Note: This is not a story about holistic versus allopathic medicine. It’s a story about how far we venture into the warzones of our own bodies and hearts when facing a fertility challenge. It’s about who we become and what we speak up for as a result of our own experience. It’s about how we prepare for the conception, gestation, labor and birth of incoming generations. The stakes are higher than most of us dare to acknowledge. Resistance to conventional wisdom of half-truths is mandatory.
The Risk of a Single Star
Poignant Memoir: Read It but Don’t Let It Get You Down. That was the original headline when I first posted my review of—The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine, and Motherhood by Belle Boggs—on Amazon.
It would’ve been so much easier for me to click on the five star rating after writing that headline, and join the accolades for the lyrical passages, the exhaustive research, the engaging observations, in a book, which aside from being a memoir, also claimed to be “a brilliant exploration of natural, medical, psychological, and political facets of fertility.”
Had I done so, clicked on five stars, instead of one, I could have saved myself from becoming a target of—attacks on my character, vitriolic comments from members of the author’s family, the book’s publicist, and a host of other people closely linked to Ms. Boggs or her publisher.
But here is what’s stunning about risking that one star.
If you were to read any of those comments after my Amazon post through a lens of someone who’s been around the “baby-business” block a few times, you might recognize a slice of the ‘cultural history of infertility” missing from The Art of Waiting. And now that I’ve had some time to catch my breath, I’m able to look back at the last several weeks of this “war” and see it as a collaboration.
An unintended collaboration.
Unintended, yet eminently useful. Whether or not anyone will ever see it that way, is irrelevant. For me, those disparaging responses were more affirming than anything else I could’ve orchestrated to illustrate the key misleading messages of The Art of Waiting. Misleading messages that have far-reaching consequences.
My detractors–especially the people who have been patients in the baby making world–have shown me how urgently we must challenge the– yes! lyrical, yes! masterfully crafted, but ultimately superficial— medical, psychological, and political attitudes reinforced by Ms. Boggs’ narrative.
How I Became the Enemy
A few weeks ago, I got a Google Alert which read,“ Review: The Art of Waiting: What to Expect When You’re Still Not Expecting. Belle Boggs tells a personal tale of infertility with a wide scope…”
I clicked on the review and in the third paragraph read: “I thought quite a lot about what normal is as I was reading “The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine, and Motherhood,” Belle Boggs’s thoughtful meditation on childlessness, childbearing, and — for some — the stretch of liminal agony in between. Her book is a corrective and a tonic, a primer and a dispeller of myths. It is likely to become a go-to guide for the many couples who discover that having children is not the no-assembly-required experience they were expecting. They will come away enlightened, reassured and comforted by her debunker mentality in between.”
The rest of the article brought up pretty much the same points I’ve been reading in books about infertility for years. The “one in eight” statistics, the accompanying shame, the isolation, the horror stories, the profiteering and outrageous costs not covered by insurance.
Was this, I wondered, another book to raise the waves of panic that wash over us when we’re faced with a diagnosis? Another book about how awful this “disease” is, and how our time is running out? One more book perpetuating the lie at the center of the “unbiased advocacy;” the politically correct grassroots movements for the greater good, which happen to be sustained by donations from IVF clinics?
Encouragement from a Facebook Fan
I posted a link, along with my gut response to the NYT review on the Fertile Heart Facebook page. Sure enough, a bit later, a woman replied after reading the piece: “Heartbreaking but exactly where my husband & I have been for years…loss after loss…no rainbow baby…just sadness & wishing for what may never come true!”
This was precisely what I’ve dedicated the last two decades of my life to debunk. This was what I feared would happen when my clients, the people I care about, were to read this universally acclaimed, “brilliant exploration of the natural, medical, psychological and political facets of fertility.”
Yes, I wanted to read the book and see what it really said. I wanted to read it and if need be, speak up about it before the fifteen minutes of spotlight were over and no one gave a damn.
The Golden Notebook, our independent bookseller here in Woodstock had already sold the one copy shipped to the store. I then realized that as an industry insider, I could get a copy from the publisher. Chatting briefly with the woman in the PR department, I mentioned that I was teaching a group the following Tuesday and then a workshop and wanted to tell people about the book. The young woman offered to both send me a PDF and to overnight me a copy.
Eight “Infertile Women in a Basement”
“No need to overnight it.”I replied. “It’s better for the earth if you send it regular mail. The PDF is sufficient.” (This conversation became the lynchpin for the ambush that followed my post)
I suppose I could’ve also said, that what I have read so far about it in the New York Times didn’t feel particularly enlightening, and if this was a tale about how broken we are, I want to make sure the woman looking for a “corrective and a tonic ” knows “agony” isn’t the only way to live her way to motherhood.
I opened the PDF and began reading the first beautifully crafted essay about the return of the thirteen year cicadas and the reproductive lives of captive lowland gorillas.
But when the author reported the dialogue in the support group she attended for the first three years of her journey, which convened in the basement of a hospital, something about the tone of that conversation sounded all too familiar. “Test tube baby, says a young ER doctor who has given herself five at home inseminations and is thinking of moving on to IVF…She has driven seventy miles to talk to seven other women about the stress and isolation of infertility.”
I fled one of those groups after my own diagnoses. I walked out and never returned. My faith in my own power to defy the certainty of studies that proclaimed me irreversible infertile, was much too fragile. And part of me sensed that had I stayed, I may not have had the fortitude to keep walking in the direction of a child that everyone agreed was not conceivable.
The Bias of Our Stories
As I moved through each of the essays in The Art of Waiting, it was clear that the accolades describing—the poignant stories, the likeable narrator, the exhaustive research—were well deserved.
What was also clear is that the author’s research and consequent conclusions were—as with all of us humans—shaped by Ms Boggs’ conscious and unconscious bias. Her own story.
The story that exploits women’s fears of childlessness so convincingly, that even someone as brilliant and well intentioned as Belle Boggs has bought into that tale without much resistance.
It’s a story in which the body’s refusal to deliver a child on our time table is not a protective response to repair an imbalance but a sign of brokenness and betrayal. (Pg. 18 I can remember wiping away spots of blood a few months after stopping the Pill….I wasn’t pregnant; the spotting was actually a symptom of my infertility, masked for so many cycles by birth control.”) How is that? How exactly did we leap from spotting to infertility? Would examining the effect of long term birth control use be a good start for decoding the message of that symptom? Any other ways to wake up a sluggish ovary, than telling ourselves we’re infertile?
