My name is Adele, I am one of Wombshine’s cofounders. I am grateful to have met and connected with so many of you at markets, on the gram, and at events. Thank you for being a part of this. I’ve just passed my two year anniversary with Wombshine, and to celebrate, I am reflecting on why I buckled in for this rollercoaster!
Setting up the stage for our favorite femme DJs and performers to grace at the Wombshine launch party, June 2024
You may have heard me tell stories of my wild ride with my own womb health at events, on the radio, or on social media. In 2020, I was fobbed off for months with abdominal pain by overwhelmed healthcare providers as Covid-19 pummelled the NHS, and ended up a sort of double statistic: struggling to get my womb symptoms diagnosed, while being dismissed as noncritical against the pandemic’s relentless urgency.
Eventually, my symptoms turned out to be very serious, and I had emergency, major surgery - much more intense surgery than I would have had if I’d accessed adequate treatment from the beginning - to remove a grapefruit-sized cyst full of noxious fluid from my ovary. That was August 2020. Three years of recurring cysts and surgeries later, I had my right ovary (her name was Rachel) removed forever in a surgery called an Oopherectomy. I call my remaining left ovary Lucy. And hilariously, my gynecological oncologist’s name was Dr. Mystery. Fitting for his line of work, for while he was an excellent surgeon with a wonderful bedside manner, he never once postured to know or understand what was happening in my body, or how to fight it. The fact that only 2% of all UK health research funding goes towards womb health might have had something to do with that.
me at Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel, August 2020
Although this time left scars - physical, emotional, and psychological, not the least of which was losing my ability to make a baby of my own - I also learned so much. I am not from this country, so these experiences taught me who my new ride-or-die friends were, the people who showed up for me in myriad ways when I was at my most vulnerable. I learned about the subtle, big-hearted kindness and spirit of solidarity here in Britain. I learned about the beautiful beast that is the National Health Service. I learned about my own resilience. And, although I’d always known that for some people more than others, the ‘personal is political’ (something I’d heard said quite a lot working for reproductive rights organisations back home in the US), I learned in a whole new way how institutional discrimination can affect the very deepest recesses of life.
It was these experiences that led me to say yes to Wombshine. My underlying mission here - for which the vitamin chocolates act as a vehicle - is to support, to show love and care for people with wombs.
If you’ve ever received one of our period care packages, you’ll have noticed it says ‘wombs are overutilised and undercared for’ on the insert. Women & femmes, whether by nature or nurture, socialisation or aptitude, choice or prescription, are the emotional, creative and energetic backbone of humanity. You, more often than not, are the default caregivers in your families, relied upon to do the bulk of affective labour in your households, make up the majority of the caring professions. And of course, all human beings come from wombs, in that endeavour which would qualify as utterly miraculous if it weren’t so fundamental, culminating in what is aptly called labour. This hard work is taken for granted, undervalued socio-economically, and the structures designed to support you, if they exist at all, are largely inadequate.
Through my work, I want you to know that we see you, and you deserve to receive the care you so often give. Wombshine is our way to show appreciation and awe at the way you continue to show up for others, even when you’re bleeding out, even when your hormones are going haywire, even when your nervous system is frazzled, no matter how many times that day you’ve navigated discrimination, misogyny, sexism, indignity, being overlooked, underestimated, stereotyped, objectified, infantilised, undercompensated. You show up, even while shouldering the insult and the injury of navigating a world that is, at best, not built for you, and at worst built to exploit and control your immense power.
I love giving the people who love you another way to show you how much you mean to them, and to look after you better. The friends, siblings, partners, parents who are paying attention, who hate to ever see you in pain, who also feel helplessness and frustration that your suffering is dismissed as normal, who refuse to accept you don’t feel good and want to do something about it. This is for them, too.
We get to see so much kindness and love in action
So, as I turn towards a third year of developing this project, I am committed to using whatever traction we can from slinging our supplement truffles to build more educational resources about womb health, to raise awareness of the health gap's real impact by telling the stories we hear from customers, and bring together others on this shared mission of shining light on hormonal cycles, which influence us like the tides shape the beach. I’m proud to be a part of this movement that is gaining traction now, standing up for the fact that powering through your body’s needs is not normal, pain is not a burden you must just bear, and you should not only expect to play the role of nurturer– but also be nurtured.
Mark, Ellie & I, your faithful Wombshine team