I love flowers. I love smelling them. I love looking at them. I love taking photos of them.
People occasionally make comments about my flower photos that are sexual in nature, though using big vocabulary words. Sometimes a flower is just a flower, People! As I mentioned previously, April is “Poetry Month” at Bloedel Reserve. There are poems written on signs throughout the reserve.Here is the last poem I want to share with you from my visit there.
And the day came when
the risk to remain tight
in a bud was more
painful than the risk
it took to blossom.
-Anais Nin
Well, I’m sure that to Anais Nin, a flower is just a flower. Let’s think about Anais Nin and what she liked to write about. Hmm. Maybe not. Now I’m not saying that this poem is NOT about flowers or ONLY about sex. Let’s just say that I think that sex is a part of it.
Sex is a part of flowers. Their sex parts are on full display. Stop snickering. Be adults. This is basic birds and bees stuff. Creation is beautiful. For flowers, it is okay for them to be out in the open about it, too. Flowers are simple beings who despite depending on a whole different kingdom of creation to reproduce, do not have baggage or require privacy.The other day, I came upon a pink dogwood tree. It was in magnificent bloom on the left side and had just a smattering of blooms on the right side. It was a beautiful tree but it definitely looked more alive on one side than on the other. I immediately thought, “My body is like that tree.”
Due to my right-side mastectomy and TRAM reconstruction, I have very little sensation on the right side of my torso. I would say that my right breast has no sensation but I did start feeling itch a year or so ago. Today, as I write this, I notice that I can feel pain if I pinch myself. This is new. My abdomen has been healing over the last two years since it was harvested for tissue to make a new breast and it is waking back up, gradually, from the outside in.
Although we may not always be cognizant of this fact, a flower is a sexual creature, as are all living things. A woman’s body is not just a body. Sensation matters. While I am happy with the choices that I made in the treatment of my breast cancer as well as the choices I made with reconstruction, the loss of sensation from a sexual health standpoint is not something that was raised by my surgeons. I raised it myself based on reading that I had done and my husband’s question to my breast surgeon about whether a bilateral mastectomy was indicated.
Women are not just women. We are sexual beings, even when we are done having children. We don’t want to shorten our lives we have but we also want to enjoy our loved ones as much as we can.
My Eyes Are Up Here 