Some months after writing this reflection, Nina did go on to conceive her baby girl spontaneously. I share that not as a guarantee, but because I know how quickly the heart can brace itself against stories of loss.

And yet sometimes, in the most honest expressions of grief, we find the medicine we need.

Nina writes:

How do I describe my grief? How do I grieve someone no one else knew? To grieve my child — my children — whom I never got to meet? And yet, I knew my children from my three miscarriages.

My first was going to be the first grandchild for my husband’s mom — the one who would be watched by all ten of us at every family event. The one who would smile and clap, and we would all gaze in wonder.

My second child had a rougher start. From the very beginning, we knew there wasn’t a great chance, and we worried about an ectopic pregnancy. But we still had hope. This one would be different. This one would defy the odds. This would be our “miracle” baby — the baby whose story we would tell over and over: how no one thought you would survive, but you did.

My third — my third — was the hardest. This was my baby. I ovulated and conceived on my own, without doctors’ intervention. I knew I had ovulated. I knew I was pregnant.

I would go to sleep thinking, I am a mother, with visions of this baby in my mind, curled up with his head in my neck.

Whatever I was doing, I would think: baby’s first hike, baby’s first public speaking event. But no one else knows these memories. I can’t sit with friends and reminisce about the time my baby made me so tired I had to sleep on the couch at work before I could walk home. Or the time I was sitting on the floor and my dog laid his head on my lap and looked at me as if he understood I was carrying his new playmate.

There is no memorial service where my friends can show up and tell me how they love me and my child — where I could not only feel their love, but see it.

The miscarriage of my children is a miscarriage of hope and joy and the future. And it is hard to believe that my next pregnancy will be different, but I do. I know it has to be, because my three children were so different. And my fourth will still bring hope and joy and an amazing list of firsts.

And with each pregnancy, I am different.

I grow and change and believe more deeply that I can be the mother I want to be. That I can have a happy baby and a happy marriage. I have become more patient than I ever thought I could be. I am less worried about who this child becomes and what they will do, and more focused on enjoying them simply for being.

I am learning about myself — my hopes and fears and dreams — and how they shape who I am.

My husband and I talk more openly now about what parenthood means to us. And during my grieving process, he has shown me how loving and caring he can be.

My three miscarriages have made us a family. They made me a mother.

(Five months after Nina joined our Fertile Heart community, she conceived her baby girl spontaneously. A couple of years later, she gave birth to her son, also conceived spontaneously. She speaks about her Fertile Heart Journey here.

How about you friends? Have you ever experienced a loss that feels impossible to speak about? A loss you’ve turned or are turning into love? Into a life-force. A source of strength?

“Children? You mean someone is killing children? Go!”

It’s from Karel Čapek’s play Mother.

Dolores, a woman who has lost her husband and four sons to war, finally relents and allows her only remaining son to enlist — to protect the most vulnerable.

Someone is killing children.

In every corner of the world, every minute of every day, a child is harmed at the hand of one of us grown-up mothers and fathers.

Yesterday it was a school.
Last week it was a neighborhood street.
Tomorrow it will be somewhere else.

So where do I go? What should I do?

Some time ago, I posted a photograph of a small boy lying face down in the sand.A friend warned me: “Be careful. If you post a picture of a dead foreign child, you should post a photo of a dead child of your people as well.”

I must balance an image of a victim from the Other clan with an image of my clan.
Otherwise, I could be seen as the enemy of my people.

To post an image of a child’s lifeless body is not enough.

It could be misleading.

I might be leaving out the justification for the murder of that particular child.
I might be withholding the perfectly logical, explicable reason for his death.
I might be omitting the story of the violent actions of members of the Other Clan which incited his murder.

War is messy.

It’s a mess, I’m told, one that inevitably involves the death of children.

That’s just the way it is.

But what if we viewed all the photographs of the dead as images in our family album — a family in which the mothers and fathers are failing to protect the children they claim to cherish more than anything in the world?

What if there really is no Other? What if it’s just us? Which direction do we aim the missiles then?

What story about “the Other” are we willing to believe?

And what would change — if we refused that story?

What if history isn’t asking us to choose a side? What if it’s asking us to become the the adults, the parents we claim to be?

Would our capacity to mourn protect us from collapsing into silence and passivity?

How about you, friends? I’d love to hear what this brings up for you.

What helps you stay human in a world that sometimes feels unbearably harsh?

In his Erotic and The Holy series author Marc Gafni defines love this way:

Love is the consistent commitment to the growth of the other, expressed through spontaneous acts of giving.

Obsessed as I am with birth metaphors, this is my translation:

To love you, I must adore the person you are today—and be a midwife to the person you long to be born into tomorrow.

As I see it, the toughest course in the “Learning What Love Is” curriculum is not learning to love others—but learning to love ourselves.

If we were to follow the guidance of those two definitions, loving ourselves would mean recognizing when we are spontaneously giving to ourselves, and when we are just as spontaneously or habitually taking away.

Loving ourselves would mean adoring the person we are today, while remaining willing to midwife the person we yearn to be.

Loving ourselves would mean being consistently committed to our own becoming—and expressing that commitment through genuine, thoughtful acts of care.

