Removing My IUD Was More Than a Medical Appointment

Removing my IUD wasn’t just a medical appointment. It marked the moment I realized I no longer needed external protection because I’d become the woman capable of protecting my own womb.

Finally, I had my IUD removed.

It had reached the end of its lifespan, and during my annual OBGYN appointment, my provider asked if I wanted to remove it that day. I wasn’t expecting to leave without it. Part of me felt excited, while another part felt unexpectedly emotional.

I’ve been on hormonal birth control in one form or another since before I was even sexually active.

I got my first period in seventh grade and was prescribed the pill by ninth grade because my menstrual cramps were so severe that I needed hormonal birth control simply to function. There wasn’t much time to get to know my natural cycle, my body, or even how my emotions ebbed and flowed before medication became part of the story.

In 2018, right before my 21st birthday, I had my Mirena IUD inserted.

For eight years, that tiny device lived within my body. For most of that time, my menstrual cycle was almost nonexistent. It wasn’t until I began exploring womb work and reconnecting with my feminine embodiment in 2023 that I truly began building a relationship with my cycle, not just as something my body did, but as a conversation with myself and an indicator of my health.

Looking back, I realize my body had been communicating with me long before I knew how to listen.

During my first-ever relationship, which had grown unhealthy in its final years, I bled continuously for nearly eight months. At the time, the only periods where physical intimacy stopped were when I was bleeding. Looking back, it felt as though my body was trying to create space where I didn’t yet know how to. Multiple doctor’s appointments never uncovered a clear explanation. After I found the courage to leave that relationship, the bleeding stopped the very next day.

There was another short relationship where I experienced recurrent yeast infections and bacterial vaginosis while simultaneously being financially used and emotionally unseen. Once that relationship ended, my body gradually returned to balance.

In another abusive relationship, intimacy became increasingly uncomfortable. Pleasure disappeared. My body experienced persistent burning and irritation, almost as though something inside me was asking me to pay attention to what my mind was still trying to accept.

I don’t claim that every physical symptom has one simple explanation. Our bodies are beautifully complex. But these experiences invited me to ask deeper questions about safety, stress, boundaries, and the relationships I allowed into my life. They became invitations to listen more closely to myself.

Today, my life looks very different.

I’m in a deeply loving relationship with the man I’m about to marry. He is kind, patient, attentive, emotionally safe, and deeply respectful of my body. For the first time, intimacy feels nurturing rather than draining. Pleasure is no longer something I have to strive for: it feels natural, reciprocal, and safe.

Sometimes after we’re intimate, it feels as though my body simply exhales. There is a profound sense of peace, trust, and openness that I never knew was possible.

Whether that’s biology, psychology, spirituality, or some beautiful combination of all three, I find myself deeply grateful for what my body has taught me about the difference between surviving intimacy and truly feeling safe within it.

My relationship with my womb has transformed more than the way I experience my cycle. It has transformed my ability to receive.

As I sat in the exam room waiting for my IUD to be removed, I found myself unexpectedly emotional. Part of it was the significance of the moment. But another part was remembering the woman who had walked into a similar appointment eight years earlier. My IUD insertion was one of the most painful medical experiences of my life.

I remember nearly passing out from the pain. I spent hours recovering in the doctor’s office before finally driving myself home. I cramped intensely for days afterward, navigating the physical and emotional aftermath completely alone.

Returning to that same physician years later, I couldn’t help but notice how much my life had changed. For years, I attended appointments alone. I drove myself. I paid for everything myself. I carried the weight of independence as though asking for help somehow made me less capable.

This time was different.

My fiancé drove me to the appointment, stopping beforehand to buy me my favorite latte. Afterward, he got me flowers, tasty food, and more little comforts to help me recover. During the removal itself (which, thankfully, was far easier than the insertion) he held my hand, kissed my forehead, and reminded me I wasn’t alone.

The procedure was still uncomfortable. There was pain. There were tears.

But this time, there was also safety.

There was someone sharing the weight of the experience with me. As I reflected afterward, I realized this moment represented something much bigger than having an IUD removed. It reflected how profoundly my life has changed.