Why would a woman who in her own words is among the “most well informed, privileged, and powerful on the planet,”* so readily submit to the supremacy of statistics when weighing her chances of getting pregnant. In a piece titled, The Whole House, she writes: “At 36, I was already past the age when fertility precipitously declines.”
Then in turn, why would the same patient/scholar (with a family history of serious illness) offhandedly dismiss the research documenting the potential ill-effects of routinely used gonadotropins; why would she disparage anything linked to patients’ power to participate in their own healing. (Pg 72) “Rational, loving friends and family told me all kinds of unhelpful things: that a child I conceived through IVF would be more likely to have autism; that IVF would give me cancer; that I would be better off with acupuncture, herbs, or drinking more whole milk”
Whole milk might not be the answer, but a more whole-person view of impaired reproductive function can certainly affect the—need for and success of—treatment and protect both mother and child from harm. IVF and every other form of ART are fine choices, choices which as Boggs points out, expand childbearing options to single moms, members of the LGBTQ community or anyone else who opts for medical technology.
But Boggs’ doctor’s reductive view of her symptoms, which she seems to unquestioningly accept, may draw readers toward a similarly limiting view of their circumstances.
In such a limiting view, the imprint of injustices real and perceived, such as a childhood spent in and out of doctor’s offices with a severely asthmatic sibling, has no bearing when assessing the obstacles to conception. “I can remember when they allergy-tested him, his skinny, pale back pricked and marked dozens of times, and how I coveted the marks (if not the pricks).”
To Hide or Not to Hide
I’ve written critical reviews before and received thank you notes for doing so. I thought, If only one person were to find my take on this book useful, that’s a good enough reason to write it.
My options were to say nothing on Amazon, and to simply write a post for my blog. Preaching to the choir is safe but it’s not an effective agent of change.
I could also post a review anonymously on Amazon. Not an option. Who would give credence to an anonymous review that challenged the views endorsed by every major publication?
I could use my Amazon Customer Username, Julia – FertileHeart or my name. In either case, both my name and my username have earned a certain degree of recognition in the twenty years I’ve been writing, researching and teaching about fertility.
The username would do, I decided.
Surprisingly, after all the publicity, no one seemed to have cared enough to post a comment. Well, I did. And I wasn’t’ going to cultivate the art of waiting for the right review so that mine wouldn’t offend anyone.
Wanting to honor the quality of the writing, the author’s dedication to the subject, but also to point out what to me were essentially superficial—psychological and political messages –I gave it a one star rating, with that “unreasonable” headline, Poignant Memoir: Read It but Don’t Let It Get You Down.
The Ambush
And all hell broke loose.
How could any “reasonable” person give a one star review to a book she deemed to be “beautifully written?” asked a woman I recognized as one of the author’s relatives.
“Why don’t you reveal who you really are, Julia Indichova?” wrote Richard A., Ms. Boggs spouse.
The fact that I posted my picture along with my review and a highly recognizable username didn’t seem to be enough. All I was doing according to Mr.A. was competing for Amazon ratings, because according to this gentleman, my ratings plummeted after his wife’s book was published. The fact that Mr.A linked the fate of our two books was flattering. I hadn’t checked the ratings of either of my books in years, and I doubt that there was any connection.
The publicist who identified himself as Amazon Customer, and also didn’t reveal his full name* actually posted a five star review, titled:
A Note on a One Star Review of Julia – Fertile Heart.
The sole purpose of the publicist’s action was to describe my “deceptive behavior, ordering the review copy under false pretenses.” As if I needed any reason at all to request such a copy.
There were others. The tone of each attack was patronizing, accusatory. It was fine for me to “turn my passion into profit” by selling “The Fertile Heart OVUM CD’s, but competing on this forum didn’t “look” good.
What I said in my review “had no value” because “aren’t there enough studies” showing how precipitously our fertility declines in our late twenties? Isn’t there enough proof that IVF is far more effective than acupuncture and visualizations alone.
How presumptuous of me to suggest that there was any other way to look at Boggs’ “luteal phase defect,’ when, after all, they did try everything else. All other “alternatives, such as Letrozole and IUI’s and acupuncture” during the five years prior to IVF. (It wasn’t long after I began teaching that I discovered that “luteal phase defect,” Boggs’ diagnosis is one of the most common labels stamped in the woman’s chart when the doctor is clueless as to why she’s not getting pregnant.)
If there was anyone who validated the usefulness of my review, it was a woman who identified herself as Jaime:
Jaime chose this paragraph from my review as a centerpiece of her assault:
“In the ‘Imaginary Children’ essay, imagination for Boggs is not in the service of the possible, but, as in Albee’s play, results in a self-punishing, cruel denial of reality. As I see it, people who long for a child are in relationship with an image. As painful as that relationship may be, it can also be a source of guidance, an aid in clarification of their desire to parent a child, a tool that can lead to profound insights. Such breakthroughs affect the entire human organism – and hormonal system – leading to conception and full term pregnancy.”
After letting me know how poorly my actions reflected on my character, Jaime continued. “I read Inconceivable…I am all for meditations and positive thinking, and staying healthy through diet and exercise and supplements, but let’s be real – if it weren’t for Clomid and progesterone and IUI, my son would not be here. An “image of a child” leading to ‘profound insights’ sounds nice, but that also sounds a lot like blaming the individual. What happens to those men and women who never have a biological child? Were their insights not profound enough? Did they just not get that breakthrough?”
What’s It All About
What Jaime didn’t see, is how much her words validated my choice to do exactly what I did. To attempt to dispel the myths of the holistic mind-body approach to fertility amounting to not much more than “diet, supplements, and ambiguous positive thinking” which could hardly compete with the hard-core proven cure of fertility drugs.
What would Jaime say to the stories of Maria, and Louise and Anna and Katherine who used images and the ideas of the Fertile Heart philosophy to bolster their inner fertility authority, change the course of their treatment and the course of their lives.
How would Jaime and Belle and the jeering crowd respond to the stories of Denise and Daryn who entered our studio bearing the label of bereft “infertile women” only to learn they were fertile enough to give birth to three healthy children without the help of medical interventi.
Or what would they say to the gorgeous moms who shared their egg donation stories, bowing to the miracle of modern medicine but not before fully claiming their role in shaping their treatment protocols.
