We Need a New Name for Fertility Awareness

We need to find a new name for fertility awareness.

This term feels like an empty shell to me. It doesn’t say anything at all about the magic that lives and breathes through our cycles, fertility and hormones.

It doesn’t matter if you’re looking for natural birth control or preparing to conceive - or just want to understand what on earth is up with your hormones. We all have an experience around fertility, hormones, pregnancy, potential motherhood, womanhood and what it all means to us.

Getting close to the core of it all – learning how to actually touch this current inside of us (because that’s what fertility really is: the current of vibrancy, vitality, aliveness pulsing though our blood and our cycles) – will inevitably shake things up. It moves us. 

And if you’re telling yourself that FAM* can just be a technical skill without getting to the deep core of who you are as a woman…  

I’m here to tell you bluntly but kindly – that’s a lie you’re telling yourself.

If being 5 years in the fertility awareness field has taught me anything, it's this:

Our cycle is not separate from our feminine experience. It actually IS our feminine experience. Every pain, struggle, joy, connection, disconnection, frustration, yearning, and desire we've experienced as women LIVES in the cycle. 

Yet we expect to commoditize our cycle as just a way to extract our fertile days so we know when to – or when not to – get pregnant, without any of our “stuff”** coming up or getting in the way. 

This is why we need to find a new name for the fertility awareness method (FAM). One that expresses what this is really about – reclaiming your womanhood and reconnecting with your deepest self. (Let me know if you have any ideas. I'm totally open to suggestions). 

I see how fertility awareness really needs to be taught and it feels so limited and boxed in to call this FAM education. That's like sending a kallah into marriage with simple do's and don'ts of niddah, without honoring the deeper framework of Taharas HaMishpacha – the container that holds a Jewish marriage. 

I want to believe that just like we expect more from kallah classes, we can expect more from a FAM course than just “teach me the rules of when to open and close my fertile window.”

Because when this knowledge becomes Embodied from a deep and wholesome place, you'll be surprised to feel so much more guided and held by your body and your cycle. 

From this place, the rules and practical skills feel natural and intuitive - as opposed to pressuring and overwhelming.

This is the feminine way*** to learn the wisdom of your cycle and fertile patterns. Not by being inundated with information crash course style. But with ease, embodiment, support, and sisterhood. 

In safety. In community. In Embodied.

 Embodied is a 3-month immersion into the wisdom of your cycle — where charting becomes second nature, and your body becomes your guide.

If you’re feeling the pull, don’t wait. We begin November 26. (Early bird expires November 22.)

Join Embodied

*FAM is an acronym for the fertility awareness method - the practice of tracking your fertile signs to know which days you can get pregnant. This knowledge can be successfully applied - with the right education and support - to both prevent or achieve pregnancy naturally.

**I'm saying "stuff" because there's no way I can list everything that comes up, but some examples - insecurity around our bodies, the way we view intimacy and sexuality, how we were or weren't prepared for marriage, our relationship with our menstrual blood, cervical fluid and so much more.

***It's weird to think about the wisdom of the cycle being taught in a masculine way, but that's exactly what's happening with many fertility awareness courses and resources out there. Reducing embodied wisdom to a mere technical method is like building just the frame of a house and trying to call it a home.

Anyway, now that you read my whole shpiel on this "method" that really shouldn't be a method, but rather an embodied practice - what should we call it? I don't have any clear ideas yet - I'd love to hear yours!

Meanwhile, don't miss this limited opportunity.