A (35:15)
Yeah, I mean, I think you can't start my journey or many women's Journey without looking at how we're treated as young girls when we first start having symptoms. I was told that every woman has period cramps. You know, it's always hard. And so if you can hardly function one time a month, you know, if you can hardly get out of bed and go to school, if you can hardly go an hour without changing your products, you know, then that's normal. And don't whine about it. You're just being a baby. This is every woman's curse, right? Like, sorry, Eve screwed you all. And so I, you know, it gets so dismissed and minimized. And for me, I, I was also overweight. And so I had a lot of like, oh, I'm, this is my fault. I'm just, you know, maybe if I, if I weren't so disgraceful and, you know, stupid and fat and whatever, then maybe my body would be better. I don't know, like, just the stupidity that, like, young girls think and older girls. So I probably by the time. I can't remember when I first went on birth control pills, but it was, it was early, it was probably late high school, maybe college and, and they were a miracle for my symptoms. I had been taking massive amounts of painkillers that were like super toxic amounts of painkillers. And I still took thereafter super amounts, toxic amounts of painkillers, but less, like, slightly less. And I could actually get through the day and, you know, function. Even our lives today, if you think about, like, how women in, in sort of tribal societies live and the rhythms of the month and the, the, the huts that you would go spend time in during your time of the month and like, how your life would accommodate and how expectations, like cultural expectations around how a woman's rhythms are, that's not allowed. You know, I grew up in the 80s and the 90s and it was like, go, go, go achieve cheap, cheap. And you know, sports and, and academics and, you know, there's just no. And then you go into the job world and like, you know, I was raised on feminist, you know, in the feminist milieu. I was like, swimming in it, my whole upbringing. And, you know, you can't possibly complain about this. Like, women, you're standing on the shoulders of Gloria Steinem and like, you have to go in there, you can't complain about your period and you can't miss work because of your period. Like, how embarrassing for all of womankind. And so, you know, it's sort of like when we, when we talk about how we got here with, you know, eugenics and the IVF industry, we always look back to the birth control pill in the 60s. I do the same thing in my own personal journey, and I think in so many of our personal journeys of infertility is it starts with the pill. Right. Like our, our journey starts with the pill. Not because the pill necessarily broke us or hurt us or damaged our uterus or whatever. I don't know. That's still not very well researched. There was never any incentive for anyone to invest in research around that. Right. But for many of us, it masked the symptoms enough so that we could function. But there were disease processes going on that were, that were not being addressed. They were just like, throw this band aid at it and shut up until it's ready, until you're ready to have babies. So then I got ready to have babies in my 30s. I was admittedly late. Um, so like I admittedly late. But you know, women around the world for centuries and millennia have been having babies in their 40s or late 30s. And so it never occurred to me that I wouldn't be able to. And so I went off birth control when I got out of the convent. You know, ironically, I was on birth control in the convent because of these symptoms. But when I realized, oh, I'm going to get married here, like I want to get married, have babies, I went off birth control. And it was hard. You know, the symptoms were hard, but I was, I wanted babies. So I get married. And we of course started trying. I mean, I was like prepping myself before I got married. I was doing all the charting and the tracking and, you know, learning how to chart my cycle and whatever. And so we started trying right away, of course, and didn't have much success in the first six months or so. And so I started going the doctor and they eventually, you know, they do a bunch of labs and whatever and then eventually did a 10 day ultrasound to watch like a vaginal ultrasound, this thing up inside of me, like watching my ovaries do their thing and, or watching one ovary do its thing. And they saw one ovary during one cycle kind of close up on itself and not release an egg. And after that I was given some disease name which I literally, I literally can never remember. It's like LHF deficient, I don't even know. And so they said, label, you're infertile. This is something that can't be cured. And I was at the most innovative napro, like super innovative fertility type, moral fertility type doctor that I had sought out and driven two hours each way to see oh, wow. And every day for 10 days to two hours. And so I expected her to, like, know all the