How the Money Orphan Hijacked. the “View”

It’s early morning, and I’m engaging, as lovingly and patiently as I’m able to, with my Money-Orphan.

Who is a Money-Orphan? A Money-Orphan is a part of me—and possibly a part of you– that relates to Money in a way that creates suffering. For you, your loved ones, and consequently for the larger human community.

As many of you know, part of the Fertile Heart ™ Ovum Practice is articulating each day what it is that is asked to be birthed through you. Although I’ve known for years, that the Money Orphan has been in charge of my finances, I couldn’t quite gather the courage to poke my head through the door of the orphanage and call her name.

Then some months ago, as I began doing the math for printing t-shirts and launching a new website dedicated solely to the peace efforts, my next birthing assignment was clearly to make some sense of my money-related beliefs. So, I took a deep breath, and said it. Outloud. I’m birthing a healthier relationship with Money. .

As the adage goes, Be careful what you wish for! Or rather in the O-V-U-M world, be careful what you set out to birth. Once the gestation begins, you don’t have much say in what the next incoming-tide-of-creation brings in.

And so a couple of weeks ago, the current pulled in a big old plastic technicolor toy to lure my Money Orphan out of hiding.

On February 24, The View devoted an entire show (I’ve been told that this is not something they ordinarily do so you know there had to be a lot at stake) to one topic: Infertility. I don’t have a TV, but clients from around the country saw the show and sent a link to the entire online episode.

And that’s how the producers of that View segment and every one of the people who participated in it became the perfect midwives for the next stage of my money-madness-birthing assignment.

If I ever wanted proof of how badly the Fertile Heart™ philosophy of becoming our own authorities, is needed in the world of reproductive health, every second of that View episode offered such proof.

In case you don’t want to invest the time to watch the show, here are a few highlights:

A celebrity couple, the 35 year old Guiliana Rancic and her husband Bill, reporting mournfully that the chief problem with their failed medical treatments was – her age. Not that I blame her. It’s what she’s been told by the powers that be. Though I’d love to give her names and numbers of the many over-thirty-five new moms with healthy babies. Better yet, I’d love to sit down with her for a few minutes and see if we can conceive of a more interesting answer for her difficulties.

And another couple, unofficially representing a national advocacy group, telling us how lucky they were that their insurance covered their first three failed IVF treatments. The wife shared that she has been struggling with endometriosis since young adulthood.

I’m all for insurance. I really am. Still, looking at the beautiful young woman and her husband I couldn’t help but wonder what might’ve happened if IVF was not so readily available to them. I hope that now that she ran out of insurance coverage, she will turn to less costly, more compassionate approaches to healing her endometriosis and getting pregnant.

The show also offered an expert’s advice. This expert happened to be one who was recently a Guest on a Fertile Heart Phone Circle, an expert who has known about the Fertile Heart™ work and the multitude of treatment options other than IVF, for many many years. Yet he focused mostly on reminding the viewers (and one of the hosts) about age-related statistics. At some point he turned to one of the hosts: “If you conceived with IVF once, you will most likely need IVF again.” I would’ve loved to have walked into the studio and handed this expert a recent email from a client:

“I can’t believe that after having had eight years of treatment to conceive my first, I’m normal. I’m like everybody else, I could conceive naturally.”

Toward the end of the show, the View offered a success story. We were treated to a lovely large photograph of a child, as we listened to his self-deprecating dad bemoane his substandard sperm. “I tried vitamins and herbs to improve the quality,”he said, “but it didn’t work.” Vitamins and herbs. Well, what else could he have done but moved right into IVF after that fully holistic attempt to heal himself? .

Since the vitamins and herbs didn’t work, the wife endured several years of treatment to conceive the smiling little boy.

Was he conceived with ICSI, I wondered. If so, were his parents counseled by someone like Dr. Sherman Silber, a urologist, quoted in Liza Mundy’s Everything Conceivable, “If the problematic sperm is the one that fertilizes the egg, a boy born as a result will have a chromosomal problem with all his sperm, and will thus be infertile.”

My hope is that the dad is inspired to seek a more creative path toward repairing his sperm-related ailments. And I trust that the sweet little boy in that photograph will not have to suffer any consequences of his dad’s treatment.

But wouldn’t it be great if couples such as this one, would be encouraged to engage in a more meaningful exploration of treeatment options before moving on to a procedure with such potentially risky side effects?

So how is this View episode such a gift for my own birthing process?

No matter how badly I wish to fight it, the truth is that at this stage of our evolution, the human psyche carries a deep imprint of a Money Orphan that says: Money equals Value. The more you pay the more valuable the service must be.

I’ve observed it for years with clients who, although they tell me how much the Fertile Heart™ tools make sense to them, will spend thousands of dollars on repeated failed medical treatment, before committing a tiny fraction of that cost to coming to a workshop or ongoing classes, or even buying a book or CD.

If it costs $15, 000, it’s got to be more effective than the ideas in a CD that cost $18.

This is not a conscious choice. It’s not something most of us have control over unless we begin to compassionately observe it in ourselves; observe how our credit card receipts mirror our beliefs.

So, now that I declared my desire to bring forth a Visionary rooted relationship with finances, I see how most of my life the Julia who has been making expense-related decisions was without a doubt a motherless child

I watch that child agonize over registration fees, and see how she is still the awkward, frightened kindergartner who brought shiny calendar-cards to school, hoping to bribe her way into friendship, into feeling more acceptable. She is also a child raised in a society that viewed money as an instrument of evil. A child of parents who lived in lack as a way of paying for being alive.