It would also mean allowing ourselves to feel everything: the injuries, the disappointments, the real and perceived betrayals. All of it would keep clarifying what it is we hunger for.

The more difficult parts of our lives would then become the seedlings of the next Self. A time of gestation.

Anyone who has given birth—or lived through a deep inner transformation—knows that when we’re in the middle of contractions, the pain can blur our vision.

Which is why we’re not meant to labor alone. We need a hand to squeeze, steady breath beside us. And when the moment comes, someone to say —

Push!

If we choose the love-learning road—the only road worth taking—we need trustworthy helpers. Collaborators. In all my years, I have yet to meet someone who found their way on this path without companions.

Reaching out for help—to friends, teachers—and if you’re lucky, even family members—is one of the bravest acts I know. But if you don’t risk it, you’ll never know who you can—or cannot—count on.

Despite the many examples to the contrary in our hurting human family, I’m not ready to give up on the idea that it is the longing to love that unites us. No matter how distorted that longing may appears against the daily deluge of cruelty and disconnection—the wish to connect with each other lives in all of us.

And if we’re willing to keep learning—and re-learning—the art of loving ourselves, then following the the command to “love our neighbors as ourselves,” begins to make a lot more sense.

Your turn, friends:
What feels easy for you on the love-learning road?
What feels harder?
Where are you right now in the curriculum?

Monster

Next door,
a noise-spewing monster
painted our fence black,
trampled raspberries,
scattered trash in the grass.

Shown the evidence,
she shrugged—
“Whatever…”

We tried kindness,
threat,
authorities.

Then—
with a heart’s flicker
we glimpsed
the features of the teacher
behind the veil
of disguise.

We picked up the litter,
watered the bushes,
painted silver stars
on the black fence,

left cornbread and jam
on her porch—
and a paper crane
that rose,
its wings unfolding
into the morning mist.

Have you ever met a teacher disguised as a monster? I’d love to hear.

As someone who’s spent nearly three decades supporting people on their family-birthing journeys I thought, Is this a joke? New? Little-known? To whom? Certainly not to the countless women and couples who, across generations, have turned to myriad natural remedies when their baby dreams were slow to materialize.

If by “little-known” we mean “rarely acknowledged by an industry expected to hit $85.53 billion by 2034, then yes — restorative methods are obscure. Not because they lack merit, but because they lack the marketing budgets, political clout, and profit margins of IVF. In my experience, what’s truly little-known is not the existence of gentler, less invasive paths to conception — but the fact that they often work a whole lot better than high tech tools.

Most troubling is the suggestion, voiced by some IVF specialists in the NBC piece, that offering restorative methods “denies” patients access to a “proven” option. IVF is indeed a remarkable technology that has brought joy to many families. I’m not here to vilify it. But it is not, despite decades of media framing, the gold standard for every infertility case.

Even after four decades of extraordinary advances, conceiving through in-vitro fertilization remains less certain than many believe. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2022 report), just over one in three IVF cycles ends in a live birth. The Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (2021 national report) shows that for women under 35, the live-birth rate hovers around 54 percent per cycle, slipping to 26 percent by age 38–40, and falling to 13 percent for ages 41–42. Beyond 42, the chance is closer to a whisper — under five percent. Billions of dollars, years of research, and still — no guarantee, only possibility.

And yet, numbers are never the whole story. Success rates cannot capture the whole landscape. Some of the most striking turnarounds I’ve seen have come when IVF was paired with a broader vision of healing. In my practice, I’ve seen IVF finally work after years of disappointment, not because the protocol itself changed, but because people were inspired to consider a more expansive view of what ailed them. In that light “little-known” approaches didn’t compete with IVF — they enhanced its success.

The NBC article rightly notes that restorative reproductive medicine takes time. A whole person approach to healing is in fact a life-long journey. When it comes to a fertility challenge, restoring hormonal balance, addressing endometriosis or PCOS, supporting egg and sperm health — these are not quick fixes. They require patience, skill, and partnership between patient and practitioner.

And sometimes healing arrives like rain after a drought.

I've seen what happens when we create space—physical, emotional, spiritual—for conception. I’d witnessed women, who’d endured cycle after cycle of IVF, only to discover that healing an unspoken emotional wound led them to conceive naturally within weeks. I've witnessed bodies remembering how to ovulate as soon as fear and the nocebo effect of “advanced maternal age” loosened their grip.

I have also seen people choose IVF as the right next step — after giving their bodies the best possible foundation for conception.

The NBC article, as well as the NYT piece touch on the political tug-of-war surrounding IVF and restorative medicine. That’s a conversation worth having — but not if it turns the very personal act of conceiving a child into a pawn in someone else’s ideological chess game. Fertility care should not be defined by partisan allegiance, religious doctrine, or the profit goals of any industry.

Reproductive medicine that doesn’t reduce the patient to a number on a lab report, is not “little-known.” It is simply under-valued by a system that measures worth in quarterly earnings, not in healthy pregnancies, thriving parents, and empowered decision-making. Let’s stop pretending restorative reproductive medicine is unknown. It’s been here all along—overlooked not for lack of evidence, but because the billion-dollar alternative is louder.Patients deserve to know every viable option — without fear, without a political spin.

