Learning to think, feel, live, love and laugh with my third brain, my pu$$y

The profound significance of the vaginal microbiome to a woman’s health

I had a good laugh with my pharmacist today.  I’m taking vaginal probiotics laced with “good bacteria.”  But yesterday, when I looked at the label and instructions on the bottle I discovered I had been taking them wrong, only discovered once I was down to the last two pills.  In my defence, they look like pills not suppositories.  I have been swallowing them, not inserting them into my vagina.  Oops.  

The trans vaginal micro-biome is no laughing matter.

These pills are a mono-culture of Lactobacillus Rhamnosus.  This is one of the more common bacteria that keeps a woman’s vagina healthy.

Separately, I’ve been taking little sachets of Lactobacillus crispatus on and off for months.  Most vaginal bacteria are delivered orally…which begs the question, how do they get from the digestive tract to the vagina?  It is a good question, and the only viable answer is not a pleasant one: migration.

I preferred the answer of my gynaecologist.  “Magic,” she said with a smile as I complained about the dearth of research into the vaginal micro-biome generally, and the total absence of research into trans vaginal health.

Not satisfied with these solutions, I asked myself, why not a suppository?  That’s what led me to the pills I messed up with (now I’m on the right path).  It also led me to another product that I buy from a German pharmacy which has a couple strains of “good bacteria” and which are even shaped and formulated like suppositories: Lactobacillus gasseri, Lactobacillus crispatus, Lactobacillus acidophilus, and Bacillus coagulans. I know these things work because if I have even the slightest hint of an off odour, one of these puts things dead to right within the hour.

But a healthy female vagina has roughly 200 species of healthy bacteria, not the 5 or 6 that I have found in various forms.  The healthy female vagina also has a pH which is acidic, around 4, when it is perfectly healthy.  It is this acidity which bestows the protective functions.

The trans vagina has a more neutral pH, driven mainly by how it was constructed.  6 appears to the average, with penile inversion (the most common surgery) hovering around 6.5 to 7, which is the same pH as the skin (yes, even the skin has a microbiome), which is essentially what this method uses to form the vaginal canal.

My vagina was constructed differently, using peritoneal tissue (the lining of the abdominal cavity), meaning like a natal vagina, it is made of epithelial tissue.  This type of tissue has a different look and feel to it—it is pink just as a vagina normally is, so it looks the same.  It has all has a microscopic structure that is similar, offering little folds in which bacteria like to live and reproduce.  This type of tissue also is more welcoming to the formation of bio-film, which is a mucosal layer, a slime, which protects the vaginal wall from bad bacteria.

This operation, called Peritoneal Pull-Through (PPT), is gaining popularity, but it is a more complex operation, as it involves two surgeries rather than one.   It was originally developed for women with MRKS (Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser Syndrome), a condition whereby a woman is born with uterus and vulva, but no vaginal canal.  It is called the Davydoff Procedure, named after the Russian doctor who invented in the 1920’s.  Yes, you read that correctly.

The exciting development coming from women born with MRKS, is that a US team successfully grew vaginal tissue on a mesh in the lab, and an Italian team successfully applied the technique to two women, who had successful transplants grown from their own cells…and both were able to get pregnant and give birth.  Now, two teams in the US are perfecting the technique and over 30 children have been conceived and born thanks to this innovation.

One day this will be done for trans women too.  Just as uterine transplants are possible, it is just a matter of time where a sex change can and will include all the plumbing. A girl can dream.

There is one other critical benefit of the PPT method over other forms of vaginoplasty, and that is that peritoneal epithelial tissue, like vaginal epithelial tissue, also gets moist.  And this plays a vital flushing and cleaning role which helps to maintain vaginal health.  Anecdotally, we know that trans girls who have a PPT vagina are significantly less likely to get a vaginal infection than other trans girls.

My bacterial pH has been 5.5 since I came out of the hospital.  My surgeon, bless them, is conducting one of the only long-term studies into the pH of the trans vagina.  In theory, over time, a trans vagina will become more and more like a natal vagina.  I am told, though not confirmed, that even the “penile skin” lining of a penile inversion vagina will become epithelial over time, about 10 years.  

I know nothing about the vaginal pH of the third type of operation—where a piece of the colon is used.

How does a vagina become acidic?