That child believes that if she is generous and self-sacrificing enough, someone powerful and grown up will speak up on her behalf. She believes she can make other people care about, what she perceives to be injustice.

Now that I understand all that a little more deeply, I can begin to clear up her confusion. I can show her that there is no fertile money, no tainted money, and no clean money. At this stage of the evolution of our species, money is simply the currency of exchange. And an imperfect currency of power.

Sadly, in the human society, it is right now certainly the Orphan that’s the Chief Financial Officer. In the world of Reproductive Health we’re selling out big time. Whether consciously or not so consciously, the experts of the field must know how much potential harm they’re causing. Very very few of them speak about it. After all, what will happen to their investments in all that state of the art technology, if we discover that we can get pregnant on our own?

Surely it was the Orphan that produced that View episode.

As for me, if I don’t begin to offer my work in a way that –reflects my own respect for this beautiful birthing practice, there is little hope that this healing modality will reach the many people who might find it useful.

Another sobering realization is that I can’t buy anyone’s passion for the causes I care about with money or discounted fees.

But I can continue to pass on what I’m learning about the wondrous adventure of following through on our longings; of discovering what is at the root of our desires. If we can support each other in that exploration, somewhere along the line we might discover that the causes we humans care about most, are the same.

Well, what do you know? 7:25PM. Just as I get ready to dot my I’s and cross my T’s on this post, an email arrives. I don’t recognize the name, but the timing of it surely feels like a nod from the Ultimate Mom: .

“I would like to donate some money to your cause. I am a success story and feel that this work is so important in empowering women to take their power back when it comes to their fertility.

Please let me know where and whom to make the check out to.

Thank you

Jamie Carr

I have since contacted Jamie, and she responded with another note worth sharing: ,

Hi Julia:

I don’t mind at all if you use my name. I would be honored. I will put my story to paper soon and send it along to you. Because I am renewing a beautiful and magical practice that I haven’t practiced for a very long time, I will be tithing monthly to your organization for a while. I have been pondering who to tithe to for about a month and then inspiration hit! Universe spoke and I took action.

Thanks again and blessings to you and your beautiful work.

Jamie

I am about to hire a helper to design our new website focused on the OVUM approach to peace related activism and healthcare reform. Jamie’s contribution will go to a special account assigned solely for the new website expenses. Thank you, Jamie!

How about you? Who’s in charge of your finances? Is it the O, the V, or the UM? Could birthing a healthier relationship with Money and Power be helpful for your journey toward parenthood?

The Wild n’ Sexy Scenic Road to Baby Making

Did you know that foreplay can up your chances of getting pregnant? Of course you do. We all know that procreation was designed to be synonymous with supreme delight. What then do you do, when it ends up feeling like a sure road to failure, in spite of your secret stash of sex manuals.

Now, there is foreplay and there is foreplay. I want to talk about the Fertile Heart™ Ovum Way to juicing up your baby making. Nope, it’s not a visit to Victoria’s Secret, which is not to say that daring to be outrageous in the lingerie department can’t spice up production time.

You know the old adage about the key sex organ being your brain? I say the bedroom is the Kingdom of her Majesty the Heart, and until you surrender to her laws, all your orgasmic prowess might ultimately leave you feeling empty.

Great sex is about deep intimacy, not technique. I’m going to get real up close and personal here, but when it comes to revealing the shady secrets of my inner and outer life, I’ve pretty much reached the point of no return, so I might as well keep going.

A few years ago, searching for a gift in a local giftshop, I absentmindedly glanced at a colorful cover of a postcard-size booklet on a nearby shelf, picked it up and opened it to an image of a man and a woman looking as though they were really enjoying themselves. Hmm, I thought and turned the page. Another image, another intriguing constellation of limbs. In case you hadn’t guessed I was leafing through a “Reader’s Digest” version of the Karma Sutra, the ancient Indian instruction book of sexual behaviour. Leafing through the pages I came to a surprising conclusion: Ed and I could easily do some consulting for the next edition. I mean I knew we had fun. But I had no idea we were in the Karma Sutra Zone.

And we sure didn’t get there by going on a Sexual Freedom Technique Retreat.
Our comfort with each other’s bodies didn’t grow out of an instruction manual but through a perpetually deepening trust between us. Our hearts led the way and our bodies spontaneously followed.

These days, I have to remind myself that Ed was once the strong silent type. Not that I ever doubted that our marriage was built on solid ground, but Ed was not particularly demonstrative, and in the first moths of marriage, I used to beg him to fight with me.

“ I know you’re angry, I can see it, feel it, so c’mon, what’s going on?” I’d say.

It was tough for him to ask for what he wanted, nor was it always easy for me to let my guard down. And do you know what finally broke the dam of pride and fear between us? You guessed. It was our baby-making trek that gave me the courage to introduce Ed to some of my neediest, scariest, and to me, least lovable Orphans. And…he didn’t run away. Rather, he too, painful as I knew this must’ve been for him, revealed the hiding places of his own terrified toddlers.

The orphanages in both our hearts, as in any human heart, are pretty crowded. Ed grew up with a father who sufferred for years from a life threatening blood disease and died soon after Ed’s thirteenth birthday. His childhood was a battle field that left countless scars. Healing them together is one of the sexiest things we’ve ever done.

