Chapter 27
27
SUCH A HOO-HA!
There’s an air of trepidation in the campsite this afternoon. The details offered about the ‘Locating Your Inner Goddess’ workshop have been scant.
I can’t help but worry that I might not be able to find mine. It’s entirely possible I’ve left her somewhere by accident. Maybe down the back of the sofa or on top of the microwave. Nine times out of ten I can only find my keys and purse because I have Tile trackers on them. I’m not sure it’s possible to attach a Bluetooth tracking device to an inner goddess.
At least, I think… at least Niamh seems to have let out a lot of her worry and frustration. I don’t think we’ve found a solution to any of it but I’m hoping that just talking about it will help a little. A problem shared and all that…
Deirdre meets with us as we leave our yurt and walk across the site. Her face is flushed. ‘Girls, they were talking in our yurt and one of the ladies – Ciara, I think her name is – said she’d heard it was going to involve hand mirrors and looking at our bits.’
My heart sinks and my ‘bits’ cringe so tightly that it’s hard to imagine anyone will ever get sight of them ever again. ‘I’m not doing that,’ I say. ‘Magazine article or not. I have to draw the line somewhere. Can you imagine my boys reading about the time I examined my hoo-ha in a room full of other women?’
My face is blazing red, while Niamh laughs at the horror on my face. ‘Oh, love, it’s only a hoo-ha, or a vulva as us adults like to call them. I don’t know, maybe it’s because I’ve birthed four babies, and I’ve taught GCSE biology, but I’m not horrified at the thought. Enough people have seen mine already, I suppose it’s probably about time I had a look at it myself.’
‘Niamh,’ Laura says, stopping stock still. ‘Please tell me you haven’t shown your GCSE students your vulva, because I’m pretty sure that could get you in trouble.’ It’s my turn to laugh while Niamh realises her wording might have just been a little off.
‘Oh, for God’s sake! Of course I’ve not shown my students… I meant my doctors. And nurses. Four babies equals a lot of time on display.’
‘I’m only teasing,’ Laura says, laughing. ‘But honestly though – you’ve never had a look at it yourself?’
‘Why would I?’ Niamh asks.
‘Yeah, why would she?’ I jump in. ‘I know it’s there and it’s doing what it needs to do. I’ve no need to go hoking and poking at it.’
Laura’s eyes are wide. ‘But it’s only your body. Why would you not want to know what your own body looks like?’
‘Because not all of our bodies are necessarily pleasing to the eye,’ I tell her. ‘Especially down in that general area.’ I wave my hand vaguely towards my genital area, feeling weird to even do that.
‘Wait,’ Niamh interrupts, while Deirdre just watches, fascinated at the quick back and forth of our conversation. ‘Laura, does this mean you have had a good old look down there?’
‘Yeah. I don’t see why I wouldn’t. Like, I wanted to see how it changed after childbirth.’
Niamh visibly pales. ‘Oh, God, no. There’s no need for that. After I had Jodie, they were stitching me up and I got the quickest glance in the reflection on a lamp and I’m still not the better for it.’
‘It is only a rumour,’ Deirdre says, nervously. ‘It might not be true.’
‘Tell me you’ve at least had a look at yours before?’ Laura asks her, and I feel immediately sorry for Deirdre, who is by now, no doubt, sorry she ever came and sat beside us at lunch.
‘Ah, no. Well, not on purpose anyway. And I suppose it depends on how much of it you’re talking about.’ Her face is bright red.
‘Laura, would you leave the poor woman alone. Just because you’re best friends with your hoo-ha.’
‘Vulva,’ Niamh interjects. ‘We can be mature about it.’
‘That’s rich coming from a woman who’s never so much as looked at her own,’ Laura retorts.
‘My body, my choice!’ Niamh retorts.
‘I don’t think that’s about looking at your own genitals, Niamh.’
I mouth a sorry to Deirdre and link arms with her, leaving the other two women to work through their vulva-related issues themselves.
‘I didn’t mean to upset anyone,’ Deirdre says as she joins me on a yoga mat halfway up the room. She turns her head away to take a drink from her water bottle.
‘You didn’t! It’s banter. They love each other to bits. And yeah, Niamh can be a bit prickly at the moment, but absolutely don’t worry about it.’
Deirdre smiles. ‘You three have a great bond, you know. I can see that. Cherish that. It’s so special.’
‘I do,’ I say. ‘I will.’
* * *
To my surprise, it is Peggy, dressed in loose linen trousers and an oversized linen shirt, who walks to the front of the class and announces she will be leading the workshop. She is barefoot, and her hair is still in perfect curls despite the swimming and yoga and walk in the cold outdoors. The woman is glowing and yet it’s clear she’s not wearing make-up. Whatever method this woman has found to look and feel this good, I’m here for it.
‘Good evening, everyone,’ she says in her lilting Donegal accent. ‘I know we have this room set up in rows, but can I ask that you shift yourself around so that we’re all in a circle.’