The vagina itself is not naturally acidic.  It is the bacteria which take up residence in the vaginal canal, which secrete various compounds, the most important of which is hydrogen peroxide, which creates the acidity needed.

Why does the vaginal pH and micro-biome even matter?

The vagina is a passage to the Divine.  It is the portal through which conception takes place, it is a tunnel into the core of the Feminine, and it is alive.  It is also the place of greatest female vulnerability.  It is open to the world, fragile, delicate.  The vaginal micro-biome is the most important line of defence for its health and wellbeing.

Good vaginal bacteria are happy in an acidic environment, but the nasty ones like E. Coli or Candida, do not.  An acidic vagina is a happy vagina.

I love the metaphors used to describe the vaginal flora.  The garden.  It conjures images of a carpet of delicate flowers.  And like a good gardener, I am working to fertilise mine, tend to it, and to feed it properly.

My Quest to Cultivate a Healthy Vaginal Microbiome

A few months ago, on a call with my endocrinologist (my hormone doctor) we talked about my vaginal pH.  I love my doctors, whose practice of the Hippocratic Oath, to do no harm, has extended into protection, healing, and ultimately my spiritual, emotional, and physical well-being.

I don’t want to get bacterial vaginosis or any other infection in my down there, and given my profession, the risks are higher (yes, the number one cause of vaginal complaints is penis in vagina sex.  Boys, please be conscious of penile hygiene, especially if you are uncut.  Don’t tramp on the flowers).

It is the vaginal micro-biome which determines its health, and by consequence, our health.  This makes me super-conscious of my health both generally and down there.  I take steps:

• A diet which my pussy likes (and by the way it also makes it taste good);
• Avoiding foods which it does not, especially refined sugars;
• Wearing cotton panties or other breathable fabrics;
• Using a bidet and washing at least once every day with an acidic soap made especially for washing down there.

The hardest part is not being able to wear g-strings, which are my favourite undies, but are contra-indicated as they increase the chances of contamination from the back there to the down there.  Only for photo shoots.  

These are all really good protective measures, but the long-term goal of seeing my vagina able to take better care of herself, is a quest.  I am a baby.  My vagina is just one year old.  Little girls also go through this process as they grow up.  My body is also going through “second puberty”, where my hormone levels are like those of a teen girl, affecting my emotions, my outlook, my energy, and my body.

My endocrinologist understands all of this, and why it is so important to me.  They serve an enormous population of trans women, and as such, also have the closest thing to real data.

“Maybe you have a friend, someone you trust, who could “seed” your vagina,” they suggested.  These words were magic.  All these threads came together in my head.  Such a perfect solution.  The magic in them also gave me permission.  To allow myself to ask.

And what is strange?  In that moment, only one name came to me.  One person.

[I could never share the name of my Dr. at this point, for their suggestion, though logical and beautiful, is also risky…they might get in trouble].  

The reason my suppositories and other probiotics have only one or two strains is that they can be isolated in a lab and controlled.  A human vagina is more chaotic.  It is what creates its beauty.

Vaginal “seeding” is a real practice, and just as we now do gut microbiome transplants, vaginal microbiome transplants are increasingly spoken of.

When my endo spoke, a million thoughts entered my mind at once, many of them embodied in this post.  I was flooded with thoughts and emotions when she said what she said, and when the name came to me, there was something which I can only describe as bliss.  At first.  Then came fear.

And then my monkey brain took over.  How could I ever ask?  How do you ask?

I was afraid she might say ‘no’.  And if she did, what that would mean.  I couldn’t think of anyone else.

What is vaginal seeding?

In common parlance, vaginal seeding is a natural process which takes place when a baby passes through the vaginal canal during the birth process.  The kaleidoscope of microbial life enters the babies vaginal canal, and mouth, passing into the digestive tract.  

Nature’s processes are a wonder, and humanity’s ingenuity has unintended consequences.  Approximately 30% of children born in the western world are delivered by Caesarean section.  C-section babies lose this critical step, and the health benefits associated.  C-Section babies do not have the same healthy and robust gut or vaginal micro-biomes that naturally born babies do.

Us T-girls are like miraculous c-section babies, springing into existence after 6-12 hours of surgery.