So, the foreplay I’m talking about can begin for you anytime. Even right now. And it starts something like this:

Sit with your spine straight, follow your breath for a few seconds then breathe out slowly through your mouth.

Just be with whatever is there for you right now, and invite an image of the dad to be. If you have a man who fits that description, great. If you don’t that’s just fine too. Invite an image of one. A face, an arm, a smile, the color of his windbreaker. Now close your eyes and invite an image of yourself asking him for what you want right now. See yourself going all the way. I mean all the way. If the woman in the image is screaming, give her full permission to do so. If she knocks over furniture and throws dishes at her beloved, let her.
Breathe out once.
Don’t worry about hurting him or humiliating yourself because you’re in imaginal reality.
Breathe out once.
Now ask yourself, who was doing the asking in this image. The Orphan, the Visionary, or the Ultimate Mama?
Then breathe out and open your eyes.

Orphans are not sexy, they know nothing about creating intimacy. But if you can find a safe way to bring those frightened parts of you out of hiding, you can convert every tantrum throwing Bedroom Orphan into an adoring Visionary Lover.

Your homework, if you want to play with us, is to do the above imagery exercise for a week and let’s talk about it in our next Birth Your Next Creation Phone Circle.

And here is one more piece of homework. Watch The Family Stone. with the man you love. It’s a fabulous movie but you’re going to be paying attention and replaying several times what, to me, is one of the sexiest moments in any movie. It’s a brief bedroom scene in which Diane Keaton confides her fears to her husband. I don’t want to give away anything else in case you haven’t seen the movie. Watch it again even if you did see it, it’s a movie with lots of great lessons on sexuality and intimacy.

Now for extra credit in this Erotic Baby Making class, in case you ever have left-over rage to release, here is a song that my daughter, Adi, turned me unto which you could blast out until the Orphans have had their fill. It’s the Facebook Song by Kate Miller Heidke. Love it. This is a live performance version of the song.

Is any of this easy? Wasn’t for me. That’s what community is about. Supporting each other in doing what’s not easy but ultimately thrilling. As the poet Mary Oliver so poignantly put it: There are a thousand paths through the world that are easier than loving. But who wants easier?

So if you’re looking for more support in the couplehood arena, our Couples’ Phone Circle is back by popular demand, this time as a series of three evening session. I will limit the number of couples, so if you’re interested, it’s best to register early. The series starts in March. Hope you and the father or mother of your child will join us for the Fertile Couplehood Series: The Wild n’ Sexy Scenic Road of Baby-Making.

I have always loved the story of the woman who had a passionate love affair with her next door married neighbor and gave birth to a biological child at sixty two. If a little passion turned a sixty-two-year-old grandmother into a hot babe think of what it can do for you.

What do the tragic events in Haiti have to do with our fertility? What do they mirror and how do we receive the healing they offer?

A few years ago, Ellen (not her real name) a woman in her early forties, came to the workshop in Woodstock. In her introductory email she told me she was a veteran of 11 failed IVF cycles.

What she wanted from me was approval of her plan to continue on the IVF road. She hoped I would reassure her that the imagery exercises and the work we did during the seven hours that Sunday, would turn things around for her next treatment.

I couldn’t do that. I would’ve been lying.

What I did tell her, was that as I saw it, continuing with treatment would be a mistake, that she needed to stop, breathe and begin to heal every aspect of her Holy Human Loaf. I said that if she couldn’t give up the idea of IVF entirely, at least she should take a three-month break.

That’s not what Ellen wanted to hear. She had a new doctor, and a brand new protocol. Something she hadn’t tried yet. Time was running out and she needed to keep moving. I never heard from her again.

If Ellen could’ve just for a moment glimpsed a view of herself through the eyes of the UM, she might’ve seen a frightened, motherless child. She might’ve seen a powerless, battered woman, whose decisions were forced upon her by panic. She might’ve seen all the ways that she had harmed herself and had allowed others to harm her. And such images might’ve moved her to reconsider her next move.

No, I’m not blaming Ellen. In many aspects of my life I’m as scared as she is to look into the Mirror of Truth. I’m hoping that remembering her story can continue to teach me something. Perhaps it could be useful for some of you.

And what about Haiti? The vast outpouring of aid speaks well of our ability to be there for one another in times of crisis. But a fundamental change of the Haitian story will take a much greater commitment than signing a check through our favorite charity. As Mark Danner, the author of Stripping Bare the Body: Politics, Violence, War writes in a recent brilliant New York Times op-ed piece: “…Act of nature that it was, the earthquake last week was able to kill so many because of the corruption and weakness of the Haitian state, a state built for predation and plunder. Recovery can come only with vital, even heroic, outside help; but such help will do little to restore Haiti unless it addresses…the man-made causes that lie beneath the Haitian malady.”

We are co-authors of the book of our lives. Not authors. Co-authors. But unless we are willing to read and re-read the chapters we have written so far and learn from them, we will continue to write the same story over and over again.

We can’t undo the pain of 11 failed IVF cycles, nor can we change the reality of the Haitian horror. But we can turn the losses of our lives into a source of healing. If we can resist the lure of collective denial, and gather the courage to tell the truth, our past suffering can even become the seed of our greatness.

