September 21, 2025 • 61 mins
When Ally Hensley was a teenager, she received a life-changing diagnosis: she was born without a uterus, cervix, or vaginal canal; a rare condition known as MRKH syndrome. That moment would shape everything: how she saw her body, her future, her self-worth, and her relationships.
In this raw, unflinching, and darkly funny conversation, Ally opens up about what it’s like to navigate sex, intimacy, identity, and trauma while carrying a secret she felt she couldn’t share.
She speaks candidly about infertility, shame, and the complexities of abusive relationships when you already feel broken - and what it takes to reclaim your voice and your story. Today, Ally is a writer, speaker, and advocate who has turned her pain into purpose.
This is a story of resilience, identity, and what happens when you stop hiding and let yourself be seen.
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CREDITS:
Guest: Ally Hensley
Host: Kate Langbroek
Executive Producer: Naima Brown
Senior Producer: Bree Player
Audio Producer: Jacob Round
Video Producer: Josh Green
Recorded with Session in Progress studios.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
You're listening to Amma Mia podcast. Mamma Maya acknowledges the
traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is
recorded on.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
It's not uncommon for people with MRKH to prove their
worth through a lot of sex. It had nothing to
do with the person, and I'm so sorry to every
sexual partner out there that I've had, which has been
a lot.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
It was almost like a numbers game.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
The more I could seek with people, the more a
woman I thought I might fail. Hi.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
I'm Kate lane Brook, Welcome to No Filter. When Alie
Hensley was sixteen, she was told something no teenage girl
expects to hear. She was born without a uterus, without
a cervix, and without a vaginal canal. It's called mr
Kh syndrome, a condition most people have never heard of,
(01:07):
but for Alie, that diagnosis would shape almost every part
of her life, her relationships, her sexuality, her body image,
and how she saw herself as a woman. In this conversation,
Allie shares her story with such honesty and vulnerability about
(01:29):
what it was like to undergo vaginal dilation as a teenager,
to navigate sex and intimacy with a body that felt
different and to live for years feeling like she had
to hide a secret. We talk about infertility, about trauma,
about abusive relationships, and shame. So friends, please listen mindfully.
(01:54):
This is a conversation about identity survival and what it
means to make peace with your life when it turns
out so very differently to what you imagined. Here is
Alie Hensley, Alison Hensley, Allie, welcome.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
To No Filter.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Thank you so much for having me, and how lucky
that this is no filter because I'm going to give
our listeners the same. Is it a warning, It's a
premonition that you have given readers in your brilliant book
Vagina Uncensored and Memoir of Missing Parts, And this is
(02:35):
the warning.
Speaker 4 (02:37):
We're going to say vagina a lot.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Yeah, we are. It's a staple to my vocabulary diet.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
The irony of us saying vagina a lot is that
you were born without a vagina.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
I most certainly was. Yep.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
I'm going to cast myself in the same role as
the friend that you refer to in the book, who
has all the standard questions that I imagine a lot of
our listeners also do. And it actually comes from I
realize a place a privilege of never having to question
that about my body.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
Question one, how did you weigh?
Speaker 2 (03:21):
So the diagnosis, just to sort of premise this conversation,
is called Maya Rocketanski Cowstahauser syndrome MRKH for short, the
most unsexiest diagnosis name to advocate for. Not that I
believe it's all about being a gamorous brand, but it
(03:41):
is a hard one to take over the line. It's
a congenital condition, meaning it was present at birth, and
it affects one in five thousand women. It tends to
occur in the first six to eight weeks of gestation,
so when all those vital organs are being formed and developed.
(04:02):
I always describe it as a lorry traveling down the
genetic path and it hits pothole, and in that pothole
was the reproductive development. So I was born with ovaries,
which meant my estrogen was firing. So I'm an XX
chromosome female biologically, and because I had the estrogen, it
(04:27):
was giving my body the signal to develop typically externally
as a female, so you'd never know from the outside,
which is why you know it wasn't picked up at
birth the way it was diagnosis when I failed to
get my first period, so I have the uretha. It
was the actual vaginal canal, and because we're formed from
the outside in, my genitalia was I don't like to
(04:51):
use the word normal caked.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
It's got me into a lot of sad times.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
I think its standard. What term do we use standard?
I use typical, right, typical? Okay, So you're externally as
you were saying, your typical. So if anyone saw you naked,
nobody would know that what is missing is the internal cavity.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
So yes, I was born without a uterus, the cervix,
and then the vaginal canal. What I was born with
is called a dimple, which is like basically it was
the length of my thumbnail. The first sign was no period.
At sixteen, I went to the doctors with my mum.
(05:38):
They said, maybe you're a late starter. You know, I
wasn't overly athletic. I'd sort of dabbled in eating disorder,
but I wasn't so thin that the period.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Would stop or not start.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Because when you've released a book and you've told all
your secrets, I said, you have, yes, of course write,
So I can't really backtrack on the truth as much
as I used to politely give my sort of diagnosis
pitch or speech, if you like. I was over in
Greece with my family and my best friend and we
(06:11):
had this I don't think I've actually shared this before.
We had one of those like charts where you can
kind of gauge who kisses the nice boys or.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
It gets chepped up.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
They would take part in hand play, and then who
would go the four mile and have sexual intercourse? And
I met this really gorgeous guy in a bar and
it was like after closing, and I can't remember where
I was. I think it was some behind a bush
somewhere probably, and we tried to have sexual intercourse and
(06:44):
it just didn't work. And I didn't know then that
I had m mark h, so you know, he gave
it a good go, but it just never happened. And
I thought it was like the hymen thing, you know,
when you're young and you're about be hymen and you
have to pop your cherry. I just thought maybe mine
was not so probable. So that's that's how I kind
of knew something was wrong. But you never go as
(07:05):
far to think that it could be this particular scenario.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
No, because as you said, it.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
It's so rare, did you because you went to the
doctor with your mum.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
So this was after the Greek the Greek holiday.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Yeah, I thought it was gonna say the Greek COTTI there, Yeah,
the Greek Holiday.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
We came back and then the period hadn't arrived.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Still, I remember doing my school exams and having this
terrible fear that I would be the girl that sort
of stands up after the three hour mass exam and
has like blood all hamer skirt and I so I
wore I wore these really ugly sanitary towels that my
mum gave me. They're ones that kind of like they
look like a hammock. They're really archaic now and they've
(07:51):
got more one them or something fascinating huge compared to nowadays.
But concerned at that point, the GP gave me an
internal exam, which was incredibly intrusive. I mean, I was
a child, you mean think of sixteen odds of course
being very mature, but we're not far out of childhood.
(08:13):
And had a look on his face that was obviously
quite concerning. He did refer me to have an ultrasound
and then the sonographer's face was also sort of perplexed.
Then I went on to have laparoscopy, which is getting
cert a camera into your abdomen, and that was the
(08:36):
diagnosis day. I remember the doctor pulling the curtain around
my bed. He hadn't for any other other of the
patients on the ward, and he drew a diagram. And
I always think it's funny the facts that you remember,
like a lead pencil. No one ever uses pencils now.
And he told me that I was born with this diagnosis,
but it didn't occur to me. My mum's face was
(08:59):
profoundly grief stricken, shocked, but I.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Just thought, well, i'll get I'll get I'll get fixed.
You know, what's the big deal?
Speaker 2 (09:10):
And their lies trauma when you don't truly believe or
comprehend the news that it's given to you. And shortly
after I was sent to a very very amazing flagship
hospital in London where I was given two options if
I wanted to create a vaginal canal. And this is
(09:30):
only literally a month after my diagnosis. That all happened
very fast, and they give you two options surgery where
they create one obviously surgically, and there's about five different procedures.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Some are barbaric.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Some aren't less awful or vaginal dilation, which is when
they give you their various sizes of Pyrex tubes. They're
not sexy dildo looking things. They literally are tubes. And
I was admitted into hospital for three days and taught
how to create vagina. And you would be lying on
(10:09):
your back, your knees splayed into a diamond shape, and
the nurse would guide you with the smallest into the
dimple and you would press against your body. So I
would have to use my strength of my arm and
my hand against the resistance of the muscle mass, which
is the undercreated vagina. And they said to me, if
(10:34):
your knuckles turn white, you're doing it correctly. And I think,
despite nailing how to do it, those three days in
hospital are incredibly, incredibly responsible for the next fifteen years
of how I completely dismantled and reacted to this diagnosis.
(10:57):
I did create the vagina. It took me nine months.
It's a really weird scenario. When you're upstairs in your
bedroom before school, after school, parents are downstairs trying to
coenc you know, coexist with normality. Sometimes I would sneak
some cider and some hoots just to make myself a
(11:18):
bit tipsy, so I don't have to feel the pain
sure and the shame.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
I should say pain and shame.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
And even though I was going through the process, there
wasn't any support, there wasn't any awareness. I always think
it's really interesting when there are so many procedures out
there where physiotherapists and Guyanese and healthcare professionals will say,
this is your diagnosis, this is your treatment. But there
(11:47):
was something that I've only been able to really nail.
I guess in the last year about that process for me,
because I was really learning how to couple pain with progress,
pain and intimacy, and pain with shame and sex. And
that's why I had a shocking, shockingly bad relationship with
(12:09):
relationships and sex for.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
A long, long, long, long long time.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Well, what you have described sounds like a turn that's
bandied around a lot, but you've had a double dose
of trauma then, because you had the physical trauma of
actually trying to create this vaginal passage in what sounds
like a most excruciating manner, but you've also had the
emotional trauma. So even down to the fact that when
(12:39):
you talk in your book about your family, who sounds
so beautiful, your mum and your dad, and they were
very open about this. But even the openness, like you said,
bring shame. So everyone's like, oh, where's a Ali. Oh
she's upstairs making her vagina.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
That's so difficult when you're that age, at any.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Age, well, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
And I think you know this topic stems from women's health,
I think in general, when it's when it's below the belt,
and I think parents do their absolute best. I mean,
I probably got away with quite a lot in the
sense of just allow her to work it through or
work it out, or let's not go too hard on her. Now,
(13:24):
I would say to parents, place the boundaries that you
would for any child, because it gives them a sense
that you're still a un quote normal child.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
And they did their best.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
But I mean, my dad took me to the hospital
when I first made the vagina or started the process
because my mum was working, and oh gosh, he tried
so hard to sort of normalize it for me. But
you are right in the double dose, and I don't
think that caught up with me for a very very
(13:55):
long time. One pure denial. Two there's no real space
to talk about this, certainly with friends, and because how
do you you know, how do you sort of say, ah,
you know, you never guess what I had to do
last night.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
I had to go and create my I've got one.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
And so you're living in a sense of constant secrecy, which,
of course we know breeds.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Even more shame and more than anything.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
I think when you're sixteen seventeen, you're at this junction
of womanhood, which sounds sort of very poetic now when
I think about it, but you think what kind of
mother will I be and what kind of partner will
I be? And when those two things are thrown into
disarray pretty much overnight, what you believe womanhood to be
is completely, you know, thrown out the window.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
And I felt awful. I felt disgusting, I felt broken.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
I talk a lot in the book about, you know,
just the ky jelly that I had to use.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
You know, just I felt like it was always on me,
sort of having to.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
It's almost self harm by consent, and I will definitely
include a trigger warning here in terms of people have
gone through sexual I can't claim that experience and I
would never dare to try to put myself in that camp,
of course. But for me, when I think about the
(15:19):
sort of the symptomatic processes and the afterthought of as
you sort of shame and the PTSD and the trauma,
it felt like an assault on my body. But I
did it to myself very I sort of say, it's
very sad. I feel very sad for my seventeen year
(15:39):
old self and all the people who were going through
this diagnosis.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
After your MRKH diagnosis, how did you share that with,
for instance, your girlfriends from school who were menstruating and living,
as you say, a typical womanly life and on the
cusp of that, how did you you kept it secret?
