Pakistan, April 17 -- There are mornings when I wake up and the first thing, I feel is an absence. Not pain, not sadness exactly, but a hollow awareness of something that once was and no longer is a part of me, removed not by choice in the way one might choose a haircut or a change of lifestyle, but by medical necessity, by the uncompromising language of a body that had its own plans. A complete hysterectomy, performed before I had ever truly made peace with the idea, rearranged everything, my body, my sense of self, my relationship with womanhood, and my understanding of what it means to grieve something that was taken before you even realized how tightly you were holding it.

When the doctor first sat across from me and used the word "h...