The Ultimate Mama knows the high road to the child. She also knows how to reach out to the people of Haiti in a way that would initiate a fundamental shift in the course of that country’s history.

How then do we take her hand and follow her lead?

Perhaps we can begin by retracing our collective steps; by giving some thought to what it is within human nature that keeps us from hearing our own bodies’ call for help; what is it that we all do, that has made a tragedy of the Haitian magnitude possible?

Maybe we cling to the Ultimate Mom by attempting to see the world through her eyes, by “receiving” all that life places within our field of vision as an invitation to be a little braver as we face our own private battles.

I spent my week-long vacation in Sevilla, one of the most architecturally stunning cities in the world. Also vastly polluted, with its gracious, hospitable inhabitants saturating the air with car exhaust fumes and tobacco smoke, getting high on sugar, chowing down on industrially produced meat and deep-fried and mercilessly processed foods. We’ve got  work to do!

Mostly I spent the week listening to my daughter’s stories. I couldn’t get enough of them and she seemed to have an inexhaustible supply. She told me about building adobe igloos and other constructions by using earth, sand, fibers and recycled tires, and about a scientist living in the southern Negev, Dr. Elaine Solway and her Experimental Orchard  where she grows among other exotic trees, the marula tree. Legend has it marula is a delicious fertility enhancing fruit for men and women, with four times the vitamin C of an orange,  many antioxidant properties and high protein content.  

I listened to the story of a generous Bedouin woman, who picked herbs from her garden, gifted Ellena with a bottle of “All-Ills-Defying-Remedy” and carefully wrapped spices. I heard about Mike Kaplin, one of Ellena’s teachers at the Center for Creative Ecology on Kibbutz Lotan  who gets up at four in the morning and works into the night but also picks up his children at the bus stop, and somehow manages to spend quality time with his family.  I was particularly grateful to hear how Leah Sigmond, the Eco Center Academic and Educational Director, who teaches gardening at Lotan, became the surrogate mom to the group of American students who were part of the program. She listened and consoled and baked cookies, when the challenges of poverty and violence Ellena and her friends witnessed on a field trip to Jerusalem, seemed too tough to handle.

And of course all of my daughter’s stories were about increasing our individual and the earth’s fertility in the truest, deepest sense. About learning to live joyfully and abundantly without exploiting someone else and damaging the exceedingly more precious resources of our common earthly home. The stories she shared with me were all about learning to distinguish between the needs of the Orphan and the needs of the Visionary. who knows that if we really love ourselves and our children, we don’t have a minute to waste on analysis, discussions, or wait for institutionally sanctioned changes of behavior. That we must begin to act and do all we can right now.

One of the required readings for Ellena’s program was a fascinating book by Graham Bell, The Permaculture Way.   I loved Bell’s no nonsense  simplicity, loved learning  from him and the other teachers I”ve been introduced to in the book.  The concept of Permaculture, developed by Australian ecologist, Bill Mollison, is a way of thinking, a culture and philosophy that is essentially a radically holistic attitude toward every aspect of our lives. So for example when we are about to buy an item, we don’t just think of its immediate usage, but consider whether its production has polluted the drinking water, or the air. We consider whether the packaging can be re-used or will it create more landfill.

Listen to this: “Permaculture,” says Graham Bell, “doesn’t mean abandoning technology. It means that every time you choose to use technology you do so because you really want to, and because it’s the best way to accomplish the task.” Or this: “A second falsehood…is the concept of experts…Experts are expensive people who have some highly specialized skill which is usually couched in jargonistic language…all too often experts are simply protecting their own territory. They do not use their skills to enable others.” Sounds familiar?

Many of the ideas in Permaculture about the importance of community, of collaboration, of doing our own thinking and choosing, of behaving responsibly, echo the Fertile Heart™ principles our community has been striving to implement in the last decade and a half. So the book also feels like a huge nod of encouragement to all of us. I highly recommend that you include The Permaculture Way in your personal library.

Looks as though it’s time to raise the bar again. Ellena and Graham Bells are challenging me to walk my talk with greater resolve. To live these principles more fully. To observe where I’m wasteful and where I can cut back. One of Ellena’s projects in the program has been to turn our home and our property here in Woodstock into a much less wasteful, much more luscious space.

But I’m not waiting for that to begin making changes. Here are a couple of tiny steps I’m  commiting to right now: No more off season-organic- blueberries for me. Or raspberries. I want to pay much closer attention to the amount of driving I do, and reach out to people in the community about car pooling. How about this? Here is one of the eminently doable adjustments Graham Bell suggest about appropriate water usage: “Why use four gallons of water to flush away half a pint of pee…?” Hmm.  Not much of a sacrifice in making that change.   I don’t think I’m quite ready to entirely give up  taking my “mini-vacation-bath, but I could certainly use the bath water more creatively than simply letting it flow down the drain. Now why didn’t I think of that before?

Perhaps before the next Birth Your Next Creation Phone Circle, each of us could observe a little more carefully where we can cut down on waste in our daily routines, and make a commitment to take one small conscious step toward a more ecologically kind community. I bet our born and not-yet-born children would approve of our efforts. What do you think?

New Year’s Day. A day like any other but we endow it with the power to make us begin again. As if the day itself could do it. Give us the strength to behave differently than we have ever behaved before. The old New Year’s resolution trick that we’re dead sure will work this time. The truth is every moment of every day can be a beginning. And we’ve got the power to make it so.

