Losing My Belly Button

Peter Cameron-Inglis, August 29th, 2022.

Last night I listened to some very courageous people speak about their lived experiences with Substance Use in the wake of the overdose epidemic. I am in awe and inspired by them putting themselves out there and allowing themselves to be vulnerable. Here’s my humble reciprocation:

I lost my belly button when I was in my late thirties.

Surgery after surgery the scars ran up and down my torso like train tracks destined for places unknown. The surgeon came to speak with me before my next journey, with him as the train conductor, on the way to Repaired Junction. “Peter, it’s getting very difficult to cut through all the scar tissue. We need to do something different.” Colostomies, ileostomies, urostomies, and resection after resection - my health and life had continued to go off the rails.

On this occasion Dr. Baughan, Dr. James Baughan (pronounced like the 007 character but without the “D”), said, “We’re going to cut straight through the center this time and I’m afraid you’re going to lose your belly button”.

“Is that a problem?” I asked. “I mean, is that something I need to be worried about?” With all the confidence and swagger of Sean Connery he replied, “Not at all. It’ll be neat and tidy and one less scar for you to contend with,” referring to the belly button being considered everyone’s very first scar.

Before that, I can’t recall ever really ‘contemplating my navel’. I didn’t think it was ‘a big deal’. ‘Sort of cool,’ I thought at the time. I could tell everyone ‘I don’t have a belly button because I’m a marvel of science - custom manufactured in a lab. They broke the mold, so I’m the only one, one-of-a-kind!’

I didn’t realize that being without a belly button would have such a profound psychological impact on me. I was fine with it at first, but gradually I began to feel a sense of loss. Like I had taken something for granted until it was too late. I felt disconnected.

I thought about my lost belly button. I became a little obsessed over it. What meaning may it have had to me, without really being conscious of it? It was a connection – to life, to where I came from. It was a reminder that I was the result of two people coming together who, at one time, loved each other. It was symbolic of new life being born out of a painful experience. It rooted me to place, time, the earth, love… meaning.

It was my first connection to another human being, the woman who gave birth to me. I was already becoming further and further estranged from my mother before the loss of my belly button, but the irony of losing my original physical connection to her, in parallel to the distance growing between us, was not lost on me.

I wasn’t extremely overweight, probably because Crohn’s Disease makes it hard to keep weight on. Before its removal my navel was an “innie”. I thought it made my tummy look like a puffy doughnut, especially when I had inflammation and a distended abdomen from my affliction. When my umbilicus was gone my mid-section looked more like a loaf of baked bread, complete with the scoring on the surface to stop the bread from cracking when it rapidly expands after first being placed in the oven.

I became very emotional over my loss, and I felt ridiculous being so upset over such an inconsequential thing. I remember, when it was time for my next surgery, apologizing to Dr. Baughan for appearing so ungrateful after he had saved my life so many times. Little did I know that when I would wake from this surgery Dr. Baughan, Dr. James Baughan, would surprise me with a brand-new belly button – a brand new center point. A skillful twist of skin with some creative knots and surgical sutures gave me back my health – physically, mentally, and emotionally. I was reconnected! Recentered!

It isn’t perfect. It’s lopsided and off-center. It’s up against the side of my tummy that has a mesh reinforced hernia from a previous surgery. Beside the ostomy scars, where my stoma usually connects to a bag – it’s NOT the stuff that graces the front covers of Sports Illustrated Magazine. But, I like my new navel. I have a new-found appreciation for the gift of my belly button. A gift that I now recall being given to me, outside of my birth experience, not once but twice. Once on my tummy by a skilled and compassionate surgeon and once on my soul by a caring and compassionate community of indigenous people that helped to raise me.

The Nlaka’pamux people of the Shulus Indian Band in Lower Nicola, British Columbia left a belly button on my soul. They say ‘it takes a village to raise a child’, and my childhood was no different. My parents emigrated to Canada when I was two years old leaving everything they knew - their families and community were left behind. It was just the three of us.

As a child I was surrounded by aunties and uncles that were not related to me by blood, but who loved and cared for me all the same. They fed my mouth with good food and my soul with spiritual things - stories, ceremony, laughter, teachings. They taught me to look at the world differently, although I didn’t realize it at the time. I learned to look to my Mother Earth. To see and hear the wind, the water, the trees, the plants, and the animals. This was the world to which I belonged. Their nurturing gave me roots and a sense of belonging that left its mark – a belly button on my soul. It testifies to a deep connection, full of wonder, and meaning, and purpose. A gift that was given with no expectation.

My friend Shannon has a beautiful and inspiring connection with her grandfather – an umbilical across time and place, to the spirit world, by which her grandfather speaks to her. To see and hear her talk about her connection to her grandfather fills my heart. They speak to each other. I never met either of my grandfathers, but I now find myself thinking about how I can be a good one. I don’t know much about mine, but I have my first grandchild entering this world in the next few months and I want to leave her or him with a deeper connection full of wonder and meaning and purpose like the Nlaka’pamux people, and more recently my friend Shannon, have done for me.

I am so grateful to have found my belly buttons.

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I want to thank the beautiful soul with whom I share my life, Tania. She is the biggest love that fills my heart and the rock that keeps me standing. She helps me to persevere. I also want to thank Shannon Louttit, Matthew Jensen, and Jeff Elliott whose friendship and encouragement have given me courage. If everyone in the world had friends like these, we’d all be living in heaven.