What Jaime and Belle and the readers of The Art of Waiting might miss, is that this journey and the work we’re called to do, has nothing to do with positive thinking, or supplements, or about voting for acupuncture instead of IVF. It’s also not about having a biological child, or adopting or choosing egg donation.
What matters, is that we seize the singular opportunity that comes when our child doesn’t show up when summoned.
The stakes are far too high at this moment in history to give into bullies at the playground.
A few other ideas I have found worth challenging:
Free Training or a Glaring Conflict of Interests
It would’ve been enlivening to read in this book a far more critical view of RESOLVE, The National Infertility Association. Instead, we hear Barbara Collura, RESOLVE’s CEO, lamenting that “Resolve’s budget of $1.2 million a year, allows her to spend no more than about twenty cents on each of the 7.3 million Americans who struggle with infertility.” To hear the author publicly raise the questions so many industry insiders around the world have raised in private conversations for years.
Questions such as: can a charity that relies on donations from IVF clinics and big pharma be an unbiased advocate for the patient’s care? Is an organization that rates the fertility friendliness of cities— not by how clean the air and water supply,but by the number of fertility clinics—be serving public health? Is infertility really a disease best addressed by the big guns of IVF, or a symptom of myriad underlying causes that might respond to far less costly, less invasive intervention?
Who would dare to seek answers to such questions when Resolve frames its mission as a do-gooder fighting for “access to treatment of a devastating disease for wounded veterans?”
Without a doubt veterans and people who build their families through adoption and anyone else in need of assisted reproduction should have access to treatment. As long as they don’t choose invasive procedures to sidestep symptoms of physical and emotional depletion and rob themselves of the opportunity that comes with every health crisis. With so many of the women I’ve met, insurance coverage for—lab tests that measure level of nutrients a fertility specialist isn’t trained to assess, or insurance coverage for counseling addressing emotional issues that can hinder pregnancy—might have made IVF unnecessary.
In the essay titled Paying for It, we learn that “RESOLVE provides training to volunteers who want to start free, peer-led support groups; there are now more than two hundred groups in forty-six states, plus the District of Columbia….” Later in the same essay, we are introduced to Candace.T. an African American woman/volunteer who traveled from Los Angeles to D.C. for her first RESOLVE Advocacy Day. Ms. T. is in the middle of an IVF cycle—her ninth. “I was pissed off,” she says, when asked about her trying journey. “I wanted to vent at people. But anger is such an easy emotion to have.” We learn that for Candace and her husband, their search for an egg donor was complicated by race.
Is that the only reason Candace is pissed off? What about those eight failed IVF cycles? What about the study that showed that the ART cycles for women of color, even donor cycles, have a much lower success rate than for Caucasian women?
What about all the women of color I have met who bought into the “infertility as disease” story and went through as many as 12 failed IVF cycles, ingesting truckloads of stimulants and never conceived. A scenario that has considerably increased their risk of ovarian cancer. Who is going to march for them? Who will train the volunteers of Resolve to be pissed off at the hand that supplies that basement meeting room, the coffee and cake, and the banners for their trip to Washington? Which member of the Board of Directors of either infertility charity will dare to tell the real story?
A Blinding Bias
As much as scattered throughout the narratives we receive intimations of resistance to the “doctor” who tells us “he will get us pregnant,” ultimately he, the doctor and his support team become Ms. Boggs’ saviors. When during her visit to the lab, the bosa nova playing embryologist exclaims ’ “ I create life.” I wondered, what her playlist looked like when the embryos didn’t make it to blastocyst. Did she hold herself accountable for all the failed cycles, or only for the live births?
“It took me longer to feel this way, but now I am empowered by ART…” writes Boggs and then later in “Paying for It:”I pay quarterly to keep my frozen embryos on ice and sometimes have nightmares that I’ve missed a payment or that they were accidentally thawed. Maybe Richard and I won’t choose to have a second child, but I’m grateful that we don’t have to make that decision immediately, that I can focus on my career and family while we figure it out. If our frozen embryos are part of a techno-utopia,I believe it is an empowering one. I’m lucky, and so are Facebook’s and Apple’s salaried, noncontract employees, who in addition to egg freezing receive fourteen to twenty-two weeks of paid maternity leave.”
Technology can be a useful tool, but it does not, as Boggs asserts, empower us, unless we use it in an empowering manner.
Perhaps the most revealing of Boggs’ blinding loyalty to the repro-technopoly is her attitude toward egg freezing. Commenting on the critical media coverage the 2014 announcement by Facebook and Google to cover the cost of egg freezing and storage for their employees, she writes: “These critics worried that women might fear choosing their own ‘natural’ time to have a child, at least until they reached a certain career threshold, and argued that both companies would better serve women and families by providing for work-lifebalance.”
This is how the author responds to such concerns: “While it’s easy to see how corporations benefit if some of their best workers delay childbearing, and while work-life balance is a crucial goal, it feels presumptuous to worry about these women, who are among the most well informed, privileged, and powerful on the planet.”
What? I wanted to call out across the great divide. Belle, you mean after five years of witnessing the irrational, self-punishing choices made by well informed, powerful women when they’re infected by the collective hysteria of the last good egg, you think this is what we should encourage young healthy women to do? Subject themselves to invasive procedure that offer no guarantee whatsoever that their frozen eggs will yield a child?
Is that the world you want your daughter to inherit? A world of landfills of syringes, and storage tanks filled with test tubes and liquid nitrogen? You, someone who is moved by the sight of “pink and orange sunsets and the cool white sand of beaches?”
Tragically The Art of Waiting shows us the lifetime value of an IVF patient who sleepwalks into the arms of a false friend. A friend, who, to paraphrase the late cultural critic, Neil Postman, “asks for trust and obedience because his gifts are truly bountiful. But of course, there is a dark side to such a friend, the gifts are not without a heavy cost.”
Unless more patients and doctors risk voicing unwelcome truths, the earth-community has yet to see the immense environmental impact and healthcare costs of the rising number of the egg freezing boom, and politically correct marches that provide a steady stream of “patients for profit” to the baby making industrial complex. A dubious legacy for Belle Boggs’ baby girl, my daughters and the not-yet-born generations of children we so fervently long to bring into the world.
Here is a link to the Amazon review.