That’s what’s so hope-filled about longing for a child, that’s what’s so hope-filled about allowing ourselves to want something–anything–badly enough to actually change our behavior. And by doing so, to change the course of our lives. No need to wait for New Year’s Day to infuse us with strength to begin again.

And yet, New Year’s Day is a fine time to take stock: What is it that I want badly enough now, to change my behavior? What is most important to me? How do I raise the bar, become a little clearer about my priorities and how do I reflect that, in my behavior? How do I care a little less about what other people will think or do in response to my actions and stay true to what matters most to me?

I will continue to ask these questions in the next couple of weeks as I take a much needed break from email and work and meet my older daughter Ellena in Spain. . She is on a gap year, has just completed a Living Routes Study Abroad Program called Peace, Justice and the Environment on Kibbutz Lotan in Israel., and is on her way to join an organic-farm-community in Southern Spain. I’ll be spending a week with her before she begins work on the farm.

I haven’t been out of the country in years, except for a couple of trips to Canada, am not much of a traveler, but the prospect of hanging out with Ellena made me book the flight–even overcome the seemingly insurmountable obstacle of a long expired passport–without a heartbeat of hesitation.

So, I’m off! Hope to be back for our first Rebel with a Cause Phone circle on the 11th. That is definitely something I’m clear about: Raising the bar on the level of activism we engage in together. It matters to me. It’s important. It’s time. I’ve always loved this quote by Hillel, an ancient Jewish scholar and sage: If I’m not for myself, who will be for me? If I’m only for myself, who am I? And if not now, when?

How about you? What new beginning do you embark on this New Year’s Day? How will you be “for yourself” a little more than you were yesterday? And what is it that’s ripe for action for you?

The December 6th workshop was, as most workshops in the last few years, fully booked, with a list of names on the waiting list. A few days after the workshop I received several moving emails. One of them came from an aspiring dad.

Hi Julia,

It’s R.D. from last Sunday’s workshop. I just wanted to say how grateful I am that you hold these workshops and that you do the work you do. We both feel like we got so much out of being there and participating on Sunday — we’ve definitely begun to change our holy human loaves for the better! I don’t have much else to say but “thank you” for doing what you do. I understand that it’s a livelihood for you, but it’s also one that helps out a great number of people in need, so I both commend and thank you for it! You offer something that no one else does!

We’ll let you know when the baby comes, and then we’ll REALLY be thanking you…R.D.

Dads rarely write to me, and this note is particularly poignant, since it touches on a most timely subject.

One of the assignments I’ve given myself is to birth the part of me that has the courage to claim the full value of my work, and the value of the service Fertile Heart™ has been providing for close to a decade and a half.

And as it happens with the Ovum practice , when you apply the tools to a particular project, you begin to be more receptive to guidance. This time the guidance arrived from the Dad whose note I shared, and from the end- of-year-appeals from two national fertility advocacy groups.

Both advocacy groups asked for monetary donations, listed their accomplishments and proclaimed to be the only unbiased source of information for parents with fertility related challenges.

Unbiased, was the word that caught my attention. Unbiased advocacy is, of course, an oxymoron. We humans are by nature biased. We are shaped by our experiences; our vote is deeply rooted in our history, our likes and dislikes, and in the case of advocacy groups it is greatly influenced by the hand that signs the largest check.

Several years ago an article in one of the Canadian newspapers talked about the ethical issues that arise when advocacy groups are sponsored by pharmaceutical companies and medical institutions. This is something that is begging for attention in the arena of reproductive health.

In the case of fertility and advocacy, we have a veritable little mafia operating here in America, with long-standing members of the board of directors of some advocacy groups. making a very, very good living from clinic referrals. Doctors and clinics linked to advocacy groups enjoy the courtesy of reciprocal referrals. Changing the status quo would not serve either group.

Where, then, does patient empowerment fit into this scenario?

In 1997 after, I completed the manuscript of Inconceivable I sent it to Dr. X, a healthcare provider who was on the board of directors of one of the largest advocacy organizations. I was hoping for an endorsement. She called me a few days later and said how much she loved the book. She sounded genuinely excited:

“What a great job you did. You showed quite masterfully how much a person can affect their treatment outcome.”

I was delighted. “Thank you,” I said, “I’d love to quote you, if you don’t mind? “

“I’m sorry”, she replied, “your story doesn’t reflect enough the importance of mainstream medicine, and people need mainstream medicine. But I wish you the best of luck with the book.”

Dr. X didn’t endorse my book all those years ago, not because she was worried about patients needing mainstream medicine, but because she was worried about her position on the board. She was worried about referrals from doctors drying up if she publicly endorsed a holistically minded book.

When the book finally came out, I naively proposed to teach workshops for the same group. But after a few workshops the powers-that-be began to dictate what I could or could not say.

A few years later, I received a call from a lovely woman who was on the board of one of the local chapters of another national advocacy association. She told me how much she and her friends loved Inconceivable, and invited me to give a keynote address at their annual conference. They apologetically withdrew the invitation a week later. The other board members were worried that my talk about the link between nutritional deficiencies, and emotional conflicts and fertility would minimize the importance of mainstream treatment. As it happens,ten years later Harvard researchers came out with The Fertility Diet, an embarrassingly poor rendition of a book on food and fertility. (I reviewed in on Amazon)

The competition is fierce. As Dr. Debora L. Spar, a former professor at Harvard Business School, notes in her book, The Baby Business: (Harvard Business School Press, 2006) “.. much of the fertility industry is increasingly marked by significant economies of scale, meaning that firms or clinics must serve a large number of clients simply to cover the cost.”