Well—almost.

In the dream, which teetered between fantasy and a mild psychological thriller, the Oprah crew showed up unannounced at the back door of our Upper West Side apartment, just as I was dragging out the garbage in my faded red-and-black flannel pajamas.

But in real life? Things were actually lining up.

Four years after self-publishing Inconceivable, the story of my “impossible” second-chance pregnancy, one of my clients was interviewed on Good Morning America. A producer from The Oprah Winfrey Show caught the segment, picked up my book, read it, liked it, and pitched my story for “Remembering Your Spirit.”

After several rounds of screening interviews I was declared “the real deal.”

My husband Ed and I began preparing. We researched fulfillment companies, discussed shipping logistics for the avalanche of sales that were bound to pour in after the show.

Wouldn’t it be great, we fantasized, if Ed could leave his job at the investment bank to help build the Fertile Heart community full-time.

There was just one small snag in our grand plan.

There were no books in the stores. The timing of what was to be our big break was just a wee bit off. The publisher who had acquired the Trade Paperback rights to Inconceivable was not prepared to fast-track production to catch up with our luck.

To be fair, we did have a spike in sales. Our Amazon ratings for a few days after show aired, flirted with bestseller territory.

But there was no million copy explosion. No book tour. No branded tote bags and mugs.

Was I disappointed? Of course. Crushed? Yep, for a day or so.

But after the dust settled I noticed something else. After decades of trying to shed my obsession for searching for saviors, something about that Oprah show had a decidedly curative effect.

It was a timely lesson I may need to keep re-learning for the rest of my life.

In some crusty corner of my heart, there may always be a forgotten child, yearning for a rescue team.

Someone to speak up for her. A defender, an advocate. Someone to validate her right to take up space on this “gay great happening illimitably earth.”

The rest of me knows I’ve been saved long ago; I am, in fact, exactly where I need to be. The rest of me knows that being saved begins as an inside job. It begins with feeling, thinking and acting as closely aligned with my own deepest truth as I’m able to be at any given moment.

If I can do that, chances are. I’ll gravitate toward people who can support me in living my way into honoring that truth.

Years later, my work is most likely different than it would’ve been, had we sold a million copies of Inconceivable after the airing of that Oprah segment.

Would my work be better or worse?

Who’s to say?

All I know is that the truth I choose to live, is that the Fertile Heart OVUM birthing practice, needed a longer gestation, in order to grow into the—fully formed creation, with its very own name, language, philosophy, its own special tools—which it is today.

So in the most unexpected way, maybe Oprah did save my life. Not by changing it overnight. But by not changing it too soon. By leaving me just enough room to grow into the teacher, the guide, the witness I was still becoming.

And for that, I am deeply grateful.

How about you, friends?

Any lifesaving events you wouldn’t have chosen for yourself? Any rescues that didn’t look like rescues at the time? I’d love to hear your story—or anything else this one stirs.

With love,
Julia

Is there a yet-unborn part of you that keeps tugging at your heart? Longs to be born? I’d love to hear about it.

Diagnosis

I can easily recall the sting of panic as I stood in the narrow kitchen of our Upper West Side apartment, listening to my OB-GYN deliver the news: Premature Ovarian Failure, she explained, meant that my childbearing years had come to a close.

The diagnosis struck like a penalty for my innumerable shortcomings. I was fluent in the language of self-blame, and now I had compelling reasons to use it. What was my problem, getting in line for seconds before everyone had a turn? After years of floundering, didn’t I finally have it all? A healthy, blue-eyed little girl who lit up my days, a man at my side, who was well worth the wait, a job I loved, teaching English as a second language at Hunter College.

Why did this hurt so much? If you’d asked me then, I’d have said I failed—failed my daughter by being unable to give her a sibling, failed my husband who wanted a larger family, failed myself for ignoring the ticking clock of my biology.

Or, had I paused long enough, I might’ve said: I don’t know why this feels like such a colossal defeat. I don’t know why adoption feels untenable. I don’t know why I can’t even glance at the unopened package of syringes attached to a pamphlet on egg donation.

Today, I have a little more insight into the woman I was on that Tuesday afternoon, standing in the kitchen with the phone pressed to my ear. What I didn’t understand then, was that as much as I wished to bring one more life into the world, it was my own life that needed saving.

No, I didn’t have a life-threatening disease. But the crippling self-doubt that had shadowed me since I arrived in America was pulling me under once again. Back then, leaving behind my parents, my friends, my “promising young actress” status, and a language I loved, I had scrambled to figure out who I was.

Now, unable to fulfill what was presumably one of my most elemental tasks, the scaffolding I rigged up to construct a new identity was suddenly collapsing under me.

With every “No, there is nothing you can do,” I sank deeper into a familiar swamp of despair.

Epiphany

Except this time, I had an antidote: desire. Right or wrong, I wanted that second baby more than I allowed myself to want anything else before. Fierce, uncensored, nonnegotiable desire became the golden rope I clung to, inching from dejection to hope.

