“I always believe women…”
This is not a picture of me. My nails are never that nice.
I was 34 weeks pregnant, living in Seattle, and worried about some symptoms I was having. I’m not going to go into them here, because that’s not the important part of the story. It will suffice that what I was noticing was low-level, but I’d had a complication with my last pregnancy and was worried I was headed for the same thing again. I asked my healthcare provider if what I was noticing was anything to be worried about.
We’ll keep an eye on it. The doctor said.
I shifted my considerable weight on the crinkly-papered exam table and asked (secretly hoping to be reassured but not knowing how to be),
Do you think it could all be in my head?
Yeah, it probably is, the doc responded.
My heart sank. If it was all in my head, how would I know if I was actually having a problem or not? Who would tell me? What if I ignored it and, at some point, it was too late?
I talked it over with a friend. She suggested that I ask for a second opinion from another healthcare provider, a midwife she knew who had a lot of experience with my particular issue. I was hesitant. I didn’t want to be “high maintenance.”
By the way, let me just say here that it is 100% okay to need help, even to need a lot of help. I’m just saying that having needs can feel uncomfortable because of the perceived expectation that I should just be okay and not need things, whatever that even means. Do you feel that, too? Just me? Okay, moving on…
Anyway, I took her advice and made an appointment to be seen for a second opinion. Honestly, it felt a little good somewhere deep inside me, where all my repressed feelings live, to advocate for my own need.
Another day, in a different office, on a different exam table, this time with a midwife, I again described my situation and again asked,
What if it’s all in my head?
The midwife stopped taking notes and met my eyes.
I always believe women.
She said this matter-of-factly. Like, the weather is 62 degrees and partly cloudy. I like salsa verde on my nachos. I always believe women.
And I sat there, in the office of a complete stranger, and started crying some very surprising tears.
I did not realize until that moment of my life how heavy the burden I had been bearing until then actually was. I had never known what it felt like to just be believed. Not to be given the benefit of the doubt, not to have someone just hear me out and make their judgement afterward if I had a strong enough case, not to be “believed” with saccharine sympathy only to be scoffed at behind my back. To be believed because it was obvious that I know myself best. Because I am a woman. Because I am a mother. To have a healthcare provider say this to me was transformative, not just to my healthcare, but to my life.
We ended up talking about that some. I asked her whether she worried about being lied to ever. She said that she wasn’t.
She explained that when women have concerns sometimes they are misarticulated for any number of reasons. Sometimes they don’t know how to describe what is wrong, so it comes out funny. Sometimes they are used to being mistreated, so they say what has worked for them in the past. But never to her knowledge had a woman just made something up who didn’t actually have a problem that needed attention.
It occurred to me that this was true healthcare. I was witnessing a provider in the active role of understanding her patients, understanding the complexity of women, understanding that we all need to be believed.
Ultimately, that’s why I opened a birth center. We need more places where a whole person can be seen. We need spaces and providers who are allowed to care for the entire human, the entire family. Physical, spiritual, emotional, pregnant, postpartum, all of it.
This is, above all else, a place for women to be believed.
