As my hands pummelled the steering wheel through hot tears I felt numb, I felt angry, I felt frustrated but most of all I felt hate.

13 long years of tests, needles, endless appointments and shaking heads echoing, “your bloods are normal,” “I think you’re just depressed,” but the worst one “I think this is all in your head” and finally “It’s Endometriosis - it’s there, there and there.” I hated my body and I hated them.

This is where my Endometriosis, Adenomyosis and Fibroid journey began - tears streaming, I felt completely alone in that car. What continued after was years of detachment. Surgeries, catheters, drugs, more surgeries, more pain meds, more unknown, more pain… feeling like a slab of meat on a table.

I felt helpless.
I felt broken.
I was broken… IT WAS BROKEN.
The detachment was complete.

My body was an IT.
IT was broken.
IT was failing me.
IT was diseased.
IT was damaged.

The end of the line was a hysterectomy.
Take these pills and go into menopause at 33 or the hysterectomy. A conversation I did not feel prepared for and left me feeling numb with aloneness.

I sat the script at my front door for 18 months. Numb and stuck, I detached. Continuing to medicate every month. Dreading the pains arrival, hating the swallowing of the pills (Endone + Tramadol). Lost in the fog of the meds, burying the guilt even deeper.

I was not a good Mother, loving wife, supportive friend…. Falling into my monthly patterns of guilt, shame and burden. Why was I such a burden to everyone?

I’ll never forget this conversation with my Mum on a very low day; “Mum - I’m going to cut IT out. I’m going to cut IT out, throw IT in a bin and then go dance at Burning Man with my tits out” *forever using humour in dark times.

Now on the other side, it is this statement that haunts me the most - the most sacred part of my body, my being, reduced to an ‘IT’ that I wanted to abandon. A vital organ that had enabled me to bring life into this world and I hated IT. And I wanted IT out.

You cannot heal a body you hate…

Personal words by Founder Jess Blizzard.