Post-Cancer Group Sex and the Heartbreaking Mystery of Vanishing Twins in Utero…
Hi Dearhearts—
This week I’ve been reminded of the fragility of the body. Especially the tiny little bits so often overlooked. Not the back or the feet or the shining lips of the vulva. Not even the legs or the hands or toes.
This past week I came home from some wonderful Roman travels with a hugely infected EYELID. An eyelid so infected that the lymph nodes in the left side of my face also grew hugely swollen in trying to combat it and the resulting look was that of an overly confident pint-sized boxer.
After three days of antibiotics, everything looks and feels a little better—I can kind of blink normally again this morning and when I turn to sleep on my lefthand side, I don’t wake up yelping like I’ve been slapped.
Small victories abound.
This is all to say that I’m thankful for the reminder the body is a wondrous thing. It’s an intricate machine, a dogged, brilliant, well-oiled flesh-tank of preposterous strength and versatility.
But it’s fallible. It can only do so much to combat our sometimes selfishness.
I hadn’t tended to my post night out heavily makeup-ed face…and my machine stumbled on the tracks.
I’m tending to her again—checking in every hour to test swelling, to swab and tongue-cluck at these two inches of my face that make my life so easy — good grief the protection the eyelid offers us!—and so goddamn painful.
I hope all your pieces and parts are singing their song. Be gentle with yourself. You’re a most wonderful machine. (Even extraordinary as Fiona reminds us.)
Eve worth the squeeze,
Katie (+July)
The Curative Powers Of A Post-Cancer Ménage
By Ivy Hughes
Reclaiming your sexual self after cancer is as bad as it sounds.
Actually, it’s worse.
It’s like falling off a shining new Gary Fisher and then being given a unicycle with a flat tire and a rusty chain. It takes effort where effort wasn’t previously required and it forces the issue of how to exist in a foreign body in front of someone else.
None of my body parts work right, look right, and none of them are all that interested in being touched most of the time.
What will this new person, I asked myself, want from a sexual partner?
Vanishing Twin Syndrome
We wanted two kids, but one at a time. It would be so much easier with one. We can do this, we said. But just like that, we didn’t have to.
By Family Resemblance
I had a hard time believing. Believing I would ever get pregnant, and then believing I was actually pregnant. During those three years of failed conception, I’d try to determine if I felt pregnant before every test I took. Was my anticipation and excitement based on an intuitive feeling or just idle hope? For just a moment, I’d try to wish a child into existence.
From Ashtray To Art: A Reclamation Story
My tattoo goes deeper than skin and healed more than just flesh
By Gwenna Laithland
After pressing on the stencil paper for a moment, he peeled the backing away.
“That where you want it, doll?” gesturing at my exposed breast. I bristled at his use of the cutesy pet name, but held my tongue. I looked down; if the outline stayed true, the ink would hide the scar.
“Yep.” I try to smile, but I was barely keeping it together. I knew the questions would start soon. It would be small talk to Bob. But to me, it would be reliving my abuse.
How My Child Helped My Transition With Their Transition
By Martie Sirois
In big sister’s room, BB came alive. He’d spend hours sitting at her pink plastic vanity, applying pretend makeup and modeling runway-ready attitude. He’d gaze at his image in the warped mirror and see crystal clear something the rest of us could not see.
BB was unambiguous in his preferences.
When he was not quite 3, BB caught me off-guard with just a few words. One afternoon while playing a favorite role-playing game (Alice in Wonderland), BB grew strangely quiet. After a few moments, he snapped back and appeared to discover some revelation out of thin air — which compelled him to assert:
“Mommy, you know I’m only a boy because of my parts, right?”
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The Pulpit Presents: Jams For Going Dark
