During my time in the Peruvian Amazon jungle in 2013, in one of my most intensive nights with Ayahuasca, I was brought to a traumatic event that was experienced by my maternal great-grandmother and I could see how the unprocessed pain had been passed onto my grandmother, my mother, and finally myself. This trauma manifested as severe endometriosis in the previous two generations, and I was diagnosed with a mild form of it when I was 15 after having horrendous periods and being put on birth control when I was 13 to help with the symptoms.
Endometriosis is a medical anomaly where the lining of the uterus (the endometrium) grows outside of where it should be found. It can grow on the outside of the female reproductive system and anywhere else in the abdominal cavity, oftentimes wrapping itself around the intestines. In rare cases, the endometrium has even been found in the chest and brain cavities of women, making the modern medical theory of it somehow "accidentally" flowing out through the fallopian tubes obviously untrue.
This lining is what sheds each month when women menstruate, and endometriosis causes severe pain and bleeding in the women it effects.
Because of it, my mother was told she had less than 50% chance of successfully carrying a baby to term when she conceived me. Both my mother and grandmother had to have full hysterectomies (removal of ovaries and womb) after the birth of their children, and I was told as a teenager that I would have to have children earlier than later if I wanted to have them at all because of my family history.
That fateful night in the jungle in December 2013 during my first plant dieta (learning from the spirit of an indigenous plant), Ayahuasca and my plant showed me the ancestral trauma that had been carried down my maternal line, unprocessed but desperately needing to be seen on some level and therefore expressing itself as a severe imbalance in the area of the 2nd chakra.
She (the spirit of Aya) asked me if I was ready to start the healing process for my family and my future children. She told me, gently but firmly, that if I wanted to have children in this life I would have to do this work or else the bloodline would end with me.
I, in that altered state of expanded consciousness, said, "Yes, of course I will!" and proceeded to purge from both ends as the metaphorical plug was released that had caused the backup of energetic pressure in the wombs of my family for three generations. The purging was so intense, I figured the 'work' she'd been talking about had been completed that night.
I had no idea what I'd signed myself up for...
The next day, I started bleeding, two weeks before my period was set to begin. I proceeded to have the heaviest, longest shedding I'd experienced since going on birth control over 10 years prior (I'd been off of it for 2 years at this point). At the end of my plant dieta, just before leaving the jungle for the first time, I had a dream that I was sitting on the porch with a Shipiba maestra who placed her hand on my womb and asked if I had been feeling pain there. I started crying saying, "Yes" to which she told me, "It's going to get better soon."
Over 2.5 years since the night the ancestral trauma was revealed, I've been through more happenings with my womb than I can explain here, but I'll share that it's left me at an interesting crossroads, which is where I am at this moment...
There is obviously something "wrong" (aka out of balance).
Doctors and my family are encouraging me to turn to western medical treatments (birth control, surgery, etc.), but as illogical as it may seem to conventional wisdom, I know with every fiber of my being that what I'm experiencing right now is a part of the cleansing process that I chose to begin while in the jungle. It doesn't make any sense in our modern paradigm of healing, but I've seen enough to know that there is more to healing than what most doctors can even begin to conceive.
Yes, I'm in constant pain right now, but it's not for nothing..
This pain is the shame and guilt that my great-grandmother felt when she thought she was carrying a dead baby back in the 20's, only to give birth to a living baby months later.
It's the pain and sadness that my grandmother has felt her entire life for being "unwanted" when she was born alive while her mother's love had already been removed in an effort to process the pain mentioned above.
It's the pain and anger that my mother felt as her right as a woman to birth children was being threatened.
It's the pain that I felt as a teenager when I was being sexually abused. It's the pain of the shame and guilt I've felt about my sexuality since then..
It's everything my family hasn't allowed themselves to feel and therefore fully heal.
It's everything my sisters around the globe are facing as the divine feminine reemerges into it's full strength on the planet.
One day I will be on the other side of this and my daughter will be free to live without it, and for that I am grateful.
