What Does it Mean to be a Woman? A Psychedelic Descent into the Womb

Melissa Vrouvides
May 5
8 min read

Updated: May 6

Surreal painting of a woman with three faces and a burning third eye, evoking the many layers of womanhood, intuition, and transformation.

Several years ago, someone asked me what being a woman meant to me.

I said something about how my menstrual cycle was central to my experience.

She responded that periods were just a biological process and had nothing to do with being a woman.

I walked away from that conversation feeling tongue-tied, confused, and somewhat offended.

Something in me had been dismissed.

And yet, I couldn’t find the words to defend it.

Because I didn’t yet understand the depth of what I was speaking from.

Perhaps something in me did know but I was still too far from my body to hear it.

Truthfully, before that question, I hadn’t given it much thought beyond the obvious:

a woman has breasts, a vagina, ovaries, fallopian tubes, a monthly period—

the ability to create and grow life.

It was a given, something I had never thought to question.

The thing is, though I had been living as a woman,

I hadn’t exactly been living into my womanhood.

Not in any sort of conscious or embodied way.

And there are valid reasons for that.

The more closely I pay attention,

the more I see how womanhood has been treated as a pathology.

Birth reduced to a clinical procedure.

The emotional waves leading up to our periods dismissed as irrational, even shameful.

The pill framed as a solution,

a way to skip right over these “nuisances” of bleeds.

To bypass our bodies, flatten our hormones.

As if our power lay in the ability to function like men.

Well, inevitably, I came to believe that my cyclical nature was a liability.

But I don’t blame myself for not knowing what I didn’t know.

Not for the absence of female elders who might have walked me through womanly rites of passage with reverence.

And certainly not for growing up in a culture that has failed to integrate the intelligence of women’s bodies.

And, ultimately, women’s wisdom.

And now, it seems we’ve arrived at a time where being a woman has become something of a currency.

One that anyone can reshape, reach for, even claim,

without ever truly knowing the cost.

Where conversations around gender have become so charged,

that speaking the word woman can feel like stepping on a landmine.

I can’t help but wonder:

if we continue to sidestep the biological, physiological, emotional, and spiritual realities that live inside female bodies,

if we sever womanhood from the very processes that shape how we feel, think, bleed, love, grieve, and heal,

if we cut womanhood off from the womb, as if it’s simply a body part, rather than a pulse that reaches every corner of our being—

how can we ever reclaim a women’s culture that is grounded, embodied, and real?

Fierce depiction of the goddess Kali standing over Shiva, holding a severed head and sword, symbolizing the dark feminine, destruction as rebirth, and the raw power of womanhood.

Descent

Sometimes it takes an encounter with the wild and terrifying to understand,

to fully experience what’s been buried.

To claim a piece of your essence that you didn’t know had ever been lost.

Five months ago, during a psychedelic experience, I met Kali.

Ma Kaali. The Dark Mother.

Hindu Goddess of time, death, destruction.

Of transformation, liberation, and creation.

Kali destroys illusion.

She cuts through ego, conditioning, and everything false.

Tongue out, four arms raised, each wielding a weapon.

A garland of severed heads hanging from her neck—

symbols of the false selves we cling to.

She didn’t arrive gently, but with command.

I tried to document what was happening like a proper student, like a good girl,

but she tore the pen & journal from my outstretched hands and thundered:

“EXPERIENCE.”

“Feed it to Kali,” I kept hearing.

Like a sacred mantra,

pulsing through me,

holding me in truth,

each time a piece of conditioning reared its head.

Forget your ‘parts work.’

This is your training.

Feed it all to Kali—

and just fucking be the woman you are.

Be seen by your own gaze.

Not for display.

But for your own delight.

Be in your sensuality.

Be in your pleasure.

In your primal nature—

before the world told you what that meant.

She showed me who I was truly in service to:

my womb.

I felt the warmth pulsing throughout my uterus.

Not a symbol of fragility—

but pure primal power.

Life force.

Creation.

My womb is a lie detector.

She speaks, at every moment, every breath.

I haven’t always listened.

But I am now.

Something hovered above me in that room as I lay on my bed, legs spread open, womb contracting fiercely.

I don’t know what it was.

But I surrendered.

I’m a humble student. I know nothing.

My uterus contracted and purged.

Purged trauma held in silence.

Tension that began in childhood,

in rooms that should have been safe.

Where the first man who was meant to protect me

became the first man I had to protect myself from.

She purged the times my mouth said yes, while my body screamed no.

To men who touched me without presence.

To sex I endured rather than desired.

To poison-filled products I was told were normal—

bleached tampons, synthetic hormones, perfumed pads.

Foreign objects I invited into the most sacred part of me,

believing that's what being a woman required.

She released for the women of my lineage,

for all they couldn’t grieve.

She showed me what I had been carrying for far too long—

the cost of it all.

That she remembered everything,

even though I worked so hard to forget.

The body—the womb—keeps the score.

Surreal collage of a nude woman floating toward a glowing tree with a keyhole, surrounded by mystical objects and vivid colors, symbolizing feminine initiation, transformation, and the journey of inner awakening.

