Harness Your Superpower

OVULATION is your superpower, and identifying your own pattern is the key to using it only when you mean to. When you understand ovulation, you can begin to use Fertility Awareness based methods of birth control to effectively reduce your chances of unintended pregnancy.

The Pill was a necessary weapon born during a state of emergency for womankind and it did facilitate our “liberation” in many ways.  But we must not kid ourselves- it is a weapon of destructive power and sufficient time has not passed for long-term effects of sustained usage to be known. Countless times the medical community have been grossly negligent in the drugs they have prescribed to female bodies, only discovering too late the devastating consequences that cannot be reversed.

  Now that our circumstances have changed it is time for modern women to evolve past the pill and develop our own answer that works with our natural functions rather than trying to stop them at the cost of our health. 

 Fertility Awareness Based Methods of contraception offer the same effectiveness as the pill, with none of the side-effects.  If you are not currently sexually active you might consider it time to give your body a break and see what you discover about your cycle.  

Fertility Awareness is not the Rhythm Method

THE MYTH of the 28-day cycle is a man's story, and for a long time man's best defense was The Rhythm Method.  I just made you laugh, didn't I? 

  The Rhythm Method says a woman with a 28-day cycle ovulates around day 14- if she has intercourse on the days surrounding ovulation she could become pregnant, if she has intercourse at any other time of her cycle pregnancy is unlikely. 

While the basic principles behind The 28-day cycle and the Rhythm Method are sound, the glaring omissions render it ineffective.  It’s like using a plastic baggie instead of a condom and then complaining that it didn’t work.  The Rhythm Method operates on the mistaken assumption that there is one answer for all women, when in fact the answer can only lie within each individual woman- only you can correctly identify your own fertile window.

  Counting days and crossing fingers does not give you true insight into The Whole Cycle- only when you begin charting your temperature and your secondary signs can you recognize your individual rhythm and let the knowledge you discover inform your decisions.  

Ooops… I Did It Again

The rate of Unintended Pregnancy in the US is 45%, that means almost half the avg 6.1 million pregnancies per year do not happen on purpose. This is comparable to worldwide statistics, indicating that nobody is doing that much better regardless of race, education or socioeconomic status.

The glaring implication is that our current methods of birth control and contraceptive education are not effective in allowing us to reproduce with intention even most of the time. Reducing Unintended Pregnancy has been identified as a means toward reaching several of the 2030 UN Sustainable Development Goals.

The answer does not lie in medication or sterilization, it lies in understanding the rhythms of The Whole Cycle. When humanity internalizes the principles behind this basic function, avoiding unwanted pregnancy becomes second-nature.

In A World…   

 What if women knew exactly when we could or could not become pregnant?  We would finally gain control over our reproductive power and ease the great burden each of us carries.  

   The answers found in Fertility Awareness are not new or controversial, they are simply unknown by most.  The majority of us labor under a misapprehension of The-Sun-Goes-Around-The-Earth-Which-Is-Flat proportions.  Those who have stumbled upon the truth will attempt to tell all their friends, but until we start collectively acknowledging the truth in The Whole Cycle, the population will have trouble believing.  

  Until now this knowledge has only been discovered by those who have had to seek it out:  generally older, educated and affluent on the global scale, we make up a small fraction of the reproductive female population.  Happily, we are a fraction with great passion and influence, and so it is up to us to show all young women the relevance this knowledge has to their own lives.  Today hundreds of millions of women have access to a thermometer and a smart phone or computer, regardless of their age , economic status or education level- what they are lacking is knowledge and a plan of action.  The Whole Cycle Campaign seeks to equip all women with both these tools.   

  Any woman can come to know intimately her own cycles.  Today BBT is the most widely-accepted accurate indicator of ovulation because it is quantifiable to an outside observer- once we take it upon ourselves to tabulate and verify data on a mass scale we can begin to prove the effectiveness of identifying one's fertile window by a combination of the other signs alone.  An impoverished woman in an undeveloped area may not have a thermometer, but she can witness the changes happening in her own body and she can look to the moon.  Once she knows how to read the signs, even she will have a better chance of making The Whole Cycle work for her.

     To gain true understanding into humanity's great mystery, we- the half of the population who actually experience The Whole Cycle- must begin thorough investigation on a mass scale.  It begins with making a habit of simple charting and comparing our individual rhythms.  Men will never be able to give us the answers that we seek because no man will ever go through The Whole Cycle- they will have no trouble believing once we prove it to them.     If most woman knew how to correctly interpret their bodies' signs, the implications would be immense. 

 What if we were taught to recognize ovulation as easily as we recognized our periods, and having and using a thermometer was as second nature for us as having and using tampons?  Instead of being ashamed, confused and scared of the strange things we've been feeling all our lives, we would anticipate and accept the ups and downs of the emotional and physical roller coaster we ride as proof of the greatest miracle at work.  We would understand that no woman is alone.  

