Fertility and Mindfulness:
The First Mindful 5 Little Steps

By: Janetti Marotta, Ph.D.
Private Practice
1655 Stanford Ave.
Palo Alto, CA 94306
(650) 494-2347
info@arcfertility.com

Man's main task in life
Is to give birth to himself.
-Erich Fromm

We often feel that bringing a child into our primary relationship is the ultimate affirmation of shared affection; and bringing a child into the world can feel like our one true bond to the (tribe or progress) of humanity and the stream of time. Infertility undermines all our assumptions about ourselves; it questions our place in the world. As an infertile person who has internalized "barren" as one's definition of self, how has it come to be, that in this very quest to bring new life into the world, we bring with us so little life of our own?

When we focus on what's wrong, we strive to compensate or fill the void in our desperate attempt to be OK, in this case fertile. But when we focus on what's right, we start from the perspective that we accept ourselves as we are, with all our inadequacies and imperfections. Paradoxically, not until we accept ourselves for who we are, are we free to change.

You're probably questioning how it's possible to accept yourself when feeling broken beyond repair! We take off the lens of judgment, so we are able to recognize our thoughts and emotions without having them define who we are. We stay away from rehashing the past and rehearsing the future, and learn to reside in the present, where we can bring our attention to the work ahead and see what we need to do to stay engaged. We plant the seeds of moment-to-moment non-judgmental awareness or mindfulness and cultivate such qualities as acceptance: being with what is, rather than how it should be.

In this journey to wholeness, we must challenge our assumptions and ask ourselves: Is fertility outside our reach, or already here? We begin by taking 5 Little Steps.

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