6- The Last Post from Before

This post goes out one day before the operation. Last week I wrote that I was curious to find out what it would be like to be so close to what's imminent, what's unappealable. Well, here I am, telling you.

Saying Goodbye, for Real

I'd already started saying goodbye to my clients in the last post. But now it's becoming final.

And something happened that I didn't expect: some new clients want to stay. I explain the situation to them, that I don't know how long it will take me to recover, that I hope it'll be soon, but that I don't know. And even so, they decide they want to start therapy with me, that they want to hold the process from the very beginning, knowing what's ahead. It surprised me and brought a wave of gratitude.

Putting Things in Order

On another front, I'm still working on the document. This week a friend I've known for almost thirty years came over. He's the one who'll take care of all the bureaucratic paperwork in case something happens to me. Nobody wants anything to happen to me, me neither. I know I have to be pragmatic, and be prepared.

And that's where I run into how chaotic I can be. I was planning to make a map on my computer, something simple, so everything important would be easy to find. I start looking and I have twenty windows open, things everywhere, a chaos only I understand, and one where sometimes even I get lost, although I always find my way back. I call it, half-jokingly, my undiagnosed ADHD. I've never been officially assessed, although it's clearly something I recognize. Either way, it confronts me to discover it now, at 50.

Thinking that I now have to make all of this simple, so someone else can get in and find what they need, makes me laugh. I think: poor things, I don't want to leave them this chaos, they'll hate me from beyond the grave.

A few days ago, a friend of many years asked me: "Who do you want to go through and filter your personal things, your reflections, your journals, your letters, what's on your computer and in your notebooks, before it reaches your son or your family?" And I said: "You?" And we laughed, because we'd just been talking about how chaotic she is, and how alike we are in that way. So basically, I'm leaving my chaos in the hands of someone exactly like me.

Luckily another friend, a friend of mine since I was 18, without me asking, told me she wanted to offer to do it together with her. So it'll be two of my oldest Dutch friends who get the arduous job of filtering, reading and throwing out my papers. Poor things!

Obviously, we're projecting that this won't happen, and that it will never be necessary.

The Altar

A lovely friend, whom I met at some singing gatherings, told me that something similar had happened to her with her uterus very recently. Not the same, but along the same lines: operations, an inner process that had to be gone through. We talked about how to say goodbye to that organ, to that part that has been with me since I've been alive, that was for me the sign of being a woman, of procreating, of caring, that womb.

We talked about what's done in different traditions. And she told me: I made an altar. She showed me a photo. And she said: this altar is going to stay here at home until you have your operation.

It moved me deeply. And I have to say it also gave me peace of mind, so I could focus on the practical things and not so much on the ritual, knowing that part was already being held somewhere else.

Now that I have this last week, with a bit more time, more space, to organize myself in another way too, a more emotional one, I know I do want to do something. A farewell, however intimate, with my uterus, with that part of me.

I'll do it before the operation, in my own way. I'm going to write a goodbye letter. To myself, to that part of me I'm leaving behind, to my uterus. In the good and in the bad: the good it has given me, and all the bad times it has sometimes put me through. I think that's what honoring is: honoring what's going to change tomorrow, and the 50 years it was part of me. And welcoming whatever new thing will come into that space. I'll light my little candle, my incense, and take a few minutes, maybe with some music, to read it.

The other day I told my son: this was your first house. Your first home on earth. He said he'd never thought of it that way. And it's true, you don't think of it like that. It's the place where I created a human being, with the help of those ovaries that every month gave me the chance to pro-create, and that made me aware of my condition as a woman since I was 14.

The Collective Strength

That altar set up over there, in her home, until my operation, shared with another woman who knows what it's like to go through this, made me feel something more: that among us there is a bond. An invisible thread that connects us, that you can feel in women's circles, and that gives us energy when we need it most.

My uterus is leaving me. My womb is leaving me. But the strength doesn't leave with them. That strength is something else: it's feminine, and it's masculine too. It's collective. And I think that's what lifts us up.

There's going to be a void in me the moment they take out my womb. A void that will be filled with something else: with that bond, with that love. That's why I feel connected to women from a different place now.

I'm going to need women close. Well, I don't need them: I want them close. And I want to create things that have to do with that too.

And it isn't only about women. These past weeks, many men have held me up too: my brothers, the friends who came to fix up the house, the ones who came to take care of me. There too I felt that bond, that caring, coming from the masculine.

There's a part of me, a vulnerable part, that gives me strength. I can be vulnerable, and feminine, and at the same time have the same steadiness I've carried through these weeks. And I think we all have that strength. At least, that's how I've felt it.

The Low

After this marathon of sorting, of cleaning, of organizing everything I can think of that needs organizing, of closing sessions with my clients for a while, of even pausing my own sessions, of putting in writing everything that can be put in writing, I hit a low I didn't expect.

I noticed how good I feel in my body right now. Good in my work, good in my friendships. And suddenly I was gripped by a tremendous urge not to have to go through what I'll be going through from tomorrow on. It made me sad, and only then did I feel the farewell to my body as I know it, the one that has carried me until today.

All of this has also given my friendships a turn. I got back in touch with people I hadn't really been talking to for a while. I don't want to say I didn't value them before, because that's not the word, but maybe it does have something of that. Situations like this show you who's close and who isn't. I already wrote about that in an earlier post. Now there's something more: it's not only who is there, but how. How I want to be present with each of them, what attention I want to give them. And also how each of them is present with me, in their own way, with what they can. This time has been quite a discovery, this space that opened up for us to meet in a different way.

