It has been nearly five weeks since I had my hysterectomy, and I’m finally ready to talk about it!

I’ve missed updating you all, but I have to admit, I’ve been struggling to figure out how much I want to share about this surgery.

Trans people get gender-affirming surgeries for so many reasons, and sometimes it’s hard to articulate the exact thing we’re feeling because there isn’t the language for a lot of these feelings.

So, I’ve decided that with you, I’m going to be open about what led to getting this surgery and how I feel now. I will be talking about some mature themes in this post, namely sex, menstruation, and medical trauma, so read with care.

I decided that I wanted to have a hysterectomy pretty soon after getting top surgery last year. My earliest memory of not wanting to be pregnant ever was when I was 14 years old. Still, I never considered this procedure because I had a lot of medical trauma throughout my 20s as a result of my long journey with chronic pain.

I started healing from my medical trauma in 2018, which led to enough safety in my body to entertain and eventually get top surgery in 2023. After top surgery, I had so little fear around medical procedures left that it was like it was safe to realize my desire to have a hysterectomy.

I didn’t mull it over for a long time; I just woke up one day and knew I wanted it.

The thing is, my period never gave me gender dysphoria.

For most of my life it was pretty manageable, I just kind of dissociated my way through it every month.

Now that I see that written down, it kind of sounds like it did give me gender dysphoria…

I used to say the same thing about my chest before I got top surgery. My chest never really gave me dysphoria; I just turned a blind eye to it, didn’t take photos in profile, or wore loose-fitting clothing.

It wasn’t until my top surgery was on the calendar that it was safe enough in my body to feel negatively towards my chest. The only time I ever cried over my chest dysphoria was in the week before surgery.

Dysphoria is interesting that way, isn’t it? Sometimes, it’s not an intense negative feeling, just the slow separation of body and mind until something cracks open, and you can’t go on living without a major change.

By the time I finally approached a gynaecologist about a hysterectomy, my periods had become so intense that I could no longer ignore them. Over the past few years, my periods had gotten heavier, more painful, and longer, and I’d started bleeding between periods as well. In a way, this was lucky because it allowed me to pursue this surgery through a more traditional route. Because I had an undeniable pathology, the public insurance system covered this surgery without question. If I had wanted this surgery to be covered as a gender-affirming surgery, I would have needed a letter from a psychologist.

It’s so ridiculous because my gender dysphoria and my heavy bleeding were both things my doctor had to believe by my account alone. They had no more proof of my heavy periods than my gender dysphoria, and yet one requires proof, and the other takes me at my word. It’s so arbitrary.

In a way, I got lucky with this pathology. In the 7 months between meeting with the gynaecologist and having the surgery, my periods got worse and worse until my gender dysphoria was eclipsed by the pain that I was regularly in. Because of this, they bumped me up the cancellation list, and I got the call only one week before surgery.

I didn’t have the months I had before top surgery to process all my feelings, but I sure processed them anyway but at 2x speed like an audiobook.

In that week before surgery, so many feelings came flooding through me that hadn’t been safe to feel before my body knew there would be an end.

The feeling that surprised me the most with its intensity was how dysphoric I had been all my life during sex, knowing that pregnancy was a possible outcome. It made me feel so euphoric to think about a possible future where this intrusive thought is no longer a factor. My intimate moments with people can be about pleasure, love - anything but pregnancy. And that makes me feel extremely euphoric.

I know this was a long one, but I think all these feelings have been rambling inside me, waiting for the right moment to come out.

If you made it to the end - thank you so much. I really appreciate you being a witness to my ever-changing landscape of body and feelings. And I hope I can be a witness of yours as well.

No pressure, of course, but if you also have complicated feelings about dysphoria and stuff that’s hard to put to words, I would be happy to read it. Just send me a message and tell me your thoughts.

The next posts will be shorter, I promise lol

Renée ✨