Celebrating and honouring the Crone Vulva
Tending my Lady Garden in the Time of the Crone Vulva
I want to talk to you about my lady garden. No, don’t stop reading. This could save your life. A few months ago, my beloved noticed some changes in my vulva. He wasn’t quite sure what he was looking at, so he pointed them out to me.
After inspecting myself, to see what was going on, I decided to make an appointment with the doctor. I was sent to a nurse instead, which was okay for me. She gave me a cervical smear, saying that vulvatic issues can also be identified through the smear, which by the way, is not true.
I’m not blaming her. I’m just saying. The smear test came back negative. “Everything is okay,” she smiled. “But it’s not, “ I replied. “I am in acute discomfort, I am scared, this can not be the rest of my life!”
“The waiting list to see a Gyno is long,” she said. “Put me on it,” I replied, standing my ground.
I still had increasingly uncomfortable symptoms. The itching was driving me mad, all around the outside and the burning sensation inside. I asked the beloved to check me on a regular basis to see if there were any other changes that he could see. And at one point he said that there was a dark mass, a little bit like a mole growing.
Well, obviously that put me into panic mode. I insisted on seeing a doctor. They didn’t even look at it. They said that they would refer me, but the waiting list was long. They didn’t think there was anything wrong. The problem is that this doctor was a young man in his 30s, who didn’t understand the fear and panic that I, as a woman, felt as I increasingly became uncomfortable on a regular basis.
He basically told me that this was old age, to get used to it, to use the cream, to use the Estoring I had been given, to basically settle down with what I had, an old pussy. He didn’t use that word, but you could see that he was thinking it. I have always prided myself in being very open and loving to my vulva. It birthed two of my children. It gave my husband a lot of pleasure over the years, and we’ve been together 38 years.
It’s given me a lot of pleasure. And I do feel that the root chakra does connect with the earth and that we can breathe in energy earth, healing earth through our vulva. Medically, people would say that is nonsense, but spiritually, I do believe that very strongly. So what on earth was happening? The amount of research that I did and found very little, the common consensus is that the drying up, the atrophy of the vulva is a normal everyday thing.
And that if you can, you can use HRT to reverse or halt the process of the ageing pussy. But if you don’t want HRT or you can’t take it, you can basically just use the creams that have been provided. Which alleviate the symptoms but don’t stop them. And there are rings, rings that you can insert into yourself with cream twice a day. Of course, the idiocity of that, is that as we are all getting a little older, a little wider, a little less flexible, you know, our hands are getting a little less flexible, to try and put a rubber ring full of cream inside of yourself can be a bit of a trauma.
And here’s the rub. I’m a thalidomide victim. My arms are shorter than everybody else’s, my hands less flexible. So when I was told to do this, I lifted my hands up and said, “How are you expecting me to do this?” And I was told that my husband had to do that twice a day. And I thought to myself, “I can’t ask him to do that. I don’t want to ask him to do that.” But there was no understanding of my dilemma. When I said that the gyno in the hospital, a healthy 40 year old woman had no understanding of myof need for dignity, you may not either, but I didn’t want my beautiful Vulva to become a medical problem for him. The change in dynamic could be catastrophic to our sex life, I feared. “Nonsense of course”, she said…. Very caring, I think not.
There was no kindness. There was no compassion. There was no thinking outside the box for someone who’s different, differently abled. That in itself made me feel really inadequate and really like I was a problem. So in the end, after lots of research and as an aromatherapist…I’ve came up with a blend of oils that helped me, helped me heal and improve my own condition while still waiting to be seen by a gynaecologist and having that mole checked out.
The thing is, I thought to myself, what did our grandmothers do? They must have had similar experiences, but they still talked amongst themselves about these things. We modern women, we who value our evergreen existence despite logic to the contrary, won’t talk about this. They helped themselves and each other, probably until the Victorian times when that topic was taboo, but who knows. And so, I looked at old books, old recipe books, looking for something. And in the end, I found that mixing some evening primrose oil and some lavender oil and painting, literally, with a paintbrush, my vulva, the outside of my vulva, at night alleviated the symptoms.