At first, hope meant seeking a third, fourth, and fifth opinion in the Park Avenue offices of the best and brightest in the baby-making market. From there, I ventured to Chinatown and its environs. Five acupuncturists later, I found a homeopath, then a Native American medicine man, an herbalist, a naturopath, and a midwife.

I replaced one set of experts with another.

It was only after all the specialists had given up on me that an entirely unexpected idea emerged: an epiphany. I realized I had an opinion about the diagnosis.

Elated by that glimmer of a thought, I became the principal investigator of a most compelling research project: my own healing.

First, I translated those clinical lab reports into words that spoke directly to my body—words that evoked a visceral response: My ovaries are depleted, they don’t have enough energy to create new life. How, then, do I generate more energy—for my body, my mind, my spirit?

This was a far more workable assignment.

Guidance

A voice of knowing—one I didn’t even realize had been silenced—began to speak again, dispatching guiding dreams, clearing the path.

In one dream, I discovered a malignant growth in my uterus. The doctors in the nightmare assured me it would vanish the moment I stopped clamoring for more than I already had.

I didn’t need to call my ex-therapists to decode that dream. I was trudging through the familiar, treacherous terrain of Child-of-Survivors-Guilt, where self-sacrifice was traded for the privilege of being alive.

I had traversed this land before. I knew enough to switch on the high beams when the path grew eerie, to anticipate the twists and hairpin turns, to hang on to the wheel and keep my eyes on the road.

Gradually, I surrendered to the notion that I was not meant to control how and when birth happened. My task was simpler and, in its way, more profound: to persist in creating a conception-friendly space—both within and around me. To humbly and diligently attune myself to the ever-present promptings of a quiet voice within me pointing me toward the next guidepost.

Not that it was easy. It required patience, humility, and a fierce loyalty to my own experience, no matter how invalidated it was by the medical dogma of the day. But what a relief, to shift from the clenched stance of a dictator—forcing my body to obey—to the role of a trusting collaborator.

Eight months into a gradually unfolding self-healing protocol of radical lifestyle changes and massive soul-searching, I conceived a baby girl without medical intervention. Forty elated weeks later we became a family of four.

The presence of both my children is, for me, a source of unending wonder. And the pilgrimage sparked by my soaring hormones delivered far more than their arrival—it offered an entirely new way of approaching my life.

After decades of deferring to outside authorities, I’ve come to understand what it takes to stay the course and uncover a truth I could finally trust as my own. For someone who grew up under a tyrannical regime, in a family perpetually threatened by the powers that be, this was a taste of unprecedented freedom.

New assignment

Fertility advocacy was not part of my career plan, but after my second daughter’s birth, everywhere I went, I began meeting women battling the same supremacy of statistics and diagnoses that once haunted me. One day, galvanized by yet another harrowing testimony, I resolved to host a Sunday afternoon gathering in our Upper West Side Manhattan apartment for women and couples who’d reached out to me for guidance.

Most of them had been labeled “untreatable,” endured years of invasive procedures, or were juggling an array of perplexing natural remedies. And yet, in this gathering of supposed “rejects,” something extraordinary began to unfold: we celebrated the births of babies who defied the studies, the odds, the labels.

Gradually, fertility advocacy and education became my life’s work.

As I continued testing the ideas that had helped me defy medical dogma, an entirely unexpected gift emerged: a clear, systematic healing process with its own language, philosophy, and toolkit. The most wondrous part of this gift wasn’t just the arrival of “inconceivable” babies, but its capacity to reduce suffering and guide people toward navigating life’s challenges with a sense of grace.

An unexpected gift

Numerous branches of social science have offered explanations for why we humans behave as we do and how we can move toward a more conscious and compassionate way of living our lives. My contribution is in the particular way these universal truths have unfolded for me, and how I have applied them in my work with clients over the years.

In the Fertile Heart OVUM philosophy we speak about three invisible forces that shape all aspects of our personal and collective lives. Forces that surface in the currents of our circumstances, the threads of our relationships, and even signals of disease.

O.V.U.M.—Latin for “egg”—stands for Orphan, Visionary, and Ultimate Mother.

In the early days of leading circles, the grief in the room was palpable. One afternoon, a woman broke into uncontrollable sobs. “It sounds as though a long-forgotten orphan has been resurrected inside you,” I said gently when she calmed down. From that day forward, the Orphan became a central metaphor in our work.

The Orphan, in the three-way mirror of OVUM, reveals the abandoned child within us—parentless, voiceless, and burdened by the grief and denial passed down through generations. With no adult present to guide or protect them, the Orphans are frozen in a silent scream of outrage, desperate to be heard. When we build our lives on Orphan-rooted half-truths, the structures we erect are bound to crumble.

But there is good news. Within each of us lies the seed of another force: a wisdom far greater than our daily mind. This innate intelligence has been named and revered across time and cultures. It needs no religious or political affiliation and speaks to us in dreams, symbols, and moments of profound insight. It offers a roadmap to our creations, whether they take the form of children, books, or peace projects. It’s a force that sends shivers down the spine when our bodies recognize it as the sound of truth.

