Infertility is so poignant because procreation is our strongest drive, hard-wired into our species, and fathering a child or becoming pregnant is viewed as our birth rite. Though infertility is a medical condition, it is experienced as a redefinition of self, challenging our core identity of what it means to be a man or woman. As an infertile person, we internalize Webster’s definition: not fertile or productive: BARREN syn see STERILE. Here rests a core paradox: 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?
Mindfulness challenges our assumptions about infertility. This mindful fertility series uses the wisdom of Buddhist Paradox to work with the paradoxes of infertility. You are then invited to challenge your assumptions through journaling.
This blog series is taken in part from the workbook I’ve written for the Fertility Support and Mindfulness 8-Week Program that is offered through Palo Alto Medical Foundation Fertility Physicians (www.pamf.org).
“Every exit is an
Entry somewhere else.”
-Tom Stoppard
