I was at one of the biggest women’s wellness events in Westchester three weeks ago.
I’ve been there before as a woman, walking through, stopping at tables, deciding what felt relevant and what didn’t. This time, I was there as a professional. As a pelvic floor physical therapist. As someone who talks about the pelvis and women’s health all day.
I genuinely thought this would be the easiest place to say “vagina” out loud and have it land casually. It wasn’t.
From behind the table, the experience felt different. Women walked in looking put together—four-inch heels, flawless makeup, polished conversations. Everything on the surface suggested ease and control.
But when they got to my table, something shifted. Voices lowered. People leaned in. Words were chosen more carefully. Sometimes there was a quick laugh first, like a buffer before saying what they actually wanted to ask.
And almost everyone instinctively whispered. Not because the room was loud. Not because I asked them to. They just did
What they were asking about wasn’t rare. Leaking is one of the leading reasons women eventually need higher levels of care later in life. Prolapse affects the majority of women at some point. Painful sex is experienced by more than half of women during their reproductive years. One in ten women lives with chronic pelvic pain.
These are common experiences. They just don’t sound like it, because we don’t say them out loud.
There’s something about pelvic health that makes people hesitate. It brings up this quiet question of whether it’s even appropriate to talk about as if we’ve done something wrong. As if our bodies are somehow failing.
So many of the women I spoke to were managing things quietly. Leakage they plan around. Discomfort they’ve learned to ignore. Pain they’ve normalized. Questions they’ve carried for months or years.
Not because they don’t care, but because it feels vulnerable to say it out loud.
What stood out most wasn’t just what was shared, but what happened after. The moment someone finally said the thing they’d been holding in, there was a visible shift. Relief. Less tension. A sense that maybe they weren’t the only ones.
And underneath most of those conversations was the same question. Is this just something I have to live with? It isn’t.
Pregnancy, postpartum, menopause, aging. These are normal phases of life. But the symptoms that come with them are common, not inevitable, and not something you have to accept without support.
There are ways to understand what’s happening in your body. There are ways to improve it. And you don’t have to figure it out alone.
If there’s one thing I would say more directly than I could in that room, it’s this. Talk about it. Ask the question. Say the thing you’ve been holding back.
Because the more we keep this quiet, the more isolating it becomes.
If any of this resonates with you, even a little, it’s worth paying attention to. Not someday. Now.
