Because the fertility journey can be an extremely clinical one, it is so important to retain a bit of magic and space for reflection in your life. That’s where rituals come in. They help you slow down, focus on the type of energy that you’d like to call in or release, and process any emotions that present themselves. Ritual helps you say ‘I matter, my experience matters.’ On this episode of the podcast I talk with fertility coach Caroline Ashurst about the power of ritual, how you can design your own rituals to deal with (in)fertility and loss, and why we need to let go of the notion that we’re on a time clock when it comes to fertility.

Top quotes:

Caroline Ashurst: “Ritual is a pathway to processing deep threshold experiences that we have as humans. We create space to process our emotions. It’s a declaration of self-love and that influences how we experience the fertility journey.”

Françoise Molenaar: “Establishing a healthy womb connection can be an important entry point for creating that space for yourself.”

Caroline Ashurst: “There is so much that you can do to support egg quality. When you take the time to slow down, to nurture and nourish and love yourself, you’re putting yourself in the center of that process and not the outcome. When you do all that, you’re working on your egg quality in a way that is so powerful. Because all of that affects your hormonal health.”

About Caroline Ashurst:

Caroline Grace Ashurst, L.Ac. is an award-winning acupuncturist + holistic fertility coach. She helps women who are discouraged and frustrated with their fertility journey heal inside + out, renew their hope, and get their lives back so they can make their baby dreams come true without losing themselves in the process! You can find out more about her work at her website www.carolineashurst.com or Instagram https://www.instagram.com/restorativeharmony/. You are also welcome to join her Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thefertilityformula

The fertility journey would be so much easier if you knew that you’d eventually get that baby. The ‘not knowing’ can be crushing: not knowing if and when you’ll conceive, not knowing what is the right course of action for you, and not knowing how long you’ll have to carry this burden. On this episode of the podcast, I talk to trust guide Fenja Sepers about how to find trust in such an uncertain situation. Fenja has dealt with her own fair share of grief and uncertainty, of life not ending up the way she planned it, and of having to adjust to what the Universe had in store for her. She has come out with a tremendous sense of purpose and trust and shares her key lessons with us.

Top quotes:

Fenja Sepers: “Grief is one of those forces that brings us into a more inclusive and more whole sense of being.”

Fenja Sepers: “How do you know that what you gain through this journey is not bigger than what you were wishing for?”

Fenja Sepers: “Life is not always fair and we cannot control life.”

Book recommendation: “The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief” by Francis Weller

About Fenja Sepers:

Fenja is the founder of Navigate on Trust, trust-guide, consciousness thinker and art director dividing her time between Morocco and The Netherlands. She uses her insights and personal experiences in navigating the life-giving spaces between the visible and invisible, life and death, fear, creativity, uncertainty, grief, loss, happiness and life's great adventure to guides individuals, groups and projects in the awakening of consciousness and rekindling of connection. You can find more about her work at her website https://www.navigateontrust.com/ or on Instagram @navigateontrust

Learning how to connect to my womb is one of the most important skills I’ve ever learned. It helps me ground myself, it allows me to tap in to a profound source of inner wisdom and it empowers me and shows me how to step into my most authentic leadership and authority style. Developing that womb connection is especially important for women who are on a fertility journey. Every time you consciously connect to your womb, you open up a portal for healing. On this episode of the podcast, I share a number of techniques that you can use to start developing that womb connection. You can download my free meditation here: https://www.thatfertilefeeling.com/freebies

Truly connecting to the body can be very difficult when getting pregnant doesn’t come easily. Your womb becomes a means to an end rather than a place in your body that stores your feminine power, creativity and life force. On this episode of the podcast, I talk to pelvic healer Kinga Sidor about the importance of looking at all the trauma that you are carrying with you in your womb space - especially when you’re trying to get pregnant. We discuss why it’s so important to create a healthy relationship with your inner masculine side and how we need to feel safe before we can start listening to the body. We also touch upon the topic of loss and how that is often a gateway to a larger process of inner healing.

Top quotes:

Kinga Sidor: “The moment you put pressure on the feminine, she closes up.”

Kinga Sidor: “When we truly heal our relationship to the masculine, we can feel fully safe in the body and start listening to the body.”

Kinga Sidor: “Sometimes life is unraveling something for you so you can look deeper into yourself.”