The loss from not being born through a vaginal canal is so serious that a practice of taking a vaginal smear from the mother and then swabbing the baby (both orally and vaginally) is one of the responses that doctors have come up with to deal with C-Section babies.  But what about us, the t-girls [and cis women born with MRKS, the one-in-a-million birth condition which sees vulva and uterus but no vaginal canal] who don’t have vaginal canals at birth?

If you are interested in reading about vaginal seeding, you can read more here.

What is a microbiome anyway and why do they matter?

Our body is literally covered with microbial life, and this life extends to the world inside of us, in our mouths, our intestinal tract, in our vaginal canals, in our ears.  Everywhere.  Science refers to the skin, nose, oral, gut and vaginal microbiomes as distinct environments.

Each of these environments contains a diversity of microbial life, whose distinction is driven by “inside” and “outside” the body, the conditions for life each presents, and a kind of symbiotic functionality.

Humans, all animals, have co-evolved with the microbial life that populates us.  Its importance cannot be understated.  Consider this: roughly 70-80% of our immunity from disease lies in the gut.  It is the single most important line of defence that we have.

There are roughly 39 trillion microbes on and in the average human body.  We are teaming with life.  Without them, we would die.  We would not be able to digest our food, we would get sick, we would cease to function.

Thankfully, we are now studying the various microbiomes on the body in more detail.

The persistence of the microbiome is primordial.  They are formed at birth, in the earliest years of life, and despite the effects of environment over time, this starting point setting does more to define the composition of our microbiomes over life than anything else.  In other words, those microbes that are in you when you are born are likely going to be the offspring of those same ones when you die.

Do you dig?  That means your vaginal microbiota are like your mother’s, like her mother’s, and so on, and so on.  To the dawn of time.

The microbiome is persistent and resilient.

If you ever wondered what the meaning of the Divine Feminine was or wondered on the sublime protective feeling that only a mother can convey, it is etched inside you, all over you, and is with you for good.  With all of us this extends to our gut.  Just think for a minute.  Gut feeling.  Our instinctual brain.  This comes from the microbial life in our gut, which came from our female lineage.  For all of us.  It is called our second brain for a reason, and it gives great comfort to know that it has lineage.  After all, our microbial life has DNA too.

And for girls, this gift extends to her holy of holies.  The vagina, the uterus, the Divine apparatus which makes life manifest on this earth.  We are but hosts to the protective horde:  a gift bequeathed to us by our female lineage.  What a spiritually resonant thought.

You can imagine how hard it is to study such a thing, but there is emerging evidence which confirms that the holobiont, the combination of host and microbiota, persists across generations (it’s the song, not the singer).  

The composition of microbiota is transmitted in part across generations, making it a form of non-genetic inheritance.  Please read that sentence again.

As any woman born without a vaginal canal, that female lineage is broken.  Yes, there is some persistence via the gut, and the migration of bacteria over time.  But it is a faint signal.  On the other hand, vaginal seeing delivers a very real and strong signal.

The gut-brain axis

There are roughly 1,000 different species of bacteria which inhabit our various microbiomes.  Most of them are good for us, but some not.  When there are environmental imbalances, chemical, physical, nutritional, stress-related, the wrong ones could be encouraged to grow more than the right ones.  I am simplifying, but this can have severe consequences for our health and wellness.

Here is a scholarly article on the gut microbiome, what it does, how it works, and why it matters

There are more communications lines, nerves, which go from our gut to our brain than between our brains and any other part of our body, even our eyes.  Kind of amazing considering none of it is conscious.  We speak of gut feeling and trusting our guts, our intuition, and we all know how powerful it is, and how right it is.  Don’t tell me you have never said to yourself “should have trusted my gut,” when time shows the poor wisdom of a certain course.

Some people call it our lizard brain, and indeed, the first neural connections in the body of any animal are these.  Instinct. This is what we share with all life.  That is the Divine manifested in the physical.

There is also real science behind this:  the vagus nerve is the “neural superhighway” of the body, connecting brain and gut.  It controls heart rate, digestion, mood, breathing, and the body’s immune response.  It also controls mucus and saliva production, speech, taste, and peeing.  Think of it, this complex colony of bacterial life has a direct line of communication to the brain…it is like the body’s red phone.  And it completely governs us.

And this is not far-fetched.  There are so few genetic differences between two people, you wonder how we can be so different as humans.  But the microbiota of the body might explain that.  Gut bacteria, for example, produce the neurotransmitter serotonin, which regulates our mood, emotional state, and personality.  Specific bacterial compositions have been linked to social behaviour (higher gut diversity is linked to more sociability) and cognitive function such as neuroticism, conscientiousness, and sociability.