Womb work has taught me not only how to protect myself, but how to receive:

• care without feeling guilty

• tenderness without questioning whether I’ve earned it

• support without believing I have to do everything alone

For so much of my life, strength meant carrying everything by myself. Now, strength looks like allowing someone who loves me to show up for me. As I looked over at my fiancé that day, I wasn’t simply grateful for his help.

I was grateful for the woman I’ve become: the woman who chose a partner capable of meeting her with kindness, steadiness, and unwavering love.

Now I know love can also look like flowers after an appointment, a hand to hold during a difficult moment, a comforting forehead kiss, and someone waiting beside you while your body heals. Those gestures were not small at all; they were sacred.

And yet, despite everything I’ve learned over the past few years, I still feel like I’m meeting my body for the first time.

Since I began menstruating nearly sixteen years ago, very little of my adult life has been spent experiencing my natural cycle without hormonal birth control. Like so many women, I inherited messages that periods were inconvenient, embarrassing, dirty, something to hide or simply push through. Emotions were dismissed as “just PMS.” Pain was normalized. My cycle was often treated as a problem to manage rather than a rhythm worth understanding.

Removing my IUD feels like the beginning of an entirely new relationship with myself.

Not because birth control is inherently bad; it isn’t. For many women, including me, it can be an incredible tool. Mine served an important purpose during a chapter when I was still learning who I was and how to advocate for myself.

In many ways, my IUD became a guardian of my womb while I was learning how to become her guardian myself.

When it was placed, I was still learning how to use my voice. I was still figuring out how to recognize healthy love, set boundaries, trust my intuition, and decide who truly deserved access to my heart and body. Looking back, I feel immense gratitude that I didn’t create permanent ties with people who couldn’t offer me the kind of love, safety, and partnership I deserved.

When my provider removed my IUD, I asked if I could keep it.

Some people may find that strange, but to me, it represents an entire chapter of my life. It reminds me of the woman I was, the protection I needed then, and the woman I’ve become.

So thank you, little IUD.

Thank you for helping carry me through seasons when I needed your protection.

Thank you for giving me space while I learned how to choose myself.

Thank you for allowing me to reach this chapter with freedom rather than regret.

Now, I don’t need you in the same way I once did.

Not because I’ve become fearless, but because I’ve become deeply connected to myself.

I trust my intuition more than I ever have before. I know how to speak my boundaries.

I know the difference between attention and devotion, chemistry and safety, love and self-abandonment.

For the first time, I feel ready to experience my body as she naturally is with curiosity instead of fear, compassion instead of criticism, and reverence instead of disconnection.

Not achieving perfection. Not overriding my needs. Not proving my worth.

Remembering that my body has never been something to control or overcome; it is something to know, honor, and trust.

This realization is at the heart of why Empress Embodiment and womb work are so deeply connected.

To me, womb work isn’t simply about fertility or preparing for motherhood. Whether a woman desires children, has a womb, no longer has one, or is well beyond her reproductive years, the womb symbolizes something much deeper: our capacity to create, receive, nurture, discern, transform, and trust ourselves.

My womb became one of my greatest teachers because, when I finally slowed down enough to listen, she reflected every place I still needed healing. She invited me to cultivate safety instead of survival, boundaries instead of self-abandonment, pleasure instead of performance, and intuition instead of fear.

As I learned to protect my womb, I learned to protect my peace.

As I became more connected to my cycle, I became more connected to my emotions.

As I learned to trust my body, I learned to trust myself.

That is Empress Embodiment.

It is the lifelong practice of returning home to yourself, mind, body, heart, and spirit, so fully that your life begins to mirror the safety, abundance, love, and wholeness you’ve cultivated within.

The expiration of my IUD wasn’t simply the end of a form of birth control.

It became the beginning of something far more meaningful.

A deeper relationship with my body.

A deeper trust in my own wisdom.

The closing of one chapter of womanhood and the unfolding of another.

As I savor these final days of maidenhood and prepare for marriage (and, if life blesses us with that chapter, motherhood), I feel profound gratitude for every version of myself that carried me here.

For years, my womb was something I managed and defended.

Now, we are in a relationship with each other.

The journey was never simply about removing an IUD.

It was about removing the layers of shame, fear, disconnection, and self-abandonment that kept me from fully inhabiting the woman I was always becoming.

A beautiful new beginning lies ahead.

With love,

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