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Owning Creation: Giving Birth for A Living

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

A while back, a conversation Lissa and I had about being a mom and an entrepreneur struck a chord in both of us and produced her wonderful post on birthing what wants to be born. That post produced a moving discussion about the choices we make about where our amazing, female creative energy goes – into babies, projects, passions and work. As I sat with this and let the words of Pinkie wisdom seep into me, a wondrous thing happened I want to share with you. I felt some of the tangle of my personal confusion on this subject begin to unravel. When I told Lissa and Joy they encouraged me to untangle and reweave in public in the hopes that it might be useful to others. And so here I share some of my tapestry-in-progress with you. Blessings to you in your personal struggles and choices as you release your own amazing creative powers. ~Dana

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The need to create

We women are just bursting with the ability, talent and NEED to create. Not just procreate – though that’s obviously a biggie hormonally and otherwise – I mean: CREATE. I wasn’t completely aware of this myself until recently, which is ironic because in addition to co-creating two children, I’ve spent my whole professional career trying to create stuff. This has been frustrating because I wasn’t an artist or a welder or a software developer, I was a marketer. (Marketers don’t make stuff, sadly; we make stuff up.) So, unconscious of the fact I really wanted to create things, I aligned myself with people who did and made a career out of launching new products into the market and advising organizations on how to take advantage of new technology to create new businesses. Somewhere along the line I stopped owning the failure of not being happy in all my jobs and started owning success by realizing I was a creative spirit and that creating stuff fuels me and brings me joy. Seeing it come to fruition in one form or another makes me ecstatic! I loved making kids! I love parenting kids – now teenagers whom I adore. I have – count them – four businesses! And I love them all! It’s all just the creative energy in me visioning something wonderful in the world and then setting my energy to bring it into being.

Lissa and I laughed because of course, she has given birth to one beautiful child and many businesses too – a medical practice, an artist’s body of gorgeous work, two books, and a blossoming creation in Owning Pink she’s inviting us all to co-create with her. But of course, we’ve both created children and sometimes the demands and desires of motherhood and entrepreneurship get a little tangled up and confused.

Confusion

For myself, this tangle is definitely confusing; and I’m not just talking about the energy management of it here (though that is often beyond confusing!). I mean something deeper. Something so deep that it’s tangled up with roots that go so far down into my spirit and my being I can’t even see where they end. This bonked me on the head when Lissa and I were chatting on IM about this. We were talking about how fun it is to start up a business (and how exhausting) and about the parallels with having a kid. At first we were focused on the similarities:

neither a baby nor a startup business can exist without you;
both cry a lot and need constant care and feeding, sucking at your very being; and
you LOVE them both to the point that it can make you wonder where you start and they stop.

After a bit we were all confused. Birthing anything new is an act of creation and so in many ways they feel so much alike, is there really no difference? Could you just start a business and never have a kid (or visa versa) and have the same experience? Well, no… there are significant differences too:

a child is an independent soul with its own intrinsic purpose on this earth, while a business’s purpose is to further the growth and development of all the independent souls it touches (employees, owners, customers, investors etc.);
a child should be nurtured until it can function completely independently, while an organization always needs leadership; and
your love for a child should be a personal connection, while your love for a business (which is also “owned” by others, either financially or otherwise) should be a little more distant for your own health and well-being.

They’re one in the same

And then it hit me. In addition to being a mom, I’m also an entrepreneur, a professional risk taker. A serial Pleaper (i.e., Pink Leap of Faither). And in this conversation I’m just now realizing why those two aspects of my identity are SO important and SO related. What I realized today is: My JOB is giving birth and it’s also my LIFE. There’s no separating them out!

So now I realize I’m on the same adventure many of us find ourselves exploring, how to blend my creative energies in my professional, creative and family lives. When I think of it this way, I feel like a success as a creator; and by viewing all these adventures as creative efforts I find I’m having a lot more fun. Because the act of creation assumes a little mystery about what the end result will be and when I think of them as creative efforts I have less attachment to exactly how they come out in the end. I also realize they are creative collaborations with the people in my life – my husband, my kids, my partners, my clients – and where we share creative visions so much more is possible.

