by Luz Helena Hincapie, 35 years, BA Architect, Colombia, South America
When I started writing this article, I found many other women were expressing their experiences with their breasts. It felt as if we were all connected at this time, and that the topic was ‘in the air’. It felt timely and confirming. I would like to share my own experience with my breasts, especially since I allowed myself to acknowledge and connect back to them. I am amazed at how much we as women can learn from our breasts.
Over the last 4 years or so I’ve become more aware of them, learning to love them (an ongoing process) and getting to know myself and know what is going on in my life through them.
When my breasts started growing, more than 20 years ago, I remember it was an unpleasant time; I didn’t like the fact that the nipples grew first and I wanted them to become real breasts quickly.
I felt shameful, angry and apprehensive by this growing process, as if becoming a woman was something people would laugh at.
I rejected very much the attention that my growing breasts used to give me. I did not feel it as a natural process at all.
The environment where I grew up didn’t treat the changes in a girl’s body as something special, something to honor, share or talk about openly. I assumed that I had to deal with it all on my own, I had SO many feelings about it, but I could only keep them to myself, and bury them later on. I also remember being curious about which girls were already using bras: I tried to look through their shirts to see if they were already using them – I think I was trying to compare myself and feel less alone in the process. It would’ve been more fun, more natural, less secret if I could have shared it openly without feeling like an alien for having so many feelings about it all, in a seemingly neutral environment.
This reveals that there was a moment in my life when I was really aware of my breasts, however, when they finally grew and they were not a mystery any more, I almost completely forgot about them… well, not quite.
When I started thinking of sex and boys, then my breasts came back to the spotlight. I saw them as a part of the body that could give me more pleasure and was liked by men. I basically saw them as sexual objects. Although I didn’t really like them – the shape was not round enough, they were not very fit, the nipples were too big in proportion to the whole breast, they were not located high enough in my chest, some days they were too big and other days, too small. I preferred to forget about them, apart from the days before my period when they would be tender and painful, or if I had some kind of intimacy with someone. But in my daily life they almost didn’t exist. I liked to keep them hidden in my clothes, I never wanted to look at them in detail or touch them, I didn’t hold them in any particular regard.
If I now think about it, did I ever get the time to feel my breasts and take them into consideration while I was partying heavily, not sleeping, smoking, socializing non-stop, waking up with terrible hangovers and so on? Of course not.
This attitude would have continued if I had not been inspired by Universal Medicine and their specialised Women’s Health modality – The Esoteric Breast Massage, something I explore in my upcoming blog.
You may also like:
Learning to Love Myself Through My Breasts – Discovering the Esoteric Breast Massage
Learning to Love Myself Through My Breasts – My Experience with Breastfeeding