Healing Taboo

Womb Wisdom is an innovative, non-judgmental, compassionate form of support and integration available to women, couples, and men, and anyone who has been involved with miscarriage, abortion, and fertility concerns. This work is not about shame, blame, dogma or religion. It is about care and safety.

Speaking freely about your experiences is a form of medicine for the soul.

Women's Womb Wisdom

Womb Events: Miscarriage, Abortion, Fertility, Menopause

Healing Support   for Loss

Private and group work is informed by 25 years of skillful holistic integrative guidance. The healing work blends methods of support that help illuminate your experience, questions, and life story. This work moves beyond many traditional approaches by considering ancestral, mythic, and transpersonal experience that may be inter-woven with your womb experience.

This work will be of help if distress from a womb experience effects your life (body, heart/soul, relationships, purpose  and life direction).  It is through respectful attention to feelings of disappointment and loss, with unbiased compassionate listening, cross-cultural insight, healing rituals and practices, clinical hypnosis, and somatic therapies--that a renewed optimism is possible to achieve.

How do you speak about the loss no matter if it is recent or a part of your past? How do you heal the ache? Healing for womb events, including: miscarriage, a changing womb, an empty womb, loss of the womb itself,  understanding the transformative power of the womb/womb area, and the second chakra (creative-spiritual energy center). 

The focus of this holistic counseling is to provide compassionate care for those who have experienced the pain of womb loss through miscarriage, still birth, fertility concerns, early menopause.

(Continue to read this page for specifics about support after termination).

This cross-cultural guidance also provides ideas and support that may benefit women/couples who would like to conceive. Working together with traditional and alternative medical support results in more potential. This work is an enhancement that can lower stress and provides options that energize the overall intention of fertility treatment. If you are beginning to explore your fertility this work can provide additional integrative methods.

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After Abortion

''Thank you Terra! Our phone session helped me so very much. Here in Europe, I just couldn't seem to find anyone doing the kind of fair and caring work you do. Thank you for walking your talk and approaching this subject from a non-polarized compassionate perspective... I really felt your calming presence, quite deeply in fact. Your support has helped me make sense of a complicated time. I am grateful indeed.'' - Mary, London England

Your right to choose should not negate your right

to speak openly and safely about your choice.

''Hi Terra. I feel blessed to have access to you right now.  Thank you for doing this special work. We felt our last appointment was such a positive step for us, with positive results, that my husband has asked to see you jointly again! Thank you for helping us through this experience.'' -Susan, SF, CA

Everyone deserves non-biased, non-polarized support after abortion, if they choose... Please know, all communications are safe, respectful, and confidential. If you have had an abortion, no matter how many, how long ago, or why--and if you want to talk about it with an unbiased well-informed and experienced guide, then do contact me... If you want to work on your womb experiences with an open mind and heart--or if you know a person who does--be assured in the knowledge that you will be unconditionally supported. We can work in person, by phone, and/or within a group. There is no judgment, blame, or shame here. You are warmly invited.

Questions I asked myself that inform my unique healing practice

What happens to a woman after she has had a surgical or medical abortion and leaves the clinic?

What happens for her in the days, months, years, and decades after her abortion?

Where does she go to find comfort, counseling and emotional sharing from a non-dogmatic and caring ally?

Who helps her explore the powerful feelings she may have, often many different feelings at the same time: the emotional, spiritual, physical, sexual, and relational concerns that can follow her abortion?

Who does she confide in, cry with, create healing ritual with, and tell her story to without fear of condemnation?

How does she honor and integrate such a powerful life-threshold?

How can she be respectfully guided through this tremendously important life transition?

What of the other womb events that may be a part of her life as a woman?

What are the symbolic, mythic, and transpersonal implications of an experience that is shared by countless women the world over from ancient times through today?

 

''Dear Terra, Thank you for helping me get in touch with my feelings around this dilemma--it is a very difficult decision for me and it was helpful to have you mirror some things back to me. I've really struggled with my emotions around this, but I now feel peace around the decision. Thank you again for your kindness.'' -Danni, Berkeley CA

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Your right to choose and healing rites working together without judgment or polarization.

In my twenty-five years of healing work in Canada and the U.S., I have rarely met a woman who had not had an abortion or miscarriage. And consistently during the past decade more and more women who sat in my healing room would tell me that they feel safe for the first time. They began to speak of a cultural taboo that is most often swept under the rug. These women, men, and couples too, shared their secrets, their womb stories for the first time in years--experiences that had never been spoken out loud, not to family members, to therapists, or even closest girlfriends. My intention is to take abortion out of the closet--that is the need and compassionate right to be able to talk about it--not in a political or religious way--rather to name the giant elephant in the room that no one will acknowledge yet is clearly seeking to be addressed in order to allow for healing integration.

A belief in women's reproductive freedom does not have to negate a need or desire to integrate a complex life event that could include personal experiences of womb loss and/or termination.

The same is true for providers who work with great care and commitment to supporting a woman's right to a safe and legal abortion. They too welcome an opportunity for non-polarized support.

Each client, as unique as people can be, they include various ages, ethnicity, politics, religions, secular and devote. They include clinic patients and the providers (nurses and doctors) too. People from many walks of life are quietly yearning to experience trust and safety, to speak freely without being shamed or judged. And when the experience of compassionate listening is finally received, it is both healing and empowering.

It is permissible in our society these days (even encouraged) to speak about difficult life transitions such as the ending of relationships, divorce, alcohol and drug abuse, eating disorders, experiences in rehab clinics, anger management yet for the women who have had abortions, they are mostly urged to remain completely silent!  How can there be an integration of any powerful event when it is culturally a taboo to even mention the experience?

When everything is bottled up inside, if a person is not free to speak safely about an experience that can shape a life (and the next steps on one's path), then what does that say about society? My work with women and their womb stories is a response to this muzzling, and the harmful shaming and blaming that is involved. Some women seek guidance before a choice is made in order to consider options, others within a few days of their termination, however, the majority of people I work with seek me out after it has been years, even decades since their abortions. The importance of an unbiased ally is expressed through my clients in their words, warmth, and inner calm that they move into as a result of a healing integration in response to this work.

For the women who have had abortions and feel at peace and in alignment with their experiences, then this work is not of need. But for the women, men, or family members connected to an abortion experience who have doubts questions, or inner turmoil, this work provides a helpful solution.

To break free of fear and shame takes a leap of faith, I know. To trust you will be safe to speak your truth without judgment is an enormous effort, especially given the cultural tone; all I can do is assure you you will be safe and the rewards are well worth the leap.

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I will facilitate a healing workshop for six or more people, women/couples. To organize a group please contact me to learn more. Private confidential appointments are available in person and by phone.