So what about you, Pinkies? Where are your lives rich with creative energy? What are your strategies for blending them? How do you infuse creative excitement into facets of your life? How do you manage the creative tensions that inevitably arise?

Love, light, and creation,
Dana

Tags: art, business, career, change, co-creation, confusion, creation, failure, family, giving birth, medicine, parenthood, pleap
Posted in Owning Balance, Owning Creativity, Owning Motherhood, Owning Parenting, Owning Success, Owning You, Owning Your Family, Personal Empowerment | 9 Comments »

Owning Loss, Honoring Lessons, Remembering Life

Friday, March 5th, 2010

Dearest Pinkies, it is our honor to re-introduce to you Nancy Slonim Aronie, our teacher, hero, and friend. It was at Nancy’s workshop at Esalen that Joy and I met two years ago. This is a woman who was Owning Pink before either of us was even born. Ever-present in Nancy’s inspiring anecdotes at the soul of the workshop was her son, Dan. Dan passed away a few weeks ago, and Nancy wrote a eulogy that captures him so well, we couldn’t not share it with you. Most of all, her writing demonstrates the incredible power of love, the capacity of the heart, and the eternal nature of the spirit- how Pink is that? Thank you, Pinkies, for helping us hold space for and honor Nancy, Dan, and the Aronie family.

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There were so many Dan Aronies. And on January 29th at 1:21 in the morning on the fullest brightest moon of the whole year, one month after his 38th birthday, with his brother and his father present , we lost them all.

You might have known the little guy with dark eyes and long hair (which his grandmother always begged me to cut – “he looks like a street urchin!”) and ribs that stuck out (“people will think you don’t feed him!”), who followed his big brother Josh everywhere, who could be found juggling with his father on Lucy Vincent Beach or hitching rides with the likes of Harrison Ford.

Or you might have known the little fisherman always on the jetty at dawn or late at night (while his mother … me … worried about whether he had eaten his snack and was in the middle of a diabetic reaction, had fallen over and was at the bottom of the ocean. Dan was diagnosed with diabetes at 9 months old and became a rebel about an hour later.

You might have known the inventive, creative survivor Dan who taught his fellow young diabetics how to cheat on their urine tests: “don’t put any drops of pee in the beeker. They wont know the difference and the results will set you free. Think chocolate.”

Maybe the guy you knew was the angry contrary funny Dan, the Dan who drove his boat too fast, rolled two cars, skied recklessly, loved girls wholeheartedly, played his violin passionately (not always accurately). That Dan lasted for most of his young adult life. You might have known him at Bard College when he was starring in View from the Bridge or driving his motorcycle down 9G when he was supposed to be studying for exams.

Or maybe you were there when he was diagnosed with MS at 22 and the anger turned white hot.

But for many of you here on the Vineyard, you most likely knew him in his early stages of losing his “abilities to do anything!!!!!” (his words, screamed often). When he couldn’t hold a cue stick anymore, couldn’t make the steps in the Ritz , when he could no longer drive, when his short-term memory started going, when his speech started slurring, a new Dan was emerging.

If you had been a visiting nurse you might have been met with a tirade of 4 letter words (so now let us thank you for every loving moment you spent with Dan). You may have seen him through two brain surgeries that didn’t work, one open-heart surgery that did. You may have noticed a softening, an accepting, a surrendering. For those of us close to that Dan, he became a Teacher. We got to see how a person changes, actually takes lemons, squeezes the life out of them, cuts away the rotten parts and turns out the sweetest tartest most delicious lemonade ever thought possible.

I once asked Dan, “can you say why you stopped being angry?” His answer was so simple but so profound. He said, “I noticed that being angry didn’t help anything.” Hello.

When Dan’s bedsores prevented him from getting up and out and he became bedridden, he never complained. He got even funnier if such a thing is possible. One night I stood at the end of his bed and I, said “Good night o king of kings,” and I did an exaggerated bow. And then I said, “Good night o lord of lords,” and I bowed again. And without skipping a beat he said, “Good night o fruit of loops.”

