Lena Dunham celebrates her hysterectomy anniversary with nude post
Lena Dunham is celebrating her ovary-less life hard. On Wednesday the actress took to social media to post three nude photos of herself celebrating the 9 month anniversary of her hysterectomy. In true Lena style, she can be seen posing for the camera with her tattoos and curves on display. The photograph isn't airbrushed and doesn't sport a filter. In a frontal shot, her arms are shielding her breasts as she is stares directly into the camera. Along with the photos, Lena also shared a powerful message.
"Today is National Leathercraft Day, National Relaxation Day and National Lemon Meringue Pie Day. It’s also the 9 month anniversary of my hysterectomy," she began before revealing that her uterus was named Judy. "I’ve never celebrated the 9 month anniversary of anything and I realized last night why that number feels so funny- I won’t ever do it the way I planned to.
"My body is mostly healed and every day I find a new bruise on my heart, but today I offer myself gratitude: from the most pained place, I somehow knew to choose myself. The purest glint of who we are and know we can be is always available to us, calm and true at our center. My friend Paul named my uterus Judy, and when she was being uppity we called her out, hence the tattoo on my ribs, which hurt like fuck even through the pain meds: #RIPJudy. Today I give thanks for Judy, for her graceful exit and for this body, which is stronger than I’ve ever given it credit for. Happy Giving Birth To Myself Day."
The 32-year-old star decided to make the decision after suffering from endometriosis for almost ten years. In her essay for Vogue in March she had spoken about her struggle. She wrote, "The pain becomes unbearable. I am delirious with it, and the doctors can’t really explain. The ultrasound shows no cysts, no free fluid, and certainly no baby. But that doesn’t help the fact that it hurts so bad that the human voices around me have become a sort of nonsense Teletubbies singsong. With pain like this, I will never be able to be anyone’s mother. Even if I could get pregnant, there’s nothing I can offer." She added that it may not be the right choice for everyone but it certainly seemed like the right one for her. "I know that a hysterectomy isn’t the right choice for everyone,” I write, “that it’s not a guarantee that this pain will disappear, and that you are performing it due to your deeply held, essential and—to my mind—feminist belief that women should be able to make a choice about how they want to spend their childbearing years."