During the day, I used the lavender oil by placing it into my knickers. This may all be too much information for you. But on the other hand, there just isn’t enough information. And I’m not saying you should try this at home. What I’m saying is, do not go into that dark night without asking yourself, “How can I treat my lady garden better? How can I help my lady garden, my beautiful rose? How can I help my vulva, my crone vulva, be healthy, be joyful?” It was actually really interesting when I was in the gynaecological hospital suite, which I eventually got into after eight month, by which time, if it had been cancer, I’d probably been dead by now.
During the procedure, while they’re investigating, they have a camera that shows your vulva on a little television by your side, so you can actually see exactly what they’re doing. It gave me a massively magnified view of my Crone Vulva, and she is still beautiful and special. Still lovely. Grey haired and proud.
They didn’t have that camera on during the biopsy ’cause I think that would have probably given me a heart attack. And let me tell you, if somebody tells you, “That’s only a little scratch,” while sticking a massive needle into your vulva, I would always correct them and tell them, “It’s not a little scratch. It’s a massive invasion, a traumatic invasion, of my most delicate and loved places on my body.” No understanding or consideration at all. How can one do a job like this and be so detached of another sister’s suffering. Almost as if these women have rejected that sacred connection with other women. “Just business”. Don’t get me wrong, they were lovely, just unaware of the trauma they were inflicting on me.
Eventually, after three weeks of fretting and worrying, the biopsy came back negative.
In a way, Ceridwen had already told me that. But I was sent home once again with all these creams, lotions, potions, these medical steroid creams, etc., etc. And there is a condition that I suffer from that is actually not discussed at all with women. We used to have such a thing as a black tent where the women who were years post-menopausal, probably post-60s, sat together and discussed these things.
I’m seriously considering bringing that back. But even when I try to talk to my friends about what my experience was, they shy back. Not because they’re prudes, not because they don’t want to discuss any topic that we have, but there was some innate withdrawal that I could feel from them, and I was intrigued by that because surely I was not the only one who had some of these issues. It’s interesting how we are silenced and how we are silencing ourselves when it comes to our post-menopausal lady garden, our beloved crone vulva.
Why can’t we be more honest with each other? Why can’t we talk about some of the things that happen? Wouldn’t it help to compare notes? Share knowledge? Female empowerment comes from within, and it comes from shared experiences and how to get through them.
I now am investigating more and more things that I think might be of help, that might be helpful, and one of the things that really started this process off, was an empowering TV show.
Years ago when I was pre-menopausal, I started watching an American TV show with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, Frankie and Grace. And at the time, it seemed funny what they talked about the wild yam lube that Lily Tomlin’s character made in her garden shed and the differently shaped dildo for the older woman, that they designed together and how they went through the local Care homes filled with older women and older men that were still very much alive and still very much interested in having pleasure, and the responses from some of these women, how the conditioning to be a ‘good girl’ and not talk about these things was discussed. So here it is. The crone vulva. What do we do with it? How do we keep it healthy? How do we give it pleasure?
How to manage the changes in our body, how to honour it as a beloved part of us. And so we have to give that some thought and not when it’s too late and things are already going wrong. How can we have a better understanding on how to keep that part of us healthy?
For me of course, there is always the path of the Ayurvedic medicine. The Indian tradition has a much better understanding of these ‘illnesses’ for women, or the changes that occur.
That culture has always been far more interested in alleviating suffering. They are miles ahead of our Western medicine and maybe they will share that knowledge . I’m going to try a turmeric paste with star oil next. 
So my journey with my crone vulva goes on obviously, because it’s part of my body, the body that I love, the temple of my soul. But one thing I know for sure, there will be a full moon and a dark moon ceremony this month, it’s Samhain, to honour my crone vulva, to honor that part of my body that is precious to me, loved by me, honored by me.
And so it is. And so it is. And so it is.