Today I am celebrating my sweet 16.
It is the sixteenth anniversary of my hysterectomy at age 27. This surgery purged any remaining cells of cervical cancer from my young body but with it removed my womb. To save my life, I would no longer be able to give life to another human being. I had agonized over the decision. I had so desperately wanted to give birth to one more child. While I was strong and brave through the roller coaster ride of a sudden cancer diagnosis and various treatment options, the journey afterward would be more challenging. The grief of having no more children was the toughest wound to heal. Thankfully I was already blessed with a loving supportive family, a strong caring husband and one beautiful, wise little two and a half year old. It was my daughter’s light, love and sage bits of wisdom that would transform me over the year that followed and lead me through my healing.
Profound wounds truly are our openings to the light that shines within us. 
If we allow ourselves to feel our way through, we journey through them to a core gift buried there for each of us. Through that healing, we discover the divine beings that we are while inhabiting these amazing human bodies and living these remarkable lives.
That is a story I am ready to tell. I will take precious time to do it and hopefully to tell it well. I have shared it with those closest to me. Now, I plan to share it more expansively in the next few years, along with sharing other stories of love and wisdom that I’ve been blessed with on my journey. I pray that when I give birth to these creations that they find hearts to hold them well.
I create now from a womb more expansive than this human body could hold and with a Love I couldn’t have known sixteen years ago. That was, and is, the gift of my wound.
Today I acknowledge this precious anniversary for the very first time without my child here at home. While we two have shared many heroine journeys together, my daughter now flies solo as a brand new college student. She has embarked on the next chapter of her own heroine’s journey alone, knowing that her family is always there for her ~ as we have always been for one another. I am so tremendously proud of her and of who she is in this world.
I am so blessed to be alive, to be with those in my life and to have this one child. We have all taught and learned so much from one another…. And to think, the journey continues… for us all.
DeAnne Wolfgram 
Beautifully shared. Full circle into the Loves of your life. Xo
Jackie, I have thought often of that potent messaged conversation that we shared on the morning I would drive my daughter to college. You brought much more needed conscious awareness to what that deep core part of me already knew and to what the protective smaller self part of me had not yet allowed myself to recognize. Thank you for the profound touch that you have had upon my life and my purpose in this life. I love you my dear soul sister and sacred friend. I love you immensely. xoxo
I reshare our conversation here so that I may always know where to find it should I need to be reminded. Thank you, once again.
Jackie L. Robinson wrote on your timeline. ♥ Thinking of you today. XOXO
August 21 at 6:00am
DeAnne Wolfgram: I feel your love and gentle strength Jackie. Thank you my dear friend.
I happened to look ahead at the passage for our next ‘Divine Feminine First Friday’. It appears that the guidance was right on target once again. Next Friday will be potent, certainly for me. It will be a precious time of heart expansion no doubt.
http://sacredcircleretreats.com/feminine-first-friday/
Divine Feminine First Friday
sacredcircleretreats.com
A circle of women honoring the voice from within, connecting to our ancestry and allowing the Divine Feminine to speak through and to us. In this month’s circle we explore this passage:
“How might your life have been different, if, as a young woman, there had been a place for you, a place where you could go to be among women… a place for you when you had feelings of darkness? And, if there had been another woman, somewhat older, to be with you in your darkness, to be with you until you spoke… spoke out your pain and anger and sorrow.
And, if you had spoken until you had understood the sense of your feelings, how they reflected your own nature, your own deepest nature, crying out of the darkness, struggling to be heard.
And, what if, after that, every time you had feelings of darkness, you knew that the woman would come to be with you? And would sit quietly by as you went into your darkness to listen to your feelings and bring them to birth… So that, over the years, companioned by the woman, you learned to no longer fear your darkness, but to trust it… to trust it as the place where you could meet your own deepest nature and give it voice.
How might your life be different if you could trust your darkness… could trust your own darkness?”
Jackie L. Robinson: I do love those circles. You were divinely guided in choosing each passage, of that I’m certain. Love you…..xoxo
August 21 at 6:04am
DeAnne Wolfgram: Love you too.
