieces of me from places I thought were unbreakable. It left me standing in wreckage I never imagined I would have to rebuild. But the tornado is not me. I am the woman standing after it.
And little by little, I am rebuilding.