I was stunned and pissed by the response to your review. I thought it was complimentary to the author and had a fair critique of the book’s limitations. I would like to read it, mostly to provide my own perspective, but to be honest, just reading the snippets makes my fear orphan freak out.
Reading the responses, I couldn’t help but think of all of these orphans having tantrums about not having uniformly five star reviews. I rated your review highly because it is very helpful to people looking for something different or in addition to medical “solutions” to infertility.
As I’ve said on the last few calls, this work has made a huge difference in my life. I feel full of life and know that my life is and will be a good one with and without a baby. I think I need to know that – even if I have a baby/child, that is something that I need to understand deep down and not put on the condition that my child does this or my child grow up to be this or the parents of other children like me. I have spent so much of my life saying when this happens, I will be happy, I will be complete, I will belong. I had to know that a child would not fill that anymore than a career or a partner or buying things. I am still working on this, but have definitely come a long way.
I recently had a very big challenge in my marriage. We are still working through it. But I think the OVUM and Fertile Heart and the work I have done helped me face this without overwhelming fear and negativity, as I would have done in the past. That is something that IVF will never give me. So Bravo, brave and strong Julia. We are with you!
Love,
Suzanne
Julia – I hope you will always be brave to say scary things. Without your words that challenged me, I would have never challenged my self or the doctors that were always so willing to give up on me. When I started Fertile Heart, it was all because I wanted a baby. What I realized in the process, for me, the Fertile Heart work was not about giving birth to a baby but giving birth to a more open version of myself.
Only until I really got to know what was in my heart was there room for my baby to come into it. Your words are always so kind and warm and they were always what I needed to hear.
I am sorry you have to experience the words of those who are so scared to look into themselves. It feels like all of those negative voices are finding comfort in the authority of others instead of listening to the authority in themselves. I will always be grateful for you helping me to learn to listen to the authority of my heart.
Oh dearest Julia. Your review was thoughtful, compassionate, honest. The blast you received after was shocking and hurtful. Clearly lots of their orphans yelling at you. It is far easier to allow those orphans to bully you for your response than it is to hear them, and take that opportunity to figure out how to help them heal. Although my journey began in the world of high FSH, premature ovarian failure, IUIs, IVF, egg donation, each step of that journey put me further and further away from my child. The first words I read in Inconceivable were the first in my journey that made my heart believe and heal. I couldn’t read the book fast enough and couldn’t wait to begin Fertile Female. When I stepped across your threshold the first time I was as broken as I’ve ever been, my hope and faith in myself pushed so far down I didn’t even know it was still there. Your gentle teaching and encouragement to hear my own voice is the only reason I found my strength and courage to say, I need a break to heal me so that I don’t continue in life with bitterness and resentment. I need to soothe and encourage me. You gave me the courage to believe in myself while hearing, listening and soothing my inner orphans so that I could grow and become a better me, a better mom. This work is not easy. It is always a far easier road to follow and do what someone else says. I actually remember telling my doctor, I’ll do whatever you say, I follow your directions exactly. And his response was, I know. You’re the best patient. Hmmmmmm. Yup. At that time I had fully surrendered myself to the other powers that be. I had completely lost me. I thank you daily for your guidance that helped me find myself, heal, gain wings and fly again. Your work has taught me about myself and about hearing, listening and responding in LIFE. The fearful orphans speak loudly but your teachings continue to give me the strength and courage needed to keep taking steps forward one at a time, while seeing and understanding with a clearer vision. The beginning of my journey was a barrage of hurtful words that truly influenced my view of my body and abilities. Without the FH practice, I would not have been able to hold up the shield for them to bounce off of and I would not have had my son. I believe I can do it again and on the days when that voice is weak and the fearful orphans speak loudly, I know what to do. You’ve given me the tools to USE, not follow absentmindedly. I am grateful daily for your strength and courage to share your journey, and follow your heart and pour it into your work and the lives of so many others. I applaud your courage and resilience and thank you for me, and all the others past, present and future who will live happier lives in a healthier place.
Love,
Deidra
I found your review to be very fair and honest. I applaud your courage to continue to speak up and make your voice known. So often we are dis-empowered by what others tell us in what we “should” do. I find your thoughts and opinions valuable for all women who are facing infertility. In the area of infertility, there is a profound lack of healing alternatives and methods given to couples. Healing comes in and through many different methods. I have seen that personally in my experiences and in the experiences of others. It is unfortunate that there are many who do not yet comprehend and understand this. It takes courage to stand and make your voice known in the midst of the majority who yet do not understand. Thank you for being brave, committed, vulnerable, and passionate enough to speak up for what you believe in!
Dear Julia,
I am so glad you wrote about the experience you had with reading this book and the reactions to this review. From what I can understand without having read it, the book does seem to encourage giving up our judgment and trying to take routes to parenthood that seem to be easier and less-painful than listening to our orphans and introspection. Especially, what struck me is the family situation, and the role of our siblings play in our fear about having a child, or having a second child. The sibling rivalry that is so often taboo can exhibit in wanting to have the medical attention as much as our little sibling had when we were the healthy child growing up. I can see some of this in my own family. It seemed to me that the book encourages idling, waiting without listening to your own heart and the voices of your own orphans. All the publicity, I wonder, may be to quiet the orphan who wanted all the attention the other sibling had due to their medical condition.
I applaud to your courage to continue to speak up and break the silence and the taboo of the growing medicalization of parenthood. The freezing of the eggs was also offered to me by my gynecologist, when he said, while you wait for your husband’s sperm to recover from chemotherapy, why don’t you freeze your eggs? Or mix it with his sperm and freeze the embryo, that is much more valuable that the egg on its own. When he examined me, he said, if I had any sperm, I would put it right in, you are 35, what are you waiting for? I replied, remember – we are waiting for my husband’s sperm to recover. And he just said oops. And the following month I was on your visionary call wishing for his sperm to recover and a couple months later the sperm started to come back. And it’s getting stronger as we speak. I feel humble.
I am so grateful for your friendship, Julia.
Eva
Dear fertileheart mamas, Dear Julia,
I read all your comments,as well as Julia’s post with great interest and desire to get in touch and catch up with you again. Julia you are a live example for me in life, no matter if the second baby arrives or not. The way that you have chosen to go about responding regarding your book review made me think about myself being in similar situations every day at work. It’s difficult and takes so much of your energy but challenging and rewarding at the end. I have learnt lots from your honesty, kindness, free mind.