One day I arrived to the ubiquitous ambulances that knew 111 Leonard Circle by heart (and let me now thank every paramedic who ever crossed his threshold!). I raced in to find Dan already strapped on the gurney, I leaned in to see how bad it was. I said, “Danzer how are you, baby boy? And when he tried to say something, Alison, the caregiver of the century, raised the oxygen mask and Dan, barely conscious, sang “A three hour tour” from Gilligan’s Island – one of the mantras he repeated to describe his life.

Four months ago, Dan got his third bout of pneumonia and was air lifted to Mass General where he was in the intensive care unit for four weeks. He was intubated and communicated with only his eyebrows and his dancing eyes. He had a tracheotomy and a feeding tube. He was transferred to rehab in Salem where he spent another four weeks not really recuperating, but when he was stable they let him come home. And this community and the love and the energy and the support poured in, and it looked as if the Miracle Man was going to beat the odds again. He managed to fight two fevers on his own and he was looking stronger and stronger and healthier and healthier.

But then he got another fever. And this one brought him down. Five days before he died, a dear friend said, ”Dan on a scale from 1 to 10, where are you?” Mind you, he couldn’t talk, but with his signature grin and his twinkling eyes, he mouthed “ELEVEN!”

That’s the Dan he became. A solid 11. And to quote Dan himself… not too shabby.

Thank you, Nancy, for sharing the story of this incredible human and the journey you went on together. Remember, Pinkies, you don’t need to wait until someone dies to honor their life. Nancy did this with Dan every day by sharing him with her workshops, and later with the world through the documentary they made about him. Have you considered writing a eulogy for someone who is still around — or someone who left a long time ago to whom you didn’t say goodbye the way you would now? Let us know your thoughts, and again, thank you for helping us honor this special Pinkie in our lives.

Honoring all the angels – on earth and beyond …
Lissa and Joy

Tags: joy, life, loss, parenthood, writing
Posted in Guest Pinkies, Owning Joy After Loss, Owning Motherhood, Owning Surrender, Owning Your Family, Owning change | 1 Comment »

Owning Pink: Embracing Our Girlytude

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

Hiya Pinkies,

Lissa here with some reflections on the concept upon which Owning Pink was originally conceived. Remember back when this was all about just owning our girlytude? Though our community has evolved into something far, far greater – a place where we are free to be precisely who we are and hold space for others to do the same – it all started as an invitation to OWN the parts of ourselves that make us uniquely female (and, as such, powerful beyond imagine).

Frankly, I revel in the fact that I was born a woman. As a baby girl, I got to wear frilly tutu confections and pink head frosting. As a toddler, I wrapped baby dolls in blankets and held them tight to my chest so they could nurse from my breasts, just like my mother did with my baby brother. As a young girl, I pranced like a princess, pirouetted on tippie toe, and painted rainbows and unicorns in pastel purples, teal green, sunshine yellow, and carnation pink. I donned tiaras and twirled batons and collected china dolls with porcelain faces and rosebud lips. I curled my hair with pin curls, took hula dancing lessons, and wore panties with ruffles.

Growing into my teen years, I toned down my prissyness a wee bit, just to be cool- but I doubt I fooled anyone. Princess costumes made way for pointe shoes, singing at the top of my lungs in high school musicals, and wrist corsages adorning hoop skirt prom dresses. As I got older, my unique femininity evolved. Cancan dancing with my girlfriends to the tunes of Grease trained me well for sashaying my hips to salsa music while wearing a white silk bridal gown and delicate veil. Sitting around campfire circles with my karmic sisters led to giggles and grins and glorious tales of girlness.

Later, when my body flourished with the ultimate face of femininity, round and curvy with a baby moving inside of me, I came to experience the female experience as something even deeper than tutus and pastels and prom dresses. As a soon-to-be-mother, you learn to appreciate your body for the vessel that it is, the pleuripotential creator of all life. Then, as the mother of a daughter, the whole cycle begins anew, and I revel in the girlytude of my little one, who spins and twirls and wants me to curl her hair and paint her toenails. It’s enough to make me deeply appreciate the divine feminine within me and within all women. I find myself bowing deeply to the sacred Goddess I know I am, deep in the heart of me.