About Kinga Sidor:

Kinga has been (co)leading Women Circles, Retreats and a Year Training for women since 2015. She is a devoted reiki practitioner since 2010, and since 2013 also a yoga teacher and her classes are very much YIN oriented these days, with the focus on deepening the feminine qualities in us all. In all those years she attended countless body work trainings & in 2020 she added Healing Body Sessions & now also deeply transformative Pelvic Massage Journeys to her offerings. You can find out more about her and her work on Instagram @kingasidor

When creative designer Lotte Vergouwen decided to stop fertility treatment, she didn’t realize that the hardest part of her journey was still to come. On this episode of the podcast I talk with Lotte about the importance of agency - both in designing your treatment process and in designing your life when things don’t work out the way you planned them to.

Although you cannot control whether you will get pregnant or not, it is so important to take charge over the process and really feel that you always have options. We also talk about the ‘not mom’ retreats that Lotte organizes where women who never became mothers share, connect and reflect on how to design a life beyond having their own kids.

Top quotes:

Lotte Vergouwen: “Once you start fertility treatment, you go all in.”

Lotte Vergouwen: “As a designer, I know that you can design almost everything. That includes your life when you are not a mother.”

Lotte Vergouwen: “Still now I catch myself thinking, 'I don’t want to be a sad woman.'”

Book recommendation: “Living the life unexpected” by Jody Day

About Lotte Vergouwen

Lotte started NoMo Retreats out of a desire to do something for women who never had, or never were able to have, children. She is one of them. After an intense fertility trajectory, she has had to let go of her dream of becoming a mother. She was inspired to start NoMo Retreats when she realized that the most difficult journey only started after she stopped treatment. You can find out more about Lotte and her work at her website (https://nomo-retreats.nl/) or on Instagram @nomo_retreats.

The fertility journey can be an incredibly lonely one. Many people just don't understand the challenges you face along they way. They say the wrong things and/or they try to make you feel better about something that is just really hard. It can also feel like you're being left behind in life. And it's a private journey and not something you might necessarily want to share with everyone around you.

On this episode of the podcast, I discuss how important it is to therefore find communities that are able to hold space for you. I share of my own experiences with people that were really there for me along the way and how beautiful it was to be connected in this manner.

On July 16, I'm starting a weekly moment of love, support and hope for women on their fertility journeys. The idea is to create a (Facebook) group of women who are all trying to get pregnant. Every Friday, we'll do a little ritual for one of our members and post a photo of it in the group. This can be things like burning a candle, saying a prayer, putting something on your altar - whatever feels fitting to you and your traditions. I share some more info about it on this podcast and on my instagram @thatfertilefeeling.

If you want to sign up, here's the link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1456519601750714/

I’ve long been a fan of family constellations. We all carry so much baggage from the generations that came before us (a scientifically proven point) and it can be really helpful to see that visualized in a space where other people represent your family members. You can only start breaking patterns once you recognize them.

On this episode of the podcast, I talk to systemic facilitator Cecilia Alteri about whether family constellations can also help you deal with fertility issues and loss. Although it’s hard to generalize, as every family system is different, Cecilia provides some important pointers as to how your lineage may affect your subconscious beliefs about parenthood and fertility. It can also teach you a lot about your family’s unique blend of resilience.

For more information on epigenetics, see this video about Kerry Ressler's research: https://youtu.be/FVKYVNfIWp8 and this article: https://news.emory.edu/stories/2013/12/smell_epigenetics_ressler/campus.html

About Cecilia Alteri

Cecilia’s way of working is gentle and creates a graceful atmosphere and strong presence. Her focus is always on the client first. She places a lot of emphasis on creating a safe environment. Often, people feel like arriving home in the circle. As a facilitator, Cecilia follows different schools of family constellations. She uses tools and methods from family constellations, structural constellations, inner parts, the internal family and much more. You can find out more about her work at https://www.ceciliaaltieri.com/ and https://therapy.brussels/. You can find out more about the European Institute for Systemic Education & Coaching at https://www.eisec.org.

We never really learn that much about our hormones and our cycles. That is until you’re trying to get pregnant and you realize that the whole process can be so much more complicated than you ever imagined. Yet fertility treatment does not necessarily seem to take that into account, with its protocols that are often narrowly focused on the ovaries and womb alone.