I keep working on my imageries doing: out of trap (body truth), three steps forward (as I want to move on in life), and supporting ovulation (I just turned 42 and the doctor told me just last week that since I’ve not been ovulating properly for more than a year now – have some eggs that are small and not of a good quality and my cycle is not stable- I should think of egg donation). I CANNOT BELIEVE THAT MY BODY CANNOT MAKE IT. I WILL MAKE IT. IT WILL HAPPEN IN ALL ITS GLORY AGAINST ALL THE PREDICTIONS. I’m joining you mamas to the next cycle and I wish I could fly back to Woodstock in December, as I did 2 years ago in November 2014. Blessings to you Julia and to all of you great mamas. xxx
Dear Julia, your review was clearly much needed! It brought with it an explosion of comments and, hopefully, anyone who reads the horrible comments that followed, will see that there was an attempt at character assassination going on, rather than engaging with the comments you made. I was truly appalled by the comments and could recognize that many of their comments were simply Os that were screaming for attention.
I didn’t really know where to start on this blog as so many thoughts and feeling rose up. As a very happy student of yours, I know that your work is the most supportive and truthful fertility practice that I know. My diagnosis was pretty depressing to me and I am often put into the “unexplained infertility” category or “you are too old” category — and I use the Golden Shield imagery and many other imageries to protect myself from such comments relating to my diagnosis. Also, I have learned with your practice to see my diagnosis as an opportunity to grow internally and to live a more fulfilling life. Although I have not conceived a wee baby yet (I am living in deepest hope!), the fertile heart practice that you have created has so immensely enriched my life and made my journey so much more bearable and – dare I say it, enjoyable. The tools you have given us fertile heart community is priceless. I have learned how to protect myself from the statistics and to start believing in my own body and my own truth.
I am so glad you wrote your review and clicked that 1-star. Without it, nobody would have noticed or focused on the issues that you so rightly raised. Let’s hope it will help someone to stop and think (and hopefully connect to you and the fertile heart community!) before being subjected to all the fear and doom spread by the fertility industry.
Lots of love
FearlessRose
Julia’s work is the antidote to the toxic labels and thoughtless and strength-sapping words and verdicts we can encounter from doctors, test results and articles. It helps you build up your belief in yourself and encourages your mind and body to let go of negative energy and fear, and to replace them with hope and images of the life we are looking to lead.
Julia’s review of “The Art of Waiting” by Belle Boggs was a model of constructive criticism: she offered genuine feedback as to the reasoning behind her 1-star review, which could be used by the author (or readers) to improve the research behind the book. Unfortunately, many of the Amazon responses were unconstructive, focusing not on the essence of Julia’s criticism but on secondary matters – this is usually the sign of a weak (or non-existent) argument. I am deeply impressed by Julia’s polite, humorous and open-hearted way of engaging with her detractors and will use her as my personal censor in my head in the future when I have to respond to criticism and am about to flounce off into a sulk or an injured counter-attack.
If there is a genuine philosophical disagreement between the principles that Boggs presents in her book and those that Julia presents in her work, it would have been much better had the review comments focused on that. Julia addressed this in her review; why couldn’t everyone else?
There is no need to choose between the Fertile Heart approach and complementary and medical treatments because all are valuable in their own way. Challenges such as blocked tubes or various sperm issues can be addressed or circumvented through medical assistance if the attempts to solve the underlying reasons cannot make specific anatomical problems go away. The Fertile Heart practice helps to work through whatever it is we can change ourselves, and is a loving companion and source of strength at a time when you are bombarded by discouraging information or results.
Julia’s website was the only thing I encountered after several sleepless nights of researching raised FSH levels that didn’t pull me down further and that didn’t feed my despair. The Fertile Heart website and books gave me my hope back, and made me feel excited about the many jigsaw pieces that we can control. It helped me enormously after being walloped without any preparation with the “donor egg” speech that at the time I didn’t know was standard and not a final truth but something many of us have survived and proven wrong. What felt like the end of the world to us has become a path of connecting with ourselves and each other. And, at the Woodstock workshop three weeks ago, we felt like we were meeting our tribe. Wonderful, irreverent, strong, inspiring Julia and our brave fellow travellers on this path. We came over from England to meet you all, and we would do Julia’s suggested reunion in a heartbeat :-)
With love and gratitude.
That was so well-stated! Thank you for such clarity.
Dear Julia
I was horrified at the comments to your review.
It took courage to tell your truth and not hide. Thank you for doing this.
I don’t always have this courage and when we witness someone who does, it helps us get closer to that courage ourselves and to realise that the pain of not saying our truth is greater than the pain we could receive for saying it.
Love Katherine
Hi Julia. Just wanted to drop you a quick note here because this story is so relevant to what your blog is about. The twins just turned four months and we christened them a few weeks before that. They are nothing short of amazing and I still can’t believe they’re here sometimes and real.
Anyway, I’ve been meaning to write this for a little while as I want to thank you again for the Fertile Heart “tools”. Just because the twins are here doesn’t mean the journey has ended and that the tools are no longer useful. They certainly are.
When I went to see my OB-GYN (who I hadn’t seen since 2012) a couple weeks ago to get a non-hormonal form of birth control, because I am not ready at this moment to make any decisions about the size of our family, some of the things she said to me were shocking. “Wow, you can’t get pregnant but you still want a diaphragm? Ok. Well, I guess you could get pregnant, but there is no guarantee it would be successful. Oh and btw, did you use your own eggs?”
Amazing, huh? I am grateful to you that I had the exact tools not to get flustered and I told her that, “Yes indeed Sean and Maggie have my DNA. And if I believed for a second that I couldn’t get pregnant, they wouldn’t be here. Nobody knows what plans God has for my future, so please write the prescription I came here for, so I can be on my way.”
Can you imagine? I just carried twins to one day short of 38 weeks and they were born at 6lbs 7oz and 6lbs 2oz and did not spend a second in the NICU. How DARE this woman question what my gloriously strong body is capable of? Grateful that I know better. So thank you again!
I was pretty horrified as well when I read the comments responding to Julia. I could see the orphans of the commenters lashing out at her. It was hard to come back and write something that was not fueled by my own orphan. It was annoying too when one of the commenters said she wasnt writing a “self help” book. Which of course was not what I was suggesting! It has taken a while but I found I have been pulling myself out of depression and moving towards bringing more joy into my life and I really attribute it to using my Fertile Heart tools. I continue to be very grateful I have found this work and keep moving forward in the best way I can.