In the Fertile Heart OVUM practice, we engage with this voice of knowing through carefully crafted imagery and movement. After years of teaching, I have settled on calling it the Ultimate Mother—a mother that offers the Orphan a protected sanctuary where all grievances are heard without a threat of repercussions.

Finally, according to the OVUM model, by uniting the Orphan with the Ultimate Mother, we nurture the seed of our next not- yet-born self: the emerging fully human parent who can hear the wailing of the abandoned child and the guidance of the Ultimate Mother and responds with equanimity.

For several years I spoke about the liaison between those two forces as the Student. One night as I was drifting off to sleep, a far more fitting term came: Visionary. The Visionary, conceived in the liminal space between the Ultimate Mom and the Orphan, is the grounded, mature adult able to choose the next useful step in the direction of her desire.

To my amazement, when I combined the first letters of these archetypal forces—Orphan, Visionary, and Ultimate Mother—they formed OVUM. I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect acronym.

Through the years of teaching, this process began to take shape as a tool not just for biological conception, but for living.

The perils of positive thinking on the road to peace

Infertility—or, as I prefer to call it, “the scenic road to parenthood”—is often the most emotionally significant challenge people face. Over the years, I’ve worked with brilliant, introspective clients—mental health professionals, meditators, yogis—who nonetheless fell into the hollow trap of “positive thinking” in response to their pain.

Instead of engaging with the raw, messy emotions of grief, jealousy, or rage, these unwelcome responses were placated with suggestions to reduce stress or improve lifestyle choices. Many feared that their “negative” reactions would jeopardize their chances of conceiving. The wounded, bereft child within was left crouching in the shadows, its cries silenced by shame or self-judgment.

But when we label feelings as “negative” or “positive,” we’re telling ourselves that something is wrong with what we’re experiencing. Without a safe space to tend to the injured voices within us, those wounds often find expression in ways beyond our control. What if, instead of dismissing jealousy or rage as “negative,” we saw them as signals of pain? What if we said: He is jealous—oh, he must be hurting. She is raging—how awful that must feel.

But birth is possibility. It’s about conceiving the inconceivable. Birth operates under entirely different laws.

In the world of baby-making, a fragmented embryo is unlikely to lead to a full-term pregnancy. Likewise, a fragmented human being—someone who disowns any aspect of their nature—cannot give birth to a healthy life, a thriving community, or a peaceful world. And yet, unlike embryos, fragmented humans can be repaired. We can be born and reborn into greater wholeness over and over again.

Lasting peace cannot simply be legislated or enforced—it must be conceived and nurtured by shepherding the motley crew of our inner Orphans to safety.

In Styles of Radical Will, Susan Sontag writes: “An event that makes new feelings conscious is always the most important experience a person can have. These days, it’s a moral imperative as well.” Consciousness is contagious. Unseen and airborne, it seeps into sealed-up caves and walled-off terrains, places unreachable by even the most advanced drones. The story of our species is co-authored by all of us. The feelings we attend to, the thoughts we expand upon, and the action we choose to take, will tip the balance—toward a more frightening or a more life-friendly earth community.

At eighteen, Edita lost her adored father to suicide.

Her first husband? A wife beater.

Her son — my brother —eight years old— swallowed by a world gone mad with hatred.

Her mother, my grandmother Sofie — torn from her home and vanished in one of history’s many factories of forgetting.

Edita herself endured that underworld. Starvation, disease, the terror of being seen —or not seen—by the ones who held life and death in their hands.

And after the war, her second husband, my father, drowning in his own waves of post-war grief over the loss of his widowed mother and cherished younger sister, became a man whose pain too often spilled over as rage.

And still, in the aftermath of so much sorrow, Edita kept choosing life. Choosing love.

She loved us, my older sister Susan and me, with a kind of fierce, feral devotion. I know this. I’ve always known it as a bone-deep truth.

And I also know: tenderness was never easy for her. It wasn’t easy to offer, it wasn’t easy to hold. Tenderness would have made the little boy, her son, our brother Robert, too real. It would’ve made his absence unbearable.

In Hungarian, we called her Anyu. Mother.

The n in Anyu is soft, like a hush, like a hidden softness.

My mother’s softness was hidden, too.

And so, my own life became a long, ceaseless search for softness.

Until I grew a mother inside me.

I didn’t do it alone, and it wasn’t a sudden metamorphosis — it was a long, long gestation. But then, at some point, it morphed into the central theme of my life and work.

Now, She’s always there.

So, where do I go, when I need a where-does-it-hurt-honey kind of mothering? On days when I need to fully let go and be carried by a force I’ve come to call the Ultimate Mother? The days when no flesh-and-blood human can hold the weight of what aches inside me?

On such days, I drop into the deepest layers of the heart, knowing She waits there for me. No appointment needed.

I slow down. I listen.

Once I align my breath with Her breath, She points me — sometimes toward a human with arms and words and truths to soothe me.

Sometimes toward the right line in the right book.

Sometimes toward a cobblestoned street, one that seems to recognize my feet and greet me like an old friend.

Sometimes I lean against her arms in the Hands Of Kindness Imagery, let her scoop me up, trusting She’ll carry me safely to my next best destination.

