Womanists love their wombs. It seems whenever I’m in womanist space women are talking about, talking to, laying hands on their wombs, our wombs, my womb. But you don’t know my womb or its story. And it’s not just my womb or my story. Today I’m going to speak to and for wombs that hurt, wombs that hurt us.

In this room and every room in which womanists celebrate their wombs and their fruit – children and the spiritual, emotional, creative and ancestral conversations and processes that they locate not just in their bodies or bellies but in their wombs, some of us flinch. Some of us hurt. Some of us fold in on ourselves. Some of us hold our heads down in pain and shame even if we don’t move a muscle. Some of us hold our carefully composed masks as your words encircle us, negating our experiences and our truths. Our wombs hurt and they hurt us.

Some of us were born with broken wombs. Some of us were born with dead wombs. Some of us were born without our wombs. Some of us have been attacked by our wombs for as long as we can remember. Some of our wombs were broken into, raped and scraped into inhospitality and infertility when were too young for our wombs to recover. Some of us have wombs that cannot or will not hold onto life – and we have tried, cried, paid and prayed for womb-life. Our wombs trickle, leak and squeeze – in heart and flesh rending pulses – the life out our wombs. Our wombs bleed when they should not, not a cleansing, healing flow but a chunky, membranous, crimson tide running down our legs, staining our clothes, soiling our sheets, embarrassing and humiliating us in public and in private with our partners. Our wombs do not bleed when they should. They do not bleed because we have nothing to nurture with its rich blood. Our wombs don’t bother to bleed because they know we have no eggs, no ovaries or we have ovaries and eggs that are not worth its blood. Some of our wombs hurt so much that they must be taken from us and no matter how much they hurt us we don’t want to let them go.

Some of our wombs hurt because they have been taken away from us and ache for the children they will never bear. Some of our wombs hurt because the life we have given has been snatched away. Some of our wombs hurt because death came for our child and we had to carry that dead body in our body to term and push it into the world in a grotesque parody of the birth we had planned. Some of our wombs hurt because the child we birthed didn’t survive the birthing. She didn’t last the day, the night. He didn’t live a week, a month, a year. Some of our wombs hurt because we can never accept our child’s death at any age. Some of our wombs hurt because they were perfectly healthy and desperately empty having never found anyone to love or be loved by.

Sometimes, hearing our sister and mothers revel in their wombs and accomplishments, our wombs hurt all the more.

For my sisters and mothers whose wombs hurt and hurt them.