One of our 2026 Pushcart Prize Nominees.
Every morning, after brushing my teeth and taking my shower, I dab a little lubricant on a silicone two-by-two-inch cube, squeeze the object between my thumb and fingers and insert it into my vagina. The cube is called a pessary, and it supports my prolapsing uterus. If you are unfamiliar with the word “pessary,” you are not alone. I only learned of it when I was prescribed mine a few years ago. The spell-checker for the writing program I’m using does not even acknowledge it as a word.
Learning new vocabulary is just one advantage of becoming an older woman. You are less susceptible to the darts of the male gaze. You may get to have grandchildren. If you’re lucky enough to be financially secure, you can do many of the things you’ve always wanted to do, maybe travel or be a writer. But there is no way to avoid the gradual degradation of the human body.
We, the Our Bodies, Ourselves generation, have been aware of our female parts most of our lives. Fifty plus years ago, I volunteered in a free woman’s clinic and learned to do basic pelvic exams. With a plastic speculum and a mirror, you could even do one on yourself, see your own cervix, the small, rounded part of your uterus through which future babies might come out.
The days of self-pelvic exams were far behind me when, in my late thirties, the midwife told me my uterus was prolapsing after giving birth to my second child. The sinking uterus made it a little more difficult to use my preferred form of birth control, the diaphragm, but otherwise, life went on as gravity and the wear and tear of bodily functions took their toll.
Thirty-three years after that last birth, in the early months of the Covid pandemic, my insides were slipping out. I didn’t need a mirror and speculum to feel the smooth, round protrusion of my cervix when I sat on the toilet. When I walked around, I could feel a part of my body that was supposed to stay inside me hanging outside. The midwife had not told me this would happen, and I was scared. [Continued inside Vol.5]
KRESHA RICHMAN WARNOCK is a writer who retired to the Pacific Northwest with her husband, Jim, in January 2020. She is writing a memoir contrasting her days as a campus radical to her current role as the mother of a police officer and is in love with her first, tiny granddaughter, whom she finds a delightful distraction from writing. Kresha’s essays have been published in Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, The Brevity Blog, Screamin’Mama’s and the On Being Jewish Now Substack. Her essay, “The Survivor”, received Honorable Mention from in the Proud To Be Anthology published by Southeast Missouri University Press. For a complete list of her work, please visit her website, www. https://kresharwarnock.com/ Follow her on Instagram @kresharwarnock.
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