WHILE THE DECISION TO START A FAMILY can be both exciting and terrifying, it is especially so for couples who encounter challenges. At its best, making a baby can be the thrill and joy of a lifetime. At its worst, it can be a roller coaster of hope, disappointment, and unfulfilled dreams.
We wrote this book to take the chaos and confusion down a notch and put you back in the driver’s seat. Is your diet nourishing you and contributing to your ability to conceive? Have you explored the unique perspectives on fertility that Chinese medicine can provide? Are you getting the most out of your medical care? Have you truly created space in your life for a new little being?
The title we chose, Feed Your Fertility, has to do with a lot more than food. We believe that, in order to truly nourish yourself in a meaningful way, all aspects of your life must be fed. That means paying attention to your relationships, your lifestyle habits, and all of the nuances that go into making you feel healthy, inside and out. In this book, we hope to provide you with tools to enhance your whole self, paving the way toward conception, a healthy pregnancy, and a thriving baby.
Taking this a leap further, in Chinese medicine, human beings (and all living beings) are viewed as a microcosm of the world in which we live. This means that we as individuals are simply tiny parts of the greater whole, and our little tiny part is a mirror image of the world around us, just on a much smaller scale.
With this in mind, we admit that this book is about more than achieving a healthy pregnancy—it’s a call to cultivate fertility within your life and for our planet at large. Without an external healthy environment, our internal environments become essentially irrelevant, because we cannot survive without the earth upon which we live. By living consciously and choosing our food sources carefully, we take on the role of the archetypal Mother, nourishing ourselves, the health of our planet, and the viability of future generations.
As part of your fertility journey, we invite you to embrace the role of the great archetypal Mother, bestowed with the obligation to protect her children. Begin to live your life from the belief that you already are a mother and that your mothering can be applied right here and now.
Consider the possibility of letting go of the wanting and instead living through the present moment—honoring, cultivating, and activating life and fertility in every aspect of your existence. Living from this place, on both a physical and energetic level, will invite the conception of a baby into your body far more readily than existing from a state of fear, stress, and ticking clocks.