Gut microbiota also have a direct effect over hormone signalling.  In other words, who can say that who we really are, is defined by this incredible colony of bacterial life which lives in symbiosis with our physical body?

The vaginal microbiome

The vaginal microbiome plays a different role in the body than the gut microbiome.  It is primarily a protective one, and the higher presence of Lactobacillus helps do that.  Lactobacillus produces lactic acid and other acids which makes the vagina more acidic, protecting it from pathogens.

What is interesting is just how much communication exists between the vaginal microbiome and the gut microbiome.  They are constantly talking.  Female food cravings, moods, passions, are all potentially driven by this communication pathway.  Insofar as the vagina is symbolic of the entire female reproductive system, this communication through the gut to the brain, is central to the lived experience of women.

The female reproductive system talks to the gut to tell the body what it needs to keep itself happy and in equilibrium.  The environment, the menstrual cycle, where she is in her life, drives what the female reproductive system needs at any point in time, and this is communicated to the body through the vagina-gut-brain axis.

It is not such a big leap to understand that vaginal health has a direct impact on mood…and similarly and conversely, stress has an impact on the vaginal microbiota.  The links are so profound that everything from yeast infections to childhood abuse can show up in the diversity and composition of the vaginal microbiome.

Quite literally, your vaginal microbiome has a mind of its own.

What else?  Your mother’s mood during pregnancy affects the microbiome of her child, as she transmits a snapshot of herself at the moment of birth.

A whimsical thought.  There is a collective mythology about feminine intuition.  That it is a real and primordial force which is distinct from our gut brain.  It has to do with human connection.

Feminine intuition is a language of the body that appears to explore human relationships.  A way of saying, ‘how much energy is this person worth?’  Do I want to sleep with them?  Do I want to love them?  Do I want to be kind to them?  Do I want to nurture them?  Do I want to invest in the connection with them?  Could it be that all things related to reproduction and caring for community, stability, are a direct result of an animal intelligence which begins in the vaginal microbiome?

What is sure is that women’s intuition is not the same as gut instinct or even empathy.  It is a distinct set of feelings and energies.  It is a third brain.

What does this all boil down to?  All of it?  That if what we are is a collection of our feelings of being in this world, how we express ourselves, it is sure that our microbiota play a lead role in defining who we are.  One could even speculate that a good part of the symphonic range in human expression is influenced and driven by our microbiome.  And each different one does different things, plays different roles.  

The gift of womanhood from mother to daughter is like the Olympic Torch—it never goes out.  It’s significance is much greater than what a father gives to either child.  What a mother gives to her daughters over generations is also mitochondrial DNA.  Mitochondria are the engines of all cellular life.  It is thought that when we moved from being viral to bacterial, ie. from a simple instruction set to being a living thing, it came with the emergence of mitochondria as a structure within cells, which had its own DNA.  The significance of this comes from the advances in reading the genome and what it has taught us about our genealogy.  For the mitochondrial DNA in any of us tells us about the origins of our pure female line—our mother’s, mother’s and so on to the origin of our line.  To when she was both chicken and egg.  It is not possible to know our male lineage in this way…what we are made of is quite literally our female herstory.

The mother continues to seed her newborn baby through her breast milk, which in addition to meeting a baby’s nutritional needs, is also rich with bacteria which help to continue to populate the baby’s gut and other microbiomes.  

And while this is taking place at a genetic level, the same thing happens from mother to daughter with her microbiome.  We say that ancestral trauma, but also a blueprint of our “usness” through time is carried in our genes, and has the power to alter our DNA, meaning our story, herstory, is written in our DNA, but also in the bacterial gift that every mother gives to her child.  When she has a boy, the slate is wiped clean in a sense for he has no vaginal canal…he may carry her in his gut, but he does not have the gift of being able to bestow on his own children this generational “memory”.

Think this is going too far?  The body of evidence now puts the scientific community firmly behind the essential role of our gut microbiome plays in our health and well-being, but also in who we are and how we behave.  And while “science” per se is not there yet with the vaginal microbiome, the smart money is.  No less a body than Harvard Medical School is supporting research which explores how the female vaginal microbiome shapes who women are.  