Active involvement with a national advocacy group is an effective way to insure a steady stream of income.

To be sure there are compassionate, brilliant doctors and healers out there who fret over their patients’ miscarriages and rejoice with each milestone of a long awaited pregnancy. I’m also quite certain that there are many decent, well intentioned women and men who work for advocacy associations. I had the pleasure of meeting caring doctors and caring volunteers.

But the source of funding creates an intrinsically corrupt, can’t-bite-the-hand-that-feeds-you climate, and advocacy may ultimately do more to serve the sponsors of such groups than the people they claim to represent.

According to Dr. Spar, the high cost of assisted reproduction is the evidence of the supplier’s power to raise prices and the buyer’s willingness to pay.

In an op-ed piece on January 25, 2007, commenting on the State of the Union ceremony, the New York Times columnist, Bob Herbert writes: “The candidates for the most part are listening to their handlers and .fat-cat contributors, which is the antithesis of democracy. It’s not easy for ordinary men and women to be heard…but it can be done.”

It can only be done if ordinary men and women begin to do their own thinking and then follow through with action.

The only thing that will create a change in the growing Infertility Industrial Complex is a more honest public debate. The only thing that will move us the direction of reducing our dependence on technology, thus reducing the demand for the goods of this industry is grassroots, genuinely empowerment–focused education.

If you review our history and track record, you will find that every single action we have taken here at Fertile Heart has been aligned with that intention. We are entirely self-funded. Up until now, every penny of the profits from our workshops, educational events, my books and CD’s, and my private counseling has been invested into building the Fertile Heart studio and our online presence.

So, you see, R.D., teaching a workshop is a true labor of love and passion for me, not yet a livelihood. Though the opportunity to pass on what I continue learning, has given me riches beyond my wildest imagination. Born into an environment of insufferable injustice and corruption, the grip of state authority so tight, we could barely breathe, I grew up with a sense of utter powerlessness. My fertility challenge has taught me something I haven’t been able to fully grasp through twenty years of new age workshops: I am not powerless, I am in fact as powerful as my dedication to a cause greater than my personal gain. And of course I also derive huge satisfaction and fulfillment from connecting so intimately with people like you. Women and men who choose to engage with me and my work because something in my books or CD’s strikes a chord. Fertile Heart™ now provides support for women and couples all over the world, Australia and Italy, Germany and the Far East.

An equally wondrous reward is that I now have the opportunity to finally use the gifts I’ve been blessed with more creatively than I had ever used them before.

Sure we could use additional funds. But we pay our taxes, so even if I wanted to, I couldn’t ask you for a tax deductible end-of-year donation.

What we need more than money is to know that there are people out there who hear us and see us, and will say thank you not just through effusive thank you notes in their birth announcements but through engaging actively in letting others know that we exist, and helping us birth one fearless and fiercely independent community of aspiring-parent-activists.

So that we can not only continue doing what we do but do it better; make it easier for you to find your way; offer you guidance that will hasten the arrival of your child with the least amount of suffering.

We hope to add to our resources a referral service driven by those of you who have good things to say about your doctors and acupuncturists, naturopaths, and yoga teachers. (We welcome your input as we begin to build that list). It will not be a referral list you can buy into, because such lists are misleading. I know, I and many of my clients have been misled by them.

With more active involvement from you, we hope to add a support circle for new moms, educational events with little known brilliant teachers, doctors, naturopaths, herbalist, holistic pediatricians and reproductive endocrinologists who respect and encourage their patients. I know they’re out there. A few weeks ago, a reader from Germany wrote that she was referred to my books by her Harvard trained endocrinologist. Several doctors have already participated in past Guest Teacher Circles. (We are in the process of creating an archive of transcripts from those events)

Many holistic practitioners around the world tell me that their clients came to them because they were inspired by the stories I shared in Inconceivable. They say the book made a significant contribution to popularizing holistic treatment options for reproductive challenges.

Now it’s time to raise the bar a little higher. We can do this.

I’m hoping you’ll join me on January 4th, when we’ll inaugurate our first Rebels with a Cause Phone Circle of Volunteers. We’ll have fun and I bet our children born and not-yet-born will be rooting for us. I can’t imagine that they wouldn’t want to see us replace a couple of hundred of clinics with biodynamic farmland. Or perhaps with a few acres of wind-turbines. We could still keep a handful of good clinics and doctors in case we really need them, but otherwise let’s invest our dwindling resources in more environmentally friendly endeavors.

I know some of you would rather I just posted recipes for hormone balancing cocktails, and talked about the most fertility enhancing yoga poses. We can do that too. There is certainly plenty of that information in my books and our site, and all over the World Wide Web. And I promise to keep returning to those subjects with creativity and gusto in the months to come.

Right now, if you’re looking to draw support and strength for your journey, there is nothing more energizing than knowing that you are doing your best in fulfilling the task you have been assigned. As I see it, those of us who are traveling the scenic road to parenthood are being asked to increase the total sum of truth, and justice in this vitally important arena.

May this be a season in which the voices that guide us become a little easier to hear, and the miracles that surround us at all times become a little more visible.