So when I find myself cursing my vagina, complaining about menstrual blood, bitching about stretch marks, or otherwise dissing my gender, I remind myself that it’s all part of the female package, that you can’t cherry pick what it means to be a woman. You have to take the whole kit and kaboodle. And that’s just the beginning.

When I teach workshops about Owning Sexuality, we often talk about what it means to truly own your body and your sexual self. One woman, who is married with three kids, said she realized that she needed to take responsibility for her sexuality, rather than expecting her partner to read her mind and meet all of her needs. Rather than lashing out at her husband because he wasn’t making her feel loved and nurtured enough, she needed to love and nurture herself first. Another woman said that she has spent her whole life hating her femininity, bad-mouthing her yoni, and wishing she had been born male. Then she wondered why her sense of self suffered. By learning to reclaim her feminine self, she was able to step more fully into the beautiful being she is.

If you’re one of those women who has work to do in order to appreciate being feminine, let us all hold out our arms in Pink sisterhood and invite you to open yourself to the blooming flower that you are. Only when we embrace all aspects of ourselves can we be truly whole.

Own it, sister!

Yours in Pink love,

Lissa

Tags: femininity, girly, girlytude, menstruation, period, self love, sexuality, sisterhood
Posted in Lissa's personal yada yada yada, Owning Menopause, Owning Motherhood, Owning Sexuality, Owning You, Owning Your Body, Personal Empowerment, The Color Pink | 1 Comment »

Owning Your Dreams- Never, Ever Give Up on YOU

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

When we started Owning Pink just over six months ago, I set a personal goal- I wanted to write books. I had already written a memoir that Barbara Poelle, my literary agent who I lovingly call Monkey Barbara, shopped around. A whole slew of editors took the book to editorial boards, where it got shot down by a whole slew of marketing departments who didn’t know how to put it in a box. The glowing rejection letters piled up.

Set Goals, But Release Attachment to Specific Outcomes

But I refused to count this as failure. Instead, I figured that book just wasn’t ready to get published yet- or maybe, I wasn’t far enough along in my personal development to handle it. Either way, I still wanted to write books. I figured I’d wait for a Sign from the Universe. I decided to simply let go and let God.

Well, wouldn’t you know it. God took over. A few months later, an editor from St. Martin’s Press, who was familiar with my writing, ran into my agent and said, “I have a book idea and your client is the perfect person to write it.” When Rose Hilliard and I spoke about the project, Rose said the magic word, “empowering.” She wanted me to write a book answering the questions you’d only ask your gynecologist after three martinis. She figured we could use the opportunity to educate women as part of a greater goal to empower women to own who they really are. When Monkey Barbara was shopping the memoir, I felt like people kept putting me in a doctor box where I no longer fit comfortably, so I had resisted putting on my white coat, standing up on a pedestal and talking down to people. But I felt myself light up when Rose sent me the questions her girlfriends and female staffers at St. Martin’s had asked. Yes, I could use this book opportunity to help women Own Pink. So I wrote a book proposal, prayed like mad, and once more- I surrendered it to the Universe.

The Universe Listened

Voila. Suddenly, I had not one but four publishing houses fighting over the book proposal I wrote. But I stuck with St. Martin’s Press, where Rose believed in me and gave me a chance to realize my dream. She had been an answer to prayer, and the synchronicity between her idea and my dream felt like one of those Signs from the Universe I listen to. It honestly felt too good to be true. I mean- seriously- after a year of disappointment, an editor was going to just show up and hand me a book deal? Apparently, it’s that easy. You set goals, you release attachment to outcomes, and you just let go…

So I’ve been writing writing writing, and yesterday, I just sent the manuscript to Rose. I’M DONE, PINKIES! Amazing authors helped me along the way- Bonk, Spook & Stiff author Mary Roach, sexpert Lou Paget who wrote The Great Lover Playbook, S Factor founder Sheila Kelley, Barbara Whipple (who famously named the G spot- opting against the chance to name it the Whipple Tickle), Tantric sex goddess Caroline Muir, piercing guru and The Piercing Bible author Elayne Angel, and Susan Crain Bakos, author of The Sex Bible. And now- miracle of miracles- Dr. Christiane Northrup just agreed to write the foreword (Thank you Chris! I love you!)
Introducing My Book

Nine months from now, my book What’s Up Down There? Questions You’d Only Ask Your Gynecologist If She Was Your Best Friend will be on book shelves. And my dream is that it will unleash a whole revolution of Pinkies owning it. Hey, when I dream, I dream big!