Speaker 1 (16:04):
I think I told one friend, my best friend at
the time. I would lie an awful lot.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
I lied about whether I had sort of like the
tampon in the bag, what time of the month was
I on. We talked about sort of later on consciraception,
where I would learn the most common names of conscioception,
like the pill, so that if I was asked I
could tell them or a perspective partner. It really just
(16:35):
wasn't spoken about, and I don't think it was a
conscious decision almost not to speak about it it was.
I refused to even acknowledge that it exists, to not
speak about it. I left school. I dropped out of school.
I was an absolute car crash as I was leading
up to my final exams, and then I loosened to
(16:57):
the big unknown.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
I got into university.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
I don't know how we'll call them a levels over here,
and that was the worst place with somebody who doesn't
want boundaries, doesn't know how to do boundaries, and prey
much is. I was on a self destructive path to
self destruct. I hated myself and I was going to
do everything with my within my power to ensure that
(17:20):
that was true. And I would put myself into situations
where I would purposefully be treated incredibly poorly by people,
by men. It was a real weird validation of what Yes, you're.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
Right, what you believed about yourself.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Hmm. And again, I think this is to do with
the vaginal dilation hospital experience. That's all I knew about intimacy,
So I didn't know how to form healthy relationships with
well with anyone really, in the sense I would gravitate
towards people who had their own probably demons if I
(17:59):
look at it, you know, retrospectively, the sort of like
the bad boys, the bad people, the wanted wanted to
act out, wanted to get pissed every night, wanted to have,
you know, random sexual encounters. The more, the merrier, the worse,
the better, the it was everything that was healthy.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
I choose to do the opposite. Was I choosing?
Speaker 2 (18:21):
I don't think. I don't even know if it was
a choice. I was just I was just doing that
with anyone and everyone. I didn't tell anyone.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Next, we talk about the turning point, how Ali learned
to stop punishing herself, and how the act of speaking
out became the beginning of her healing. It's very interesting
because I met you through you through the pages of
your book, and though you describe, you know, the depths
(18:55):
of your pain and fear and shame, within that, there's
an overriding sense of you as being a very act
I'm going to say, happy person, which is a you know,
you address the notion of happiness, A very lovely person,
a very easy to love person. And I'm struck by
(19:18):
how it seems in retrospect. Sometimes we like to look
at people as though they're fully finished now the way
they always were. But your journey has been such an
incredible one of grappling at each stage with the dysfunction,
the physical, the mental, the self harm to get yourself
(19:41):
to the place where you are now. And I think
this is where your story is a benefit to so
many people.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
I actually want to cry when you're saying that to me,
Kate those lovely compliments. It's you know, I wrote the book,
but I don't know what it's like to look at
me from the outsider perspective or of course the reader perspective.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
I was brought up to be a very.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Hard worker, with value and morals and empathy. I think
when you've been through horror, they always say that you
want to heal other people for the parts that are
unhealed in yourself. I am incredibly I don't know whether
it's the word resilience.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Sort of. I knew how to sort of.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Present myself to be as I say, you know, a
hard work, a kind person. I would never want harm
on anybody else. That wasn't my objective. My objective was
to hurt myself and allow others to hurt me, as
I say, through domestic violence, control crazy crazy choices and
(20:51):
men that I'm still maybe trying to work out. Let's
say I think we all are working well, we.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
All have those vagina or no vagina.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
By the way, I was gonna say, that doesn't make
me special.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
And that's what's so important about the book.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
I've got to thank you for that, because the book,
of course touches on MARKH and kind of sets the
tone from my experience. But I think there are so
many experiences where as women feel that whether you have
m R H or not, a vagina or not, you know,
there is infertility in there. There is like the dating
dilemmas in Bondai Beach, Good Lord, like you have to
(21:27):
seriously armor up to date in Bondi Beach when I
lived there for fifteen years, the turnaround moments.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
I think.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
I always knew deep inside of me that I knew
that I could do something really good, and I knew
that I wanted to.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Really be happy.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
I think I was always on a convey about observing
happiness and trying to work out how people can feel
like that and what do I have to do. It
was when I was in Bondi and I think I
probably I think I was tanked up on some wine actually,
and FACEBOOK was in my era and I wrote a
(22:07):
post on mrkh four saying I really need help and
I was wondering if anyone knew how to help me.
Of course, next day, hungover and over share as remorse,
deleted the post. But that was probably the first step
in knowing that I needed to kind of get up
(22:28):
up close and personal with my diagnosis. I was so
exhausted of being so unhappy, and I did email an
amazing hospital in Sydney and I asked if for support
group existed for people like me, knowing that London and
Boston had Spearhead the Way and peer support, and they said,
(22:49):
we don't, but there's something in you, you know, quite
a good business acumen, organized passionate.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
So we did.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
That's what we did. We started the first peer support
group for people in Australia and there was fifteen women
in a circle. There was a doctor and there was
a nurse and we for three hours did some presentations,
we did small storytelling. I don't think peer support or
(23:20):
healing is any particularly difficult formula. We've seen it happen
through hundreds and hundreds of years of women coming in
circle or eating disorder therapy groups, Alcoholics anonymous Bible study groups,
book clubs. They all have the same formula. You create
(23:41):
a safe space for people to talk about what's has
caused them so much harm with no judgment, absolute trust
and safety, and there you've got yourself a place for
true recovery. I don't think that it's a you know,
when people think about peer support, it's let's sit around
(24:01):
and breid each other's hair and talk about you know,
you know, something that might have just hurt ten years ago.
There is a there's a fully functioning, robust way to
do what I did in Australia, and I have never
felt anything come so effortlessly then I did, knowing that
I wanted to become an mrkage advocate. However, what I
(24:23):
quickly realized in the world of media, especially in Australia,
which is a young ish, I guess country, and no
one's been talking about vaginas like fifteen years ago the
way that I wanted to. I realized that this isn't
the time to fundraise, This isn't the time to be
building programs for people at m RKH. This is the
(24:47):
time to start talking about the condition as raw and
as open as I possibly could without turning it into
a clickbait exercise because I know.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
That it could be misconstrued a lot of the time.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
Is that maybe you talk about wanting to create this
place of safety, which, once again with the benefit of hindsight,
it was possibly as much for yourself as for the
other women that you drew to you, but in your
because in your personal life you had lived without any safety.
(25:24):
So you relate your first relationship with James that was
in the UK, tell me, tell me about that period
and where you were mentally and spiritually at that point
with James. Yeah, and then and then subsequently Tom and
and the period of your life that brought you to Australia.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
I dropped out of university. They wanted to put me
on antidepressants and I was self harming quite a lot.
I did attempt to take my own life one night
at university and I knew that I was dangerously close
to the edged, or let's say the end. My dad
(26:10):
came and picked me up and we drove back to Berkshire,
which is the county I was born in in the UK.
But I still wasn't ready, Like I was still far
from ready. I was still had like a massive a
goal to continue the self destruction. I just had a
sabbatical for a couple of months. I walked into a
pub because you know, that's what you do midweek without
(26:34):
any goal or purpose or friends or happiness, and I
just met the locals. I was drinking cider at the
end of the bar, and I heard that there was
a job opening in a kitchen. And my mum had
had a restaurant, so I had a bit of experience
in that environment. And I was half pissed, and I
had an interview with James and I got the job,
(26:58):
and I went back down to the bar and I
fell off the stool because I was a drunk, and
everyone laughed, and that was pretty much the premise for
the environment.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
There.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
It was very seat grip with James.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
I was still on a very promiscuous high. That's not
uncommon for people with MRKH to prove their worth through
a lot of sex.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
It had nothing to do with the person.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
And I'm so sorry to every sexual partner out there
that I've had, which has been a lot, but I did.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
It was almost like a numbers game.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
The more the more I could sleep with people, the
more a woman I thought I might feel.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
At this point because you've your vagina is functioning as
a typical vagina at this point, fully made, and so
then so you can have a promiscuous and vigorous sex life,
fully functioning like any other girl in her twenties.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Yes, but I also never wanted to go back to
dilation ever again. Right, And there's different opinions about whether
your vagina will close.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
I mean, it won't ever close up.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
It's like an elastic band over time you have stretched it.
But I just had this awful feeling that if it shrinks,
then I'm going to have to go back to that
bedroom scenario and push objects back into my body. So
I thought, over my dead body, am I ever going
to do that again? So I had a lot of
sex and replacement of having to go through dilatory therapy.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
Using a penis as the dilator. Yeah, right, absolutely practical.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
I thought it was. I thought I was being pretty resourceful.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
They were dilators with a heartbeat, and it sounds awful,
But I don't think they cared about me any more
than I cared about them. That was the environment that
we were in, and it's only in the last few
years where I haven't I've been sort of on off relationships,
and I thought, oh shit.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
What am I going to do? Like, I don't want
to go back to dilation.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
I don't want to go back to being like, you know,
a promiscuous woman. I don't have the time or the
contacts to do it. But now I'm just taking sheer
faith the fact that I'll make the right choice when
I have to make the right choice. But then James will.
None of us should be of working in a pub.
You should never give responsibility or keys or to anyone
(29:21):
who's under the age of twenty five. It's a dangerous place.
Too much drugs, too much money, too many honestly, too
much exposed to alcohol. Everyone in the environment tends to
be on the run from something. There's a trauma there.
That's why hiding in pubs is so easy, because everyone's
there for a reason and they don't want to talk
about it.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
They want to escape it.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
I can't remember the first time that I saw James
showing any you know, I can't remember our relationship ever
being particularly happy, but I do remember the first time
he hit me, and I didn't think that I needed
to leave or question, And sadly, a lot of the
(30:05):
people in the pub were exposed to our volatility. They
knew of the domestic violence. Do people step forward? I
don't know if that's their responsibility, But again I normalized
it because it was punishing me. And I just remember
him and as the book line in the book says,
(30:29):
when he was talking to a bunch of locals, he
turned to me and said, is there any wonder that
I don't want to have sets with that?
Speaker 4 (30:37):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (30:37):
And I never told James about my diagnosis.
Speaker 4 (30:40):
But a friend deed, one friend that you had to
share that. We've told him.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Yes, yes, out of spite.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
She was really angry with me, and she walked up
to him and told him that, you know your girlfriend
was born without a vagina and a womb.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
You're going out with a free And.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Again, this is the sad thing about where I was
in relationships. I just I never thought I should leave,
and I and I begged him to whenever he wanted
to end a relationship, because he knew it was so dysfunctional.
