fertility awareness is true feminine empowerment
There are a handful of angles for the inspiration behind this write-up. One of those reasons being the questions I get sometimes like, “What method of birth control do you recommend?” or the total opposite side of the coin, “How can I support my fertility?”
And the answer is the same for both, because they are the same exact thing really — only in different directions. One is preventing pregnancy, while the other is calling it in.
Fertility awareness is the answer.
Giving young girls and women knowledge and awareness of their bodies is what they need in order to prevent unintentional pregnancy, or on the other hand, to call it in.
When we support her to explore her physiology, to be fluent in the language her body speaks, teach her how to confidently identify her fertile window each month, recognize when there is malignancy or abnormalities in her cycle that skew fertility signs, and then have the ability to decide for herself what’s best (for example abstaining from intimacy, using extra methods of protection while on fertile days, OR intentionally having unprotected sex on fertile days when desiring a baby, etc.) we give her the basic foundation for pregnancy empowerment.
What’s happened today though is that girls have been taught to fear, avoid, and ignore their own signs and signals, or oftentimes don’t even realize they have them. Letting shame and/or ignorance narrate our experience is pure recklessness and generally puts us into situations that create deep hurt, fear, confusion, and messes.
When we’re not aware of our own fertility, we’re setting ourselves up for failure in empowered pregnancy prevention, as well as mindful conception.
Looking at it from this lens, we’re able to take on an immense amount of ownership, responsibility, and self-autonomy, which prevents feelings of victimhood, regret, and blame — or needing to make decisions about life or death regarding an unborn baby.
Fertility awareness begins with having a healthy menstrual cycle. Within a healthy menstrual cycle, we’re able to identify which days are fertile and which days are not. Every day of the cycle is not a fertile day. It is not possible to become pregnant every day of the month. Having the skills and simple tools to be aware of fertile days, women are better equipped to enter into pregnancy consciously and more fully prepared. And let me add, the required tools to naturally track our cycles are not expensive or all that elaborate either — although there are things like Oura rings and phone apps to help calculate fertile days, I do advocate for connection with the body vs solely utilizing external tools.
When the menstrual cycle is irregular, imbalanced, and unwell, it’s much more difficult to confidently identify fertile days, which can be a huge reason for “infertility” challenges (I really dislike this diagnoses because it often fails to help women ID the roots within their cycles that are preventing pregnancy). This also puts women at higher risk of unintended pregnancy, because they may be having sex on fertile days while completely unaware they are fertile.
So rather than getting tangled in the messy conversation that is “abortion rights”, I’d really love to offer and advocate for this truth that we can do better for women from much earlier stages in the game. If we’re standing up for women’s rights, let’s support and share women’s wisdom to prevent women from entering into systems they don’t align with or desire to be in.
No one desires to become pregnant and then abort a baby. Becoming pregnant, afraid, and then unsure of how to proceed is NOT empowering. Laying in a cold sterile office with bright lights and strangers emptying your most sacred places is NOT empowering. The trauma (ex: anything that is too much, too soon, too fast and then not adequately processed out of our systems = trauma) that most often results following these procedures are things like painful sex, heavy bleeding, period irregularity, extreme pain, and even further pathologies resulting from the procedure itself (adhesions, cysts, infections, etc). The aftermath of having this done is NOT empowering. This is not a benign, “over when it’s over” event. The emotional and physical toll this takes on the body is extremely taxing and stays with a woman her entire life. What about that says “feminine empowerment?”
This isn’t a discussion on the reasons why women choose to abort babies — I am here today to shine a light on how abortion is what happens when a woman hasn’t been given the tools and support she needs to prevent unintentional pregnancy.
Abortion is a last ditch effort to give “power” into women’s hands about “choice”, when really there were ample steps that should have been offered well before she met this point of considering things such as abortion.
True feminism is honoring and valuing the female design, innate wisdom, and inherent strength. What would happen if this is what we offered our girls?
Just for some perspective too, this is all coming from a gal who walked her high school graduation while eight months pregnant and knowing nothing at all of fertility awareness. And here we are, twelve years later and I don’t regret even the toughest moments of it. I do believe that babies arrive on their own timeline, with their own mission, that it’s all perfect, and that we experience things in our lives for great purpose, but that deserves to be a whole rich conversation in itself.
So this is the narrative that I will hand to my daughter, to my nieces, to the little girls, and even the grown women who come to me with questions. I will remind them of what they already know: that they are powerful, they have the innate wisdom to and responsibility to make choices for themselves, and their body will guide them every step of the way if they choose to listen.
Let’s offer them the resources they need, so that they may know themselves well, trust their intuition, and be willing to use their voice to choose what they know is best for them.
But again, it’s starts firstly with having a healthy menstrual cycle. This is where my womb care consults can be an incredibly magical and empowering support for girls and women who are desiring either pregnancy prevention or are desiring pregnancy.
May you feel supported, confident, and vibrant.
Love,
G