Lena Dunham took a moment to look back at how she’s changed since having a hysterectomy, crediting the experience for making her realize she is stronger than she thought.
The Girls creator, 32, took to Instagram on Wednesday, August 15, and shared three nude photos of herself to honor the nine-month anniversary of the surgical procedure. “Today is National Leathercraft Day, National Relaxation Day and National Lemon Merengue Pie Day. It’s also the 9 month anniversary of my hysterectomy,” Dunham began the post. “I’ve never celebrated the 9 month anniversary of anything and I realized last night why that number feels so funny- I won’t ever do it the way I planned to.”
“My body is mostly healed and every day I find a new bruise on my heart, but today I offer myself gratitude: from the most pained place, I somehow knew to choose myself,” she continued. “The purest glint of who we are and know we can be is always available to us, calm and true at our center.”
In the photos accompanying the post, Dunham shows off her various tattoos, including one that reads, “RIP Judy” — a piece of ink that the American Horror Story actress touched on. “My friend Paul named my uterus Judy, and when she was being uppity we called her out, hence the tattoo on my ribs, which hurt like f—k even through the pain meds: #RIPJudy. Today I give thanks for Judy, for her graceful exit and for this body, which is stronger than I’ve ever given it credit for,” she added. “Happy Giving Birth To Myself Day.”
The Tiny Furniture star hasn’t held back about her health issues. Three days after revealing she underwent the hysterectomy in February 2018, Dunham shared a photo on Instagram of herself smiling on a hospital bed. “Your body failing you is a loss that’s hard to explain and yet the amount of messages I’ve gotten from women in a similar predicament has been so overwhelming, loving and heartening,” she captioned the shot. “I have a broken heart and I hear those don’t mend overnight, but we are linked forever by this experience and our refusal to let it hold any of us back from even the grandest dreams.”
The decision to remove her uterus was not an easy one for Dunham, who told Vogue in March that she chose to have a hysterectomy following “years of complex surgeries measuring in the double digits,” as well as various attempts to manage her endometriosis, which proved unsuccessful.
Dunham’s mother Laurie Simmons spoke with Us Weekly in May, noting the Not That Kind of Girl author is “moving in the right direction” and feeling “pretty good.” “My daughter is super-resilient. My daughter is brilliant,” Simmons told Us at a Planned Parenthood event in NYC. “The last few years have been about her health and getting her better so she could kick ass again because she’s an activist.”
