A Letter to Hilda

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Written August 5, 2021

Dear Hilda,

Yesterday, during my walk through the forest, I recalled that you’d died exactly three years ago to the day. Although you were only my massage therapist – a chatty one for sure – I considered you my friend. You are definitely a kindred soul because you told me secrets about my body and I told you secrets about my past.

I don’t know how many times I’d come to see you by then, but I often reflect back on the time you translated the messages my body was sending. I guess I was a little hard of ‘hearing’, or maybe instead it was selective hearing. Yes, that’s it. I chose not to hear myself.

The messages you got that day came from my pelvis. My muscles were tight and I’d often felt pain there. You kneaded and massaged and said to me, “You know what it’s saying? It’s like your womb is mourning. It’s mourning the children you’ve never had.”

I gave a laugh of relief and nodded my head. She was right, and I often called it something like that myself when my monthly periods were debilitating and my pelvis felt like it would be ripped out from underneath me – except I used the word weeping. My womb was weeping every time the blood came, except I didn’t want to admit that I was crying for my children.

A Plan for My Body

Was there a plan for them to come here through this body? Had God planned it and the plan somehow got thwarted? The grief would often come when I thought about how my most fertile years have been stolen from me through chronic illness, within systems put in place to keep people as sickly slaves.

Yes, I was mourning alright, and you helped me, Hilda, to bring it to the surface. It may have stayed and rotted in there until it killed me, but you helped me acknowledge and release my pain, and take a step closer to feeling whole again. Thank-you.

To read about my first encounter with Hilda, please see the blog post entitled Hilda.