Writing this book has been such a blessing for me. You Pinkies submitted amazing questions- hundreds of them (thank you Pinkies! YOU made this book!) Your candor, wit, and vulnerability built the perfect skeleton so I could flesh out what we collectively know, feel, live.

So what’s the book about? Just imagine if your best friend was a gynecologist and you could talk candidly about every question you’ve ever had about gynecology, sex, and women’s health, all while drinking a glass of wine and sharing a good laugh? My girlfriends actually get to indulge in that kind of intimacy, asking me all the things they would never ask their doctors. Most women don’t have a gynecologist at their beck and call, so they share girl talk amongst themselves, often perpetuating myths and repeating misinformation. My goal is that What’s Up Down There? will help bridge that gap. I tried to answer your questions with typical Pink style, aiming to demystify the female body and all its quirky, eccentric intricacies, while empowering you to learn, grow, and celebrate the curious oddities that make us women. I say let’s invite the G spot, the scary metal duckbill, the bikini wax, and the feminine deodorant spray to come out of the closet. Let’s put the maxi pads, the douche bags, the sex toys, and the clitoris out there on the table for discussion. Let’s give vaginas a chance to shine, empowering women to embrace and own their femininity, with all its glorious pink power.

Now, the book is done, and I’m looking back on the magical journey that has lead me to this place in my life. You Pinkies were a big part of helping me realize my dream. That you care what I have to say helped convince publishers that there is an audience for what I write. And this is just the beginning. Somehow, I know and trust that there will be more books ahead. Maybe my memoir will even get published one day…

Never, Ever Give Up

The reason I wanted to share all this with you Pinkies is because I want to encourage you to never give up on your dreams. After a year of rejection, I might have convinced myself that I wasn’t good enough. If all those publishers passed on my book, I must lack the chops to be a professional author, right? After all, I had quit my job and spent a year of my life holed up in a cave writing a tell-all book. And it was all wasted, right? How many of you would have told yourself those stories if it had been you? How many would have given up on your dream?

Certainly, the gremlins of self-doubt jumped all over me, whispering evil nothings into my ear. I had dark nights of the soul when I lay silently in the dark, crying. My anxiety mounted and niggling voices threatened to rob me of my mojo. But I pulled out my Monster Spray (thanks Dana!) and clung to my dream. By golly, editorial boards could reject me, but nobody was going to take my dream away from me. I guess, deep down, I’ve always had the confidence that- no matter what happens- I would land butter side up.

What about you Pinkies? What’s your dream? What’s keeping you from pursuing it? Are the gremlins getting you down? Are you afraid to take a Pleap (Pink leap of faith)? Or have you Pleaped and then Unpleaped, because things aren’t happening effortlessly? Have you tried giving your dream a great big hug and then letting it go into the Universe?
Never, never, ever give up, Pinkies.
Never.

Still Pleaping,
Lissa

Tags: barbara poelle, beverly whipple, caroline muir, Christiane Northrup, elayne angel, gynecology book, Lissa Rankin, lou paget, mary roach, questions you'd only ask your gynecologist if she was your best friend, rose hilliard, sheila kelley, st. martin's press, surrender, susan crain bakos, what's up down there
Posted in Lissa's personal yada yada yada, Owning Menopause, Owning Motherhood, Owning Sexuality, Owning Spirituality, Owning Surrender | 26 Comments »

New Pap Smear Guidelines & Why The Holistic Health of Women is in Jeopardy

Friday, November 20th, 2009

Good morning, Pinkies. I just heard the news (calm down, Lissa. Breathe…) In the wake of the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force’s new guidelines for mammography screening, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists just announced new recommendations that cut back on Pap smear screening. My blood is boiling, Pinkies. WHAT IS GOING ON? Why are we recommending cutting back on women’s health screening? Don’t get me started (yet). Let me fill you in on the news.

