MORWENNA FERRIER

REDISCOVERING REST FOR YOUR BODY

I’M NOT AN ESPECIALLY WOO-WOO person. But I recently read something about ‘body memory’: the idea that trauma imprints on your body, not just your mind. There’s a need to work backwards, to move from the outside in, through the medium of rest.

For years, the island of Lanzarote – at least in the British imagination – has been associated with beach holidays and terrific winds. Flung out into the Atlantic Ocean many miles from the coast of north-west Africa, it held a cluster of developments that catered to people who needed something easy to escape to for a week or two.

But Lanzarote is a verdant volcanic island, shaped by regulations that ensure its buildings are, for the most part, lowrise and white-washed. It is a place at one with its surroundings. So, a number of years ago, when I went there with my boyfriend following an agonising and drawn-out abortion process, I found a place of healing, somewhere I could reconnect with the land, and my body.

We camped and walked. I ate dinner barefoot, wrapped in nothing but a green Kantha robe that, years later, when I had a baby, I would wear to breastfeed. But on that trip, I wore it because my body had failed me and I needed the wild and otherworldly uplands to act as a corrective. Having had something removed from me, I wanted to get something back.

The sun helped, and the fact we showered outside, with a view of the ocean partially hidden by dragon trees and bougainvillea. Spending the days half-naked, in gentle protest at the sanitary pads clogging up my wash bag, while eating plates of salty potatoes, pineapple and blackened fish, was a balm. And the wind! So sharp and unflagging, I occasionally struggled to breathe on the beach as it whipped off the sea. Yet, unable to do anything about the pain, the bleeding, the sadness, I eventually attempted doing nothing.

Then, one morning, a week in, the bleeding stopped. I had been swimming off the island of Graciosa, mostly nude, save a pair of blue bottoms to catch any blood, but when I got out, there was

nothing there. I waited, and checked. Nothing. I felt the clothing and the sea against my skin and I began to feel – after months of disconnection and pain – like I might be myself again. Like it was finally over.

I have had two abortions in my life, which either makes me clumsy or lucky – possibly both. The first time, I was in my early twenties. I realised I was pregnant quite late, so my body had already began to grow and morph, announcing its intentions. It was not a decision I took lightly, and my body ached for days, but there was never really a choice to make in the first place: I knew I wasn’t going to have this baby. Outside the clinic someone had handed me a pro-life leaflet, which I took out of politeness.

The second time was trickier. I was older and, on many levels, my partner and I were both ready, but neither of us was prepared to love something else singularly, in the way that I love my son now. I don’t regret the abortion, but I regret what happened after.

It had been early on in the pregnancy, so I had the option to take two pills, which I did. But something lingered. Bleeding was normal, they said, and so I ignored it and went to work in loose dark clothing and thick knickers. Weeks became months, and still the blood came. It started feeling normal to change a pad every few hours in the work loo. Three months in, I realised something was wrong. I took another pregnancy test and faintly, ambiguously, it told me I was still pregnant.

Panicked, I rang the clinic who sent me for a scan at my local hospital. There, it was determined that the abortion had been unsuccessful and I needed another procedure to remove ‘parts of the pregnancy’. Parts. This is very unusual, the stuff of small print, but it can happen. ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart,’ said the nurse, wheeling me out. ‘You’re going to have to go through it again.’ So I had another abortion. After that, we went to Lanzarote.

I took a pill for my second abortion but that simple action – swallowing something with water – belied the complexity of the process and the pain and confusion that ensued. Abortions can be messy and hard, but they are still ours to have and, though I did not talk about it very much, I now feel no shame about it – not in the way an American evangelist would have me feel.

In the United States, the Supreme Court’s overturning of the Roe v Wade decision, which has removed the federal right to a legal abortion that held for more than half a century, has thrown stories like these – everyday stories – back into the limelight. I grew up in the United Kingdom, and even though Northern Ireland did not decriminalise abortion until 2019, I know I took my right to abortion for granted because of how I was treated: calmly, sympathetically and without judgment. I know this because I barely thought about them until this summer.

Yet now, looking back, I see how there are moments, such as mine in Lanzarote, when having felt that I had lost my body, I found it again. In doing nothing and through rest, I found a refuge.

TRAUMA IMPRINTSON NOTJUST YOURMIND. THERE’SANEED TOWORK BACKWARDS