In The Middle Way

Listen to this poem here:

Origin Story

After a history of crippling endometriosis, this woman had an arduous, ongoing struggle with her healthcare community for the right to have a hysterectomy. She was finally granted approval at the age of 29. “It had been like pulling teeth, but finally I felt free,” she told me. However, closing the door on one health journey ushered in other serious conditions – primarily the onset of early menopause and later osteoporosis, which was a byproduct of menopause.

As a milestone birthday fast approaches, and having recently discovered a compression fracture in one of her vertebrae along with a general decrease in bone density, she finds herself reflecting on advocacy in women's healthcare. What should it look like, particularly as women age? She shared: “I feel like I'm in some sort of race – where no one is on the sidelines cheering me on… there’s always that ticking time bomb. The thought that one of these days I could have real problems with this condition (osteoporosis) that no one seems too concerned about – or concerned about treating – that scares me.”

With a lengthy former career in healthcare herself, first as a pediatric nurse and then as a social worker, she said: “I've always had these high-intensity caring positions – but I’ve never really turned attention to myself.” She went on: “Society wants us to have babies but then doesn’t help us take care of our maternal health. Society really doesn't value women, especially in menopause. We are forgotten, neglected, discarded.”

Sibihan Lawrence, Listener Poet
Listener Poet Session
May 2025

By Sibihan Lawrence, Listener Poet

They say—
Hands that help,
Are holier than lips that pray
So as the persistent ceremonious roar of
The Crimson Tide
Crashes against the altar of uterine walls
As the comfortable chaos,
Of my Genius body
Contorts, cramps, sheds and redefines
While hormones dance,
rigorously resisting the heavy strain
Of circadian rhythm
(Im) balancing on endogenous landmines
I,
I am a ticking time bomb
Caught in the maelstrom of medical male-dom
Where they treat symptoms
and not the cause
And we give a round of applause
for systems that are flawed
And endorse the idiocy of corporatization

The passage of time teases and taunts my brittle bones
And I don’t yet possess the language to describe
what these bones know
So I’ll need you to speak up for me now.
But I watch my crumpled reflection
in their languid eyes
I see it—
They’ll expect me to pain silently,
Expect me to
Mask my matriarchal wounds
and heal privately
Surrender my famished femininity
Become discarded deity
I see it,
I see it in their furtive looks
and averted gaze
They'll want me to shrink myself…
Shrink myself into a corner
Fold myself up until I erase
Put up
Shut up
Don’t make a fuss
So I’ll scream into the void
Then go quietly
Quietly…
into the Middle way…

I am fugitive
Chasing womanhood through unfamiliar streets—
and it’s dark down there.
I am two-headed beast
Swaddled in drenched sheets and defeat.
I am She
Of drained reservoir and Icarus skin
She of Misplaced Guilt
and Soliloquies of Shame
My Dreamscapes are now Requiem
For the unknowingly squandered
Whimsy of youth
I am Afterthought
A Casual casualty
I am Stigma
I am Scapegoat
I am Underdog
Standing at the foot of
Mother Nature’s mountain
Without a harness
So Who
Who then watches the Watch Woman?
If this bough breaks, who will tend to my branches?
And if this bough breaks
who will rake my fallen leaves?
And if the fog descends, who will make a clearing?
Who will help calm the storm in me?

As I hasten towards my Second Spring
I’ve learned that Hope is sometimes a Rebellious companion
And that it is always darkest—
just before the Dawn.

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