Here’s the tiniest of poems I wrote for a friend once:

Love thyself,
no matter what the pain,
then mother yourself
the way your mother
couldn’t mother you,
since no one showed her how.

And you?

Where do you go when you need a “where does it hurt, honey?” kind of mothering?
Is it a person, a pet, a poem, a place?

Or maybe — just maybe — you’ve grown your own soft-voiced mama inside you too.

I’d love to know. Would you leave a comment and let me know? In the most recent Fertile Heart Visionary Circle, the theme of alone-ness rose up for several of us.

Let’s remind each other we’re never as alone as we might feel.

Joy, the Netflix movie about IVF’s creation, and the overlooked contribution of Jean Purdy—one of the three collaborators behind the procedure—is a good one to revisit on International Women’s Day. For me, and for any woman who has ever questioned the cost of fully standing in her power, Joy is a vital reminder: Take up space. Speak your truth. Share your story. If you don’t, who will? The film dares us to imagine a world where we claim what’s ours in order to have the support and the resources necessary to continue to evolve our ideas for the benefit of all.

Purdy was a lab technician, whose pivotal insights and devotion to her patients were essential to the treatment’s success. Yet her diligence went largely un-credited during her lifetime, overshadowed by her male collaborators, Robert Edwards, a physiologist and Patrick Steptoe, a gynecologist- obstetrician.

Purdy died at just 39 years old, never having seen her name etched into the history she helped create.

Subscribe now

Watching Joy, I couldn’t help but hear echoes of my own life and work. As if the complexities I’ve wrestled with—of contribution, acknowledgment, and erasure—were being given space to breathe.

The film evoked a wave of reflections on how often I’ve grappled with the fine line between advocating for my work and venturing into what might constitute self-promotion.

Like so many women, I was raised to avoid celebrating my achievements too openly, lest I seem boastful. The message was clear and persistent: “Good girls don’t brag.” We’re best to sit quietly, to trust that someday —somehow —the powers that be will recognize the value of our labor.

In spite of volumes of feminist manifestos, the tendency to hesitate when claiming the worth of our work—rooted in gendered expectations—continues to linger. Though consciously we might know better, the fear of being perceived as "braggy, loud, or aggressive" is not easy to erase.

A study featured in Psychology of Women Quarterly revealed how much this discomfort with “violating the modesty norm” can erode our self-trust and perpetuate the gender gap in motivation and performance.

For me, Joy felt like an invitation to examine how this deeply embedded social signaling is stitched into my self-image, not as an act of selflessness, but as an act of self-sabotage. '

To ask myself: Why do I shy away from speaking with pride about the ideas and tools that have taken years of dedication to fine-tune? Why do I continue to struggle so much with charging fees that would fully reflect the value of what I have to offer? Why? Why shouldn’t the fact that I get to do meaningful work be enough?

What is it that recognition would provide?

The story of IVF’s creation is a triumph of scientific collaboration and perseverance and it also holds up a mirror to those of us who have internalized the “it’s best to downplay your gifts, you don’t want to risk being seen as a show off” message.

Purdy’s name was left off the initial commemorations not because her work was less significant, but because she was a woman and perhaps because her credentials were seen as less legitimate as those of her collaborators.

This dynamic feel woefully familiar. Inconceivable is a memoir I wrote about being diagnosed with Diminished Ovarian Reserve. It tells the story of the consequent pilgrimage of self-examination and research that led to the birth of my daughter, defying the medical dogma of the day.

After the book was published, through ten years of counseling and teaching I developed not a technological breakthrough, but an original healing modality, the Fertile Heart OVUM Process with its own philosophy and toolkit which has supported thousands of women and couples in birthing their families. In some cases, the process has paved the way for spontaneous conception after IVF has repeatedly failed to yield a viable pregnancy.

I documented that work in The Fertile Female.

Yet when my clients generously shared my books and case histories with their healthcare providers, they were, for the most part, received with benevolent condescension. Their inconceivable babies were just anecdotal evidence. Luck.

The need for recognition, for being appreciated for who we are and what we bring to the collective pool of thought is a basic, universal human need.

If the weight of standing in our power feels daunting, consider this: claiming your work is an act of service—to yourself, your family, colleagues, to your community, to all the midwives that made the birth of your creations possible.

It’s an act of service to the people who have yet to benefit from what you have to offer. It’s a way of saying that what you do matters, that it can ripple outward and change lives as profoundly as the quiet brilliance of Jean Purdy has changed the lives she touched.

Your turn Friends:

Is this something you too wrestle with? Claiming the value of your work?

Anything else that comes up reading this piece?

Yet, as someone who has spent nearly three decades guiding women and couples through the labyrinth of fertility struggles, I find myself grappling with the message embedded in Ms. Yeoh’s infertility story—that has been widely shared on BBC Woman’s Hour, Good Morning America, BuzzFeed, and debated across Reddit and other social media platforms.

Similar to stories shared by Michelle Obama, actress Elisabeth Röhm, and other high-profile women, what we can glean from interviews is that Yeoh was in her early thirties when she attempted pregnancy and sought fertility treatments. Unlike Obama and Röhm, however, treatment did not bring her a baby.