innovative things that could be done. And when she told me, can't be, I can't help. This is, you're infertile. And it was just crushing. And you, you receive. We receive labels from the medical system, whether it's infertile, whether it's cancer patient, whether it's rheumatoid arthritis patient, whether it's diabetic, whatever cancer. We get told this label, and then we wear it like a cloak and we take that on. And when we take it on, our body responds when we, you know, you think about John 1, right? In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was made flesh, and the Word was God. And you know, like, through all, through everything. Colossians 1. God created everything with his Word, right? And so if he can create everything with his Word. And it's not, it's a bad translation, it's not really the word Logos. In Greek. In Greek, it's not really the word word. It's the. It stands for thought, intellect, mind. It's like the mind of Christ created all. And so if that, if we're made in that image, if we're made in the image of that Logos, how powerful is our mind? So when we believe these labels and I just, like, yes, just like when, you know, the Lord speaks, blessing on you. The Lord speaks, you know, daughter, I, precious one, you know, like, and we take on that and we believe that it can change everything, right? But when, when we believe infertile cancer, diabetes, you know, and we, our body obeys our beliefs, just like creation obeys the Logos of God. And, and so I believed it. I don't know why. I'd always been kind of irreverent and, you know, disobedient to authority. I don't know why I believed it, but I did. And, and so we stopped trying right away. My husband and I, like, we. I, you know, melted. I fell apart, obviously. And then I just pulled myself up and said, well, okay, adoption it is then. And you know, if, if the Blessed Mother adopted the world and, you know, St. Joseph adopted God, then adoption is good enough for me. And so we started, we adopted a couple older children and it's been a journey with them. It's been beautiful in many ways. Difficult in many ways, but. But we gave up. And what was interesting is, you know, as I've mentioned, I had this, like, really kind of high stress job and career going, and nobody ever really talked to me about, hey, you're living in not so low grade fight or flight all the time, right? And you know when, when our bodies are so brilliant, like when you're being chased by a bear, there's no time for your like ovaries to be doing things and you're like digestion to be like pooping stuff out. Like you can't go pooping when you're running from a bear. And you're not going to be reproducing, you're not going to be resting, you're not going to be detoxifying, like none of that, your body shuts all that off so that you can run away from the bear. And so we're designed to like only go into that process when there's a bear, right? Not when there's an annoying boss or a stressful job or a difficult marriage or like, you know, we're not supposed to live in fight or flight, but we do. And when we do, all those functions that I described, digestion, detoxification, reproduction, all of those are shut down or slowed down or inhibited like permanently. Like they're just constantly in a state of mal performance under performance or non performance. And so we see, I think it's a major reason for one of the chronic illness rates that we have and certainly infertility. And so what should doctors who are dealing with women struggling to get pregnant, what should they be talking to them about first? Should it be like, oh, let's look at your ovary while it does its thing? You know, like even in normal ovaries, not every cycle produces an egg. Sometimes it doesn't. And it doesn't mean that you'll never get pregnant. Doesn't mean that you're infertile. I don't actually believe that I had a specific disease that they told me I had. Maybe I did, I don't know. But I don't know that I really did. I do know that my body was whacked, I mean, and that I was, you know, deep in fight or flight. And no doctor spoke to me about, you need a radical diet change. You're living out of vending machines. You need to get off the Diet Coke, which is your sole hydration. You need to start sleeping more than four hours. You need to not be doom scrolling with blue lights, you know, at all hours of the day. And so like all these things that are all these factors in my life communicated to my body, Unsafe, not safe. You're not on a regular circadian rhythm. You're, you're being chased from A bear. We're going to shut this off. And so nobody even tried that. Like, I would have tried anything. And that is the beauty of, like, the opportunity that these doctors have, is you have desperate women. Like, there is nothing more primal and more rising up in a woman than to have a baby when she is ready to have a baby. There is nothing else in the entire universe that she wants more than that. You look back at, like, poor Hannah in. In the Bible and who's the other one? Say it again.
