My daughter the endometriosis warrior

​For the past several months writer and journalist Kim Meredith has worked alongside her daughter Courtney Sina Meredith, writer, poet, journalist and artist in the PMN news team. She talks about Courtney’s near lifelong battle with endometriosis and her latest art exhibition Season II of ‘I know a place where only reinvented women go'.

As an artist and cultural leader Courtney Sina Meredith has never shied away from sharing her truth and as a parent it’s no easy thing watching your child taking a stand.

She was just five years old, when I picked her up from school and could see clearly something was up. In the playground, her schoolmates had sung a nursery rhyme using the N word. 

It was like the Emperors Clothes where it took a young innocent to point out what was happening right in front of our eyes, casual racism had become so normalised; my generation just winced and put up with it. But through her eyes, the hurt was fresh and right there and then she insisted that we (meaning me) had to do something. It was 1991 and I did not feel optimistic.

We went down to the school the next morning and it probably helped having a visibly stressed out, gorgeous little brown girl crying, while I talked about how it was probably time for our kids to stop singing that word. 

The staff and myself took our lead from Courtney’s outrage and surprisingly not one single person disagreed, even her little friends. I had all the "feels" as the kids say nowadays. I was slightly embarrassed that a small child was starting a long overdue conversation. As well as being proud that at such a young age her sense of fairness led her to instinctively take a stand.

However, it was a sign of the path ahead and it was just the beginning.

​One of Courtney's new small clay endometriosis sculptures for 'I Know A Place Where Only Reinvented Women Go' on now at Kim Meredith Gallery. Photo/Supplied ​

Over the past decades I’ve witnessed Courtney deliver speeches to audiences in classrooms, school halls, libraries; in theatres to royalty and on panels to world leaders. Last week she spoke to an audience that included Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and Deputy Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni about living with the acute condition that affects one in 10 women - endometriosis. She did not hold back.

To say that it was a sobering discussion is an understatement. She opened up about living with chronic debilitating pain for almost three decades; the isolation of being frequently laid up at home or in some remote city around the world not to mention the toll on her mental health. Then came the surgeries that led to a bowel and bladder resection and … (look away now if you’re squeamish) also having the top of her vagina removed!

I watched cabinet ministers, members of parliament and local board politicians viscerally wince while being shocked and moved to tears. In my head I kept thinking: "oh my god she just talked about her vagina" and I thought well at least she spared them the photos.

“I wasn’t going to hold back, I had to go there! I was given a platform and I spoke up not only for myself but all the women in our family and all women who continue to suffer from endo [endometriosis].”

I could hear people around me quietly sobbing and I realised that her words unfortunately were ringing true, that the condition that has plagued generations of women in my aiga has normalised the suffering for me. It was a profound moment realising she was standing up there for all of us, again!​

On that very same day she also launched Season II of her exhibition at Kim Meredith Gallery with a series of ceramic works that give shape to the endometriomas, (the small chocolate cysts) that grow like weeds inside the body and create havoc for sufferers.

“These are all based off on having endometriosis, I’ve tried to make small objects that are really hard and fraught, that are gritty,” says Courtney.

Who would want reminders of such horrendous pain, to have the pain staring at you in three-dimensional form? At the private launch, a family member and another chronic sufferer of endometriosis was drawn to a particular sculpture.

“There’s something empowering about holding it, seeing the tangible thing responsible for how I live my life,” they said.

Courtney says sharing her truth as an artist allows her to explore her inner world; as a renowned writer and poet, it was liberating to make art with her hands.

“It can be a lonely world as a writer, it’s all in here," she says pointing to her head.

“But making requires you to embody the work, to use different materials and see that creation in front of you, then you watch other people respond to that. That’s powerful, art can be transformative.”