In an interview on BBC Woman’s Hour, Ms. Yeoh described not being able to have children as “the biggest sadness in my life.” She also said it was a major reason for the breakup of her marriage.

Those words echoed a familiar narrative—the narrative of personal failure, the idea that delayed childbearing is a sorrow that ruins marriages and lives. While this framing may strike a chord of solidarity, it can also do a disservice to the millions currently navigating this complex, singular challenge.

Yes, a diagnosis that signals childbearing challenges can be frightening and painful. But it is not only a story of helplessness and loss.

Over the years, I have witnessed countless couples for whom this crisis became an impetus to repair ruptures, deepen intimacy, and, when needed, re-imagine their definitions of family and fulfillment.

"At some point… you just have to let go and move on," Ms. Yeoh said.

Hearing those words, I was reminded of a favorite teaching story. (I paraphrase)*:

A man finds himself in the midst of a terrifying life crisis. One night, alone and restless, he steps into the darkness and is met by a stranger—shadow and sinew, more force than form. Without a word, they wrestle. He doesn’t know what or whom he’s wrestling with—grief, God, his own fate—but he refuses to surrender. The struggle stretches until dawn, bruising him, breaking him open. Just as the stranger moves to leave, he clings tighter and demands: “Not until you bless me.” And so, with one final blow that leaves him limping, he is blessed—not with a clear answer to his troubles, but with a new name, a deeper knowing, and a new way to live.

Of course, Michelle’s story unfolded exactly as it was meant to unfold and she is living an incredible, fulfilling life.

And…I confess that when writing this piece, I couldn’t help but wonder—if our paths had crossed during those difficult years of her trying to conceive, might her story have taken a different turn?

I set that thought aside—until, just days later, when I learned about another celebrity—one who did read Inconceivable.

I don’t mean to suggest that my book—or any single story—holds the answer for everyone. But storytelling, whether from the lips of a celebrated actor or an ordinary woman finding her way through the dark, shapes cultural conversations. It reinforces or challenges the myths we carry—about love and loss and what it means to keep the faith in the face of uncertainty.

These narratives don’t just live in the headlines; they seep into our own hearts, subtly shaping how we feel about our struggles, our relationships, our dreams.

In a world where so many already feel that difficulties in becoming parents are a life sentence of sorrow, I wonder:

How might we tell our stories in a way that honors the pain without feeding the fear?

How do we inspire not just sympathy, but a new way of wrestling with this unwelcome stranger called “infertility”?

How do we keep engaging in conversations about this deeply personal and contentious subject in a way that leaves us not just wounded, but blessed—with a new level of knowing ourselves, each other, and a deeper sense of awe for the unfathomable mystery of creating life?

When it comes to a pivotal life-challenge, what would “being blessed before you move on” look like for you?

* Jacob wrestling with the angel, Genesis 32:22-32.

Dear Friends,

For nearly three decades my work has centered around delving deeply into two questions: what makes us fertile in every sense of that word and what is at the root of the relentless unleashing of violence within the human family.

I’m often advised to keep those two subjects separate. I can’t do that.  For me, those two subjects are inextricably linked. How can we hope to bring more children into the world without contributing in all possible ways toward building  a more life-friendly earth-home not just for them, but for all of creation.

I’ve been struggling so much in the past year with my need to show up. To speak up. Witnessing the deepening divides between family members, within my local community and worldwide, seeing how our eroding ability to hear one another hinders any hope of generative conversations; how much of our emotional energy is channeled toward divisions, I kept asking myself: With such a frighteningly escalating level of us versus them ethos that’s been on full display in the last several years, where do I look for help with finding the most healing, most unifying way to show up? 

Then the answer rolled in from an unexpected source. My grandmother. Someone I never met and yet she’s someone I’m still getting to know. And as I grow older and my capacity for holding the particular horror of her experience expands, I appreciate her guidance more and more.

My paternal grandmother, Yolan Klein, was a palpable presence in our childhood home in Eastern Slovakia. In pictures, she was a kind, dignified woman in a silk black dress with a white collar, whose portrait hung over the family bed in our one-room living quarters. My father’s nightly ritual was to stand on tiptoe and touch the glass held by the mahogany frame with his lips. Then he’d invite my sister and me to say goodnight to our grandmother.

(I’m not sure that childhood-trauma therapists of today would approve of this ritual but it’s what my father needed to do for his own healing.)

The Ring and the Note was the story my father told us to explain what gave him the strength to survive starvation, exhaustion, disease, and daily humiliation in Matthausen a death-camp in Upper Austria.

“I kept thinking how it would affect my mother and Adelka, my younger sister, to return come and not find me there,” he said. “I couldn’t do that to them.” 

He then described the scene of arriving home after the liberation.

“I walked up three flights of stairs ready to wrap my arms around my mother and sister and found strangers living in our apartment. The neighbor must’ve heard me. She was waiting at the top of the stairwell. Without a word she ushered me into her living room and handed me the possessions my mother thought I would most need when I returned: a winter coat, a down blanket, a ring, and a note. It read:”

‘Children love each other, we will not see one another again.’