I begged him to stay, and he did, and the
violence just got.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
Worse and worse.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
You ended up then setting yourself free to a certain extent,
and you ended up in Australia where you became a house.
Really for a period of time, you were in BONDI
kind of living the dream with another man called Tom.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Didn't buy tone. I didn't leave.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
I didn't go to Australia because I wanted to be
set free. I went to Australia to because I was
on the run. And my mum was born in Sydney
and she left Australia in her early twenties because she
was on the run from her past and her trauma.
And I had citizenship, so it was no problem with
(32:04):
me going. And we had this really shitty apartment in
Elizabeth Bay. And I shouldn't say that, because Elizabeth Bay
is gorgeous in Sydney if you know it, of course
it is. But I was working for this really bad
tech company. I don't know what I was doing. I
wasn't living the dream for I want to say a
(32:24):
good number of years. We ended up moving to BONDI
I'm blessed Tom because we've reconnected since the book. So
I want to be kind. I think it's always important
to protect those in your book. But there was a
certain amount of control there. I wasn't I wasn't allowed
(32:47):
to go out to the beach or in icebergs the
gorgeous pool.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Only after a few years swimmers with the swimmers, I
couldn't believe it.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
And I'm not like if I'm not very good at
being like gorgeous and glamorous.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
But I felt very at home now. I felt like
the water is God. The water is so much.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
I have no water where I live in England, and
doesn't it take a toll?
Speaker 1 (33:14):
But I had I.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Had to be home before he woke up, and I
would make sure that everything was in place for him
waking up before we went to work in the city.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
I'd have to get his clothes ready.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
I'd have to make sure that if it was winter,
I would he have to heat the clothes on the
heater so they were warm when he put them on.
And if there wasn't the bus pass in his wallets,
you know, God forbid when we got the three three three,
and that's that's the Bondi rocket, the you know the
bus that goes in and out of Bondi and he
again ended it. And this is the tragic thing. Even
(33:47):
though I knew these relationships weren't supposed to be, I
still didn't want to be alone and I didn't want
to be rejected and he did. And I was at
a junction because I thought, well, I can either go
back to the UK, where my mum is, my my
dad is my that's my motherland.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
But I felt actually.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
Home in Bondai and I thought, this is this is it,
This is the time where you've got to choose life
or repeated crap. And I found a yoga studio, which
we know they're beautifully in abundance of in Bondai and
it was this very cute you were doing bikram. Yeah,
(34:32):
I love Biram. I wanted to be a bitcroom teacher.
Actually I think everyone wanted to be a bit croom
teacher at one point. But I got really bad XMA
through the heat because I was practicing so much and
I couldn't practice anymore. I would crawl my legs to
the word red raw bit.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
But I loved it.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
I used to learn all like the twenty six postures.
I was learning the pig in English. I was saving
up to go to one of the trainings, but yeah,
that took.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Home and I was like, oh my god, my yoga
life is over.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
But then I found a really cool one very sweet
intimate studio in Bondai and oh my lord, you know
talk about talk about your cho in chapel. That really
was it. And someone said to me, Ali, be prepared.
The more you do yoga, the more your life is
going to change. And that terrified me because I don't
(35:20):
like change, despite always trying to instigate change, and that,
you know, the relationship ended. I never wanted him back.
That's the wonderful thing about a relationship ending when you
know it's right. I kind of did a bit of begging.
I think I drank a bottle of champagne and phoned
him at midday, but he didn't of course, didn't answer.
(35:42):
And I found an amazing group of friends. Amy Malloy,
who I can say edited my book, My very close
bestest of friends in Bondai, and she had and has
obviously you know, telegraphed this through her work, has gone
through her own trauma, and she took me under her wing.
(36:04):
She introduced me to these incredible women who have had
their past, who know what it's like to her grit
but want to do something really purposeful with it. We
went to yoga studios everywhere. We were drinking chai lattes everywhere,
like it was such an a magical time, and I
think my parents got it that it was my time
to find out who Ali is without, you know, and
(36:27):
also to figure out what the fuck happened with me
and my vagina story, like what trauma had it caused me? Uh,
And so I feel like I've all the places were
footing in. I developed the Sisters for Love, a market
foundation which subsequently has been rebranded to a markh Australia.
I was on you know, the Telly. I was working
(36:49):
with researchers. I was helping women. Every night, would be
phone calls, fundraising, developing programs for young people around sex
and intimacy and mental health.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
And it just flourished.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
It was so amaz us best best era of my life.
Speaker 4 (37:09):
After the break.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
Allie reveals how the yoga matt became her therapy and
takes us through her experience of IVF. It's very interesting
to me that the yoga, which is physicality, unlocked something
in you because there had been so much shame attached
(37:32):
to your physicality. Do you think that that was a
key to then this openness that you brought to the world,
are basically no longer not even not keeping a secret
but bellowing it from the rooftops.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
It was my yoga mut was my therapist. They always
say that the the the asagnas, the postures, they're sort
of incidental. The strength that you build isn't esthetic. You know,
being contortionist isn't the purpose of yoga, but great if
you get there. I was a self harmer, as I
(38:11):
mentioned before, and I don't really want to go into,
of course, how I did it.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
That's not something i'd want to sort of share out there.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
But I'm very scarred, let's say, from that and living
in Australia in a climate, physically physically scarred.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
You could look at my arms.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
And there's it's like an a board for self harm
in a yoga space or even you know, in a bikini.
I know people are looking at my arms and I
have to really try to not I don't say want
to react, but I need to feel them looking because
(38:50):
I want. I don't want to hide, and maybe that
is part of it. I didn't want to physically hide,
and I think in that yoga mat they always say
the first thing you might want to do after a
really difficult posture, or you can't breathe or your your
muscles are aching, is you want to run and it
teaches you not to run. And I remember this really
(39:11):
wonderful yoga teacher said that when you're saying, I don't
know if people know that the chair pose where you're
basically sitting on it in a visible chair, and your yeah,
your thighs, yeah, your thighs are burning. Everything feels weird,
like tuck in your ribs, bend your thing, doda feet together,
and you're like, fuck me, and I just wanted to
(39:32):
go and you just want to run out of that pose.
The body doesn't distinguish what you're doing at the time
of that particular difficulty. It doesn't know that it's doing
a yoga pose anymore than it doesn't know that it's
going through a injury on a bike, or it doesn't
know that it's not going through absolute heartbreak. The body
doesn't know what's happening outside.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
It just knows hard.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
And if you can teach yourself to go through the hard,
not necessarily through pain, but the point where you want
to go, go through that, because when you get outside
into the real world, you'll feel that pain again, you'll
feel that desire to run, and you don't because you
know you can sustain it.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
So my yoga studio.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Has seen breakups, breakdowns, meltdowns, But there is something incredibly
special that people who go to a yoga studio are
not going to get fit per se.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
It's a byproduct.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
Most people land in a yoga studio over a gym
because they're working some shit out.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
And there is nothing.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
More spiritually exciting than rubbing shoulders with people who are
going through stuff because it makes your stuff feel less stuffy.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
Yes, and you had found that with your girlfriend Amy,
And was it Drew?
Speaker 4 (40:53):
Was it in that.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
Period that you decided to explore your infertility slash fertility?
Speaker 2 (41:02):
I was dating I think how old was I? Early
thirties let's say mid thirties. Amy had the thing about
Amy and I were that despite having two very different
lives in a way married. She had her first child.
I was very single, very far away from having my
first child. We always talked about the things that some
(41:25):
friends don't want to talk about that could cause a
jealousy or a discomfort or an inequality. Let's say, Amy
and I's skill was always addressing the hard stuff like
a normal conversation and blessed Luke.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
I met Luke on a dating app in Bondis.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
Bingo Swipe Swipe, Swipes Swipe. I thought it would be easy.
When I came up a ten year relationship, I was like, Oh,
this is easy. That's an amazing man. How hard is
this going to be? Three years later, I really really
liked Luke, but of course Luke and I realized that
we probably weren't in the same relationship. But there is
a biological clock and it will time. Whether you want
(42:05):
to answer it or not. Biology will say to you
or ask you to ask the question do I want
a child?
Speaker 1 (42:13):
I had been hovering around.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
Some amazing research and doctors and surgeons for a long time.
I was very confident in that space of reproductive medicine
or family planning, but I still didn't have mine forever
after so I thought, well, I could go and get
my eggs frozen. Being in a very well paid job,
despite whether it gave me, it gave me no joy,
(42:38):
to be honest, but it did afford me bondaye and
afforded me savings because I knew that seregacy, where opting
for somebody else to carry your child, was going to
cost me a hell of a lot of money. You're
talking sort of north of fifty thousand, eighty thousand dollars.
And I did all the I started the process. We
(42:59):
actually went to IVF Australia and Amy was in the
waiting room with me, and she was pregnant, which is
a tragic irony or a beautiful irony, let's say. And
I went in and said, because you've got m r
k H, it's going to be trickier. We don't know
when your cycle is, we don't know the state of
your ovaries. They could be underdeveloped. And I thought, this
isn't going to be easy at all. And I knew
(43:21):
it wouldn't be easy, but I still was doing alone.
And I did muster up the confidence to tell Lee
go the spaghetti bolonnies one night that I was thinking
about having my eggs praising, and he said and paused,
I I think that's a really great idea for you
and your future partner.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
And then I was like, holy fu, I'm gonna have
to do this alone.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
I know, oh together.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
He stayed with him after that, and also you sent
the book that he was also sleeping with other people.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Delightful discovery delightful discovery.
Speaker 1 (43:58):
Bless him.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
I had I'd gone around a conference and I came
back and it was the night before my birthday, and
he looked really twitchy, and he said, got something to
tell you. I slept with someone else when I might
have gonorrhea, and I thought, and I think it was.
And he was nervous because he knew that we couldn't
(44:20):
have sex on my birthday. I was nervous because my
heart had just been broken. But yeah, didn't leave. He
left me. Actually, yeah he did, which is again, we
still talk. I don't have an ex out there, apart
from maybe one or two that I don't have a
conversation with now and again. And I pride myself on
that wonderful way of exiting relationships.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
Maybe I like to keep doors open, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (44:43):
But he was out the.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
Picture, and I thought, I'm still going to try to
do this egg retrieval process.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
And you know what, I just couldn't.
Speaker 2 (44:52):
I couldn't wrap my head around not having the perfect picture.
I thought, I don't want to be doing this alone.
I want the Maybe it's a bit I don't know, Disney.
Speaker 3 (45:01):
I wanted the perfect picture for you was to do
it with somebody.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
To create a family.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
I wanted that, and I think I I wanted I
think I wanted a relationship to be happy more than
I wanted a child, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
I wanted the whole dynamic.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
I don't think that my motherly instincts were as strong enough.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
To do it alone.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
And I couldn't fathom how transactional fertility was when I
was handed sort of the FPOs machine for my next
load of bloods, and it's like, this doesn't this feels
icky to me. This isn't how I wanted to play out.
