*What Does My Unborn Child Ask of Me?* This was one of the questions we worked with in a recent phone circle. It was lovely to hear the first caller articulate her truthful answer: I don’t know.
As a community of parents and parents to be and as members of the human family this is the most timely question for us to contemplate. For me, it is the central question at e very juncture of the pilgrimage toward the child, as well as the pilgrimage we call human life: I talk about this at some length in The Not Yet Born, one of the final chapters of The Fertile Female.
Many of us continue to travel the wondrous and at times rocky road toward parenthood. Perhaps before we get to our particular destinations the best way to encourage our fertility is to keep asking ourselves what is the next most immediate creation, next healing, calling to be birthed through us. What are we called to attend to at this moment? Who are the Orphans tugging at our sleeves? Is there a Visionary standing alongside the road trying to flag us down? Offering an alternate route? Perhaps a road with a lot less suffering ?
For me, the one overarching plea of the unborn is to arrive into a more child-friendly home. So that whatever it is we might think they’re asking for, needs to be placed in the context of co-creating a cleaner, safer, more peaceful world. We need to keep clarifying to ourselves and through every relationship we’re in, what exactly is the nature of the human gig. Starting Sunday, November 23rd at 9:00PM EST , I’ll be alternating our regular baby-focused phone circles with “Birth Your Next Creation” phone circles. This is something I had intended to do for a while and now it just doesn’t make any sense for me to keep leading groups about bringing more children into the world unless we start actively speaking up on their behalf.
I look forward to connecting with you in one of our upcoming events.
Julia Indichova
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In the past year, I've come to understand the meaning of the oft-quoted Bob Dylan lines, "He not busy being born is busy dying," more fully than ever before. Each new undertaking was, without a doubt, nothing less than a birth. Not only a birth of a new website, video, or workshop, but mainly, a birth of another not-yet-born aspect of my own nature. Asking for help, for example, is not something I've been very good at in the past. So learning how to --lean on other people and reach out as an adult -- rather than a cranky, demanding child, has been a birthing process.
Truth be told, none of these recent "babies" were uneventful pregnancies. And without the tools of what I've come to call the Fertile HeartTM Ovum Process and all the amazing midwives of the extended Fertile HeartTM family, I don't think I would've been able to stay on task.
As some of you know, The Fertility Diet (McGraw Hill, 2007) ), the new Harvard book that has gotten a great deal of publicity, has galvanized me toward action. It is both my inner Orphans and my Visionary that have become so engaged in speaking up about the book. The Orphans were the parts of me that felt invisible and invalidated by the "powers that be." Voices of authority that pretty much dismissed all non-institutionally sanctioned research on the link between food and fertility as "scattershot approaches based on wishful thinking..." As opposed to their " recommendations based on evidence from one of the most comprehensive long-term studies ever conducted."
Then what we really got was sloppy science, a book full of misleading conclusions. And the fact that the Harvard name was connected with the book stopped members of media, readers, as well as professionals in the field from questioning it's conclusions.
I first posted my review of the book on Amazon on December 12, 2007, questioning several of its recommendations. I pointed out among other things Dr. Chavarro's assurance that they "."didn't see any effects on fertility at moderate levels of caffeine intake, which is the equivalent of three to four cups of coffee a day." On Monday, January 21, 2008, a study in the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology linking caffeine and miscarriages validated my concerns.
Then, of course, it was not just the Orphans in me that wanted to be heard. The Visionary needed to speak up, since this is not just a question of a right or wrong diet, The teachings of The Feritlity Diet story can provide another invaluable lesson on the central piece of the Fertile Heart TM practice. The importance of becoming our own authorities. We can read studies, and books and learn from a variety of sources but then we must hold it all up against our own findings, against the truth dictated by our bodies, our common sense and the intelligence of the heart. (In case you've ever been tempted to abdicate your decision making to outside experts without doing your own thinking, this book should provide a perfect cure. (If you do take the time to read the review, and if you find it useful, could you please click on the appropriate button under the review? Amazon Review )
Perhaps the most exciting of all my new ventures this past year is a scary but totally sane, peace project idea, The 9/11- Bowing Project.. http://www.fertileheart.com/projects_911.php) Briefly, I made a commitment to bow in a public place on the 11th day of each month at 8:46AM, the time that the first hijacked passenger jet, American Airlines Flight 11 out of Boston, Massachusetts, crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center, setting it on fire. In the coming months I hope to visit several schools and organizations that expressed interest in exploring the ideas behind the project.
It just doesn't make any sense to me to speak about bringing more babies into the world without doing all we can to makes this common home of ours a little more child-friendly.
For my last birthday, a friend gave me a book of essays by a beloved teacher, the brilliant political activist, Susan Sontag. The book jacket shows these lines from Ms. Sontag's private journal:
Do something
Do something
Do something
That continues to be my wish for the coming year, for myself, my family, and the extended human family. That we all find the strength to hasten the co-creation of a safer, saner world through doing something.
I'm hoping that this blog can be yet another forum for a dialogue that encourages the birthing process for each of us. I'd love to hear what it is that you are burning to bring forth. If you are on the road to meet your child half-way, what is the next "you' that needs to push through the birth canal in order to fully engage in co-creation of the life you had once intended to live?
And for those of you who have already completed your family circles, what is it that draws you toward action? Is there anything that makes you want to speak up, be heard, do something?
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How is the Fertile Heart Imagery different from other visualization techniques?
Fertile Heart TM Imagery is a very specific way of working with images, quite different from the popular "visualization' techniques, many of which are focused on relaxation.
The Fertile Heart Imaginal medicine is about using images to identify the inner obstacles that contribute to our difficulties. It's an effective way to change our inner reality, to recognize destructive behaviour and self-defeating beliefs that so many of us live with without realizing it. For example, there is an exercise I call The Room of Fear, which helps people access hidden fears of pregnancy, or parenting. One of my clients who was adopted at birth, found that she had a lot of unresolved painful feelings about her own birth. As she allowed herself to move through those feelings and started changing her inner reality she conceived naturally after five years of unsuccessful medical treatment.
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