The key to rewilding your fertility

To rewild: to restore to it’s natural state.

Rewilding is a central guiding principle in my life. For a long time I didn’t have a word to describe my desire to live as naturally as possible, to return to my roots as a wild human being. But rewilding is the word that best describes this belief and focus.

The goal isn’t about living in the woods with nothing but a loin cloth and a bow. Rather, it is about integrating principles of wildness into our life as it is, embracing the wildness that lives within us, and making changes to improve our health and well-being by living close to nature.

To me, rewilding is an all encompassing proposition. I believe living in a manner that more closely matches that of a wild human (aka, a non-civilized, primitive human being that lives in harmony with nature) is the best way to achieve lasting happiness and good health.

I try to rewild every aspect of my life – what I eat, the water I drink, what I use to heal my body, how I move & exercise, how I sleep, and also how I approach my fertility. I approach rewilding on many different levels. Yes, on one hand, it is about the things that I do and the things that I don’t do, or want to avoid. But it goes deeper than that. It is all about perspective and motives. Rewilding is powerful both on the physical level, in that it guides my lifestyle choices and be healthier, but it is also a spiritual journey.

Wildness is usually seen in a negative light in the dominant culture. Calling someone “wild” is usually derogatory, especially “wild children” – but let’s face it, children ARE wild, as they should be, and they only stop being wild because civilization does not value wildness and usually forces wildness out of them. Something wild is something that cannot be controlled, and is therefore something society looks down upon. A naked body? Shameful! It is even illegal to be naked in public! Nakedness = wildness, and that is unacceptable.

The technocratic world mistakenly believes it can improve upon wildness and wilderness. But the natural world does not need to be improved upon, nor does it need to be managed – it is perfect in and of itself. The same can be said of the human body, and of fertility.

No matter how hard we try, fertility cannot be controlled – there is no such thing as “birth control”.

All methods of contraception (even permanent ones like tubal ligation and vasectomies) occasionally fail, some far more often than others. I say, let’s ditch the illusion of control, and instead reconnect to our body wisdom & awareness! This is where rewilding our fertility comes in.

The final frontier

For many women it seems that fertility is often the final frontier on the way to living an all natural lifestyle. Someone may be eating a really clean & organic diet, living a low stress life, using natural healing modalities, yet when it comes to contraception, they still feel that they do not have a choice but to rely on hormonal contraceptives, or intrusive devices like IUDs (intra-uterine devices). As for trying to conceive a child, when most couples/women encounter road bumps on their way to conception, once again, they are often told that their only options are invasive procedures and/or powerful pharmaceuticals that can have far reaching side effects.

Why is that? Why do we follow doctors’ orders even when deep down in our guts we can feel something is wrong and that we should be walking out of that office? Why do so many of us end of stuck in these situations where we feel we do not have a choice in the matter?

Let me say this loud and clear, ladies – we all have a choice in these situations! It might feel as though we don’t – perhaps because we are made to feel silly for believing in natural healing modalities, or perhaps because we are in a hurry to see results. Indeed, modern society has created expectations of instant gratification that can be hard to shake. But there is value in slowing down, learning to listen to our bodies and realizing how powerful we really are. We have the ability to heal ourselves, if we can just learn to trust ourselves.

There is a natural solution to embracing our fertility and sexuality in such a way. It is effective, and incredibly empowering – Fertility Awareness is what your soul has been longing for! No one is encouraging us to look within for answers, to connect to our bodies, to heal naturally as our bodies are capable of doing. But that is exactly what we need if we are to reverse the trend of disconnection. We can rewild our fertility!

Bridging the gap

How do we bridge this gap? The short answer: compassion for where we are at today, and a desire to learn & grow.

We are brought up in a society where there is little value placed on knowledge of self. As we enter womanhood, most of us are not taught much about our fertility & sexuality. We are strongly discouraged from touching ourselves and getting to know our bodies. We cannot talk openly about our cycles and our blood. One of the most sacred and profound parts of the female soul gets pushed to the side and often forgotten.

It is quite a difficult landscape to grow up in, and makes it difficult to develop body awareness, and self-love, even as adults. But it is never too late to reconnect to the sacred feminine energy within us and harness this power. One of the best ways to begin the work of reconnecting to our womb wisdom is to stop depending on drugs and/or devices to “manage” our fertility for us.