And I went to the IVF clinic for my last
time and I didn't tell them it was over. But
(45:44):
I phoned my mum, who I used to phone every
day in Australia, for a good two hours and I said,
I don't know what to do, and she's like, Alie,
this isn't this is one that I can't answer for you.
And then I went home that night and I just thought,
now this isn't for me. I put all the files
in the bin. I cried profusely and that was the end.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
And I did have a big thing. I actually had
a surrogate ah lined up.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
Yes, but I said, I think your uterus and your
womb is better placed with somebody else for this gift.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
Would I wouldn't be taking it for the right reasons.
Speaker 3 (46:20):
One of your friends said something so beautiful to you
that I had to write it down. The world needs
all sorts of mothers, teachers, educators, storytellers, and healers. That's
what the world needs. And so you decided to step
further into that space.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (46:44):
She was and is an incredible doctor, but also went
to the same yoga studio as me, and she could
see the pain.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
And you know, I was heartbroken.
Speaker 2 (46:54):
I lost a baby, idea of a baby, and a
boyfriend within months of each other. And that's when I've
really started looking into the word woman and realizing that
the world does need all types of women in all
types of roles. And my role wasn't to be a
biological mother to a child. My role was to and
(47:17):
I don't want to sort of this sounds very matriarchal,
but not to the women of MRKH, but to guide
people through what you can do if you don't tick
certain boxes. And we have to have holistic versions of womanhood.
They always say, don't they you need to experience all
(47:37):
the bad stuff in life to have the good stuff
in life. And I think the work that I've done
and doing more than ever actually right now, I'm so
so passionate about what it means the dismantle the word woman,
especially in the political climate that we're in, especially in
the UK, about the ruling of what a woman is.
So if you're not necessarily a parent to a child,
(48:00):
there will be someone out there who needs mothering. There
is a book that someone needs to read, and you
could be the storyteller of that, which is another form
of we need the leaders to guide. You know, they
set after the pandemic that the women were being well.
I don't I want to use this statistic loosely, but
(48:20):
the encouragement of having women back in leadership roles with
the emotional intelligence that the world was needing after a
pandemic was so more needed than your typical version maybe prior.
And so yeah, that line is beautiful because it was.
I think I just felt a huge surrendering in acceptance.
Speaker 4 (48:44):
But your quest for love continued after that.
Speaker 3 (48:51):
Was when I was reading your book, I was like,
we got to the rom com beat where you're at
a conference and you meet doctor Gregg, and I'm like,
this is perfect.
Speaker 4 (49:02):
Here we go.
Speaker 1 (49:03):
Hello, I know the power couple of imity. Trust me.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
I ignore every red flag that was running towards me
because I thought that this has to be has to
be surely a going to cologist. Surely who helps women
have been Surely who's passionate.
Speaker 4 (49:23):
About Hell no, no.
Speaker 1 (49:27):
Difference in the world of love.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
But you learned the.
Speaker 4 (49:30):
Lesson quicker this time.
Speaker 3 (49:32):
So amongst his other red flags were like that you
didn't go to his house and you wouldn't hear from
him for months, but when you saw each other, it
was amazing and explosive and you felt in that time,
I think.
Speaker 4 (49:45):
You said, very like a woman. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:49):
He and I explored sex and ways that I've never
explored before. One he was very I guess, confident and
diverse in that way.
Speaker 3 (50:02):
Well, he was a gynecologist, so he knew everything.
Speaker 1 (50:06):
Honestly he did.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
He used to talk to him of about there's some
studies reveal, but then there's some studies that won't reveal,
or that sort of counter that that a woman can't
lubricate if she hasn't been born with a vaginal canal,
which is not true, or if you haven't got a womb,
you can't lubricate. So it was really interesting having these
very matter of fact conversations. I used to ask him
(50:31):
all sorts of vagina questions about can it do this?
You know, what's female ejaculation? How does that work? And
he's like, you know, every well, I don't know. Again
I quote him, every woman can do it if they
just get out of their heads. And so it was
these sort of conversations I was having it. It was
kind of liberating and it was glamorous, like there's a
doctor living the Byron Bay and you know, he's a
(50:54):
pioneering surgeon, and I'm attracted to that, but I'm also
attracted to people who make me work for it, and
he was someone who was not going to be easy
to win over and pretty easy then to leave. But
sexual that was a real, I don't know, turning point.
I think for me to also believe that my body
(51:17):
is desirable and I am fanciable and it can explore
pleasure and that's not bad. Pleasure isn't a guilty act
that we should feel. But then that goes back to
my vaginal dilation days, where pain was what I thought
was all it was down there. So the quest for
love always continues. Okay, that's my next book, no doubt.
Speaker 3 (51:40):
Then you go back to the UK also to be
with your mum who's suffered stroke eight years previously, and
then a recurrence of that.
Speaker 2 (51:51):
Yes, she had seizures out of nowhere. It was just random.
There was They didn't know why, much like they didn't
know why she had a stroke. Her relationship of twenty
five years was very tumultuous. And my mum has gone
through so much crap, like so much of her own
crap in her past. Her self esteem has been affected,
(52:14):
her sense of self worth, her need to apologize every
five minutes.
Speaker 1 (52:18):
This is someone who's really.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
Tried hard to feel safe in her world.
Speaker 1 (52:25):
And I remember looking at her in.
Speaker 2 (52:28):
ICU after the siegures and I thought, if you wake up,
this is when we changed your life. I've done my
fifteen years of running around Australia, I've had my glorified moments,
I've had me. I've given that time to me, and
now it's your turn. And she did, thank god, wake
(52:49):
up and made a great recovery. And then a month
later her relationship tied up and went to an end.
But as the book says, I had to choose between
keeping our house or having a baby, and I had
that money in the bank, and it was the most
soul destroying moment, knowing that I probably wouldn't have had
(53:12):
a child. I always had a little bit of hope
and choice in the bank, but we needed a home
and that was the choice I made. So goodbye as May.
Speaker 3 (53:26):
As May you write the most beautiful letter to es
May your unborn daughter.
Speaker 4 (53:34):
It was very moving. How was your mom?
Speaker 3 (53:39):
Because I always think with fertility, it's not it's you,
but it's also the generation behind you, who often have
a hunger for it, on your behalf or on their behalf.
How is your mom during that period? Selfless or selfish? Selfless?
Speaker 2 (54:01):
I have apologized to my parents for not giving them
a grandchild.
Speaker 1 (54:08):
There is no guilt with them, there is no.
Speaker 2 (54:13):
Sense of letting down or I have never been made
to feel that I've been inadequate in any way as
a child. I think they wish it for me, and
I think sometimes my brother has four children and I
don't have vulch. But also in the space of a child,
I knew that I had to create a lot of magic,
(54:34):
and I had to create a life that was really,
really exciting and really make it count. And that's what
I've done, and I've made my parents incredibly proud. And
I think that it's an absolute privilege to love someone
that much and to be loved by someone. So there's
no obligation in my life when it comes to my
parents of the people I have. But how was she
(54:58):
in that moment? Well, very sad. But we have our
house and we also have this lovely relationship that's full
circle now and she's very poorly at the moment, which
we're working through. But again, it's a privilege to have
someone that close that I love, never never atore.
Speaker 3 (55:21):
And you also found you have no trouble finding loves
by the way to hold onto it? Well, sometimes I
think the right one holds onto you. You mede a
guy called Jack once again. I'm like, Yay, she's gone
back to the UK. She's made a guy called Jack.
Speaker 4 (55:42):
What happened?
Speaker 1 (55:44):
What happened? Kate? Well, this is an interesting junction for me.
Speaker 2 (55:48):
Jack was a man that had a very unusual type
of cancer for a man. He was very funny, witty, creative.
He had just started his path on advocacy to promote, promote,
but to make his type of cancer where in the
(56:10):
UK and beyond. It was a friendship first, which I
think I've never done before, so that was weird, and
I felt very trusting with him, and we would talk
about dates that had gone wrong. And then I think
that I just saw him one day in a very
different light. I think when I met up with him
in Oxford and then I later went to stay with
(56:30):
him in the North of England, there was a chemistry
that I hadn't experienced before and I thought, this is
the type of man that I want to date, and
we did for a while. Actually, well, it's complicated because
we have spoken since the book's been released.
Speaker 1 (56:50):
Actually, as you do.
Speaker 2 (56:52):
Fact, the day of my book launch, there was a
message from Jack on my phone after quite a long
time of not being together, and it was supportive and
he read the book and he was completely taken aback
by how I described the relationship in the sense of wow,
(57:12):
it really was something special. However, however, external circumstances just
did not align to make it work.
Speaker 1 (57:23):
And it's tragic, it really is.
Speaker 2 (57:27):
I don't know whether I have a fear of the
future of being you know, alone and single and will
I meet the one? I don't think that, because you're right,
I do know how to hunt them down or be hunted.
Speaker 1 (57:38):
But I have no idea.
Speaker 2 (57:41):
And I tell you this sounds really kind of I've
never been a very in the present type of person.
I don't meditate. I mean, I love yoga, but I
can't meditate for love nor money. I've never needed just
to stay in the moment so much as I do
right now, because life has shown me that it doesn't
matter how much I try to plan for the future,
how much I plan for future feelings, it will not work.
(58:04):
And with my mum's health, with so many different sort
of cliffs, is with my future and creativity? What am
I going to do next? Is there another book in me?
I'm just going to trust that I don't need the answers.
I don't need the answers today. I just know that
I'm incredibly proud of what I've created. And just speaking
(58:26):
with you Kate today on this incredible podcast is the
testament that if I ever have a wobbly day of
am I good enough?
Speaker 1 (58:34):
Am I doing it right?
Speaker 4 (58:35):
Ah?
Speaker 2 (58:36):
I need to rewind back to this moment because it's
a wonderful reflection of achievement.
Speaker 1 (58:41):
Thank you, it really is.
Speaker 3 (58:43):
I mean, we talk to a lot of extraordinary people,
often ordinary extraordinary or extraordinary extraordinary people on no filter,
and you certainly are extraordinary. I love your tenant, which
I don't even know if it's a formal one for you.
But the truth will set you free, and you coming
(59:07):
to the truth of yourself. Sharing the truth of yourself
with others, divesting yourself of shame and guilt and sharing
the journey of your life with others is so valuable.
I respect it so much, and I thank you so
much for your courage and your advocacy and your beauty.
Speaker 1 (59:31):
Well, thank you, Kate.
Speaker 2 (59:33):
And as I always say, the only thing normal in
this world is difference. And I would really love to
make truth like the next biggest trend, because that's the
only way we're going to release the shame in our lives.
So thank you so much for these wonderful words.
Speaker 3 (59:55):
Today, Alie Hensley led us into a story that most
of us will never have heard before, a story of
what it means to live with mrkh to carry a
secret you feel you can't share, and to navigate intimacy,
self worth and survival when your body doesn't match the
(01:00:16):
script you thought it would. What strikes me most about
Allie is not just the pain that she's endured, but
the extraordinary courage it's taken to turn that pain into purpose.