The trans woman and her vagina

The definition of a trans woman is a moveable feast.  I am not casting shade on anyone, but this discussion makes the most sense for those trans women who have taken the step to have a sex change.

Remember that all humans begin life in the uterus as female.  It is only after the first six weeks that sexual differentiation begins.  What this means is that all of the parts start out the same, our wiring is the same, but where they go, and their final form is driven by the flood of chemicals which direct sexual differentiation.  It is beyond the scope of this post and is not needed to make me feel any added comfort as a woman, but there is emerging science that transgender people have the brain structure of the sex they yearn to become.  The thought is that this is caused by stresses or chemical exposures of the mother.  A topic for another day.

As noted above, the way a trans woman gets her vagina has an impact on its microbial composition.  There is an exciting variation being pioneered which involves using tissue called the tunica vaginalis pioneered by the team in the Mt. Sinai gender clinic in New York.  This tissue is what a vaginal lining is made up of, but in a male, it becomes the membrane around the testicles.  It is too small and fragile to construct a vaginal canal from, so they use it at the very end of the vaginal canal.  Over a period of time estimated at about 10 years, this tissue gradually grows down and becomes the canal.  Pretty exciting. It is thought to become virtually identical to natal vaginal tissue.

I have peritoneal tissue.  This is living tissue harvested from the abdominal wall.  It is left attached to its own blood supply and literally scraped from the inside of my abdominal cavity before being formed into a tube and pushed through a hole in my pelvic floor.  Like vaginal tissue, it is epithelial tissue, not skin tissue, so it possesses some of the same characteristics as vaginal tissue—it self-lubricates (not on arousal, but you can’t tell me that because I am almost always aroused—ahh, the joys of tantric life) and also has all the folds and texture that the lactobacillus bacteria that we need for a successful vagina likes to live in.  And unlike a penile inversion which is a skin graft, the tissue remains alive.

What else?  The mucus that is produced by the tissue which make up my vaginal walls is identical to that produced by a natal woman and provides a happy environment for the vaginal flora to flourish in.

The trans female vagina and microbiome

What’s a trans girl to do?  Born without a vaginal canal, the seeding of my vagina by my own mother, who died before I transitioned, never took place.  I was born vaginally though, as they say in Spanish “dio luz,” came to light, so carry my mother in my gut.

When my sex change operation was done, in a sense I was like a newborn.  Of course, it was a site of intense surgical trauma.  But I had no bacteria, no microbiome.  Mommies gift was not there.  Could not be there.  Anyway, it might have been creepy to get it from her as an adult.

Unlike for cis women, trans women are encouraged to douche, particularly at the beginning, as we have no protection.  I am reminded of the words of a companion I met once who told me, “you trans people are always my most delicate clients, so vulnerable.”  I can’t speak to her experience, but it feels right.  And I wear my vulnerability in the open.  But the vulnerability is not just emotional as she meant, but also physical.  Our body does not have the natural defences: we are “re-born” without mama’s protective armour.

Readers of this blog will know of my age-long obsession with body health: fitness, diet, and the gut.  One of my most popular posts was about coprophagia (yes, shit-eating).  While I don’t do that for fun or in my practice as a dominatrix, there are real scientific reasons behind it.  My post on “crapsules” (you can’t make this shit up, LOL) is a worthy detour.

I have written about what my pussy smelled like when the bandages came off.  And, also, how I ate a special diet for healing.  Thank you same special someone for your book recommendations, which perhaps in a most profound way, began preparing my body for your gift, as I was eating a diet informed by you.  More recently, I eat to cultivate a particular scent and flavour of my vaginal juices.  Read more about my flambéed pineapple and maple syrup pussy here.

When I started obsessing about my vagina, and its health, really once the healing process was well underway, I began to ask all sorts of questions.  Mainly, how to get my vaginal flora in line with where it needs to be.

But how the heck do you this?  The science, which should be copious on this topic, is silent.  Crickets.  WTF?!  You want to see vanishing R&D investment, start with women’s issues, and then narrow down further to trans women.

My surgeon, thank goodness, is a nerd also obsessing over the smell of my vagina right now…she obsesses over the smells of all her patient’s vaginas.  What it smells like is the best casual indicator of its health.  And my pussy smells divine.  It is wonderful that doctors like that are leading research into the pH of the trans female vagina, as no study has ever been done on this.  And please don’t get me started on how this is just another example of the neglect of research into women’s health (and FYI, it is only very recently that even a cis woman’s vaginal flora was considered worth studying).  So, I imagine that women everywhere smell their vaginas to keep track of their health.