Julia,
Your courage and strength is much to be admired. Thank you for your brave brave heart – the responses to your review are nothing short of ignorant and heartless. The work you have pioneered speaks for itself. And yes, I am new to your work and a newer client, but i’ve read all of your books, been on your calls, and just completed an incredible heart filled workshop with you in Woodstock. It is because of your program, work, dedication to your work, honesty, rawness, selflessness, and 20-years of success in helping women move past the negative thinking around fertility, that I feel a new lease on faith, hope, strength, excitement, and fulfillment as i envision and manifest my child. I was headed down the path of medical treatments, drugs, etc etc and along with it, depression and anxiety because i fell victim to a medical community that i allowed to TELL me what my body is and is not capable of. I have had a huge shift in thinking and feeling and being since being involved in your work and wouldn’t choose any other path. Thank you for staying strong and speaking your truth to continue to educate and inform people. It’s disheartening that others have to lash out against you when they clearly have no understanding of the deep work you do.
I believe so much that we can choose our destiny and manifest our dreams. The work you’ve done with so many women have proven that.
Thank you,
Nicole
Good for you, Julia, for being so honest and standing up for what you believe in. I’m proud to be one of your students, and so relieved that I found you and the FH work, which has given me the chance to entirely reframe this journey. Luckily, I found you relatively early on. I’m not even sure how, but the moment I read your books it felt like I had landed on ground that was healing, supportive; truthful.
I am at a place right now in my journey where being honest with myself is very important. Recently, all the resistance I’ve ever had towards becoming a mother has risen up (everything from fear of permanent exhaustion, the baby getting sick or dying, how will it affect my relationship with my husband, losing my figure forever, being too old to start this journey…and so on). And yet that is still coupled with a deep desire to have a child. In a way it’s tempting to push away the doubts and fears and muscle on through – and a part of me thinks that by acknowledging these doubts and fears means the baby is less likely to show up. But a bigger part knows that I need to face these, to feel them, connect with them, and to trust that in doing so I will be taken on the next step of my journey.
This morning I started working with Mosaic of Revelation imagery, as Julia suggested on last night’s call. I like this imagery a lot, as while it invites images of that which challenges, it also invites you to replace them with new scenes. While the things I feared were easy to picture, so were the replacement images – of a happy me with a baby I adore.
Another interesting thing about all my resistance arising has been a bit of a softening of the envy I’ve felt when friends have conceived easily. I suspect that, in my case, part of the reason I’ve not yet conceived (and why I started trying so late in life in the first place) was because there was resistance (along with desire). This resistance probably wasn’t there for many of my friends. It’s made me realise (not in a self-blaming way) that I play a part in this journey – and it’s not just about others being luckier than me. Again, this has meant needing to be very honest with myself, as it’s often easier to just go it’s not FAIR, than to acknowledge that it’s not necessarily quite as black and white as that.
Dear Fertile Mamas,
This to me seems to be about the right to be human and a space to be human in – to be fully human. There are such powerful humans/ladies here and we all deserve to be in life – to live it the way it has meaning for us. Julia’s work and the message boards, blogs, teleconferences give us a way to connect with other women who want to be human and explore their potential. I don’t want to be in a box and be a number or a statistic. I don’t think anyone does. Maybe some people go through an IVF or two and their child arrives. For many that is not the case. The Fertile Heart work has the potential to help us be way better parents to ourselves and the children we may receive. Maybe someone does a round of IVF and has their baby, but misses some very serious symptom that needs to be healed. Fertile Heart work has the potential to alert us to these things and be the best us we can be. No human can truly create a human from scratch. There is no human that really knows what our human potential is because we don’t truly know ourselves. Maybe it’s good to be open to possibility instead of taking the word of another human who by definition has a limited perspective. It can be wonderful to use the knowledge of other people as a guide, but we do not need to let it define us.
butterflyfaith, Yay for those small steps of letting the practice unfold – love the lighthouse image and Namaste, wonderful for not being defined by a diagnosis. Harmonious Life, that is a good point about not wanting to reinforce a victim mentality in ourselves and and sulli612 that is a good point about feeling broken down before and feeling empowered by Julia. Lisa, wonderful Woodstock experience and Nana that is awesome about your ovaries making follicles now. Purple Parrot, good point about trying to help people understand.
I have been working with White Flower Fertile Heart Imagery I and some of the Guided Meditation body truth.
I am currently taking steps to look for work since my husband’s situation has not really changed. It is scary and exciting. We will see where it leads. I am realizing that my husband’s uncertainty and mostly less than full-time work while he has been working many long hours trying to bring in new work has been hard on me (not to mention him). I’m trying to mostly look at this as an adventure. The type of job I would be looking for would be different than the most previous position I had because it would work better with my daughter’s in and out her program uncertainty and her currently needing some type of care if she is out of her program.
Blessings to all.
It amazed me that the entire string of comments and replies based on ONE compassionate and thought-provoking review looked EXACTLY like the war that happens inside my own head. It’s this orphan-waged war that goes on all the time, and most of the time, I don’t even hear the gunfire anymore. I accept it as normal. But when reading this Amazon war, I found the volume of my own battles turned up.
“Arg! What was I thinking? I need to mainline gonal-F at the highest doses and do IVF right this minute! I’ve been in denial!I’m an idiot! Of COURSE I need medical assistance! What was I thinking? EVERY DAY counts! I’ve wasted time!”
Then, Julia’s comments fueled my Visionary.
“Seriously? You’ve seen many, many instances where the medical community is not the end-all-be-all of answers. You’ve seen direct results from this work. Why do you doubt? What could it hurt to just believe? Why do you believe the loudest voices are always right?”
For 20 years, Julia has always said the same thing, held the same conviction, never waffling to the louder voices. It’s inspiring. I heard a podcast once about having faith “in the middle.” The moral of it was that it’s super easy to have faith in the begging of a journey because it’s new and exciting. It’s easy to hold faith at the end when you’ve completed the journey. But in the middle? When things are taking a long time and the doubt becomes overwhelming? That’s when it’s hard. I see Julia as a light in the fog of that middle ground. She doesn’t change her stance depending on the bullies. She doesn’t go along to get along. She is the lighthouse. But even lighthouses get lost in the deep fog sometimes. I just keep telling myself, when I can’t see a thing, that I know the lighthouse is still there and to keep moving.