By shrugging off the shroud of shame and the secrecy
that comes with it, and by speaking openly, she's helped
(01:00:38):
create community where there once was nothing but silence, and
in doing so, she's shown us all how honesty can
be both terrifying and liberating. Her story is one of
survival and resilience and hope, and it's one that will
stay with me for a very long time. Thanks for
(01:01:01):
listening to No Filter. The executive producer of No Filter
is Nama Brown, The senior producer is Breed Player. Audiopenduction
is by Jacob Brown, and video editing is by Josh Green.
This episode was recorded at Session in Progress Studios and
I am your host, Kate Langbrook. Thank you so much
(01:01:22):
for listening.
You're listening to Amma Mia podcast. Mamma Maya acknowledges the
traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is
recorded on.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
It's not uncommon for people with MRKH to prove their
worth through a lot of sex. It had nothing to
do with the person, and I'm so sorry to every
sexual partner out there that I've had, which has been
a lot.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
It was almost like a numbers game.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
The more I could seek with people, the more a
woman I thought I might fail. Hi.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
I'm Kate lane Brook, Welcome to No Filter. When Alie
Hensley was sixteen, she was told something no teenage girl
expects to hear. She was born without a uterus, without
a cervix, and without a vaginal canal. It's called mr
Kh syndrome, a condition most people have never heard of,
(01:07):
but for Alie, that diagnosis would shape almost every part
of her life, her relationships, her sexuality, her body image,
and how she saw herself as a woman. In this conversation,
Allie shares her story with such honesty and vulnerability about
(01:29):
what it was like to undergo vaginal dilation as a teenager,
to navigate sex and intimacy with a body that felt
different and to live for years feeling like she had
to hide a secret. We talk about infertility, about trauma,
about abusive relationships, and shame. So friends, please listen mindfully.
(01:54):
This is a conversation about identity survival and what it
means to make peace with your life when it turns
out so very differently to what you imagined. Here is
Alie Hensley, Alison Hensley, Allie, welcome.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
To No Filter.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Thank you so much for having me, and how lucky
that this is no filter because I'm going to give
our listeners the same. Is it a warning, It's a
premonition that you have given readers in your brilliant book
Vagina Uncensored and Memoir of Missing Parts, And this is
(02:35):
the warning.
Speaker 4 (02:37):
We're going to say vagina a lot.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Yeah, we are. It's a staple to my vocabulary diet.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
The irony of us saying vagina a lot is that
you were born without a vagina.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
I most certainly was. Yep.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
I'm going to cast myself in the same role as
the friend that you refer to in the book, who
has all the standard questions that I imagine a lot of
our listeners also do. And it actually comes from I
realize a place a privilege of never having to question
that about my body.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
Question one, how did you weigh?
Speaker 2 (03:21):
So the diagnosis, just to sort of premise this conversation,
is called Maya Rocketanski Cowstahauser syndrome MRKH for short, the
most unsexiest diagnosis name to advocate for. Not that I
believe it's all about being a gamorous brand, but it
(03:41):
is a hard one to take over the line. It's
a congenital condition, meaning it was present at birth, and
it affects one in five thousand women. It tends to
occur in the first six to eight weeks of gestation,
so when all those vital organs are being formed and developed.
(04:02):
I always describe it as a lorry traveling down the
genetic path and it hits pothole, and in that pothole
was the reproductive development. So I was born with ovaries,
which meant my estrogen was firing. So I'm an XX
chromosome female biologically, and because I had the estrogen, it
(04:27):
was giving my body the signal to develop typically externally
as a female, so you'd never know from the outside,
which is why you know it wasn't picked up at
birth the way it was diagnosis when I failed to
get my first period, so I have the uretha. It
was the actual vaginal canal, and because we're formed from
the outside in, my genitalia was I don't like to
(04:51):
use the word normal caked.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
It's got me into a lot of sad times.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
I think its standard. What term do we use standard?
I use typical, right, typical? Okay, So you're externally as
you were saying, your typical. So if anyone saw you naked,
nobody would know that what is missing is the internal cavity.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
So yes, I was born without a uterus, the cervix,
and then the vaginal canal. What I was born with
is called a dimple, which is like basically it was
the length of my thumbnail. The first sign was no period.
At sixteen, I went to the doctors with my mum.
(05:38):
They said, maybe you're a late starter. You know, I
wasn't overly athletic. I'd sort of dabbled in eating disorder,
but I wasn't so thin that the period.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Would stop or not start.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Because when you've released a book and you've told all
your secrets, I said, you have, yes, of course write,
So I can't really backtrack on the truth as much
as I used to politely give my sort of diagnosis
pitch or speech, if you like. I was over in
Greece with my family and my best friend and we
(06:11):
had this I don't think I've actually shared this before.
We had one of those like charts where you can
kind of gauge who kisses the nice boys or.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
It gets chepped up.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
They would take part in hand play, and then who
would go the four mile and have sexual intercourse? And
I met this really gorgeous guy in a bar and
it was like after closing, and I can't remember where
I was. I think it was some behind a bush
somewhere probably, and we tried to have sexual intercourse and
(06:44):
it just didn't work. And I didn't know then that
I had m mark h, so you know, he gave
it a good go, but it just never happened. And
I thought it was like the hymen thing, you know,
when you're young and you're about be hymen and you
have to pop your cherry. I just thought maybe mine
was not so probable. So that's that's how I kind
of knew something was wrong. But you never go as
(07:05):
far to think that it could be this particular scenario.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
No, because as you said, it.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
It's so rare, did you because you went to the
doctor with your mum.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
So this was after the Greek the Greek holiday.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Yeah, I thought it was gonna say the Greek COTTI there, Yeah,
the Greek Holiday.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
We came back and then the period hadn't arrived.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Still, I remember doing my school exams and having this
terrible fear that I would be the girl that sort
of stands up after the three hour mass exam and
has like blood all hamer skirt and I so I
wore I wore these really ugly sanitary towels that my
mum gave me. They're ones that kind of like they
look like a hammock. They're really archaic now and they've
(07:51):
got more one them or something fascinating huge compared to nowadays.
But concerned at that point, the GP gave me an
internal exam, which was incredibly intrusive. I mean, I was
a child, you mean think of sixteen odds of course
being very mature, but we're not far out of childhood.
(08:13):
And had a look on his face that was obviously
quite concerning. He did refer me to have an ultrasound
and then the sonographer's face was also sort of perplexed.
Then I went on to have laparoscopy, which is getting
cert a camera into your abdomen, and that was the
(08:36):
diagnosis day. I remember the doctor pulling the curtain around
my bed. He hadn't for any other other of the
patients on the ward, and he drew a diagram. And
I always think it's funny the facts that you remember,
like a lead pencil. No one ever uses pencils now.
And he told me that I was born with this diagnosis,
but it didn't occur to me. My mum's face was
(08:59):
profoundly grief stricken, shocked, but I.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Just thought, well, i'll get I'll get I'll get fixed.
You know, what's the big deal?
Speaker 2 (09:10):
And their lies trauma when you don't truly believe or
comprehend the news that it's given to you. And shortly
after I was sent to a very very amazing flagship
hospital in London where I was given two options if
I wanted to create a vaginal canal. And this is
(09:30):
only literally a month after my diagnosis. That all happened
very fast, and they give you two options surgery where
they create one obviously surgically, and there's about five different procedures.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Some are barbaric.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Some aren't less awful or vaginal dilation, which is when
they give you their various sizes of Pyrex tubes. They're
not sexy dildo looking things. They literally are tubes. And
I was admitted into hospital for three days and taught
how to create vagina. And you would be lying on
(10:09):
your back, your knees splayed into a diamond shape, and
the nurse would guide you with the smallest into the
dimple and you would press against your body. So I
would have to use my strength of my arm and
my hand against the resistance of the muscle mass, which
is the undercreated vagina. And they said to me, if
(10:34):
your knuckles turn white, you're doing it correctly. And I think,
despite nailing how to do it, those three days in
hospital are incredibly, incredibly responsible for the next fifteen years
of how I completely dismantled and reacted to this diagnosis.
(10:57):
I did create the vagina. It took me nine months.
It's a really weird scenario. When you're upstairs in your
bedroom before school, after school, parents are downstairs trying to
coenc you know, coexist with normality. Sometimes I would sneak
some cider and some hoots just to make myself a
(11:18):
bit tipsy, so I don't have to feel the pain
sure and the shame.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
I should say pain and shame.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
And even though I was going through the process, there
wasn't any support, there wasn't any awareness. I always think
it's really interesting when there are so many procedures out
there where physiotherapists and Guyanese and healthcare professionals will say,
this is your diagnosis, this is your treatment. But there
(11:47):
was something that I've only been able to really nail.
I guess in the last year about that process for me,
because I was really learning how to couple pain with progress,
pain and intimacy, and pain with shame and sex. And
that's why I had a shocking, shockingly bad relationship with
(12:09):
relationships and sex for.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
A long, long, long, long long time.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Well, what you have described sounds like a turn that's
bandied around a lot, but you've had a double dose
of trauma then, because you had the physical trauma of
actually trying to create this vaginal passage in what sounds
like a most excruciating manner, but you've also had the
emotional trauma. So even down to the fact that when
(12:39):
you talk in your book about your family, who sounds
so beautiful, your mum and your dad, and they were
very open about this. But even the openness, like you said,
bring shame. So everyone's like, oh, where's a Ali. Oh
she's upstairs making her vagina.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
That's so difficult when you're that age, at any.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Age, well, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
And I think you know this topic stems from women's health,
I think in general, when it's when it's below the belt,
and I think parents do their absolute best. I mean,
I probably got away with quite a lot in the
sense of just allow her to work it through or
work it out, or let's not go too hard on her. Now,
(13:24):
I would say to parents, place the boundaries that you
would for any child, because it gives them a sense
that you're still a un quote normal child.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
And they did their best.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
But I mean, my dad took me to the hospital
when I first made the vagina or started the process
because my mum was working, and oh gosh, he tried
so hard to sort of normalize it for me. But
you are right in the double dose, and I don't
think that caught up with me for a very very
(13:55):
long time. One pure denial. Two there's no real space
to talk about this, certainly with friends, and because how
do you you know, how do you sort of say, ah,
you know, you never guess what I had to do
last night.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
I had to go and create my I've got one.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
And so you're living in a sense of constant secrecy, which,
of course we know breeds.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Even more shame and more than anything.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
I think when you're sixteen seventeen, you're at this junction
of womanhood, which sounds sort of very poetic now when
I think about it, but you think what kind of
mother will I be and what kind of partner will
I be? And when those two things are thrown into
disarray pretty much overnight, what you believe womanhood to be
is completely, you know, thrown out the window.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
And I felt awful. I felt disgusting, I felt broken.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
I talk a lot in the book about, you know,
just the ky jelly that I had to use.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
You know, just I felt like it was always on me,
sort of having to.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
It's almost self harm by consent, and I will definitely
include a trigger warning here in terms of people have
gone through sexual I can't claim that experience and I
would never dare to try to put myself in that camp,
of course. But for me, when I think about the
(15:19):
sort of the symptomatic processes and the afterthought of as
you sort of shame and the PTSD and the trauma,
it felt like an assault on my body. But I
did it to myself very I sort of say, it's
very sad. I feel very sad for my seventeen year
(15:39):
old self and all the people who were going through
this diagnosis.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
After your MRKH diagnosis, how did you share that with,
for instance, your girlfriends from school who were menstruating and living,
as you say, a typical womanly life and on the
cusp of that, how did you you kept it secret?
