I love talking about fertility, and everything it represents for us women – it is my passion. However, I often encounter some resistance talking about fertility with women who do not want to get pregnant. There is a false assumption that fertility only matters if we are actively wanting to conceive. Women who are actively avoiding pregnancy often fear using the word fertility!
But fertility is about so much more than just the ability to conceive – fertility represents our health and our deepest feminine aspects. A fertile mindset is a creative and receptive state of being. Even if a woman wants to avoid getting pregnant, she should still embrace her fertility and have a lifestyle and diet that supports the health of her reproductive organs and her hormonal balance. To me, it is no different than staying active and exercising regularly even if we aren’t planning to run a marathon or play sports professionally. Our fertility is a gauge of our overall health, and pretending it isn’t a part of us only serves to disconnect us from our womanhood and can make life transitions much more difficult.
Here is a fictitious example to explain my point. A woman has spent many years on hormonal contraceptives, not having natural cycles, never really thinking about her fertility. She happened to be on one of the contraceptives that completely suppresses bleeding as well. Then she decides she wants to become pregnant, so she discontinues the use of contraceptives. Within a few months, she realizes she doesn’t understand the things she is experiencing as her cycles resume, her cycles are different than she remembers them being in the past, and she isn’t able to get pregnant as quickly as she had hoped. Despair begins to set in, accompanied by a feeling of being broken.
But she is not broken! The reality is that she needs to heal her connection to her fertility both emotionally and physically, as hormonal contraceptives can have significant long term side effects. For some women, the emotional aspect alone can be quite powerful and might be the main thing a woman needs to focus on healing in order to return to a more balanced state that would welcome a pregnancy.
Fertility isn’t generally something that can be switched on and off like a light switch. This is why I always tell my students & clients that there is no such thing as “birth control” – you cannot control fertility. Every method of contraception can fail, some more than others. And without awareness, they are likely to fail far more often.
Fertility Awareness teaches us that in order to be able to consciously avoid becoming pregnant, we want to be more connected to our fertility, not less connected to it!
The attitude we hold about our fertility impacts us far more deeply than we may realize. From taking hormonal contraceptives that completely suppress our cycles, to stuffing ourselves with tampons in an effort to hide our blood… there is a lot of negative energy that goes into quieting and ignoring our fertility and what it is trying to share with us. This negative energy gets stored inside of us and can cause very real physical problems.
Fertility Awareness helps us reverse this trend by embracing our fertility. We should all strive to support our gynecological and hormonal health, even if we adamantly want to avoid becoming pregnant.
Embracing our fertility and being intimately aware of what goes on inside our body will create a space to consciously avoid becoming pregnant without being filled with fear and suppressing our feminine essence. And if we do wish to become pregnant in the future, the transition into a conscious conception mindset will be a smooth one, with far less anxiety and doubt. We will be in a better place to make informed decisions about our fertility and future pregnancies.
Another situation where a woman might struggle to embrace that connection to her innate fertility is when it appears to be absent! I have struggled with infertility myself, and I know how deeply that can impact our connection to our womanhood, and our ability to trust and love our body. But that very trust is especially important when wanting to enhance our natural fertility. It is important to embrace the belief that our bodies are capable of healing, and, in most cases, absolutely capable of conceiving naturally and birthing naturally (read my birth story here to see why this is such an important topic to me).