As I watched the attacks online, and I saw Julia’s careful and calm responses to the oft-personal and defamatory attacks, I realized I do the same thing to myself. Not the calm Visionary replies, but the attacks. The loudest orphans are the ones I give claim to, even if what they scream at me is hurtful and damaging and wrong. The other thing this exchange made me realize is that I still have just been showing up. I’m burned out and tired, but I think that just by listening to the imagery or writing down my dream and checking these things off my list, I’m “doing” the program. Then I get pissed off when I don’t see the results I want.
But after the last phone circle, I realized the difference between doing the imagery/practice and organically letting it unfold. Approaching things that way instead of just doing it to get it done has been tremendously helpful. It’s still early days of me doing it like this, and it’s pretty rough as I relearn things, but I’ve been seeing a difference. Small, but there.
Dear BF, reading your comment, I want to make sure I clarify what battles we are engaged in through this practice:
The war we must wage is never the war between “medical assistance” and the Fertile Heart OVUM Practice or anything else.
As I said here, “What Jaime and Belle and the readers of The Art of Waiting might miss, is that this journey and the work we’re called to do, has nothing to do with positive thinking, or supplements, or about voting for acupuncture instead of IVF. It’s also not about having a biological child, or adopting or choosing egg donation.
What matters, is that we seize the singular opportunity that comes when our child doesn’t show up when summoned.”
The war we must wage is between the part of us that allows someone else to do our feeling and our thinking for us, and the part of us that knows that to be a fully human member of a sentient species we must take on the responsibility of following the thread of every desire to its true source.
Engaging in that battle can be difficult and yet immensely illuminating for someone like you, a mom of two beautiful, healthy children, who is wishing for a third child. The war you might consider waging is not about whether you will go for IVF or fertility drugs but whether you will use your longing for a third child as a self-punishing tool, or to discover what that “singular opportunity” I’m talking about, is for you.
I’m so glad to hear that the work we did on the last Visionary Moms teleconference created a shift for you. I sensed that shift on the call. Look forward to see where that shift takes you.
Thank you for giving me a chance to clarify this a bit. Let’s keep working on some of these ideas in the circle. They can be liberating, they can help you unclench.
Love,
Julia
Sweet Julia:
Thank you for responding and clarifying things. When I read your comment, I realize that while I know our work with Fertile Heart is not about anti-IVF or anti-non-old-fashioned-ways of making babies or pro-natural, I am not sure if I KNOW it. It’s like how I felt about the imagery. I understood it and did it and accepted it, but I did not experience it organically. Sort of like looking through a window at people playing outside, or joining them. I know that FH work is about so very much more than just making babies, but again, do I KNOW this? I’m not sure I do, deep in my truest core. There’s a part of me deep down that is very afraid of embracing that truth because in that little orphan’s world, embracing the joy of living and loving that “singular opportunity” means I must let go of my dream for another child. it feels either/or. So I ignore what that singular truth might be, because I fear having to give up my “place in the baby line.” Again, I know that’s orphan thinking, but I don’t really think I KNOW that on every level. Re-reading my comment clarified for me that my cerebral truths and my soul truths aren’t quite in line much of the time.
The more I think about your “Amazon war,” as I began calling it, the more I feel both ashamed and inspired. I’m ashamed because I fear if I was put to that test, I would have backpedaled, sugar-coated my words and turned the whole argument into a mealy-mouse bowl of mush. I would have let the orphans so afraid of people not liking her rise up and glaze over everything. The meaning would be lost. But stronger than that is inspiration. I’m inspired because I saw you never back down or rephrase your words so they would be palatable for the naysayers. You were honest and kept true to your singular truth. Keeping that in mind helped me tell a very respected doctor that her protocol for me was not in line with what I felt was right. It felt good to stand true with what I believed–and to know what exactly it was that I believed.
And YES! I would love to keep working on more clarity with you in our circle. Exactly! I need those snowflakes to keep piling up so that one day, the branch will snap. I smiled at the word “clenched.” I was just telling my husband I am so tightly wound, my jaw even hurts and my brain is like a spring. As always, you know exactly what I need to hear. ;-)
Good for you Julia for speaking your truth. I am grateful for your voice in speaking out against defining yourself or your choices by your diagnosis. I didn’t know how to do this until I found you and your work. Thank you for being a strong voice of comfort, wisdom, and action.
Thank you Julia for showing courage in writing your review and standing up for yourself, your work, your words and the Fertile Heart community that you have built with so much love, care and attention. You are an inspiration.
I was appalled too at the reactions to your 1-start review and I have been following activity on the review very regularly after I heard about this review. To be honest, at first my fear orphans popped up telling me that the rest of the world is right and Julia is in minority, in fact the only voice in this war and she can’t be right and that is it possible I was wasting my time? Fortunately there was another voice in me, who told me to keep faith and to not cast doubt on Julia’s teachings or her own efforts to follow her own truth on my own journey which has been difficult.
Sure enough, over time, the truth emerged. Julia – you defended yourself by responding to comments patiently and so compassionately I have no words left to praise you, but only awe and surrender. And a prayer to give us that strength of character that you possess and that you have been incessantly teaching us to cultivate through our own unique journeys.
I wanted to write a review too of this book, but stopped myself when I realized I do want to read this book first. Only 3 out of 18 reviews at the time were from customers with “Verified purchase” meaning they had actually bought the book – Julia’s being one of the three. Clearly many people who wrote 5-star reviews had not bought the book, so it’s only fair for me to doubt the credibility of all those 5-star reviews. Simply reading the book sample and Julia’s review was enough to show me that the book appeals to the side of the reader that wants to feel like a victim. Since then I have bought the book only to inform myself of the kind of ideas that I should not let myself have without doing my own thinking for myself, and to one day write a review in my own words when I finish reading it. But I am in no hurry to read this book at this point.
I was compelled to write a comment while this war was being waged on Julia’s review supporting her review. I know it came from a visionary part of me and I feel grateful for letting myself express my emotions on that platform.
