It’s a hand mirror—clear plastic encircling the double-sided reflecting glass and then joining into a simple handle. The plastic is chipped in a couple of places and scratched on the surface. The mirror itself has aged as well. It is almost 30 years old.
The mirror has shown women their first surprising glimpse of their cervix—so like the head of a penis-- rounded, pinkish and soft with a small hole in the middle. It’s so empowering to actually see the opening lips of the mysterious womb, which plays such a large role in every woman’s life—source of her cycles and her cramps, her fertility and childbearing capacity, sounding board of her orgasms. Women can watch their cervix throughout their cycles see how it rises and falls, opens and closes, has fluids from clear to white to clear to red.
Hundreds of times women have peered down into this mirror to see their baby’s wrinkled, birthing head. First it’s just a bulge in the lips of the vulva. Then the lips open up, closing again between labor contractions, until the crucial distance has been traversed and the crown of the baby’s head begins to show.
Later this mirror has let them survey the aftermath of that birthing, to see how their once virgin vagina is now womanly with birthing blood and small wounds of childbirth. It’s so different from an episiotomy, where the doctor decides ahead of time where the scar will be. Most women stretch and, with controlled birthing of the head, can have only surface cuts that can heal without stitches.
I pick up the mirror now and look at my face. Like the mirror, it has aged these 30 years and witnessed so many women transform in their relationship with their own bodies, growing in understanding and wisdom regarding how to respect their woman ways.
--by Terra Rafael
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