New Pap Smear Guidelines:

Instead of recommending that Pap smear screening begin after you’re sexually active, new guidelines say that even a sexually active 13 year old should wait until 21 for her first Pap.
After 21, Pap smears are recommended every 1-2 years until age 30.
After 30, if you’ve had three consecutively normal Pap smears with no history of a seriously abnormal Pap, new guidelines say you only need to do Paps every three years.
If you’ve total hysterectomy for benign reasons, new guidelines say you can skip Paps altogether.
New guidelines recommend quitting Paps sometime between 65-70 if you’ve had three consecutively normal Paps with no abnormal Paps in the past 10 years.

Why the Change?

There is evidence to support the changes. The truth is that you’re unlikely to go from having a normal Pap smear to having cervical cancer in 3 years, even if you contract HPV. Because cervical cancer grows slowly, it’s still likely to be precancerous by the time it gets picked up. And yearly screening does increase the number of procedures performed, and some of those procedures- such as cryotherapy and LEEP procedure can affect fertility and pregnancy in rare cases. Plus, cutting back on Pap smears saves precious health care dollars. And if we’re not saving lots of lives and potentially causing harm by implementing procedures that may not be necessary, why do annual Pap smears?

So these guidelines aren’t positively ludicrous like the new mammogram guidelines that threaten to kill hundreds of thousands of women. I understand why they’re recommending pushing back the age of first Pap smear. HPV, the virus that causes cervical cancer and abnormal Pap smears, is almost ubiquitous among teens. As such, doing Paps will lead to many abnormal results and require colposocopies, biopsies, and possibly treatment such as LEEP procedures, which can affect their pregnancies in the future, leading to scarred cervixes and preterm labor. And many of those abnormalities, if left untreated, would have resolved themselves without treatment.

I can also see why they’ve said that women who have had a hysterectomy can stop getting Paps. After all, they don’t have a cervix. And while there may be scant cervical cells left at the surgical scar inside the vagina, the risk of cervical cancer is exceedingly low.

BUT (and this is a gigantic BUT) there is a GINORMOUS problem here that carries far-reaching consequences for women’s health, and I can’t keep this quiet. Though women come to the gynecologist under the guise of their annual Pap smear, they actually come for WAY more than that.

Here are some examples of issues I handle under the guise of an annual Pap smear exam:

Sexual problems that threaten your relationship
Debilitating depression and anxiety
Chronic fatigue that prevents you from living vitally
Pelvic pain, often as the result of sexual abuse you have never confessed to anyone until I hold the sacred space for you and invite you to tell the truth
Urinary incontinence that causes so much shame and embarrassment that you might not leave the house, much less exercise or pursue your dreams
Menstrual disorders like hemorrhaging or menstrual cramps that cause you to miss work and other important life functions.
PMS/PMDD that may be hampering a happy life
Interstitial cystitis symptoms that make you feel like you constantly have a UTI
Menopausal symptoms that threaten a woman’s relationships, sleep, work, and life
Relationship counseling
Parenting advice
Losing your mojo

And that doesn’t even include the oh-so-necessary annual breast exam, internal pelvic exam to check for ovarian tumors and such, and the opportunity to make sure a woman is up to date on other cancer prevention procedures, such as colonoscopy in older women, or the HPV vaccine for teens.

Now, ACOG does say you should still talk to your doctor about getting an annual pelvic exam. (Thank you ACOG.) But are insurance companies going to cover a routine pelvic exam in the absence of a Pap smear? Are women going to go? So many women will hear these new guidelines and think, “Cool! I can skip the gyno for 3 years!”

By changing its guidelines, ACOG is going against the other main authorities on cervical cancer. The American Cancer Society and the U. S. Preventative Services Task Force both recommend that women get their first Pap test within three years of having sex, or at age 21- whichever comes first.

I respect evidence-based medicine and understand the rationale for these guidelines. I went to Duke and Northwestern and learned all the ivory tower beliefs about practicing based on evidence, not anecdotal speculation or emotion-based care. BUT….

What Do I Think?

Hmmm…I guess I think all the guidelines that have come out this week are missing something critically important in medicine. As leaders in women’s health, what messages are we putting out there? Somewhere along the way, governing bodies in medicine have forgotten the most vital aspect of what we doctors do. When they are reviewing data to make these guidelines, they are focusing only on what “cures” someone. But they have forgotten that there is a difference between healing and curing.

