Ilana Glazer: My Chronic Pain Was Dismissed For 2 Decades

Ilana Glazer is an actor, writer, stand-up comedian, and director who recently wrote and starred in "Babes." For PS's Radical Honesty issue, she discusses experiencing chronic pelvic floor pain. Explore more radically honest stories here.

My pelvic floor was where I always held my anxiety, since I was like 4. Some people get tension headaches or they get it in their back or shoulders, and it was always in my pelvic floor. I was on a long and winding road to find my way to health, which included experiences with medical misogyny and being misdiagnosed and being told it was my fault for having sex when I was an older teenager. Through many modes at the same time — talk therapy, medication for my anxiety, and specifically pelvic floor physical therapy — I found my way to a pain-free existence at 24. I had lived for 20 years at that point with chronic pain.

When there started being conversation around it, I was shocked. I started asking doctors about it when I was like 8 and had terrible experiences for that whole time until I was about 19. So for a lot of my adolescence and childhood, no one was talking about it at all. It's so funny, but Gwyneth Paltrow and the Goop-iverse sort of brought pelvic floor awareness to the discourse. So funny for it to come from there, but damn, was it powerful. I felt seen and heard and then started seeing other people talk about it, seeing that there was this whole underground conversation. I was like, "Oh, I could've used this as a kid, as a teenager." It would've really helped.

So then, when I was approaching the decision to have a child and be pregnant, I took my pelvic floor health toolbox very seriously. That's when I started going to Origin PT. Some appointments weren't even like I was doing so much physically, but rather almost having talk therapy about my pelvic floor and having pelvic floor awareness. It was an excellent way to prepare to give birth and to recover from birth. And to be honest, I could use a tune-up, because my pelvic floor health waxes and wanes over time. And I find the awareness with my pelvic floor is the first line of healing always.

Jump back to the Radically Honest issue.

Lena Felton is the senior director of features and special content at POPSUGAR, where she oversees feature stories, special projects, and our identity content. Previously, she was an editor at The Washington Post, where she led a team covering issues of gender and identity.