Love, life, and an ileostomy:

How I've navigated dating, love, and intimacy with an ostomy.

Sigh.

What a question.
I almost wrote: “I’m not sure anyone without an ostomy will relate.” But I stopped myself because, in reality, I think most women will relate to the stories I want to share and the tips I have.

If you’re not living with an ileostomy, maybe you have PCOS or another condition, disease, or illness that affects how you look physically.

Maybe you’re perfectly healthy and there’s something else you’re nervous about revealing as you head into the dating world.

Whatever it is, I think you’ll relate because when it comes down to it, we’re all just stuck in our heads, overthinking every little detail.

I woke up with a permanent ileostomy at the age of 30.
I had just gone through a divorce, ending a 10+ year marriage to the father of my two daughters. When the doctor told me the details of living with my ostomy, dating was the furthest thing from my mind.

I just wanted to feel good and focus on my health, my business, and my kids. If they needed to take my entire large intestine, part of my small intestine, colon, and rectum for that to happen, so be it. It didn’t soak in, that my body was never going to look the same as the nine one-inch incisions started to scab over, and I became more comfortable with my ostomy.

Now, here’s where I feel like my journey may be different from a lot of people, I was insanely active and open on my social media platforms during this season of my life, sharing every bit of my ileostomy journey. I went live from the hospital before & after, I took photos (like the one above) and shared them to my IG stories, and I made posts & reels talking about my journey, bag out and proud.

I left the hospital plugged into Facebook Groups that had me feeling depressed, reading post after post from people feeling sorry for themselves and spiraling into negativity - I swore that wouldn’t be me.

When I first started to seriously date, I made sure that before I ever met them in person they took a look at my Instagram. As confident as I felt with my ostomy, the last thing I wanted to do was sit across from someone on a dinner date and have to explain that I pooped in a bag attached to my stomach. I think I hid behind the comfort of the platform I’d created.

The first long-term relationship I was in started just like that. I had him browse my social media so he knew what he was getting into. I navigated that relationship for nearly four years, never really feeling like I could let my guard down. It’s like there was a piece of me that was never truly comfortable.

I shared in my book some of the things I went through navigating relationships & my ileostomy, this was a situation I’ll never forget:

Following that event, it was like I convinced myself that I’d never fully be able to let go and be carefree with an ileostomy.