I know this sounds like a scary (if not impossible) proposition for many reading this today. And I get it, I really do! When we are not connected to what goes on within us, it is quite difficult to trust that we would ever have it in us to build enough knowledge and awareness to be able to naturally choose whether or not to get pregnant at any given time. But countless women throughout the world do it, and so can you.

When I teach my course, I not only teach women how to chart their cycles with great accuracy, but we address the deeper connection that needs to be rebuilt within us. We talk about anatomy, hormonal balance, sexual health, and a wide variety of lifestyle factors that come into play when developing our own fertility awareness. This gives women a wide array of tools they can use to rewild their fertility.

One of the biggest obstacles for women considering this path is belief – most women do not know /believe how effective the Fertility Awareness Method truly is. Studies have shown that when the method is applied as it should, that all the “rules” are followed, it is 99.6% effective as a method of contraception. That means it is more effective than relying only on condoms, it is as effective as the pill, and as effective as tubal ligation even!

Where the lines get blurred is that there is a difference between perfect use of a contraceptive method, and typical use. Perfect use implies that a woman taking the pill never forgets to take her pill, or that a couple using condoms always uses it exactly as it is intended to be used, and that a condom never breaks. But the reality is that the way most people use contraceptives, the failure rate is much higher than what is advertised. For example, typical failure rate for the pill is actually 9% – that means out of 100 women using the pill for a year, 9 of them will become pregnant! And the typical use failure rate for condoms is at least 17%!

Often times when reading about charting methods on more mainstream websites, the failure rates reported can be quite high. Again, this is partially due to the typical use being inadequate – this can happen because women have not fully internalized the method, maybe they were self-taught and are missing pieces of the puzzle, or it could be that a couple bent the rules of charting a little bit and were not as careful as they should have been. That’s why working with a teacher (like me!) can make all the difference in the world when integrating FAM into your life.

Furthermore, several methods of charting are often combined in these statistics, like the calendar or rhythm method. This antiquated method of charting relies on past cycles to predict when you will be fertile in future cycles, whereas sympto-thermal methods, like FAM, rely on day to day awareness to assess one’s fertility. You can read more about the effectiveness of FAM on this page of my website.

So where does that leave us? Every method of contraception can fail – there is no such thing as “birth control”. However, for most methods, whether a method works or not isn’t entirely in our hands. With Fertility Awareness, you make the call, you know what your body is up to, and you have the awareness to act on this profound knowledge. Yes, it requires time and dedication to learn, and it will require a real investment on your part when you are first applying Fertility Awareness in your life.

But it is worth it – YOU are worth it!

FAM is effective, but also life transforming. Instead of relying on outside methods to attempt to control you, you can rely on yourself. You can reconnect to your wild feminine inner knowledge, and learn to know yourself on a level that is deeper than you could have ever imagined. That alone is worth it’s weight in gold, dear woman.

Change starts now! Let’s rewild!

Wildness is immensely powerful because it is an intrinsic part of who we are as humans. It is our original coding, the source of our drives and desires, our instincts, our intuition – it is our birthright! I believe reconnecting to this wild aspect of our being can help heal many of the traumas (physical, emotional & spiritual) we suffer from due to living in a highly industrialized society that does not value the natural order, and is completely disconnected from it.

No longer shall we suppress our wild instincts and abilities. We can harness our wildness by developing a deep awareness of our fertility that we can then use as a method of contraception, a tool to help us consciously conceive, as well as a means to self-diagnose, and as a guide on our healing journeys.

I am here to help YOU rewild your fertility and help you reach a place where conscious conception or contraception are an intrinsic part of your daily life.

I have shared these thoughts today without any judgment of other women’s choices, I understand that everyone’s situation is unique, and that we are all at different places along the road to living more naturally. My aim is to support you, meet you where you are at today, and give you tools to help you get back to your roots and live a healthier life. I can teach you how to chart from scratch, or I can help you refine your skills and integrate Fertility Awareness more fully into your life.

I would be happy to work with you and guide you on this journey. You can read more about my classes here, and about the consultations I offer here.

What about you? What do you feel stands in your way of letting go of control and embracing something like fertility awareness?

If you do chart your cycles already, how has this changed your outlook and how you feel about your fertility?

I would love to hear from you, please leave your comments below.