The Fertility Awareness Method

  How we implement the knowledge we gain from the Practice is up to each of us, but one thing is clear: this is the key to understanding when we can and cannot become pregnant. Wholehearted belief in the regularity of our cycles allows us to finally gain true control over our reproductive ability.   

  In the US, fertility awareness is primarily discussed in the context of achieving pregnancy.  FAM as contraception has become inextricably tangled up with the birth control debate and religious conservatism, which has convoluted the simple message and imbued it with controversy.    

  I want to be clear- Charting alone is not a means to achieve or avoid pregnancy- to use the Fertility Awareness Method both partners must be informed, willing and highly conscientious.  Also, it is essential to understand that Fertility Awareness is not effective in preventing Sexually Transmitted Diseases. 

  FAM takes some time to master but it is not difficult, and in couples who correctly estimate ovulation and avoid unprotected sex during their fertile window there a less than 2% incidence of unintended pregnancy*.  http://www.tcoyf.com/fertility-info/birth-control-faq

  I can tell you that what I've learned works daily wonders for me.  I always know exactly when I'll get my period and I my husband and I maintain low levels of stress over our ability to achieve or avoid pregnancy when we want to.  Every woman deserves to discover the miracle at work within herself and the inner peace that it brings.

    This is about so much more than pregnancy- this goes to the very core of all women's issues and transforms the way we see our place in this world.   If the reproductive population knew this as a given, what rapid and long-term effects would we see?  We would no longer bring millions of unwanted babies into the world every year.  Abortion, abandonment, crime rates, prison populations, shotgun weddings, divorce, contraceptive side-effects, strain on our resources would all be reduced. 

  Perhaps there was an ancient time when women did know this truth and we passed the knowledge to each other in the Red Tent.  But after centuries of enslavement, subjugation and separation we stopped talking and were forced to swallow the hype.  Those of us who are blessed to live in a free country are painfully aware of so many sisters who still suffer in real captivity.  We feel powerless to do anything to truly help them, while even we are subject to laws and stigmas that dictate how we see our own bodies.

  For the first time in history women are poised to spread this message like wildfire.  We are informed, articulate and powerful.  Our voices have weight, and our ideas have validity.  

Every Woman's Worth 

    The time has come to shed real light on The Whole Cycle- it is every woman's fundamental right and responsibility to know.  So let's begin the investigation, and finally hear what our bodies have been telling us all along.

What I Know

  The answer is hidden in each individual woman and only you can see it at work in yourself.  

  I discovered the practice when I was 28- plagued with anxieties about taking the pill, I was seeking a natural and effective way to avoid pregnancy.  I had been menstruating for over half my life and I had never given any thought to ovulation or The Whole Cycle.  I was skeptical at first, but once I internalized the information it blew my mind wide open.  I was shocked by what I didn't know that I didn't know.  I was scared to trust it, and yet a part of me knew that it was true- so I began to track.  

  I've always been regular and after three cycles I was accurately estimating my next ovulation within two days.  To my delighted amazement, I discovered the cramp I randomly felt always occurred around the same cycle day and I learned to recognize the sticky stuff in my underwear for sperm-sucking fertile cervical mucus.  We are all too familiar with the miserable part of our cycles, but for the first time I experienced true joy at watching my body at work.  With time I came to rely on the regularity of my own rhythm and I found peace in the assurance that my body was telling me what I needed to know. 

  My then-boyfriend-now-husband and I educated ourselves on the Fertility Awareness Method of contraception, and for 4 years we consciously and successfully avoided  pregnancy while enjoying unprotected sex during the any of the 20 plus non-fertile days of my cycle.  And when we decided to take the scary plunge into parenthood, we did it twice around my ovulation day and I became pregnant.  Two times.  

  Were we lucky?  For sure- the presence of an egg, sperm and fertile cervical fluid alone do not guarantee fertilization.  But tell me how much you think it helped that we knew exactly when to try?  

Strength in Numbers

  My story is not unique- millions successfully use awareness to avoid or achieve pregnancy- yet people will find it hard to believe.  Only when mass amounts of women and men become aware of The Whole Cycle can we all come to trust it's truth.   The ignorance must end and the first step is to prove the truth to ourselves on an individual level. The only way to have evidence on paper of ovulation is through measuring BBT, so we must begin here. 

  Never before in history has this information been so easily accessible and proven.  Never have women kind had a stronger voice and been so poised in positions of real power.  Never before has humankind had the means to spread information with lightning speed. 

  It is at our fingertips and the tips of our tongues- our time has come.  

  So let us do what we do best: observe and talk- once we collectively believe and spread the word, we can begin to effect real change across the globe.