Speaker 1 (16:04):
I think I told one friend, my best friend at
the time. I would lie an awful lot.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
I lied about whether I had sort of like the
tampon in the bag, what time of the month was
I on. We talked about sort of later on consciraception,
where I would learn the most common names of conscioception,
like the pill, so that if I was asked I
could tell them or a perspective partner. It really just
(16:35):
wasn't spoken about, and I don't think it was a
conscious decision almost not to speak about it it was.
I refused to even acknowledge that it exists, to not
speak about it. I left school. I dropped out of school.
I was an absolute car crash as I was leading
up to my final exams, and then I loosened to
(16:57):
the big unknown.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
I got into university.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
I don't know how we'll call them a levels over here,
and that was the worst place with somebody who doesn't
want boundaries, doesn't know how to do boundaries, and prey
much is. I was on a self destructive path to
self destruct. I hated myself and I was going to
do everything with my within my power to ensure that
(17:20):
that was true. And I would put myself into situations
where I would purposefully be treated incredibly poorly by people,
by men. It was a real weird validation of what Yes, you're.
Speaker 4 (17:35):
Right, what you believed about yourself.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Hmm. And again, I think this is to do with
the vaginal dilation hospital experience. That's all I knew about intimacy,
So I didn't know how to form healthy relationships with
well with anyone really, in the sense I would gravitate
towards people who had their own probably demons if I
(17:59):
look at it, you know, retrospectively, the sort of like
the bad boys, the bad people, the wanted wanted to
act out, wanted to get pissed every night, wanted to have,
you know, random sexual encounters. The more, the merrier, the worse,
the better, the it was everything that was healthy.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
I choose to do the opposite. Was I choosing?
Speaker 2 (18:21):
I don't think. I don't even know if it was
a choice. I was just I was just doing that
with anyone and everyone. I didn't tell anyone.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Next, we talk about the turning point, how Ali learned
to stop punishing herself, and how the act of speaking
out became the beginning of her healing. It's very interesting
because I met you through you through the pages of
your book, and though you describe, you know, the depths
(18:55):
of your pain and fear and shame, within that, there's
an overriding sense of you as being a very act
I'm going to say, happy person, which is a you know,
you address the notion of happiness, A very lovely person,
a very easy to love person. And I'm struck by
(19:18):
how it seems in retrospect. Sometimes we like to look
at people as though they're fully finished now the way
they always were. But your journey has been such an
incredible one of grappling at each stage with the dysfunction,
the physical, the mental, the self harm to get yourself
(19:41):
to the place where you are now. And I think
this is where your story is a benefit to so
many people.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
I actually want to cry when you're saying that to me,
Kate those lovely compliments. It's you know, I wrote the book,
but I don't know what it's like to look at
me from the outsider perspective or of course the reader perspective.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
I was brought up to be a very.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Hard worker, with value and morals and empathy. I think
when you've been through horror, they always say that you
want to heal other people for the parts that are
unhealed in yourself. I am incredibly I don't know whether
it's the word resilience.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Sort of. I knew how to sort of.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Present myself to be as I say, you know, a
hard work, a kind person. I would never want harm
on anybody else. That wasn't my objective. My objective was
to hurt myself and allow others to hurt me, as
I say, through domestic violence, control crazy crazy choices and
(20:51):
men that I'm still maybe trying to work out. Let's
say I think we all are working well, we.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
All have those vagina or no vagina.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
By the way, I was gonna say, that doesn't make
me special.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
And that's what's so important about the book.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
I've got to thank you for that, because the book,
of course touches on MARKH and kind of sets the
tone from my experience. But I think there are so
many experiences where as women feel that whether you have
m R H or not, a vagina or not, you know,
there is infertility in there. There is like the dating
dilemmas in Bondai Beach, Good Lord, like you have to
(21:27):
seriously armor up to date in Bondi Beach when I
lived there for fifteen years, the turnaround moments.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
I think.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
I always knew deep inside of me that I knew
that I could do something really good, and I knew
that I wanted to.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
Really be happy.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
I think I was always on a convey about observing
happiness and trying to work out how people can feel
like that and what do I have to do. It
was when I was in Bondi and I think I
probably I think I was tanked up on some wine actually,
and FACEBOOK was in my era and I wrote a
(22:07):
post on mrkh four saying I really need help and
I was wondering if anyone knew how to help me.
Of course, next day, hungover and over share as remorse,
deleted the post. But that was probably the first step
in knowing that I needed to kind of get up
(22:28):
up close and personal with my diagnosis. I was so
exhausted of being so unhappy, and I did email an
amazing hospital in Sydney and I asked if for support
group existed for people like me, knowing that London and
Boston had Spearhead the Way and peer support, and they said,
(22:49):
we don't, but there's something in you, you know, quite
a good business acumen, organized passionate.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
So we did.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
That's what we did. We started the first peer support
group for people in Australia and there was fifteen women
in a circle. There was a doctor and there was
a nurse and we for three hours did some presentations,
we did small storytelling. I don't think peer support or
(23:20):
healing is any particularly difficult formula. We've seen it happen
through hundreds and hundreds of years of women coming in
circle or eating disorder therapy groups, Alcoholics anonymous Bible study groups,
book clubs. They all have the same formula. You create
(23:41):
a safe space for people to talk about what's has
caused them so much harm with no judgment, absolute trust
and safety, and there you've got yourself a place for
true recovery. I don't think that it's a you know,
when people think about peer support, it's let's sit around
(24:01):
and breid each other's hair and talk about you know,
you know, something that might have just hurt ten years ago.
There is a there's a fully functioning, robust way to
do what I did in Australia, and I have never
felt anything come so effortlessly then I did, knowing that
I wanted to become an mrkage advocate. However, what I
(24:23):
quickly realized in the world of media, especially in Australia,
which is a young ish, I guess country, and no
one's been talking about vaginas like fifteen years ago the
way that I wanted to. I realized that this isn't
the time to fundraise, This isn't the time to be
building programs for people at m RKH. This is the
(24:47):
time to start talking about the condition as raw and
as open as I possibly could without turning it into
a clickbait exercise because I know.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
That it could be misconstrued a lot of the time.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
Is that maybe you talk about wanting to create this
place of safety, which, once again with the benefit of hindsight,
it was possibly as much for yourself as for the
other women that you drew to you, but in your
because in your personal life you had lived without any safety.
(25:24):
So you relate your first relationship with James that was
in the UK, tell me, tell me about that period
and where you were mentally and spiritually at that point
with James. Yeah, and then and then subsequently Tom and
and the period of your life that brought you to Australia.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
I dropped out of university. They wanted to put me
on antidepressants and I was self harming quite a lot.
I did attempt to take my own life one night
at university and I knew that I was dangerously close
to the edged, or let's say the end. My dad
(26:10):
came and picked me up and we drove back to Berkshire,
which is the county I was born in in the UK.
But I still wasn't ready, Like I was still far
from ready. I was still had like a massive a
goal to continue the self destruction. I just had a
sabbatical for a couple of months. I walked into a
pub because you know, that's what you do midweek without
(26:34):
any goal or purpose or friends or happiness, and I
just met the locals. I was drinking cider at the
end of the bar, and I heard that there was
a job opening in a kitchen. And my mum had
had a restaurant, so I had a bit of experience
in that environment. And I was half pissed, and I
had an interview with James and I got the job,
(26:58):
and I went back down to the bar and I
fell off the stool because I was a drunk, and
everyone laughed, and that was pretty much the premise for
the environment.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
There.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
It was very seat grip with James.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
I was still on a very promiscuous high. That's not
uncommon for people with MRKH to prove their worth through
a lot of sex.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
It had nothing to do with the person.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
And I'm so sorry to every sexual partner out there
that I've had, which has been a lot, but I did.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
It was almost like a numbers game.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
The more the more I could sleep with people, the
more a woman I thought I might feel.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
At this point because you've your vagina is functioning as
a typical vagina at this point, fully made, and so
then so you can have a promiscuous and vigorous sex life,
fully functioning like any other girl in her twenties.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Yes, but I also never wanted to go back to
dilation ever again. Right, And there's different opinions about whether
your vagina will close.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
I mean, it won't ever close up.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
It's like an elastic band over time you have stretched it.
But I just had this awful feeling that if it shrinks,
then I'm going to have to go back to that
bedroom scenario and push objects back into my body. So
I thought, over my dead body, am I ever going
to do that again? So I had a lot of
sex and replacement of having to go through dilatory therapy.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
Using a penis as the dilator. Yeah, right, absolutely practical.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
I thought it was. I thought I was being pretty resourceful.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
They were dilators with a heartbeat, and it sounds awful,
But I don't think they cared about me any more
than I cared about them. That was the environment that
we were in, and it's only in the last few
years where I haven't I've been sort of on off relationships,
and I thought, oh shit.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
What am I going to do? Like, I don't want
to go back to dilation.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
I don't want to go back to being like, you know,
a promiscuous woman. I don't have the time or the
contacts to do it. But now I'm just taking sheer
faith the fact that I'll make the right choice when
I have to make the right choice. But then James will.
None of us should be of working in a pub.
You should never give responsibility or keys or to anyone
(29:21):
who's under the age of twenty five. It's a dangerous place.
Too much drugs, too much money, too many honestly, too
much exposed to alcohol. Everyone in the environment tends to
be on the run from something. There's a trauma there.
That's why hiding in pubs is so easy, because everyone's
there for a reason and they don't want to talk
about it.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
They want to escape it.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
I can't remember the first time that I saw James
showing any you know, I can't remember our relationship ever
being particularly happy, but I do remember the first time
he hit me, and I didn't think that I needed
to leave or question, And sadly, a lot of the
(30:05):
people in the pub were exposed to our volatility. They
knew of the domestic violence. Do people step forward? I
don't know if that's their responsibility, But again I normalized
it because it was punishing me. And I just remember
him and as the book line in the book says,
(30:29):
when he was talking to a bunch of locals, he
turned to me and said, is there any wonder that
I don't want to have sets with that?
Speaker 4 (30:37):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (30:37):
And I never told James about my diagnosis.
Speaker 4 (30:40):
But a friend deed, one friend that you had to
share that. We've told him.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Yes, yes, out of spite.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
She was really angry with me, and she walked up
to him and told him that, you know your girlfriend
was born without a vagina and a womb.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
You're going out with a free And.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Again, this is the sad thing about where I was
in relationships. I just I never thought I should leave,
and I and I begged him to whenever he wanted
to end a relationship, because he knew it was so dysfunctional.
I begged him to stay, and he did, and the
violence just got.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
Worse and worse.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
You ended up then setting yourself free to a certain extent,
and you ended up in Australia where you became a house.
Really for a period of time, you were in BONDI
kind of living the dream with another man called Tom.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Didn't buy tone. I didn't leave.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
I didn't go to Australia because I wanted to be
set free. I went to Australia to because I was
on the run. And my mum was born in Sydney
and she left Australia in her early twenties because she
was on the run from her past and her trauma.
