Hello beautiful people,

 

I've been collecting stories lately, and this one insisted on being first.

 

A few weeks ago, I went in to establish care with a new primary care doctor. You know the drill...lots of paperwork, lots of questions, lots of filling in the blanks.

 

Somewhere in the conversation, my doctor mentioned that I was due for a Pap smear.

I laughed.

"Oh, I don't need one," I said. "I had a hysterectomy years ago."

She smiled.

"Did they remove your cervix?"

I answered with the confidence of someone who had absolutely no reason to be so confident.

"Yes."

She looked at my chart.

Apparently, everyone in the room knew something that I didn't.

"Nope."

Wait...what?

 

Apparently, I still have a cervix.

 

For fifteen years, I'd been walking around completely convinced that I didn't.

 

Here's what I think happened.

I'm guessing that somewhere after surgery, someone explained exactly what had been removed and what hadn't. I probably understood it perfectly—for a little while.

Then life happened.

The details blurred. The story simplified itself. "Hysterectomy" somehow became "everything's gone."

 

And once that story settled in, I never questioned it again.

Honestly, I was embarrassed. And fascinated. And laughing so hard I was trying to convince my new doctor and her team that I wasn't completely clueless.

But it also made me wonder...

 

How many other things have I decided are true simply because I've been telling myself the same story for years?

 

 

Once we think we know something, we stop asking questions. We file it away, label it "settled," and move on.

It's efficient.

 

It's also how misunderstandings quietly become identities.

 

Maybe you've told yourself you're terrible with names. Or that you're not creative. That you're too old to start something new. That you're not a leader. That you're "just the kind of person who..."

The story gets repeated enough times that it no longer feels like a story.

It feels like a fact.

 

The funny thing is, I wasn't wrong on purpose.

I simply stopped being curious.

And maybe that's the real lesson hidden inside my surprise reunion with my cervix.

 

Curiosity keeps us learning. It reminds us that certainty isn't always wisdom. Sometimes it's just an old story that hasn't been revisited in a very long time.

 

So this week, I've been asking myself a simple question:

Where have I stopped looking?

Where have I mistaken familiarity for truth?

 

Maybe there's something in your own life that's worth looking at again.

Not because you've been wrong.

But because you might discover something wonderfully, unexpectedly true.

 

Apparently, I did.

Hellooooo, cervix.

And thank you for the reminder to stay curious.

Love,

mmc

 

P.S. If you know me, you know I love finding a reason to celebrate. So naturally, we welcomed my cervix back to the family with my favorite soft serve cone dipped in salted caramel. 🍦

 

P.S.S Around here, the conversation doesn't end when the newsletter does. If this brought something to mind, hit reply. I read every email, and I am sitting here smiling, thinking about what you might have to say about this.