Missy’s Corner: Nice Girls DO Talk Like This

“Why is a nice girl like you talking about things like this?”

I was asked this question recently by a female publisher of a local woman’s magazine and it gave me pause. Does she really not understand how important this is? I thought to myself.  Clearly not.

The “this” I was talking to her about refers to what we do here at Women’s Health Foundation. What my life is all about – the quest to help women love their pelvis, regain their pelvic health and fitness and really be fit, sexy & in control!  Did I somehow offend her? Why didn’t she get it?

I am the Executive Director of the Women’s Health Foundation.  I am also a bladder control patient – my pelvic health is always on my mind.  Because it needs to be! You can read my story on our website, but just know that I am also a Pelvic Floor Evangelist.

I view every conversation I have as the opportunity to get women thinking about their own pelvic health, mostly because I know we are not embracing our pelvic health like we embrace the rest of our overall health. When this woman asked me this question, the question I thought most about later was, “What can we do, at WHF, to make women like this interested?”

This woman represents one of the primary targets for our work – women over 50.  OK, she had never had children, she ostensively did not have issues with bladder control or constipation or sexual dysfunction, but she was at least on the other side of menopause.  Statistically, she is likely to have an up-front and personal experience around her bladder in the very near future and judging from what she told me, she wasn’t doing a thing to potentially prevent that encounter from being a negative one.

She needed to be listening to me. She needed to start working on her pelvic health and yet she couldn’t even imagine why I would be talking about “…things like this.”  Hmmm.

I don’t have all the answers yet, but I am thinking about that woman every day.  How can we convince women to be excited about their pelvic health?  How can we encourage women to at least talk about this stuff with their doctors, girlfriends, sisters & daughters when things start to go wrong, before they end up with wildly out-of-control bladders?

Your thoughts would be really helpful.  What words would you use if you were me to talk to someone about her pelvic health?  Clearly not “incontinence,” but maybe it should be all about sex, right?  After all, the pelvic floor muscles, for example, are are muscles of “sexual appreciation,” to quote one of our favorite people in this business!  Working them out increases blood flow to the area and that can do wonders for your sex life. That’s YOUR sex life. Not just your partner’s.

Let me know if you have any brainstorms and I’ll keep thinking too.

Next time, I want to talk about letting the guys in on what’s going on for us “down there…..” Too soon?

Yours in pelvic health,

Missy

Tags: pelvic health