And I had citizenship, so it was no problem with
(32:04):
me going. And we had this really shitty apartment in
Elizabeth Bay. And I shouldn't say that, because Elizabeth Bay
is gorgeous in Sydney if you know it, of course
it is. But I was working for this really bad
tech company. I don't know what I was doing. I
wasn't living the dream for I want to say a
(32:24):
good number of years. We ended up moving to BONDI
I'm blessed Tom because we've reconnected since the book. So
I want to be kind. I think it's always important
to protect those in your book. But there was a
certain amount of control there. I wasn't I wasn't allowed
(32:47):
to go out to the beach or in icebergs the
gorgeous pool.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Only after a few years swimmers with the swimmers, I
couldn't believe it.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
And I'm not like if I'm not very good at
being like gorgeous and glamorous.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
But I felt very at home now. I felt like
the water is God. The water is so much.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
I have no water where I live in England, and
doesn't it take a toll?
Speaker 1 (33:14):
But I had I.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Had to be home before he woke up, and I
would make sure that everything was in place for him
waking up before we went to work in the city.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
I'd have to get his clothes ready.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
I'd have to make sure that if it was winter,
I would he have to heat the clothes on the
heater so they were warm when he put them on.
And if there wasn't the bus pass in his wallets,
you know, God forbid when we got the three three three,
and that's that's the Bondi rocket, the you know the
bus that goes in and out of Bondi and he
again ended it. And this is the tragic thing. Even
(33:47):
though I knew these relationships weren't supposed to be, I
still didn't want to be alone and I didn't want
to be rejected and he did. And I was at
a junction because I thought, well, I can either go
back to the UK, where my mum is, my my
dad is my that's my motherland.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
But I felt actually.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
Home in Bondai and I thought, this is this is it,
This is the time where you've got to choose life
or repeated crap. And I found a yoga studio, which
we know they're beautifully in abundance of in Bondai and
it was this very cute you were doing bikram. Yeah,
(34:32):
I love Biram. I wanted to be a bitcroom teacher.
Actually I think everyone wanted to be a bit croom
teacher at one point. But I got really bad XMA
through the heat because I was practicing so much and
I couldn't practice anymore. I would crawl my legs to
the word red raw bit.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
But I loved it.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
I used to learn all like the twenty six postures.
I was learning the pig in English. I was saving
up to go to one of the trainings, but yeah,
that took.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Home and I was like, oh my god, my yoga
life is over.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
But then I found a really cool one very sweet
intimate studio in Bondai and oh my lord, you know
talk about talk about your cho in chapel. That really
was it. And someone said to me, Ali, be prepared.
The more you do yoga, the more your life is
going to change. And that terrified me because I don't
(35:20):
like change, despite always trying to instigate change, and that,
you know, the relationship ended. I never wanted him back.
That's the wonderful thing about a relationship ending when you
know it's right. I kind of did a bit of begging.
I think I drank a bottle of champagne and phoned
him at midday, but he didn't of course, didn't answer.
(35:42):
And I found an amazing group of friends. Amy Malloy,
who I can say edited my book, My very close
bestest of friends in Bondai, and she had and has
obviously you know, telegraphed this through her work, has gone
through her own trauma, and she took me under her wing.
(36:04):
She introduced me to these incredible women who have had
their past, who know what it's like to her grit
but want to do something really purposeful with it. We
went to yoga studios everywhere. We were drinking chai lattes everywhere,
like it was such an a magical time, and I
think my parents got it that it was my time
to find out who Ali is without, you know, and
(36:27):
also to figure out what the fuck happened with me
and my vagina story, like what trauma had it caused me? Uh,
And so I feel like I've all the places were
footing in. I developed the Sisters for Love, a market
foundation which subsequently has been rebranded to a markh Australia.
I was on you know, the Telly. I was working
(36:49):
with researchers. I was helping women. Every night, would be
phone calls, fundraising, developing programs for young people around sex
and intimacy and mental health.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
And it just flourished.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
It was so amaz us best best era of my life.
Speaker 4 (37:09):
After the break.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
Allie reveals how the yoga matt became her therapy and
takes us through her experience of IVF. It's very interesting
to me that the yoga, which is physicality, unlocked something
in you because there had been so much shame attached
(37:32):
to your physicality. Do you think that that was a
key to then this openness that you brought to the world,
are basically no longer not even not keeping a secret
but bellowing it from the rooftops.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
It was my yoga mut was my therapist. They always
say that the the the asagnas, the postures, they're sort
of incidental. The strength that you build isn't esthetic. You know,
being contortionist isn't the purpose of yoga, but great if
you get there. I was a self harmer, as I
(38:11):
mentioned before, and I don't really want to go into,
of course, how I did it.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
That's not something i'd want to sort of share out there.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
But I'm very scarred, let's say, from that and living
in Australia in a climate, physically physically scarred.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
You could look at my arms.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
And there's it's like an a board for self harm
in a yoga space or even you know, in a bikini.
I know people are looking at my arms and I
have to really try to not I don't say want
to react, but I need to feel them looking because
(38:50):
I want. I don't want to hide, and maybe that
is part of it. I didn't want to physically hide,
and I think in that yoga mat they always say
the first thing you might want to do after a
really difficult posture, or you can't breathe or your your
muscles are aching, is you want to run and it
teaches you not to run. And I remember this really
(39:11):
wonderful yoga teacher said that when you're saying, I don't
know if people know that the chair pose where you're
basically sitting on it in a visible chair, and your yeah,
your thighs, yeah, your thighs are burning. Everything feels weird,
like tuck in your ribs, bend your thing, doda feet together,
and you're like, fuck me, and I just wanted to
(39:32):
go and you just want to run out of that pose.
The body doesn't distinguish what you're doing at the time
of that particular difficulty. It doesn't know that it's doing
a yoga pose anymore than it doesn't know that it's
going through a injury on a bike, or it doesn't
know that it's not going through absolute heartbreak. The body
doesn't know what's happening outside.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
It just knows hard.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
And if you can teach yourself to go through the hard,
not necessarily through pain, but the point where you want
to go, go through that, because when you get outside
into the real world, you'll feel that pain again, you'll
feel that desire to run, and you don't because you
know you can sustain it.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
So my yoga studio.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Has seen breakups, breakdowns, meltdowns, But there is something incredibly
special that people who go to a yoga studio are
not going to get fit per se.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
It's a byproduct.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
Most people land in a yoga studio over a gym
because they're working some shit out.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
And there is nothing.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
More spiritually exciting than rubbing shoulders with people who are
going through stuff because it makes your stuff feel less stuffy.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
Yes, and you had found that with your girlfriend Amy,
And was it Drew?
Speaker 4 (40:53):
Was it in that.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
Period that you decided to explore your infertility slash fertility?
Speaker 2 (41:02):
I was dating I think how old was I? Early
thirties let's say mid thirties. Amy had the thing about
Amy and I were that despite having two very different
lives in a way married. She had her first child.
I was very single, very far away from having my
first child. We always talked about the things that some
(41:25):
friends don't want to talk about that could cause a
jealousy or a discomfort or an inequality. Let's say, Amy
and I's skill was always addressing the hard stuff like
a normal conversation and blessed Luke.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
I met Luke on a dating app in Bondis.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
Bingo Swipe Swipe, Swipes Swipe. I thought it would be easy.
When I came up a ten year relationship, I was like, Oh,
this is easy. That's an amazing man. How hard is
this going to be? Three years later, I really really
liked Luke, but of course Luke and I realized that
we probably weren't in the same relationship. But there is
a biological clock and it will time. Whether you want
(42:05):
to answer it or not. Biology will say to you
or ask you to ask the question do I want
a child?
Speaker 1 (42:13):
I had been hovering around.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
Some amazing research and doctors and surgeons for a long time.
I was very confident in that space of reproductive medicine
or family planning, but I still didn't have mine forever
after so I thought, well, I could go and get
my eggs frozen. Being in a very well paid job,
despite whether it gave me, it gave me no joy,
(42:38):
to be honest, but it did afford me bondaye and
afforded me savings because I knew that seregacy, where opting
for somebody else to carry your child, was going to
cost me a hell of a lot of money. You're
talking sort of north of fifty thousand, eighty thousand dollars.
And I did all the I started the process. We
(42:59):
actually went to IVF Australia and Amy was in the
waiting room with me, and she was pregnant, which is
a tragic irony or a beautiful irony, let's say. And
I went in and said, because you've got m r
k H, it's going to be trickier. We don't know
when your cycle is, we don't know the state of
your ovaries. They could be underdeveloped. And I thought, this
isn't going to be easy at all. And I knew
(43:21):
it wouldn't be easy, but I still was doing alone.
And I did muster up the confidence to tell Lee
go the spaghetti bolonnies one night that I was thinking
about having my eggs praising, and he said and paused,
I I think that's a really great idea for you
and your future partner.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
And then I was like, holy fu, I'm gonna have
to do this alone.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
I know, oh together.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
He stayed with him after that, and also you sent
the book that he was also sleeping with other people.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Delightful discovery delightful discovery.
Speaker 1 (43:58):
Bless him.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
I had I'd gone around a conference and I came
back and it was the night before my birthday, and
he looked really twitchy, and he said, got something to
tell you. I slept with someone else when I might
have gonorrhea, and I thought, and I think it was.
And he was nervous because he knew that we couldn't
(44:20):
have sex on my birthday. I was nervous because my
heart had just been broken. But yeah, didn't leave. He
left me. Actually, yeah he did, which is again, we
still talk. I don't have an ex out there, apart
from maybe one or two that I don't have a
conversation with now and again. And I pride myself on
that wonderful way of exiting relationships.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
Maybe I like to keep doors open, I don't know.
Speaker 4 (44:43):
But he was out the.
Speaker 2 (44:44):
Picture, and I thought, I'm still going to try to
do this egg retrieval process.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
And you know what, I just couldn't.
Speaker 2 (44:52):
I couldn't wrap my head around not having the perfect picture.
I thought, I don't want to be doing this alone.
I want the Maybe it's a bit I don't know, Disney.
Speaker 3 (45:01):
I wanted the perfect picture for you was to do
it with somebody.
Speaker 1 (45:06):
To create a family.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
I wanted that, and I think I I wanted I
think I wanted a relationship to be happy more than
I wanted a child, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
I wanted the whole dynamic.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
I don't think that my motherly instincts were as strong enough.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
To do it alone.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
And I couldn't fathom how transactional fertility was when I
was handed sort of the FPOs machine for my next
load of bloods, and it's like, this doesn't this feels
icky to me. This isn't how I wanted to play out.
And I went to the IVF clinic for my last
time and I didn't tell them it was over. But
(45:44):
I phoned my mum, who I used to phone every
day in Australia, for a good two hours and I said,
I don't know what to do, and she's like, Alie,
this isn't this is one that I can't answer for you.
And then I went home that night and I just thought,
now this isn't for me. I put all the files
in the bin. I cried profusely and that was the end.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
And I did have a big thing. I actually had
a surrogate ah lined up.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
Yes, but I said, I think your uterus and your
womb is better placed with somebody else for this gift.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
Would I wouldn't be taking it for the right reasons.
