EPISODE 0 TRANSCRIPT - INTRODUCTION

Caitlin: What is The Down There? It’s not just what’s in our proverbial pants. The down there is the basement. It’s where we keep the things we don’t want to deal with every day. That we don’t want other people to see. It’s where we store memories, pieces of our past selves, and the things we don’t know how to navigate or get rid of. If we all have a down there, and I believe we all do, then why are we hiding? Why am I hiding?

I think for me- and for many of us the answer is fear, or shame, or both. One morning in the winter of 2018, I woke up in a pool of my own menstrual blood. Not menstrual blood exactly- it was much redder than normal. And I felt like I’d been kicked by a horse over my right butt cheek. Clearly something wasn’t right. So I did the sensible thing- I dragged myself up, and went to work. 

I’m guessing that’s not what you were expecting me to say, but maybe you shouldn’t be so surprised. So many of us are ignoring the alarm bells our bodies sound, that they eventually just become background noise. And that’s exactly what I did- ignore it. And the sirens faded. 

Five months later while searching for an IUD string that had somehow gone missing, my gynecologist found a large, scary looking cyst on my right ovary. She swung her ultrasound wand to the left and I saw my own eggs for the first time. It was a pretty profound moment, staring at the potential of new life inside of me, just waiting to be deployed. 

Then she swung her wand to the right, and instead of life, there was this thing staging a coup on my reproductive organs. The cyst was so big that it was in danger of twisting my right ovary enough to cut off its own blood supply, causing necrosis and leaving me with a dead ovary. For all of the zombie nightmares I’ve had this was not something I had taken into consideration.  

So surgery was scheduled. And soon I found myself cyst free- but with the diagnosis of stage four endometriosis. A disease that wreaks havoc on the female reproductive system- and for which there is no cure. 

A few days later I was sitting in my shower sobbing, and staring down at the fresh stitches in my belly. I was ashamed. Ashamed of my lack of attention and care for this body that does so much for me. And I was afraid that I didn’t know myself anymore, that my fertility was ruined, and that it was all my fault. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so alone, or so small. 

It can be tough to talk about this stuff. Shame, fear, anger, the messiness of living in a body. I can tell YOU about my Down There now, because through the process of healing myself, I talked with a lot of other folks, and discovered that I was not alone.

C: When I think of the down there I think of that spot below the belt, above the knees. A spot that nobody wants to talk about. The spot that we’re all obsessed with, the place where we avoid at all costs, and sometimes the place that we spend way too much time with. 

G: Sometimes you’re not aware that you’ve got issues because the big lie is painful periods are normal, and that’s kind of how we’re conditioned. We’re undoing a lot of messages that we’ve had planted in our head for a long long time. 

C: That’s the physical down there, but I think the down there is also a bigger conversation about the things that we don’t want to talk about, and that intersection between health and sexuality and physicality, and maybe some of the places in our heart that we avoid. 

L: The down there for me confronts shame. My shame, and the shared shame of people who’ve gone through things that aren’t talked about. Things that are seen as ugly, uncomfortable, unfortunate, too much of a burden. I can’t tell you what it felt like to share my story. It was totally terrifying, and also so liberating. I felt seen. 

C: In my trans-ness and in my journey of getting and working towards a body that feels more in line with my gender, I’m going to always exist somewhere along those lines of the spectrum. I feel like it’s a choice for me to focus on the negative aspects of like- that’s not, I’m not gonna have the body that I want versus this body still does a lot of kick ass things, and still enjoys a whole variety of sensation and livingness- and focusing on that part of it. 

L: This is going to sound strange, but I think the down there is a celebration. I think it’s a way that we are experiencing our stories in a collective, empowering manner. 

K: The down there is about taking things we’ve been told our whole lives are taboo, or not polite dinner table conversation and turning them into casual chat, and making them ok to talk about; demystifying a lot of what happens and de-stigmatizing a lot of what happens to our bodies. So I think it’s about learning more about yourself, but also self education about others, and it’s about empathy. 

Caitlin: I’m Caitlin, and this is TheDownThere- a monthly podcast of personal stories about the stuff we’re not supposed to talk about. If you’re curious about other people’s down theres and want to dive deeper into your own- join us.

C: Yeah, I think that’s good. That’s good for me.