Julia and the Fertile Heart Team

A 49 year old woman gave birth last month to a baby conceived with her own egg, at the New Hope Fertility Center, a Park Avenue clinic founded by Dr. John Zhang. She becomes the oldest first-time-in-vitro-mom on record. Undeniably, this is a cause for celebration for the happy parents, for the world of reproductive technology, and for the millions of women in their forties who long to experience pregnancy and motherhood.

Dr. Zhang’s “less is more” approach to hormone stimulants, the idea of retrieving one or two eggs in a cycle, rather than blasting the ovaries to hike up egg production to thirty times the number a woman’s body was designed to release – is clearly a step in the right direction But before you rush to reserve your place in line at New Hope, or shelve all your eggs in a freezer of the closest clinic, consider another reading of this story.

To me, this pregnancy has proved what many of us have witnessed: Yes, even in our late forties some of us still have healthy strong viable eggs. And yes, we can take action that might bolster these survivors in their valiant effort to morph into healthy babies.

The majority of pregnancies in women in their forties and even a handful over-forty–five pregnancies that I’ve seen in my practice as a fertility educator in the last decade and a half – began in the privacy of bedrooms. I myself conceived the old-fashioned way and gave birth to a feisty little girl six months short of my 45th birthday.

On the wall of our studio in Woodstock hangs a collage of cards, pictures and birth announcements from former workshop attendants and people I’ve worked with privately. Some of those babies were conceived with the help of IVF. And their moms and dads did all they could to give those babies the healthiest, strongest physical, emotional, spiritual foundation for their human journeys

IVF is a tool that helps or harms depending on how we use it.

When it comes to New Hope, and the promise of a biological pregnancy for women over forty-five, Dr. Zhang tells us his clinic treats 60 to 80 women over 45 each year. Five to eight of them give birth. What about the remaining 72 women who go home to an empty nursery?

What is left out of the celebratory rhetoric of this latest medical miracle, is the level of desperation that draws forty-five-plus wannabe-moms into a staggering series of invasive tests, egg retrievals, and changing treatment protocols — in spite of the known and not-yet-known health risks and scrimpy chances of success. Might they be better off investing their emotional energy and funds in less self-punishing attempts to beat the odds?

What is far too often omitted from public fertility debates are the widely known side-effects such as — cysts, hot flashes, disruption of menstrual cycles following extended use of birth control, and an increased risk of ovarian cancer — with patients undergoing repeated cycles of Clomiphene Citrate. Clomid is a commonly prescribed drug at New Hope and clinics worldwide. The FDA requires manufacturers to include warnings about prolonged use, yet such guidelines are routinely ignored. As one of my clients put it, “After 11 cycles, my doctor said, he’ll keep going until I tell him to stop.”

If technology is the route you choose to take – my hope is that you do so by listening closely to the impulses and promptings of your inner fertility-authority. It might serve you as well as it served the young woman who insisted that her doctor perform an intra-uterine-insemination in the cycle between retrievals. Or the woman who refused the protocol of birth control pills and asked her doctor to stop quoting statistics during embryo transfer. Or you might be as fortunate as the couple who after a consultation at one of the top clinics and after being told they could never conceive without technology, chose to raise the bar of love-making-gusto and gave birth two weeks before the wife’s 46ths birthday.

To paraphrase Wendell Berry, one of the sanest voices of our time: What makes us human is not the “human genius” but the intelligence of the heart. It’s an intelligence that created our holy-human-loaves as infinitely mysterious organisms. It’s an intelligence that remains invisible to those who choose not to see it. For those of us who seek it, it becomes the one force that makes a fully human experience bearable, even thrilling. It is without a doubt a force to heed when it comes to making babies.

Several weeks ago I received a generous thank you note from Dr. Deborah Kern, a nutritionist based in Texas. Dr. Kern and I are part of a community of health practitioners and she was thanking me for clearing up some conflicting information on soy products. Dr Kern’s note made me realize just how contentious a subject soy is even among experts in the field. So I thought it might be useful to offer a quick summary of what I have come to in the last 15 years of observing my own, as well as my clients’ response to soy.

Over eighty percent of the women I’ve worked as a reproductive health educator, wrestle with various levels of digestive difficulties. A large percentage battles impaired thyroid function.

The good news that as we begin to view food-related adjustments not as restrictions but a source of power, dietary changes become easy. A baby is the one shiny apple, most of us will do just about anything, to reach.

During the pre-conception cleansing phase — fresh, live, high-water-content, easily digestible, combinations of foods (see recipe section of The Fertile Female) , a close attention to individual nutritional needs and a supplementation with specific high potency, absorbable formulations — is where we begin.

My article Sorting through Supplements posted on www.fertileheart.com, documents some of my research on the link between supplementation and fertility

As far as soy, my clients do best with fermented soy products such as tempeh, tamari, miso, nato.

The protease inhibitors in unfermented soy foods — soy milk, tofu, processed soy cheeses — inhibit the key enzymes that help us digest protein and can cause bloating, intestinal disorders, impaired pancreatic function. Fermentation adds beneficial microorganisms that help break down complex proteins into highly digestible amino acids, and fatty acids.

Women with high FSH, and low estrogen levels, generally most women over 35, do well with incorporating fermented soy in their food plan. (The exception are women wrestling with fibroids and endometriosis who tend to be estrogen dominant and need to avoid soy products in general.)

