Rising up rooted for women & girls, with a £10k budget

sharing my pandemic pregnancy, the evolution of Postpartum Matters and why women need safe spaces to share

I wrote the below words at the beginning of last week, following yet another rejection for funding for The Women’s Health Hub. I didn’t have the time to polish it up into a readable newsletter and, since then, we have actually received news that we’ve been accepted by the National Lottery Community Fund for £10,000 to help toward running costs for the next year. This is so amazing and so unbelievable that

Lottie

actually rang them to check it wasn’t a scam.

For the last 6 months we’ve been working away, trying so hard (and failing) to cover costs for the space whilst also trying to secure funding. News of the funding has been such a huge weight off of my shoulders and I’m so excited to plan what we can do with that money. Whilst a big chunk of it will go towards the rent, it’s the little things we’ve not been able to have that I can’t wait for. A dedicated vacuum cleaner so we don’t have to lug down our personal ones, a sign for the outside of the building so more people know where we are. That’s how much we’ve been prioritising funds in the start up phase and it feels nice to be able to breathe past that now.

Whilst we have been offered funding now, I have chosen not to edit out the words I wrote last week, in the face of a £500 rejection because they feel real and raw and truly represent the rollercoaster it’s been for us to get this up and off the ground.

I recently read this piece by

Rae Katz

sharing their interview with my lovely friend

Claire Venus

. In the piece, Claire is sharing her experiences of being pregnant/ giving birth in the pandemic whilst supporting her husband with long Covid.

Honestly, the piece had me in tears.

It’s a time of my life I think I’ve consciously been distancing myself from of late. And Claire’s piece just sent me right back.

Right back to January 2021, homeschooling a seven year old, caring for a three month old baby whilst managing pain from a huge amount of granulation tissue which had formed from my labial tear that occurred during birth. All whilst trying to keep it quiet for my husband working away upstairs. I couldn’t walk without fresh bleeding from my scar tissue rubbing my pants. It physically hurt to rock my baby to sleep whilst also trying to help my eldest access white rose maths and upload evidence of their schoolwork onto Microsoft teams.

our homeschooling set up, circa 2021

I remember being rang by the school one January afternoon. I’d just got back from hospital, from my gynae appointment - where I’d had to leave my three month old breastfed baby outside in the car with my husband and my eldest, praying she didn’t wake up for a feed whilst I was gone. I wasn’t allowed to take her with me. Back at home, when the school rang, my vulva was still on fire from the gynae cauterising the unhealed wound that sat just left of my clitoris. I still had burnt bits of my skin falling off into the sanitary pad below when the school teacher asked me why we hadn’t completed all of the maths assignments for that day.

I remember sitting on postnatal zoom yoga with the screened filled with women just like me. Women who were broken wide open, hurting and healing and fighting just to keep everything going all at once. Women who had been forgotten by society and who were just expected to cope and juggle all the plates instead of healing from birth. It was too much. It was too hard and it wasn’t good enough.

And it hasn’t changed much either.

In my local area, all of the infant feeding support groups were stopped at the beginning of the pandemic.

And they never started back up again.

Many of the grassroots, free to access organisations struggled to survive that time and had to shut.

A lot of the safe spaces I’d found in my first postpartum had been fully wiped out with nothing out there to replace them.

Homebirth services have been removed, midwife led units are being closed and women are being forced to birth their babies in environments that don’t feel safe for them. With not even an apology or a reasonable excuse.

And this is just one life transition we have to go through as women+. But it’s just as rubbish for all the others. Whether it’s women in their late 40s/ 50s falling out of employment as they struggle alone with their menopause symptoms¹. Or it’s teenage girls still having to hide the fact that they’re bleeding². With the rightfully free to access sanitary pads hidden in rainbow bags behind counters so we can ask for them in code, to save us the same of having to announce we’re menstruating.

Being pregnant and giving birth in the pandemic wasn’t the first time I’ve been disadvantaged on account of my uterus but it was the first time I had the resources to try and do anything about it. It’s how Postpartum Matters CIC was born. It’s where the Women’s Health Hub has came from.

But even that has been made incredibly difficult. As we meet with funders who don’t even know what the word postpartum means. As people think our knitted uterus is a toy octopus. As we receive yet another rejection for financial support because so the people reading these things really understand how urgently this is needed? As we’re working so many hours and yes, helping so many women, but with a huge financial cost to us individually. It’s a lot.

our cuterus sitting centre stage in the hub

Yet I believe that specialist safe spaces for women+ are needed now more than ever. As government funded services continue to be cut, as the government switch goalposts and make things even harder for primary caregivers (the majority of which are female)³, as more and more reports come about about gender based violence⁴ and lets not even get started on celebrity rape culture. We need safe spaces to come together to build a safe community, to provide support and receive signposting.

Not just in my local community but in yours too. Across the country. Across the globe even.

And yeah, okay, there’s a new APPG for birth trauma and we had the women’s health strategy announced last year but government change takes forever. If it even happens at all. And it’s really hard to make those policies personal. For them to support people at a local level.

No, I really believe we need grassroots, local support. Built by the community to serve those in it, to serve those who will be accessing the support. Like the wonderful

Dr Sharon Blackie

wrote in If Women Rose Rooted:

“If women remember that once upon a time we sang with the tongues of seals and flew with the wings of swans, that we forged our own paths through the dark forest while creating a community of its many inhabitants, then we will rise up rooted like trees.

And if we rise up rooted, like trees...well, then women might indeed save not only ourselves, but the world.”

I’m asking you to rise rooted in your community now - to support the girls and the mothers and the elder women and every woman and AFAB person in your local area.

So that young girls can grow up seeing empowered women owning their cycles and move through girlhood free from shame.

So that women+ can receive support to get the medical care they need in a confusing and piecemeal system.

So that elder women can continue to be seen and heard and valued.

So that no woman needs to struggle with employment regardless of childcare, or menopause symptoms or anything else.

So that the hidden whispers about unsafe men can become a little bit louder.

Perhaps you want to set up your own initiative. Or perhaps we just start a conversation here. I’m here for all of it.

Ending this post by thanking the National Lottery and pinching myself that we have secured £10,000 for the sole benefit of women & girls - not a cis-man in sight.

Thanks for being here,

Zoe xx

our empowered girls club is my all time favorite - seeing all generations gathering and just being

Before you go…

You can check out our full timetable of events here - there’s no need to book and we’re always there with a hot drink and a listening ear.

And if there’s something you’d like to see or you’d like to volunteer your time, let us know! You can respond in the comments or email us at zoe@postpartummatters.co.uk.

1. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/menopause-women-quit-jobs-hrt-b2069754.html

2. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/may/28/one-in-five-girls-and-young-women-bullied-about-their-periods-study

3. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/sep/10/revealed-covert-deal-to-cut-help-for-pupils-in-england-with-special-needs

4. https://womensenews.org/2023/02/new-report-violence-against-women-and-girls-needs-new-global-policy/