Healing from Ectopic Pregnancy

Collection: Dance

My Story...

Early Spring 2019, I found out that I was pregnant. My partner and I weren't planning on having a baby. During an extremely busy period at work, I lost track of my cycles, and I conceived the next time we made love... At age 42 and never having felt very fertile, this came as a total surprise.

After a few days, it appeared that I miscarried. I found a blood clot in the bath, which we ritually said goodbye to and placed by the walnut tree in our garden. A few hours later I was on the ferry to the UK to sell my car, and life went on. 

In fact I was still pregnant, with an ectopic pregnancy. This means that the foetus nested in my fallopian tube instead of my womb. Ectopic pregnancy is dangerous – one of the leading causes for maternal death in the first three months. 

I had moved to France only a few months before, and wasn't used to the French reproductive health care system yet. Since I had no dedicated gynaecologist, my pregnancy remained undiagnosed.

Several weeks later I got severe stabbing pains in my lower abdomen during my morning exercise. This was the moment that my Fallopian tube ruptured. However, the pain passed, and I got behind my desk to work as normal. 

When I started to feel woozy and fainted several times, I was rushed into hospital with near-fatal internal blood loss.

The life-saving operation is exactly one year ago today, and I'd like to share more about my journey back to wholeness.

Multi-Layered Healing

I had the space and time to consciously work through all the stages of my healing, with eyes and heart open as much as I could. What struck me most was that there were really clear layers of physical, emotional, mental and spiritual healing. From dense to light, I worked my way through:

• physical recovery (overcoming blood loss, exhaustion, scars healing, dealing with hormones rampant in the body)

• emotional contradictions (the whole palette of grief, rage, despair, depression, anxiety, loss, loneliness, disbelief, wonder, from deep neediness to 'leave me alone!')

• mental and psychological understanding (what did this experience mean, had I already been prone to infertility or ectopic pregnancy, dealing with responses from well meaning people who of course always managed to say the wrong things; recovering enough to get back to work)

• spiritual inquiry (what was this experience telling me; what could I learn from it; what was the message from the Soul Spark who visited us so briefly)

The journey was intense. I often literally felt I was ‘fighting’ my way back to wholeness. It wasn’t linear, it wasn’t neat. Life took so much more courage than before. Was I up for it? Oh Gods, why didn’t I just die? 

The physical vulnerability, hormonal swings, rainbows of emotions, and even renegotiating the relationship with my own parents all needed their time. When it was possible again, even sex was scary for a time - it became so closely associated with the possibility of death.

The road to healing was a very lonely one, with few external resources, and a lot of well-intended support that was entirely misplaced. Luckily, I could draw on a myriad of creative and spiritual practices to help me through.

Creative & Ceremonial Techniques

I consciously worked with this experience, going through deserts of despair, oceans of grief, volcanos of rage.... I wrote reams of poetry and endless diary entries. I painted, made collages and art installations. I immersed myself in nature every day to feel the support of Mother Earth underneath, and Father Sky above. The cry of the Buzzard, the hum of the Dragon Fly penetrated my world as I lay on a blanket in the grass, trying to make sense of it all.

Thankfully I was well enough recovered to attend a week long workshop with Clarissa Pinkola Estés, which I'd booked over a year before. The theme was poignant: Singing over the Bones, a way of working with the death messages of Skeleton Woman.

Of course dance was the one technique that connected the different layers of the healing process for me. I remember my first 3-minute movement to Rodrigo & Gabriela’s Tamacun, dancing both the gratitude of still being alive and shaking out the shock of it all – and being totally exhausted after. 

Danced Soul Retrieval Ceremony

Exactly nine months after the operation I went into the studio to do a danced soul retrieval ceremony. Soul retrieval is a (shamanic) practice to retrieve dissociated parts of ourselves. 

• I built a strong medicine wheel, and invited the four elements earth, fire, water and air as allies to witness the ceremony. 

• I danced the original events of pregnancy, apparent miscarriage and nearly losing my life. 

• I expressed the many stories I told myself about these events, the feelings I experienced in the moment and in the long aftermath of healing. 

• I reconnected with a soul piece that had left during the process, and harvested the wisdom gifts that I received. I really felt healing and integration happen during that ceremony – and in a way being reborn into a different life.

Of course we’re never the same after such an intense experience, but ‘healing’ in my eyes is digesting the experience in a meaningful way, so that we can take up the thread of our lives once more, with courage and an open heart.

East Wind

The day after the Soul Retrieval ceremony, I returned to the studio and re-created this healing dance into an improvised performance, which my colleague and friend Erica Charalambous recorded on video.

Instead of choreographing every step and sequence, I used various building blocks that I identified during my process of recovery as a movement score. Another friend, Stef Vink, later composed and played an incredibly responsive musical landscape to go with the final edit. Their compassionate witnessing and accompanying me on this last leg of the journey added an additional layer to the healing. So did the editing, as another way of crafting and integrating the story.

You can watch the 15-minute online performance East Wind: the story of my ectopic pregnancy on YouTube. It is my testimony to the tremendous capacity of dance to mend what was broken, retrieve what was lost, to integrate and heal.

I hope it soothes and inspires anyone who is on a journey of reclaiming their health and wellbeing. Whatever you are experiencing, you are not alone. Dance provides such a deep avenue for expressing the whole range of emotions we experience, and a resource to find courage and resilience to move with and through whatever life offers us. May you dance! 

Please note that the video may cause strong emotional responses, especially if you have gone through a similar experience. If you think this applies, you can best watch it together with a trusted person, or make sure there is someone you can call afterward.

I give thanks for all the support I received during this challenging time, from people, various practices, Mother Earth, Father Sky and spirit. And thank you for reading this. In connection from heart to heart.