Speaker 3 (46:20):
One of your friends said something so beautiful to you
that I had to write it down. The world needs
all sorts of mothers, teachers, educators, storytellers, and healers. That's
what the world needs. And so you decided to step
further into that space.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (46:44):
She was and is an incredible doctor, but also went
to the same yoga studio as me, and she could
see the pain.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
And you know, I was heartbroken.
Speaker 2 (46:54):
I lost a baby, idea of a baby, and a
boyfriend within months of each other. And that's when I've
really started looking into the word woman and realizing that
the world does need all types of women in all
types of roles. And my role wasn't to be a
biological mother to a child. My role was to and
(47:17):
I don't want to sort of this sounds very matriarchal,
but not to the women of MRKH, but to guide
people through what you can do if you don't tick
certain boxes. And we have to have holistic versions of womanhood.
They always say, don't they you need to experience all
(47:37):
the bad stuff in life to have the good stuff
in life. And I think the work that I've done
and doing more than ever actually right now, I'm so
so passionate about what it means the dismantle the word woman,
especially in the political climate that we're in, especially in
the UK, about the ruling of what a woman is.
So if you're not necessarily a parent to a child,
(48:00):
there will be someone out there who needs mothering. There
is a book that someone needs to read, and you
could be the storyteller of that, which is another form
of we need the leaders to guide. You know, they
set after the pandemic that the women were being well.
I don't I want to use this statistic loosely, but
(48:20):
the encouragement of having women back in leadership roles with
the emotional intelligence that the world was needing after a
pandemic was so more needed than your typical version maybe prior.
And so yeah, that line is beautiful because it was.
I think I just felt a huge surrendering in acceptance.
Speaker 4 (48:44):
But your quest for love continued after that.
Speaker 3 (48:51):
Was when I was reading your book, I was like,
we got to the rom com beat where you're at
a conference and you meet doctor Gregg, and I'm like,
this is perfect.
Speaker 4 (49:02):
Here we go.
Speaker 1 (49:03):
Hello, I know the power couple of imity. Trust me.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
I ignore every red flag that was running towards me
because I thought that this has to be has to
be surely a going to cologist. Surely who helps women
have been Surely who's passionate.
Speaker 4 (49:23):
About Hell no, no.
Speaker 1 (49:27):
Difference in the world of love.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
But you learned the.
Speaker 4 (49:30):
Lesson quicker this time.
Speaker 3 (49:32):
So amongst his other red flags were like that you
didn't go to his house and you wouldn't hear from
him for months, but when you saw each other, it
was amazing and explosive and you felt in that time,
I think.
Speaker 4 (49:45):
You said, very like a woman. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:49):
He and I explored sex and ways that I've never
explored before. One he was very I guess, confident and
diverse in that way.
Speaker 3 (50:02):
Well, he was a gynecologist, so he knew everything.
Speaker 1 (50:06):
Honestly he did.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
He used to talk to him of about there's some
studies reveal, but then there's some studies that won't reveal,
or that sort of counter that that a woman can't
lubricate if she hasn't been born with a vaginal canal,
which is not true, or if you haven't got a womb,
you can't lubricate. So it was really interesting having these
very matter of fact conversations. I used to ask him
(50:31):
all sorts of vagina questions about can it do this?
You know, what's female ejaculation? How does that work? And
he's like, you know, every well, I don't know. Again
I quote him, every woman can do it if they
just get out of their heads. And so it was
these sort of conversations I was having it. It was
kind of liberating and it was glamorous, like there's a
doctor living the Byron Bay and you know, he's a
(50:54):
pioneering surgeon, and I'm attracted to that, but I'm also
attracted to people who make me work for it, and
he was someone who was not going to be easy
to win over and pretty easy then to leave. But
sexual that was a real, I don't know, turning point.
I think for me to also believe that my body
(51:17):
is desirable and I am fanciable and it can explore
pleasure and that's not bad. Pleasure isn't a guilty act
that we should feel. But then that goes back to
my vaginal dilation days, where pain was what I thought
was all it was down there. So the quest for
love always continues. Okay, that's my next book, no doubt.
Speaker 3 (51:40):
Then you go back to the UK also to be
with your mum who's suffered stroke eight years previously, and
then a recurrence of that.
Speaker 2 (51:51):
Yes, she had seizures out of nowhere. It was just random.
There was They didn't know why, much like they didn't
know why she had a stroke. Her relationship of twenty
five years was very tumultuous. And my mum has gone
through so much crap, like so much of her own
crap in her past. Her self esteem has been affected,
(52:14):
her sense of self worth, her need to apologize every
five minutes.
Speaker 1 (52:18):
This is someone who's really.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
Tried hard to feel safe in her world.
Speaker 1 (52:25):
And I remember looking at her in.
Speaker 2 (52:28):
ICU after the siegures and I thought, if you wake up,
this is when we changed your life. I've done my
fifteen years of running around Australia, I've had my glorified moments,
I've had me. I've given that time to me, and
now it's your turn. And she did, thank god, wake
(52:49):
up and made a great recovery. And then a month
later her relationship tied up and went to an end.
But as the book says, I had to choose between
keeping our house or having a baby, and I had
that money in the bank, and it was the most
soul destroying moment, knowing that I probably wouldn't have had
(53:12):
a child. I always had a little bit of hope
and choice in the bank, but we needed a home
and that was the choice I made. So goodbye as May.
Speaker 3 (53:26):
As May you write the most beautiful letter to es
May your unborn daughter.
Speaker 4 (53:34):
It was very moving. How was your mom?
Speaker 3 (53:39):
Because I always think with fertility, it's not it's you,
but it's also the generation behind you, who often have
a hunger for it, on your behalf or on their behalf.
How is your mom during that period? Selfless or selfish? Selfless?
Speaker 2 (54:01):
I have apologized to my parents for not giving them
a grandchild.
Speaker 1 (54:08):
There is no guilt with them, there is no.
Speaker 2 (54:13):
Sense of letting down or I have never been made
to feel that I've been inadequate in any way as
a child. I think they wish it for me, and
I think sometimes my brother has four children and I
don't have vulch. But also in the space of a child,
I knew that I had to create a lot of magic,
(54:34):
and I had to create a life that was really,
really exciting and really make it count. And that's what
I've done, and I've made my parents incredibly proud. And
I think that it's an absolute privilege to love someone
that much and to be loved by someone. So there's
no obligation in my life when it comes to my
parents of the people I have. But how was she
(54:58):
in that moment? Well, very sad. But we have our
house and we also have this lovely relationship that's full
circle now and she's very poorly at the moment, which
we're working through. But again, it's a privilege to have
someone that close that I love, never never atore.
Speaker 3 (55:21):
And you also found you have no trouble finding loves
by the way to hold onto it? Well, sometimes I
think the right one holds onto you. You mede a
guy called Jack once again. I'm like, Yay, she's gone
back to the UK. She's made a guy called Jack.
Speaker 4 (55:42):
What happened?
Speaker 1 (55:44):
What happened? Kate? Well, this is an interesting junction for me.
Speaker 2 (55:48):
Jack was a man that had a very unusual type
of cancer for a man. He was very funny, witty, creative.
He had just started his path on advocacy to promote, promote,
but to make his type of cancer where in the
(56:10):
UK and beyond. It was a friendship first, which I
think I've never done before, so that was weird, and
I felt very trusting with him, and we would talk
about dates that had gone wrong. And then I think
that I just saw him one day in a very
different light. I think when I met up with him
in Oxford and then I later went to stay with
(56:30):
him in the North of England, there was a chemistry
that I hadn't experienced before and I thought, this is
the type of man that I want to date, and
we did for a while. Actually, well, it's complicated because
we have spoken since the book's been released.
Speaker 1 (56:50):
Actually, as you do.
Speaker 2 (56:52):
Fact, the day of my book launch, there was a
message from Jack on my phone after quite a long
time of not being together, and it was supportive and
he read the book and he was completely taken aback
by how I described the relationship in the sense of wow,
(57:12):
it really was something special. However, however, external circumstances just
did not align to make it work.
Speaker 1 (57:23):
And it's tragic, it really is.
Speaker 2 (57:27):
I don't know whether I have a fear of the
future of being you know, alone and single and will
I meet the one? I don't think that, because you're right,
I do know how to hunt them down or be hunted.
Speaker 1 (57:38):
But I have no idea.
Speaker 2 (57:41):
And I tell you this sounds really kind of I've
never been a very in the present type of person.
I don't meditate. I mean, I love yoga, but I
can't meditate for love nor money. I've never needed just
to stay in the moment so much as I do
right now, because life has shown me that it doesn't
matter how much I try to plan for the future,
how much I plan for future feelings, it will not work.
(58:04):
And with my mum's health, with so many different sort
of cliffs, is with my future and creativity? What am
I going to do next? Is there another book in me?
I'm just going to trust that I don't need the answers.
I don't need the answers today. I just know that
I'm incredibly proud of what I've created. And just speaking
(58:26):
with you Kate today on this incredible podcast is the
testament that if I ever have a wobbly day of
am I good enough?
Speaker 1 (58:34):
Am I doing it right?
Speaker 4 (58:35):
Ah?
Speaker 2 (58:36):
I need to rewind back to this moment because it's
a wonderful reflection of achievement.
Speaker 1 (58:41):
Thank you, it really is.
Speaker 3 (58:43):
I mean, we talk to a lot of extraordinary people,
often ordinary extraordinary or extraordinary extraordinary people on no filter,
and you certainly are extraordinary. I love your tenant, which
I don't even know if it's a formal one for you.
But the truth will set you free, and you coming
(59:07):
to the truth of yourself. Sharing the truth of yourself
with others, divesting yourself of shame and guilt and sharing
the journey of your life with others is so valuable.
I respect it so much, and I thank you so
much for your courage and your advocacy and your beauty.
Speaker 1 (59:31):
Well, thank you, Kate.
Speaker 2 (59:33):
And as I always say, the only thing normal in
this world is difference. And I would really love to
make truth like the next biggest trend, because that's the
only way we're going to release the shame in our lives.
So thank you so much for these wonderful words.
Speaker 3 (59:55):
Today, Alie Hensley led us into a story that most
of us will never have heard before, a story of
what it means to live with mrkh to carry a
secret you feel you can't share, and to navigate intimacy,
self worth and survival when your body doesn't match the
(01:00:16):
script you thought it would. What strikes me most about
Allie is not just the pain that she's endured, but
the extraordinary courage it's taken to turn that pain into purpose.
By shrugging off the shroud of shame and the secrecy
that comes with it, and by speaking openly, she's helped
(01:00:38):
create community where there once was nothing but silence, and
in doing so, she's shown us all how honesty can
be both terrifying and liberating. Her story is one of
survival and resilience and hope, and it's one that will
stay with me for a very long time. Thanks for
(01:01:01):
listening to No Filter. The executive producer of No Filter
is Nama Brown, The senior producer is Breed Player. Audiopenduction
is by Jacob Brown, and video editing is by Josh Green.
This episode was recorded at Session in Progress Studios and
I am your host, Kate Langbrook. Thank you so much
(01:01:22):
for listening.
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