Let’s take a huge leap and assume that cancer screening is completely worthless and doesn’t prevent cancer at all. Is there not some value to the other types of healing work we doctors provide under the pretext of the annual Pap smear? Women don’t make separate appointments to talk about their sex life or whether they’re living as vitally as they might. They lump those things under the umbrella of a Pap smear. Many women feel like they’ve been handed a “You’re worthless” card at birth. I try to extract that card and replace it with a hot pink one that says, “You’re lovable, valuable, beautiful, and worthy.” This kind of work cannot be proven in a scientific study. But is taking away a woman’s excuse to visit her gynecologist taking away that hot pink card as well?

I’m not suggesting we do unnecessary testing or procedures just for the sake of getting a woman in the door. Ultimately, you have to be your own advocate for your health and wellness. But I worry about the far-reaching effects these kinds of guidelines will have for women who misunderstand and fail to hear the part about annual exams still being a critical part of women’s wellness. What if they get lost in the system? Especially underprivileged women, who may not be educated enough to advocate for their own well-being.

My fear is that cutting back on cancer screening will not only increase a woman’s risk of cancer. It may also limit a woman’s access to the kind of healing good doctors can provide. For most of my young patients, I am their primary care provider. The Pap smear is what gets them in the door. If you hear that you only need a Pap smear every three years, you may go three years without anyone talking to you about whether you’re living as healthfully and joyfully as you possibly can.

And you can be sure that insurance will cut back your coverage. If ACOG says you don’t need a Pap smear, your visit will likely only get covered if you have an ICD-9 code diagnosis like endometriosis or fibroids. And let me tell you- there’s no ICD-9 diagnosis for losing your mojo or cancer prevention.

You may think I’m biased. After all, I’m a gynecologist. It’s my business to have people come in for Pap smears, so of course, I would oppose these new guidelines. But the truth is that most gynecologists lose money by doing a Pap smear. The cost of the visit exceeds what insurance companies will reimburse most of the time. And since Medicare already doesn’t cover annual Paps, we usually eat the cost for older women who want to get Pap smears but don’t have coverage. So trust me, for most gynecologists, this is not about money. One of my dear friends in San Francisco (a total Pink God) is closing his practice- declaring bankruptcy- because he simply can’t make ends meet with a busy insurance-based practice. It breaks my heart. He is one of those doctors who, like me, practices love, with medicine on the side. Why does the system not embrace him? Why have we replaced doctors like him with technology, scientific data, and task forces? (*crying now*)

And why are they cutting back on only women’s health screening? Why not PSA testing for men? Not to be all conspiracy-theorist on you, but you can’t convince me that there aren’t some sexual politics caught up in all this. With all the advances we’ve made in women’s rights and women’s health over the years, why are we going backwards? Won’t somebody please stand up and shine the light on the Emperor’s new clothes?

I get that we need to cut back on health care costs. But come on, people. Must we do it at the expense of women? Can’t we focus our energy on tort reform or capping profits for insurance companies. Is this really the way?

For me, it’s all about advocating for holistic women’s health- the big kind, the kind that looks at a whole human being, not just a breast or a cervix. The only way we can help women holistically is to get them into our offices, provide a safe, sacred space for healing, and show up- fully present- to help them get in touch with what their body needs to be whole.

What Will I Do In My Practice?
I think you should be given a choice. The way I see it, it’s my job to present the data and help you understand the risks and benefits of cancer screening. If you want to get a yearly Pap smear and mammograms after 40- Fine. If you’d prefer to stretch out your screening or skip it altogether, no problem. It’s your body- your choice. I’m just here to help you understand your options and deal with whatever comes up.

The Bottom Line
Please, Pinkies, regardless of what you decide to do about your Pap smear or your mammogram, please don’t stop seeing a doctor every year.

Our Broken System

Thinking of how these new guidelines may limit your access to health care breaks my heart.

This system is so BROKEN. Hand me the suture and a needle driver. I want to stitch the fragmented, fractured, hemorrhaging heart of medicine back together again.