I asked my doctor if I should put plain organic yoghurt into my vagina as many African women do, as it is also lactobacillus.

“Heavens no!” she exclaimed.  It turns out it is a different strain, but I can’t see why it wouldn’t work just fine, as the vaginal micro-biomes of many African women attest.  I eat for breakfast every morning a little packet of lactobacillus crispens.  This bacterial strain is the backbone of most healthy vaginas.  I still haven’t understood how it gets from my mouth to my VJ, since I can’t quite reach with my tongue, but boy would I like to be that flexible!  Especially now that I spent New Year’s Eve in bed experiencing fireworks of a different kind with a friend who said she would introduce me to the joys of lesbian sex.

But this is also a real source of risk for me, for any woman.  The mouth is dirty.  Mouth to vagina sex can introduce the wrong bacteria.  Taking care matters.

I also eat for my vagina…and as we know from above, all sensible women do if they listen to their bodies.  I eat tons of naturally probiotic foods.  But what I don’t get, is how it migrates.  Bacteria may be small, but they are not so small as to migrate across the blood barrier.  One of the true explanations which I don’t much care for, is that they also migrate from the anus to the vagina.  But this is why they take trans girls aside to give a quick catch-up lesson on basic hygiene. 

I’m not kidding.  My first appointment with my surgeon post-op, the day they took off my bandages, was how to wipe my ass.  From front to back.  And as a former member of the boy gang (even if unwilling), I never learned this.  Isn’t that gross!  No wonder the number one source of vaginal infections in women is intercourse with guys.  I mean, boys, please wash down there, and please wipe your tushes properly!

And when people refer to a vagina as a gash, a wound, in my case, they weren’t kidding.  My pussy, even if it cost $250,000, still bled, was swollen beyond belief for months, and required 2 surgeons working in tandem for 6 hours.  Spending six weeks bleeding, wearing diapers in those first weeks, then very absorbent pads, and then finally panty liners for almost six months was a grounding experience for this woman.  It made me think about my vagina and my health.  And every time, once I was able, that I shuffled down the hall to pee, that simple act was so deeply grounding in ways that it never was as a man…my smell was primordial.

And I feel this profoundly.  As a woman, I feel much more animal, much more of my body, in my body.

This idea of the primordial soup, giver of life, that planetary predecessor to human life, is our true mother, the birthing pool of every living thing.  And just as a cell holds liquid inside, vestiges of this ancient brew, so do we, as collections of cells.  We carry it in our cells, between our cells, in our cavities and tracts.  That we are roughly 60% water, about the same as a bowl of stew, fits.  Just as life was born when a virus “swallowed” another and brought enough of the ambient soup into its structure with it and given that this basic form of life is the precursor to all animal life, I am struck by how our female lineage is written into our cellular DNA in ways that our male lineage is not.  It is as if to say that the female is the tree trunk which holds our lineage and that when the human body deviates and becomes male, it is like a bauble on a Christmas tree: a flash of colour, but not the lineage itself.  She is, therefore, the connection with our past, with our physical selves, and the primordial soup that every woman carries in her vaginal canal is a bestower of life in its own right…an extra-genetic gift which fills us in every orifice and becomes an integral part of who we are.

I remember the first time I walked after surgery, 6 weeks later.  I managed about 100 feet, realised I was tired, made it back to my apartment, and went to bed and slept for three hours.  I didn’t even quite make it to the croissant I was after.  Thank goodness my kids were there, and they got one for me: a child’s alarm registering on their faces when they saw just how weak I was.  No child wants to see a parent so physically felled.  But we all had beautiful gallows humour.

Women who live together over a long period of time gradually find a growing similarity between their vaginal microbiomes.  This is quite literally our colonies of microbes getting in on communal living.  We were meant to live in community as a species, we have better child development outcomes this way, the stress on the mother is reduced, the need for all of the patriarchal social structures are torn away, and now we know, that even our bacterial communities thrive best in this environment.  (My own link plus the one below)

All this to say that when my endocrinologist suggested that I seed my vagina with the microbiome of someone I trusted, the suggestion landed on fertile ground.