‘Letting Go’ sure is the most challenging and counter-intuitive thing a mother will ever do…. (especially this double Cancer mother who lost her womb to cancer. It’s one reason this child has been lavished with love so very much.)
“Letting go… There’s nothing in her way now… Letting go. There’s room enough to fly.”
August 21 at 6:10am
Jackie L. Robinson: It strikes me as I read your post, DeAnne – that we are so used to ‘cancer’ being a negative word with horrible insinuations. And yet, in one sentence you are triple Cancer. What if for some at least, ‘having cancer’ is a beautiful opening of nurture, love, support without boundaries? What if by your very own journey you have created a space in which there is no apology for how, how much and who you love? ‘Lost her womb to cancer’ – honey, you are one the most nurturing and loving women I know. How could it be possible you lost the womb where such beauty and creation are born? In the physical reality perhaps, but I sense that only increased the feminine power you carry. And yes – that letting go is an unexpected journey into ourselves. It so very much looks like it’s about our relationship to our children–and it IS–but as with everything in the realm of parenting, it’s so much more about how we relate to ourselves. May you all bask in the glow of how much you’ve learned to love through each other. XOXO
August 21 at 6:26am
DeAnne Wolfgram: I cannot even find the words… You’ve tapped my core and played my heart strings with your knowing and the beauty of your words.
Those born under the sign of Cancer are the mothers and nurturers, by their inherent nature. I am doubly, or rather triply so now. Cancer IS also a word filled with love, healing, and yes, opening. Having cancer brought a level of self compassion and compassion for other people that I had not possessed as fully before it.
Yes, I do believe that giving away my ‘womb’ at such a young age opened me up to loving in a much more expansive way. And, I noted the symbolic, historic timing of my ‘give away.’ I was experiencing my mothering crisis amidst the days of mourning over Princess Diana’s death and near to the time of Mother Theresa’s passing. The potency of the sacred and the Divine Feminine Mother was not lost on me, even then. I somehow knew there was significance. I’ve always held the idea that when a person dies who embodied a mission so significantly that means that their mission and way of being are ready to be dispersed and embodied throughout the globe. It feels for me, that the summer of 1997 was a time for a significant rebirth of the sacred feminine. There is still more for me to assimilate in my own story and how it parallels this paradigm shift, yet it is one of two writings that will be underway now in earnest now that my young one is flying on her own. Lauren Claire emphasized to me again yesterday that this is my time ‘to write.’ I gave her the name ‘Claire’ for ‘clarity’ following inner guidance that I received. I have always felt such trust with her. I know the truth of her knowing. It is time… Love you, enormously. xoxo
August 21 at 6:47am
Jackie L. Robinson: Yes. It is time. xoxo
August 21 at 6:57am
What a beautiful offering dear DeAnne. I was honored to have you share part of my journey with me when I faced similar choices and I am deeply grateful for your support and love. Now I am happy to help support you in this opening & birthing of this new phase of your life. Blessings dear Soul Sister….may you shine brightly for all to see ♡
Precious tears begin to dot my eyes as I read your beautiful message Jeanette and those of our friends, Jackie & Melynnda. What a journey we have shared, already, and I have no doubt there is much more yet to come. The time to fully share our gifts and ourselves with the world arrives now.
As Melynnda shared last summer, “No more holding back.” We are all bravely being authentic and living our truth, with every soulful expression and each moment of simply being who we are.
Thank you Jeanette. I will most gladly accept your support, love and friendship. I appreciatively hold your hand and walk the path. And, as my name DeAnne means “glowing”, I intend to fully live as my spirit guides, dancing in acceptDANCE and lighting the world with love. I hold the prayer for opening and birthing for us all. ♡ Much love, DeAnne
May your writing land into the hands of those who need it most. ❤ M*
It is time, and I am ready to trust now.
Thank you M* for being my loving, encouraging “kick ass friend.” ♡ xoxo