This is a wonderful illustration of the kind of daily battles we are all going through in our lives at one point or the other. When we really need to muster the inner strength and to give oneself chance after chance to become self-reliant, to learn from our mistakes and be a student on this journey who doesn’t hand over the authority over their emotions and body to someone else.
I have loads of gratitude for you, Julia. This journey has not been easy for me. But I have also witnessed the journey and transformations in so many others including myself that it gives me a lot of hope for myself and the many women I hope would come here for guidance.
Keep it up, Julia. We are right here rooting for you.
Love.
xxxx
Julia,
Thank you for being vulnerable and brave and passionate enough to speak up for what you believe in [and to the benefit of humanity]. I thought your review was fair and reasonable. What is the point of “user reviews” if there is no room for honest opinions.
Having just attended your workshop in Woodstock, I feel especially passionate about your work. It is time that all women [and men] feel empowered to be our own health and fertility advocates; to trust in ourselves, our bodies, our instinct as well as taking in the guidance of professionals. I am so grateful for the time we shared. Thank you thank you thank you for your intuition and putting your heart into your work. I walked into the workshop on Sunday a bit weathered, numb and disbelieving (because I’ve tried it all and still miscarried so why should I keep believing?!). I walked out feeling whole again, confident in my body and connected with my spirit child.
I look forward to continuing on this journey with you, learning growing and settling all those orphans.
with love,
Lisa
We all want the same thing however we take different routes to get there whether it is several rounds of IVF or taking the approach of Fertile Heart practice and others like that. As individuals it has to be the path that is right for us. Julia’s comments are fair and another perspective about the book.
I knew after the clinical trial that failed badly, where the doctors were in shock horror to see that I had produce no eggs. After which they told me that I had only 1 follicle, my right ovary being dormant, and due to my age maybe donor eggs would be an option. I had to get off this merry go around where my self confidence was being battered, self doubting myself, having dreams of blood loss around day 21 of my cycle made me go into a never ending spiral of continuous fear. I really had to do something. Speaking to friends about how I felt was not really an option as they would say it will happen, relax etc but the fear that been instilled in me over the years of seeing doctors even though they were nice,was like they all read from the hymn sheet, I needed something more otherwise I would go mad, so I typed random words in Google and up came the word Fertile Heart, I downloaded one of the visualisation CDs have been doing the imagery work, bought Julia’s books which I completely resonate with. Today both my ovaries are fully functional as from the last ultrasound I have 3 -5 follicles/month ok I may not pregnant however my fears and self doubt each day is subsiding and since I attended the Visionary Mum calls I am skipping along to a merry tune in my head and I look forward to meeting my baby not half way but the whole way.
Hi Julia
I just popped on here to voice my support for your stance and for standing up for this healing approach which you’ve worked on for so many years and which so many of us appreciate (and understand!). Sadly there are those who do not understand and so it’s hard to even begin to show them ‘another way’. At least you have made this public and very comprehensive statement so that those with the potential to understand might see there is another way to consider their journey.
I’ve not been on the calls recently as I couldn’t make one of them but may well join again, and in the meantime I am absolutely loving and working really well with the FertileHeart Imagery 2 collection. Your work is amazing and will find its own way – as it already is.
As so many others have said: I don’t know how or when I will meet my baby halfway but what I do know is that i now have a way of being in the world and with myself that is 100% better and more healthy since finding you and your work.
with thanks for all that you are doing xx
Julia, this is an amazing piece. I adored “because there is no us or them”!! Also, “if I stayed, I may not have the fortitude to keep walking in the direction of a child that everyone agreed was not conceivable”.
There is so much fear there. Why do women have to be told they have old eggs and premature ovarian failure. Is it not logical to walk out of the doctor’s office and say I am old and a failure? – these terms that are flung around are so damaging. Why are we trying to hurt people on this planet with such words? Can’t we have enough compassion and sensitivity to choose words carefully – first do no harm and all that?
Julia you are fighting for the dignity of and respect for women – for the humanity and the as yet only limitingly explored regions of human potential. Why do we all have to fit in the designated boxes? Don’t we all deserve to greet life with as large a wide open door as we wish? Honor me – honor my potential – leave the door open for possibility. What amazing powerful women are here.
AnnabelL, that is powerful acknowledging your own resistance and heather1975teaching yay yay for the mommy label and that the others didn’t fit you! Sparxy, I am sorry you are having challenges in your marriage but happy the tools are helping and Gracelife, great for being supportive!
I have been doing White Flower Fertile Heart Imagery (Imagery I) and listening to a little of the Body Truth Guided Meditation.
This has been a rather challenging time for me. My daughter is on medical leave from her special program – I am uncertain whether if she returns she will comply adequately to have it work out. Her therapist, our rock of sanity, has refused to continue counseling her. My husband will be on half time work for half pay for the month of October – nothing definite after that. I am aware of a possible job that I would like to apply for – it may not even still be available and I’m sort of waiting until the end of the month to start applying – to see if anything comes up for my husband. If the program doesn’t work out for my daughter and she remains in her current emotional state, she will need full time care if I work. Everything I have looked for costs way more than I could earn. Because of her emotional needs she would need special care. So lots of things spinning.
Blessings to all.
When I read your review on Amazon I thought it well written,compassionate and honest. I was utterly aghast to read the scathing and accusatory responses to your review- it was vicious. It took me back to the ” slambooks” of long ago in junior high and high school. Prior to Fertile Heart I read books along the same vein…and there are so many of them. Had I stuck with only that form of self-discovery and simply surrendered myself to medical authority, I doubt I would be currently bouncing my son on my lap as I type this. I did injectables, clomid, IUI’s, IVF, you name it and I was slapped with so many labels- and yet here I sit my son cooing and grabbing for the keyboard as I type… and I credit my work with FH and within myself for this shift in labels from poor responder, low AMH, high FSH, advanced maternal age to Mommy. Your review wasn’t anti anything but simply posed the question ” what if “…
Bravo Julia! I read your review on Amazon and the comments as well. You’ve been so polite and compassionate in all your responses to them. And with every reply you have tried to further get your point across but as they say, you can wake a person who is sleeping. But you can’t wake someone who is pretending to sleep. Thanks for putting your opinion out there for all the women who will read that book, and all the women who are facing or will face infertility. Thanks for speaking for [and to] all of us and showing us a new way of thinking. The manner in which you have conducted yourself through this war of words, you have given us a practical lesson in walking the path of truth. We’re cheering you on :)