A lovely acupuncturist emailed me a few months ago:
“I’m on the Board of Directors for Resolve New England, a non-profit organization here in Boston focused on infertility education, support and advocacy. We have a large annual conference each year… Before you and I connected on line, I had already thought of the possibility of having you speak as the Keynote Speaker…I’ve actually brought your name up before as an option. A couple of members expressed concern that your work wouldn’t be supportive of women/couples who were going through ART, Surogacy, Donnor Eggs/Sperm or adoption.”
I hope this page with links to stories of moms and dads who used the Fertile Heart practice to meet their children in their own perfect way will clear up the misunderstanding about whom, what, how and why I support:
I also want to be as transparent as I’ve been in these last couple of decades about what I don’t support:
I don’t support marginalizing the power of the patient to affect treatment outcome.
I don’t support telling women they will need 5 IVF cycles to become pregnant. I don’t’ support such prognosis, even when a study sponsored by an institution that benefits from citing such studies “proves” that 5 IVF’s is what it takes to bring home a healthy baby.
I don’t support exploiting women’s fears of childlessness by turning the biological clock into a time bomb
I don’t support feeding the misogynous dragon of self-hate through diagnoses that uses self-deprecating language such as old-eggs, poor responder, incompetent cervix and infertile women, infertile men.
Perhaps this story could be a good illustration of what else I don’t support. I was invited to be a keynote speaker for the San Francisco Resolve chapter. The head of the chapter, Jane T. and several women in that community loved Inconceivable and invited me to be the keynote for their annual conference.
Jane called me a week later. She was embarrassed and apologetic. The members of the board decided to withdraw the invitation because they thought that the representatives of the IVF clinics that sponsored the event wouldn’t like having me speak about a non-medical approach to conception.
This was in 1998. 20 years ago.
It would be sad to think that as respected and scientifically validated as the mind-body connection and the power of food as a fertility boosting agent has become in these last two decades, things really haven’t changed so much in organizations that get their funding from clinics.
I hope I’m wrong. I hope those board members that expressed concern over my lack of support for ART just really didn’t think about actually clicking on the FertileHeart.com website. Or perhaps they did, but they missed all the testimonials listed on this page.
It would be great if we could engage in an honest dialogue about this, wouldn’t it? What about the politics of “infertility?” Where do you stand? What do you support or find objectionable?
Here is to all of us getting clear about what we do and don’t support. Our children are counting on us to support what serves their and our greatest good!
Dear Julia and Fertile Mamas,
This is what I appreciate about the Fertile Heart work – that it honors us and looks at the bigger picture. I agree that some of the language for fertility issues is not ennobling to the human spirit. There are so many things in place that seem to link a woman’s reproduction to self-worth. I appreciate, Julia, that your work reclaims the wonderfulness in all of us – that we aren’t just an FSH number or a statistic. It is an opportunity to learn about ourselves. People hit challenging times in their lives at some point, so how do we respond in the most life-affirming way.
I have been working with the longed for family imagery and letting my body move the way it wants to body truth combined with positive things about me. Work has been challenging this week, but I have continued to use the tools to praise myself inwardly when I do something correctly after previously doing it incorrectly. ; I continue to work with trying to stay open for guidance. Today I felt more inspired about many things in my life than I have for a while, so I am very grateful for that.
Blessings to all.