Later, my father learned that his mother died in the cattle car on the way to Auschwitz, a death camp in Poland.  

In the decades since I heard that story, I’ve pictured my grandmother sitting down to write that note before gathering her belongings for the hellish train ride, choosing the one line that would make a difference in her son’s and daughter’s lives.

“Children love each other.”

My father’s sister, Adelka, didn’t read that note because she and her husband were executed during a massacre six months before the war ended.

My older brother, Robert, didn’t read that note because at the age of eight, he was one of the 1.5 million children murdered in the Shoah.

My uncle Alex, a newlywed didn’t read that note because he was shot trying to escape from a cattle car on the way to Buchenwald.

My cousin didn’t read that note because she didn’t get to be born. When my aunt Magda, shortly before deportation found out that she was newly pregnant, she aborted the cherished baby on the way.

But my father read the note. So did my mother, the woman he married, who survived her young son’s murder and Auschwitz.

My sister and I heard that story and its command many times.

“Children love each other.”

It’s an injunction that continues to haunt me.

Though I strive to do better, love is often not the first response toward my own shortcomings, let alone toward the behavior of many of my human siblings. Still, I trust that the attitude my grandmother asked me to lead with, is always there, buried underneath the resentment, distrust and rage.

Each time I rope off a safe space tor those injured voices within me to speak their truth, I find myself inching just a little closer toward compassion. A little closer to the way I’d like to show up for myself and everyone and everything I’m in relationship with.

I don’t have the answers to solving the escalating horrors of wars or any other high conflicts we humans are attempting to resolve through assaulting one another. I don’t know how I would act or what emotional reactions I’d have to reckon with if it was my son that was abducted, maimed and murdered or if my home was bombed into rubble and my children were dying of starvation.

But if I, someone with food in my pantry and clear skies overhead can’t sit down with my neighbors and hear what pains them, how can I expect people trapped in the war zone to move toward a more peaceful way of treating one another?

My father survived the un-survivable for the sake of the people he loved. Knowing the incalculable cost of violence, the loss of human life, the unfathomable harm to every living thing, what am I, what are you, what are we willing to do for the sake of the children--the people, the world--we claim to love?

“...our well being is something that is achieved collectively by encouraging other people to do beautiful things.”   Marilyn Robinson

Life chose two work-stations for me. The first one I was assigned at birth. Born into the wreckage of war, I don’t remember a time when the question of “Why? was not pressing against some part of my consciousness.

Why? Why do we humans continue to commit acts of unfathomable cruelty? Why is the “us versus them” ethos so appealing to the injured, revenge-plotting part of us? How do we nurture the gestation of a human-type that wishes no harm?

The second workstation came much later, when I was denied something I wanted more than anything else. A baby.  Not long after the arrival of my “inconceivable daughter, the fertility/infertility world became my second work station.

For me, those two assignments are closely linked. How can I possibly continue to walk along people wishing to bring a child into our world, without encouraging an active engagement in making that world a whole lot more life-friendly for them and for all of creation?

 This new platform hopes to be one more way I’d love to pursue deeper truths in the context of those two questions: How do we nurture are fertility in the deepest sense of that word and how do we re-route the human impulse toward cruelty and channel it in life-affirming ways?

I intend to invite conversation through:

Live Zoom Birthing Circles using the ideas and tools of the Fertile Heart OVUM Practice to support the conception of projects that bridge our personal and collective healing.

And through conversations with teachers whose work encourages a more aware approach to being human.

The “OVUM Game” as I sometimes call the Fertile Heart OVUM Practice, is all about easing the ache of the human game.

Come, play with us!

Julia

If you could use a benediction for a new beginning —for encouragement to show up a little more fully tomorrow than you have showed up today —may one of these wishes land in just the right spot in you.

(We recorded this particular version at a large gathering of my beloved Woodstock Jewish Congregation community — which is why it carries a little more resonance than usual.)

A BLESSING FOR SHOWING UP:

May you be blessed with gratitude flowing through you as the best anti-inflammatory remedy, each time you consider the astonishing miracles that have taken place in order for you to show up here on earth to play the human game. 

May you be blessed knowing that there is not now, there never was and there never will be another human being just like you. You and you alone can make a contribution to our human family that no one else can. That is why the seed of desire to stay true to your gifts has been planted in you as an enlivening force. Not a reason to ever start guilt tripping yourself about not doing enough.

May you be blessed with steadfast friends who will mirror what’s possible for you on days when you are not able to see it yourself. 

May your hand reach for the perfect book and your gaze land on the perfect line of guidance on days when you doubt that your voice matters.

May you rope off a sacred space each day to ponder what would be the kindest, most pleasing way for you to show up for yourself first and then for everyone who crosses your path and for the tasks at hand.

Getting clear, that your contribution adds to the Power of Good, may you risk asking for what you need, in order to fully honor the value of who you are and what you bring to the cosmic potluck.  

Most important: May you be blessed with distinguishing which Netflix shows will leave you intellectually & emotionally empty and the shows that will bolster the bud of the next creation you’re burning to share with the rest of us.

May we all be blessed.

Thank you for reading & subscribing.

Leave a comment

Share