And it's hard for me to let it go. I don't know what's coming after, and I think that's what scares me most.

And yet, these last three days, my body stopped wanting to do anything. I need to rest. I get up, I go back to sleep. I sleep a bit restlessly, which wasn't really happening before. I wake up with a very heavy feeling in my body. I notice I'm more apathetic than usual.

I imagine the body is wise too, and that it's preparing for the stillness I'm going to be in for a little while. Preparing me for that feeling, even physically. That's my reading, it doesn't mean it's the reality. It's what I'm seeing: my body is getting me used to the idea, mentally and physically, that I won't be as energetic as I've normally been.

A Blanket of Reality

It may be that what's coming turns out to be nothing, that it passes almost without me noticing. Or it may bring pain, or whatever it brings. The truth is I hope it's the first. That's what I try to project outward.

I also saw something else: there's a very clear part of me that prepares for the worst, in case it turns out terrible afterwards. That comes straight from trauma, I know. It works like this: if a slap comes, a blow, one of those bombs, the impact is softer than when I'm floating on a cloud of positivity. And I discovered that I'm afraid to think about the best. I'm afraid to think that nothing will happen, that everything will be fine, that it won't hurt, that the operation will be fantastic. Because there are a lot of unknowns, that's the reality.

I can be very optimistic, and I am, in fact. Although when I'm a bit lower, like a few days ago, I watch how those parts become more present. I'm glad to know I'm aware of them, and that I can separate them from who I am. That doesn't mean I don't need to give them a bit of space, because they won't go away just like that. It's my defense mechanism for the dark moments.

When I tell some of my friends that I've sort of surrendered to the process I'm about to go into, and that I know it's going to hurt, because that's what the doctors told me, however subjective pain may be, they get alarmed. They think I'm projecting myself toward something negative, something that doesn't have to happen.

And yes, that's true: it doesn't have to happen. I think there are people for whom projecting the other way works really well. I've learned that my system needs to plant itself in reality. A very practical pragmatism kicks in, if you'll pardon the redundancy. It's like a blanket of reality I need to keep close, to bring me down to earth, so I don't feel I'm living in an illusion.

And even so, I do my ritual. Even so, I do my meditations. Even so, as a friend told me recently, I think of all my angels, my ancestors, all my lines of women, of men, whatever, and I think of them in light. Yes, I do that too.

See You on the Other Side

The other day, in my therapy, I talked about exactly this: about the life force and the connection of this moment. And about how everything I'm doing, I'm doing because I want to live, and I want to live well, to be able to live the life I want, the one I've been creating for myself lately, from a more mature place.

There's a part of me that truly needs to leave certain things behind. It's my younger, more child-like part, the one that carried so many things she needed to carry, with a lot of pain and a lot of lessons learned by crashing into rocks and walls, by falling again and again. That doesn't mean I won't learn anymore, that I've learned everything and that's it.

I have a phrase I've always repeated: until the day we die, we'll keep being beings who learn through falls, big or small. The strength lies in how we get up, and in how long it takes us. If we stay open to the possibility of learning, with curiosity, I believe the time spent on the ground gets shorter and shorter. That we're going to fall, though, is for me an irrefutable fact. I know that if my son read me saying this here, he'd roll his eyes, tired of hearing me repeat this phrase every time, since he was little, that he made a mistake, or that we made one.

And with all that, there's a weight that's going to stay behind with this operation. And the version of me I've known until now is saying goodbye.

What appears is an awareness that isn't what we imagine: it doesn't lift me anywhere. It's an awareness of farewell, of something that hurt a lot and weighed on me a lot. And leaving it behind hurts too, but it brings relief.

Laughing with a friend, I told her that maybe now comes my version 3.0. Or 3.1? No: I'm fifty, so I could call it Andrea 5.0. Or 5.1, I don't know. Doesn't matter. We're a few hours away from starting, from entering this new phase. So here we are, and we'll keep talking: those of you in some of my WhatsApp groups will hear about it there, and those who aren't will hear it through others. I trust the community will pass the word along if needed, and whoever wants to know, will know.

There's one more thing I don't want to leave out. The hospital sent me an email about the preparation, and one of the things they asked was to bring my own music. The letter explained that research shows music can help with pain, with nerves, and with feeling accompanied.

It made me smile, because it's something I carry deep inside, and I know many of you who read this and are close to me believe it too, no research needed.

So I invited my close friends and family, and some people from outside that circle too, to send me their own music, or Spotify playlists if they wanted. And I love knowing that tomorrow I'll be accompanied by all those musical pieces each of you sent me, and by the songs you kept adding to my "Hospital Greatest Hits" for those difficult moments.

The diversity of the songs, and what each one means to the person who sent it, is incredible to see and so beautiful to receive. I listened to the whole list, and I could see each of your faces. I think it's a memory I'll take with me from this moment, one that will stay with me forever.

This is my last post from before.

And I simply want to thank everyone who has been reading, everyone who has been writing to me, supporting me, giving me strength, energy, advice, love, music. It's immense. I don't even have the words to express the gratitude I feel, and how full my heart is, for everything that has been happening to me lately.

I'll see you when this is over, and I'm on the other side.

I leave you with this song, shared with me from across the pond by this lovely woman.

🎵 "Cuando - by Luna Monti and Juan Quintero.

In case you'd like to support me financially on this journey, I'm leaving a link below.

By bank transfer; 

Name: AP Porcelli Battilana

IBAN: NL75INGB0654822875

Swift/BIC: INGBNL2A

WISE: @andreap1845

REVOLUT: @andreaporcelli