|This write-up is an invitation to pause, to breathe, to receive, to reflect and to find resonance within you whether you are a woman, a man or however you define and identify yourself as. I use the word Vagina here connected to women who are biologically born with a Vagina and at the same time, I hold space and hold sacred and honor humans who identify themselves as women regardless of the biological vagina.
This February 2022, I navigated with the She Stands Tall Project from 14th to 27th as a participant and witness to the Vagina Monologues alongside Rekha Kurup, my teacher, my sister, the founder of She Stands Tall Project.
When you hear the word “Vagina”, what is your immediate bodily reaction?
What is the Vagina to you?
How do you see the Vagina?
How do you feel towards the Vagina?
What is your relationship with the Vagina?
How do you show up in relationship with the Vagina?
How do you address the Vagina?
What words do you know in your own language that refer to Vagina?
When we think of Vaginas, often the following come to mind: child bearing, pregnancy, menstruation, intercourse, rape, violation, shame, guilt, confusion, unclear, not-to talk about and much more. We are few to know and understand that the wellbeing and health of any woman depends on her vagina. When we utter the word Vagina, shame, guilt, confusion, fear, dis-ease, dis-comfort show up for many women. We often hear “down-there” instead of my vagina.
For many women, we are veiled from the fact that our vagina like the rest of our body has it’s own ecosystem, an intelligent system with it’s balancing, connecting, protecting, repairing and response mechanisms. Any imbalance in any part of our body impacts our vagina’s ecosystem and any movements in our vagina’s ecosystem impacts the rest of our body. An intelligent interconnected system always in conversing and relating.
A woman’s Vagina’s ecosystem is nature’s ecosystem clocked in and embodied in her body. What happens in nature, what moves, what dies, what birth, what lives and cycles in nature, moves, dies, birth, lives and cycles equally in my vagina’s ecosystem. Yet Nature has been hijacked, taken for granted, abused for years now and human have been trying to control Nature’s cycles for years.
In the women spirituality path, we say “what happens in nature gets imprinted directly onto women’s bodies at all levels.” Water and earth elements are said to be closely linked to a woman’s vagina.
Pause to look around you, what are the immediate states of earth and water in your current space?
What do you gather as information?
What are the states of water and earth in your body?
Earth is the house of water. Earth holds water. A woman’s vagina is a container, that holds, moves, evolves, nurtures, births, takes, gives, receives, allows and nourishes. Whenever water run dies, earth’s fertility is impacted and so does the fertility of women in that place. Wherever the natural flow of water has been stagnated and polluted, we see the direct impact on women’s bodies.
Here are some facts
“52% of the world’s agricultural soils are already degraded. By 2050, 90% of the earth soil could be degraded. - UNCCD 2020”
“We have only 60years of soil left. -UN FAO”
“The average woman in rural Africa walks 6 kilometers every day to haul 40 pounds of water.
Every day, more than 800 children under 5 die from diarrhea caused by contaminated water, poor sanitation, and unsafe hygiene practices. – World Vision”
Pause and look around you
What are the impacts of wars fought on the African continent?
What are the impacts on women’s bodies and health?
What are the major challenges that women and children face?
What are the major health issues that woman face?
What is the current state of desertification and water shortage?
Scanning history, we uncover how wars have been fought and are still being fought over land and water. Those directly impacted and mutilated are women’s and children’s bodies.
Both water and earth are elements that have been held as assets to be vanquished and today, we live in such a world where earth and water have been commodified.
These movements have specific ramifications for women on the physical, mental, emotional, psychological, energetic and spiritual planes. Women are the water bearers on earth, the child bearers. A child within the mother’s womb is held, nurtured and nourished just as earth holds water and nurtures and nourishes us. These movements will have devastating impacts on women’s health on the longer term.
Child bearing, birthing, pregnancy, menstrual health, intercourse, vaginal heath and more. I wonder how all these movements have become a tedious journey for women across the globe.
This is what happens when women’s bodies are no more held and revered as sacred gateway to life, to pleasure, to death, to nature.
When I pause to listen and to become present to my vagina, water and flows are what I hear. I have suffered for years with all sort of unexplained dis-ease and diseases and imbalances and through it all, my body has intelligently been working hard to stay afloat to stay in balance through the imbalances.
Pause and listen
What do you hear?
I sit in conversation and circles with women, it is heart aching to hear the stories and lives of pain, of dis-eases, diseases, imbalances connected to the vaginal health and relating.
“Life gathers around water and water creates the circumstances for life to gather. Human, plant and animal life seek out water. Without water living things die. Over time water can change everything, while water itself is the ultimate “shape shifter” in its varying forms of vapor, liquid, and ice. Water is visible and invisible. It moves in all directions around the globe— north, south, east, west—through the atmosphere and beyond the planet into the universe.” Women, Water and the Reclamation of the Feminine, Wagadu, Volume 3, Spring 2006
While humans have moved away from earth- centered practices, we are never in disconnection from earth, from the feminine. We are numbed to the earth and her whispers and her echoes. Through trauma lenses, we see that there is hope, there is a call to return to our nature and to nature’s ecosystem embodied in our bodies.
Writing these words has softened and humbled me, I know little and yet I know mountains if only I pause to listen. The outer labia of my vagina has moved through this write up and as I reach the end, there is warmth building up inside and emanating outside. I am sitting here in trust of my ecosystem.
I am breathing here in acknowledgement that as women tune into the embodied nature’s ecosystem, we shall return to the beginning, to nature and this will ease the frozenness of trauma, this will bring to revive the earth- centered heart that leads at the core of creations.
Link to the Vagina Monologues hosted by the She Stands Tall Project
If you have reached so far, then join us on Facebook Livestream on the She Stands Tall Project from 6.30pm to 7.30pm IST / 5pm to 6pm Mauritian time till 27th Feb for the Vagina Monologues.
Love from my heart to yours
Love from my body to yours
Love from my vagina to you
Post © Megha Venketasamy, 2022. All rights reserved.
Creative Work © Megha Venketasamy,
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