Fermentation also deactivates the soy’s mineral depleting phytates, and other antinutrients. Otherwise the impaired mineral absorption – of calcium for example – especially for women with depleted ovarian reserve can be a serious concern.

Women with thyroid related issues have done well with a moderate amount of fermented soy, combined with iodine rich foods such as seeweed. (See Hijik Joy Salad recipe and other fermented soy recipes in The Fertile Female)

Of course, no food adjustments or supplements will “get to where the trouble is” unless our entire Holy Human Loaf cooperates with the reparative process. Which is why I passionately encourage using the Ovum tools and food to reveal the hiding places of our Orphans, learn to love them through the choices we make, and call on our Visionary and the Ultimate Mom to plan the menu of the day. When we do that the perfect “fertility diet” unfolds for us one bite at a time.

Last night in our food-centered phone circle we decided to make one Visionary-rooted change that involves food. I am letting go of the Organic Nectar Pistachio Gelato I’ve been attached to lately. It’s great stuff, non-dairy, agave sweetened and there is really nothing wrong with a treat, but just as an experiment, I want to see what comes up for me as I let go of it for a while.

I look forward to reading about the choices you made, and Aida’s eggplant-chip recipe. And…I’d love to hear
about your Thanksgiving family adventures.

Happy Holiday to All!

On this, my birthday week, I promised to post a short blog on strengthening our connection with the Ultimate Mom within us.

One of the many ways to do that is to clasp the hand of those who came before us, the wise women and men who have danced the human dance and left instructions to make the journeys of their descendants a little easier. (I talk about this at length in Celestial Gravity, one of the final chapters of The Fertile Female)

As we agreed on Monday, this entry is meant to serve as an invitation to reclaim the treasures of the tradition you were born into by sharing a lullaby. To do it as a promise to the child to come and a soothing of the Orphan within who might feel alone and abandoned.

To paraphrase the mystical poet Kabir, the Ultimate Mom (he calls her the Guest) is as close as your next breath, her shoulder is against yours. “The truth is you turned away yourself, and decided to go into the dark alone.”

The good news is that we can “turn back” anytime we wish.

To me, that’s what our not-yet-born-children are asking us to do: Be the link between those who came before us and those who will carry the treasures of our ancestral line into the next generation.

So, let the words and melodies of your lullabies roll in: (Thank you for your patience with regard to the imagery we worked on. For now please work with the exercise as you remember it from the circle. )

Julia

How we perceive ourselves, the stories we construct around the challenges life places in our path, the ideas we perpetuate and the words we use – they don’t just shape our experience. They are carved into our cells and determine the consistency of our Holy Human Loaves, they disrupt our ever fluctuating hormone levels. (more on this on pg. 45 of The Fertile Female.)

So as I read the latest mind-body study on “stress (my favorite useless term) and fertility” and read the designer of the study speak of “infertile patients,” and see countless advocacy and medical sites proclaim the institutionally sanctioned definition of “infertility” — the inability to conceive after a year of trying — (the year gets reduced to 6 months if you are over 35,and…5 minutes. if you’re over forty), I’m compelled to pass on a definition of my own.

For me, fertility is about conception, and gestation and birth, and conception and gestation and birth and on and on. It’s about being receptive to the seed of the next creation hurling toward you, opening up as wide and juiced up as you dare to be, whether by tear or thrill, but moist to the moment: the gaze of a stranger, the heart stopping headline of injustice and betrayal, the swift shadow of malice as it shoots across the countenance of a friend.

To let all of that be your compass.

If you have never stepped into the darkened chambers of your own heart, when you keep placing one fickle foot over the threshold then keep drawing back as if from a hot stove, how will you ever know which life is yours to live?

It’s all here. The writing’s on the wall. Right in front of our eyes. All we need to do is look up Breathe it in. Let it find its way and land on the floor of the soul. Just once.

If we keep dodging the day’s directions carved into the dust, for us the treasure hunt will never cease. We’perish from thirst and never taste the sweetness of the living stream dripping through the fingers of our cupped hands.

Fertility is about receiving. The willingness to be delivered. The will to make good on a promise we once made. To live and love as only mortals can. To tremble in terror and do it anyway.

It’s about choosing a road, and letting it unfold before us, not because someone tells us it’s the right road to take, but because every cell in our body says no other road will do.

Fertility is about asking ourself over and over again: what is it that’s calling to be birthed through me? If Life is not delivering the baby on my timeline, what is it I’m asked to bring forth right now? How do I clear the runway to make it easier for the child to land?.

Fertility is about standing up for something.

Exposing an injustice, and feeling so energized by doing so, we want to do it again. It’s about discovering as we speak up for others, that we have never truly spoken up for ourselves.
So we begin.

We resolve to do one act of self-loving kindness, one tiny experiment in feeding ourselves in a way that makes us feel taken care of.

Or maybe we get up the courage for one small unprecedented expression of intimacy with our partner or friend.

And no one will have to prove to us that this has made us more alive, because we’ll be tingling with excitement. The current of the life-force moving through us will be – beyond any doubt – a palpable, felt, lived experience.

That to me might be a good start toward understanding fertility.

The Mirror of Truth imagery is from my upcoming CD. Many of my clients have used it successfully as an antidote to the subtle but powerful subliminal messages released into the air and our consciousness by the “infertility industry.”

Julia Indichova, www.FertileHeart.com All Rights Reserved