The vaginal microbiome and hormones

The cocktail of bacterial life inside of us changes throughout our life, in response to our environment and to our hormone levels.  It also regulates hormone levels (and food cravings—think pregnant women and food cravings).  This is important because our hormones are like master program chemicals.   When I think about what defines man or woman, it is not the presence or absence of any physical organ which has the power to shape identity.    Hormones are the “invisible hand” of the body, the forces that move within us.  Our sex hormones or the true passe partout…there isn’t a cell in our bodies which isn’t controlled and affected by hormones.  What you cannot see you can most certainly feel, and our hormones are the most powerful regulators of our moods, attitudes, even personality.  But it is the microbes in us, on us, in our vaginas, in our guts, which regulate our hormone levels.

My hormone levels are those of a teenage girl.  I am going through second puberty, a process which will last for roughly five years.  As I have no uterus, my body cannot make its own hormones, so just as a woman who has had a hysterectomy or is born without a uterus, I must take hormones to get to the correct level.  My doctor is providing the missing link in a feedback loop from my vagina to my uterus to my endocrine glands.  And what she is doing right now is to put me in a constant state of ovulation.  I can’t tell you how good it feels to be in my body.

Even a woman’s menstrual cycle has a profound effect every month on the composition of bacteria in her vagina.

But even though the feedback loop between my vaginal flora and my non-existent uterus cannot exist, all the other connections are there—so my mood, my feelings, my cravings, my sense of self, my ability to experience female emotion, a sense of mercy, love and care, are very much present.

Becoming a woman

We can grow boobs, experience discrimination or sexual harassment, have a vagina, have sex as women, live as women, but the most important thing about being a woman lies inside.  I can’t help but wonder if it isn’t the bacteria, the nerves, the communication channels which conduct the orchestra of the female body.  Of course, I have almost all the components, and the hormones coursing through my system are surely the conductor.

But something has been missing.  It’s as if some of the instruments are out of tune.

The complexity of a woman’s body is inspirational.  And her microbiome is a living, breathing thing, which changes and adapts every single day.  https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/msphere.00593-20

How do you even “decide” who to ask?

Perhaps if my mother were alive, I would have at least talked to her about this.  But I don’t know that I would even be on speaking terms with her as a trans daughter.   Part of me held back from coming out until after she was dead.  And that’s my truth.

Mechanically, you would want ‘her’ to be someone who might say ‘yes’.  You would also want to know that she was healthy.  And I don’t just mean healthy in sexual terms, but in her body—what she eats, how she lives, her fitness.  Someone who treats her body as a temple.  But also, her spirit, her values, the way she thinks and feels, how she exists in her body.

I eat lactobacillus crispans almost every day.  I want them to dominate my colony.  As they likely do hers.  But what you can’t buy in a sachet, is any of the other possible 999 species which might exist there, in the proportions they do (the healthy vaginal flora is typically comprised of approximately 200 species).  Her flora is a reflection of her life experience, her lineage, who she is, how she has evolved.  Her garden is a reflection of not just her life, but also her womanhood, and her ancestry.

Beauty is such a strange thing to me.  Yes, I see beauty as anyone does, objectively, with my eyes.  But I also get glimpses of beauty from the spirit plane.  And no woman has ever looked more beautiful to me as she did when her eyes heard my request, her pupils dilated, and without words, showed me her answer was ‘yes’.

Asking her

We are not often together, separated by circumstances of life, birth and also the nature of our connection.  When we are, she brings her best self, a magical concoction of warmth and wit writ large in neon over the entrance to her smouldering presence.  She is theatre, venue and performer.

I don’t know many people quite like her, so when I am with her, I am utterly disarmed.  I am more than a willing participant in this way—I strip myself of age, experience, desire, expectation…to better respond to her peculiar magic.  And I look upon her with wonder, and that is a divine feeling.

We were staying in a penthouse suite of a chic Manhattan hotel, a corner with a wraparound balcony.  There was a living room, a kitchen, a dining room, a separate bathroom and extra closets.  There was only one bedroom, and I asked that it be hers.  She knows that this is my ‘kink’.  The staff set up a bed for me in the living room whilst we went out and slurped down oysters.