Initiation

But with each contraction

comes expansion.

Contraction. Expansion.

Like the most familiar of songs.

A rhythm as old as the bones of the earth.

I held my womb as it shook and released beneath my hands.

A quiet knowing rooted itself:

I need more hands.

Women’s hands.

The kind that know this terrain by heart,

like a map of holy land.

I can’t do this alone.

I was never meant to.

Grief, again.

As the contractions surged through me, I felt a strong urge to release.

Do I pee?

Yes.

Right here on my bed? asked an unsure voice within.

You’re supposed to pee in a toilet.

Feed it to Kali.

You want to hold women in their depths? she asked.

Start by lying in yours.

Honour your body’s truth—your fluids—

especially the parts you’ve been taught to turn away from.

You cannot hold space for a woman's deepest, darkest shit,

if you can’t sit in your own.

And so I did.

I purged, raw and alive, from the center of my womanhood.

I lay in my own fluids.

The most grounded I’ve ever felt in my life.

I slept in those unwashed sheets for a few days,

like it was part of my initiation.

When I finally stripped them to be washed,

I knelt on the ground,

pressed my face into them,

kissed them,

thanked them,

for containing something so sacred,

and undeniably woman.

In that experience, being a woman became holy.

Not in a religious sense,

but in a sacred, bone-deep knowing.

In the language of blood and breath.

Of death and rebirth.

Woman.

Say it like a prayer.

WOMAN.

Integration

My uterus has continued to contract since that beautiful encounter with my absolute essence.

Years of dissociation have finally begun to thaw.

She bleeds differently now.

No more reaching for painkillers to silence her voice.

Twenty years of monthly agony—gone.

A somatic rebirth.

I’m still learning how to listen to her.

Still learning how to stay in relationship.

It’s not always easy.

Especially when stories of the past take hold.

Sometimes I drift, forget, shut her out.

But I return. I always return.

Because who is Kali really?

Is she me?

Has she always been?

Is she every woman buried beneath the rubble and broken pieces of her truest self?

Is she the primal essence that has always been, and always will be?

No matter how far we drift,

no matter how often we forget?

The one who guides us back.

Back to the body.

Back to the truth.

Back to ourselves.

Vibrant surreal collage of nude women in a wild, blooming landscape under a massive moon, with a central figure embracing herself in ecstasy, symbolizing the sacred return to womanhood, nature, and cosmic belonging.

The Return

Returning to that question—

What does being a woman mean to me?

It means living in a body that remembers—

that splits itself open,

that bleeds and births,

that breaks and becomes,

over and over again.

It means becoming the woman I once needed.

The one who knows her fluids are sacred.

The one who no longer apologizes.

For her mess.

For her depth.

For her loudness and direct nature.

For her, no.

It means bowing at the feet of the women who surround me—

my doulas,

my teachers.

The ones who hold me.

Witness me.

Lay wet cloths on my forehead.

Sit nearby,

letting me fall apart without rescuing.

Because they know.

It means recognizing the masculine and feminine

were not made to dominate one another,

but meant to meet in the middle.

Seeing men different in their pain,

but not untouched by it.

It means facing the truth—

even when,

especially when,

it scares the shit out of me.

It means descent and return.

Rupture.

Rhythm.

Contraction.

Expansion.

It means remembering my body before it was trained by politeness.

Before the pleases and thank yous,

the sucked-in tummies,

the crossed legs,

the smile-even-when-it-hurts.

It means grieving what I was never taught.

And embodying what I’m learning to remember.

Drowning out the noise,

and tuning in to my own pulse.

Slow as my default.

Undomesticated.

Primal.

It means being both woman and girl at once—

letting the maiden in me play,

under the watchful heart of the mother.

It means growing into the crone with my eyes open.

Letting time have its way with me,

not knowing what that will mean,

only that I must humbly accept.

It means I am not reduced by my biology,

by my physiology,

or by my cyclical ways—

I am revealed through them,

a spirit braided into the flesh and blood of a woman.

It means honouring my womb

as oracle,

lie detector,

truth speaker.

It means being a woman,

not as a performance—

but as prayer.

Legal Disclaimer

This piece reflects the personal experience and perspective of the author and is not intended as medical, therapeutic, or legal advice.

At Aphrodite Health, we believe in the importance of free expression and the telling of stories that center women’s lived experiences. We trust readers to take what speaks to them, and leave what doesn't.

The author does not promote the unlawful use of psychoactive substances. Psychedelic experiences carry potential risks and should be approached with discernment, preparation, and support. Please consult qualified professionals when considering any therapeutic or health-related decisions.

About the Author

Melissa Vrouvides is a somatic psychedelic facilitator, writer, and community organizer devoted to women’s healing. She is the founder of Aphrodite Health, a women’s wellness collective grounded in relational healing, somatic intelligence, and cyclical wisdom. Her work bridges psyche and body, offering spaces for deep reclamation and remembrance.

Melissa supports women through one-on-one & group preparation & integration, seasonal community gatherings, and ceremonial work that honours life’s thresholds.

You can find her on Instagram @aphroditehealth_, or learn more at www.aphroditehealth.co