On this episode of the podcast I talk with functional hormonal specialist Iris Josephina about the need to adopt a much more holistic view on hormones and fertility. We also touch upon the issue of body literacy, aka your ability to understand your body’s unique baseline so that you get a much better understanding of when things are off. Iris shares how she helps her clients adopt a holistic approach towards hormonal health that is often overlooked as an important step before embarking on such the intense journey that fertility treatment often is.

Book recommendations

Rebecca Fett - It Starts with the Egg: How the Science of Egg Quality Can Help You Get Pregnant Naturally, Prevent Miscarriage, and Improve Your Odds in IVF

Heng Ou - Awakening Fertility: The Essential Art of Preparing for Pregnancy

About Iris Josephina

Iris is a certified Hormonal Health Coach, Functional Hormone Specialist, Orthomolecular Advisor and Birth Worker with an academic background in medical anthropology & women's studies. She also qualified in holistic women's health, traditional midwifery practices, and trauma informed coaching. Her work revolves around our menstrual and life cycles from periods to postpartum. In all her work, the main focus lies on getting to know our bodies (gaining body literacy), sharing tools to make informed body choices and cultivating a sense of body belonging throughout all changes and cycles our bodies move through. She is also the creator of the Planting Seeds Podcast. You can find more about Iris and her work on www.cycleseeds.com.

How can you stop working so hard to get pregnant when conception doesn’t come easily? I feel that one of the most important things that (in)fertility has to teach us (next to embracing our inner darkness) is how to make the shift from doing to being. On this episode of the podcast, I discuss why it is so difficult for us to break with the paradigm that you just need to work really hard to get what you want and how a more cyclical approach to life, as found in nature, offers us a fundamentally different perspective. Really shifting from doing to being requires us to slow down and sit with the discomfort that arises when all distractions fall away. It also asks us to reframe our todo lists into lists of practices that have no other purpose than to create peace and beauty in our lives. My own experience has been that embracing (in)fertility in this fashion improved my quality of life and my overall resilience substantially. (In)fertility became something that I was living with - rather than that it defined me.

I’ve created an entire online course on how to use cycle awareness for this purpose. You can find more info here: https://www.thatfertilefeeling.com/self-study-course

Book recommendations:

Jenny Odell - How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

Oliver Burkeman - Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

Cal Newport - Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World

A couple of years ago I tried looking up goddesses who represented infertility. I figured that there must be cultures around the world who’d created a special status for childless women - maybe as the godmothers of their communities or the wisdom keepers of something along those lines. On this episode of the podcast, Shereen Öberg explains that we can use goddesses mythology to see infertility and loss in an even bigger light. These journeys into the underworld are initiations that awaken a part of us that has been lost for thousands of years. They are a gateway into the divine feminine and offer us the power of resurrection. And goddess mythology offers us an example of how to get there.

Top quotes:

Shereen Öberg: “Surrender and release is a practice. It won’t come just like that. Setting the intention, and then maybe for a while you can do it and then you cannot. But the more you practice something, the more you do it, whatever journey you go through afterwards, when the next descent comes, then you have that inner practice of “I have faith in my path, I know that this is leading me somewhere and I can become the observer.””

Françoise Molenaar: “By stepping into the darkness you can connect to a deeper feminine practice. Isthar shows us how to move from doing to being. When you are able to be with darkness, you slow down, you stop trying, you stop fighting. When you stop resisting, you’re just being.”

Shereen Öberg: “When we can find the divine feminine within ourselves, we can heal our wounds. And when we can heal our wounds, we also heal our whole lineage.”

Here's the link to Shereen's article on women's experience of infertility and treatment: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877575623000691?dgcid=author

About Shereen Öberg:

Shereen is an integrative healer, spiritual teacher and doula who holds a master's degree in sexual and reproductive health and rights. She has years of experience teaching yoga, meditation and healing, and she is also a licensed acupuncturist and Chinese Medicine practitioner. She is the author of the book The Law of Positivism - Live a life of higher vibrations and love, the creator of the Healing Oracle card deck, and is the heart behind the Law of Positivism instagram page (https://www.instagram.com/lawofpositivism/) and podcast (https://www.lawofpositivism.com/lawofpositivismpodcast.html).