Later, we were lying on the bed.  Her bed.  Crumpled white sheets beneath us.  She had been teaching me about how to use a vibrator.  Showing me.  The glow of intimacy was like a bubble wrapped around us, like gossamer.  And then I asked.

“Would you consider putting your fingers inside you and then taking them and putting them inside me?”  I didn’t need to explain.  How does someone understand just like that?  

She looked at me, blinked, her lips curled into the tiniest smile, which was just a ripple, opened her legs, and pushed her fingers inside, delicately, carefully, as her eyes flitted across my face.  She was so still, it was as if she was taking all of me in, and I think I stopped breathing as I watched her.  It was so silent that even the New York City traffic went silent.  And then she brought her hand to my vagina and slowly worked her fingers inside me.  I closed my eyes.  I felt a colony jumping ship.

When it was time for bed, I was so tired, as if I had just had the biggest day of my life.  There is something so sweet about that moment, like when your mother or a lover tucks a strand of your hair behind your ear.  She took my hand and walked me out and asked me to get ready for bed, and to let her know when I was ready.  It felt dreamy, and I went to the second bathroom and washed, face, teeth, hands…and put on my pyjamas and came back and knocked on her door.

She came and tucked me in, wrapping the covers tightly under me, swaddling me, so that the covers became part of how she makes me feel…she kissed my forehead and smiled down from where she sat on the side of the bed, and caressed my face.  I was asleep before memory could take a breath.  

The next morning, my eyes fluttered open in a bath of sunlight, and my first thoughts were of the caress she had left inside of me.

I sniff my pussy every day.  It may seem kinky, and I would hate to tell you it isn’t, but it’s also how I find out if I’m okay.  What did I smell like then?  Just like her.  To smell me was to smell her, a smell I had once wished to smell forever many months before, when her bed was almost still warm, the pillow still holding the head that had just left for the airport, and I crawled into it, feeling her in the sheets, on the bed, in the wisps of energy still present in the room.  Smelling her on my fingers now told me just what I needed to know.  It had worked.  She had seeded me.

My vagina; my future; my scent

No pussy scent can survive my lusty consumption of pineapple, coconut water, kombucha and fenugreek seeds.

I asked my GF the other day as she raised her face from between my legs, “what do I taste like?”

“I don’t know…” she thought a minute…”fruit, tropical fruit, maple syrup, and pussy.”  The pussy part is the new part.   If I stop eating my special magic pussy diet for a few days, a week, she comes back, and I can smell her in me.  A bit like the bass in a rock and roll band, setting the pace, adding the funk, driving the whole thing forward with its supple and sinuous line.  And to know that she will never not be there is better than the warmest sweater on a winter day.  

And that is the way of it.  Inside of me is a colony of bacteria from someone else’s life.  It will have taken over my own fragile eco-system.  No matter what I do, how I live, that colony will be there.  Even if I douched with bleach, her bacterial colony would live on inside of me.  For the rest of my life.  What she ate, how she lived, where she travelled to…it is a blueprint of who she was and is, how she became, how I met her.  And that is something that even on days where my mind might not dwell on the gift she has given, my body will.  My body knows that her lived life is standing guard in mine, casting a protective glow. 

I know how strong she is.  A warrior princess, outspoken, advocate for women in all walks of life.  And in that spirit, she is inside of me, inspiring me to speak up.

A socio-sexual Sacrament

My private nickname for the woman who seeded me is The Priestess.  That is the truest rendition of the feelings she produces in me, and the effect she has had on my life.  She has administered “rights” to/for me.  She is my portal to the Divine Feminine.  My contact with her has been symbolic of the administration of rites: present for my last sexual experience as a man, the first person to be inside of me as a woman, and now this.  And I can’t help but think that her seeding of me was a true baptism, a socio-sexual sacrament.

The perfect donor is someone whose life I would want inside of me.  Whose thoughts, ideas, values, spoken words represent something about womanhood that is aspirational.  Should I, could I, would I ever grow up, it would be to embody these things.  She can only exist in the realm of the senses, as a person apart.

My vaginal microbiome is now more like hers than it would have been had I been born as my mother’s daughter.  Only a Priestess could make this gift; only a Priestess has the power to transmit Goddess energy. To be seeded is to be changed.

And that is what it is.  This feeling that this badass woman is with me, protecting me, showing me in unconscious ways how to be the woman I was meant to become. A woman. Me.

Thank you Miss for your gift.