‘Leave a space for me too,’ she says as we start to do what she asked. It’s four in the afternoon, and the light is fading quickly now. Our reflections shine back at us from the floor-to-ceiling window, now speckled with rain, and I make sure to take a place in the circle where my back is towards the window and I am unable to see any part of myself and become self-conscious. I want to tell Laura this proves it’s not just my genital area that I don’t want to look at. I don’t want to watch how my body moves, or even, I realise, how I look. I’d quite happily ban mirrors and selfie-taking cameras from the universe if I were in power.
God, I really, really hope no one is going to start handing hand mirrors out. Surely I can locate my inner goddess without having to go cave diving for my uterus?
‘First of all, friends… fellow goddesses,’ Peggy says, ‘I’ve been made aware there has been some chatter about an exercise honouring the yoni – which, to you and me, is probably better known as your vulva or any other manner of interesting words for it.’
The room falls silent. We are hanging on her every word. I wonder how many people, if any, gathered here are hoping it’s going to happen. From the expressions of the other women in the room, I’d guess a relatively small amount.
‘Let me reassure you before we get going that such an exercise, while valid and empowering, is not part of this weekend’s proceedings.’
There is a collective sigh of relief, which quickly turns into a ripple of laughter spreading around the room.
‘Thank God for that,’ a woman I don’t know calls. ‘I haven’t waxed since before the pandemic and it would take more than a mirror to find mine. I’d need a garden trimmer and some safety goggles!’
More laughter ensues.
‘Laugh all you want,’ Peggy says. ‘When I tell you what we will be doing you might be wishing we handed round the mirrors and the strimmers after all.’
Niamh and I look at each other, fear on our faces. What could be worse than such an intimate level of self-inspection?
The answer, it seems, as Peggy lifts a box of coloured scarves onto a table at the back of the room, instructing us to go and take two each from the box, is dancing.
Dancing and I are not good friends. I’ve never been blessed with a good sense of rhythm. Mum tried to take me to Irish dancing classes when I was five or six. As legend tells it, I survived all of two lessons before the teacher very gently took my mother aside and suggested she may want to look at speech and drama lessons instead.
As I have aged, I have been known to substitute skill with enthusiasm and I do enjoy a good bop around the kitchen. But dancing, with scarves, in a well-lit, populated setting, without the assistance of alcohol to make me think I could be the next Beyoncé, is not something that generally floats my boat.
Still, in the spirit of writing this article as authentically as possible, I know that I should, and I will go along with it. Looking across at Niamh, I can see that if I’m feeling uncomfortable at the thought of dancing in front of other people and waving scarves around, she is positively wanting to crawl inside her own body and die.
Laura, funnily enough, has practically elbowed her way to the front of the queue and has already selected her scarves and is waving them around as if she’s directing the traffic at Belfast City Airport.
‘I’m not sure about this,’ Deirdre says. ‘I’m not much of a dancer. Two left feet, and neither of them good for anything.’
‘Listen, I’m the same if not worse,’ I tell her. ‘Niamh’s not a bad mover – or she wasn’t before her left knee started playing up. Laura there did ballet for two years in primary school and thinks she’s Darcey Bussell, but I can assure you that she isn’t. All three of us do a mean Macarena though, so how about we put that energy into it?’
Deirdre laughs and nods – and I even manage to feel a whole lot better about what we are about to do.
Peggy dims the lights and I immediately feel more relaxed and then, just as with this morning’s meditation, she guides us through a movement class where we start slowly at first, swaying to and fro with our eyes closed. It reminds me of when the boys were little and I would spend endless hours rocking them to try and settle them down, and ease their colic. It’s astounding how much of a muscle memory that becomes. I could almost be in their bedroom, ‘The Blower’s Daughter’ by Damien Rice playing softly in the background. Even as babies, Simon insisted that they would be introduced to the classics instead of nursery rhymes. My children were raised to a soundtrack of angsty singer-songwriters.
There is something about this gentle swaying that evokes those feelings of motherhood. Of youth. Of fertility. Of nurturing. I want to keep my arms wrapped around my centre and hold that part of me inside, stop it from moving on from where it has been such a huge part of my last two decades. I am not ready to let it fly or accept that the young mother version of me is no more. Or that the new generation of us is getting ready to embrace that stage themselves.
But as Peggy talks and encourages small movements at first – the extension of our arms away from our bodies inch by inch, turning slowly in a circle, throwing our heads back, reaching upwards – once again taking ownership of each part of our bodies and our souls, my fears lessen.
The movements become bigger. The music becomes louder. The rain starts to fall heavier outside, beating off the roof, adding a percussion to our movement. I swear I feel it in my very soul. The scarves become an extension of our arms, and those parts of me that I have been holding so very tight to all these years seem to move and change. They adapt to fit the person I am now. It’s as if they change colour and shape, as the energy within shifts and swells.
This is a dance shared by the woman I am now and the woman I am becoming.
Before I know it, I’m dancing and crying and thinking that I didn’t need a GPS tracker after all to locate my inner goddess. She was always here. She was just hiding.