I expected to feel less than whole. To mourn my uterus, to miss the procreant cradle where my babies rocked until I rolled them out and raised them up. To perhaps feel like I’m missing what makes me a woman. But that’s not what I felt.

I’ve felt missing completely. Lost in a head full of white static, my body lost in post-anesthetic cotton batting. Muffled thoughts floating in half-dreams and white-sheet other-worlds opened by robotic arms and pain-numbing canister snaps. So disconnected. So dejected. Missing parts and missing people.  Body blue and punctured, matching my mood. 

I also didn’t expect the exhaustion. Weights hooked and hanging at the end of my limbs, the start of my thoughts. Everything sluggish and sidelined. Everything empty. I shed a lot of tears. Felt sorry for myself. Felt forgotten and alone.

But that was far from the truth — was all the fallacy of post-surgical funk. Because I have had so many people rally around me and my family. So many people shower us with love. So many meals delivered, texts sent, pickups and drop offs completed, prayers spoken. I grow weepy (with gratitude this time) just thinking about it.

And today, the cobwebs and cotton batting are limned in a see-through-the-murky-to-better-days brightness. I feel like I’m closer to the other side now – the side where my family is, my friends are, where energy pours like sunshine and waterfalls. It’s shimmering there in the haze like the northern lights I missed the weekend of my surgery. The shine is returning. I’m nearly there. 

And it’s all thanks to a little help from my friends, my family, my people, my village.