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The Seeds in My Body: Seneca Descendancy and PMDD

  • By: Rachel Arlene Redeye Porter

For Indigenous women of matrilineal nations, our ovaries are the future of our peoples. We carry the seeds of the next generations within our bodies. For my people, the Onöndowa’ga:’ (“Seneca”) of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, this sacred responsibility is why women hold an elevated status in the community. Since I was a young child, I have understood that Haudenosaunee women are responsible for passing on their clan and, by extension, their citizenship, to their children. The importance of upholding our matrilineal clan system has long weighed heavy on me as I honor it. I am of Seneca blood, but my mother was non-Native, leaving me — and my descendants — without a clan and a political voice in my nation. 

Even without status, I can feel the voices and experiences of my ancestors shaping my own. My connection to my Seneca ancestors is the reason that when I was diagnosed with Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD) at age 31 and learned that the only true cure was to surgically remove my ovaries, I paused. Haudenosaunee women have always had full autonomy over our bodies. I paused because I knew then, as I know now, that my ovaries do not only carry the potential of my future children. My ovaries also carry the truth of my existence and identity as a Seneca woman.

According to the International Association of Premenstrual Disorders, PMDD affects about 1 in 20 people who menstruate. It is an abnormal brain sensitivity to normal hormone fluctuations across the menstrual cycle. I experience it as raging, sudden tears, irritability, muscle aches, and darkness that dips toward suicidality. I feel as if I am floating above my body watching these symptoms happen to me without my consent. I spent 12 years trying every treatment available before I leveled with my gynecologist and questioned out loud whether or not I could psychologically and physically handle having a period this severe ever again. 

At that point, my gynecologist offered two options for alleviating PMDD: have an oophorectomy or take a medication called Lupron Depot to temporarily induce a menopausal state by completely suppressing ovulation. One of these options was a necessary precursor to the other. I could trial the Lupron Depot and prepare for surgery while still leaving open the possibility of suspending treatment and pursuing pregnancy. I wasn’t sure what I would ultimately decide, but I knew I needed relief as soon as possible. 

I dropped into menopause immediately and the relief came shortly after. What didn’t subside was the ever-twisting agony in my stomach about what to do long-term. The effects of Lupron can wane over time and after two years of injections every twenty-eight days, I am beginning to feel my original symptoms return at the end of each month. The question of whether or not I will have a biological child imminently requires an answer. Each month, I am losing energy, time, and freedom to live my own healthy life as I contemplate whether or not to bring new life into the world. 

There are times when it feels like there is nothing more important that I could do as a Seneca woman than give birth. In Haudenosaunee culture, to be a life-giver—one who births the next generation—is to protect the existence of our people and to carry forward the legacy of our ancestors. The knowledge of women and mothers is centered within the Haudenosaunee community because women have an inherent connection through reproduction to all living beings. Bringing forth new life is also vital to our survival. As I contemplate whether or not I should pursue surgery, a path not without risks, I wonder who I will be as a Seneca woman without my ovaries. I crave a permanent solution to my PMDD and yet I fear that putting my health above my people will betray them in some way. Even though my child would not be enrolled as a Seneca Nation citizen, they would forever be a part of the legacy of the Seneca Nation of Indians.

Embodying my Haudenosaunee ancestors’ dreams today means remembering what they endured for me to be here. Our strength as Haudenosaunee women has always been apparent to colonizing powers. In an attempt to control and eradicate Indigenous peoples, colonizing powers waged sexual warfare, conducted forced sterilization operations, and assimilated our children through the Native American boarding school system. Despite this, the Haudenosaunee matrilineal clan system has existed continuously for over 1,000 years. This is the history that I inherit regardless of clan status and that I feel in my body with each breath. When I think of my great-grandmother who attended the Friends Indian School at Tunessasa and was scolded for speaking Seneca, I feel it in my body. My ovaries hurt. My uterus cramps. My pelvic floor tightens, and my chest feels hollow. 

When I learned that a majority of people with PMDD report having experienced early life trauma, I was not surprised. Trauma always finds a home within the body and sometimes even the most sincere and earnest healing journeys are unable to dislodge it. This is especially true for intergenerational trauma, whose pathways you are born with and when activated permeate every cell of your body. As much as trauma lives within me, so too does strength and resilience. In the darkest moments that PMDD causes, I connect to my purpose as a Haudenosaunee woman to honor and defend our lifeways, and that pulls me through. The interplay between my brain and my ovaries may bring me to my lowest, but it is also the precise relationship that keeps me here, earthside.

The time when I will finally have to choose whether or not to pursue surgery or continue taking Lupron gets closer. As my PMDD symptoms return, administering Lupron shots more frequently is a medically safe option. Even with systemic limitations beyond my control,  I still don’t know what to do.  I vacillate nearly every day between the promise of a life free from PMDD and the sacrifice of living with it a little bit longer – long enough to get pregnant and delay the final decision until postpartum. 

Alternative solutions such as in vitro fertilization and surrogacy do exist, but they feel as out of reach as ridding my body of artificial hormones and hoping that my cycle regulates naturally. I’m not sure that I could physically tolerate either process well enough to make it worth it. Parenting a child who is already here and needs care is a truly viable option and something that I think about often and makes my heart smile. The only thing that I know for certain is that I long to be healthy enough to give the best parts of myself to my people— and the truth is that those parts may not be my ovaries or the children that I may not be able to bear.

Peace lives in the quiet relationship between me, my body, and my ancestors. It is a relationship that no doctor could ever surgically remove and one that is intimately my own. It is the way that when I hear the Seneca language spoken, my feet ground more securely into the Earth. No question that living with PMDD is a seemingly never-ending labor, but it is no one’s life in its entirety. If I choose to become a mother—whether through adoption, foster care, or pregnancy—I will teach my children how to honor this relationship within themselves. If they are born with ovaries, I will tell them giving birth is their choice just as I learned from the Haudenosaunee women before me, and that many gifts give life to the world. In the meantime, I will continue to speak these words to myself. 

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About the Author

Rachel A. R. Porter is a queer, disabled, chronically ill Seneca descendant and storyteller of mixed ancestry. She earned her Master’s in Human Security and Gender Analysis in International Affairs from The Fletcher School at Tufts University. She is the Founder of the Indigenous Enough Project, an initiative honoring the breadth of contemporary Indigeneity, and Co-Founder of Kneading Change, a narrative justice company.