Through walking alongside women and through my own experience of loss and conceiving after loss, I hold a lived experience of the journey and what it asks of us. From the moment of conception our bodies and our hearts reorganise and we are changed forever, our bodies hold the cells and DNA of our babies, they are forever with us.
And in a culture that values moving on quickly, and focuses on healing and fixing, these sessions hold both a space for being with what is, while gently preparing for conceiving.
In Chinese Medicine, pregnancy is never understood as something that happens only within the uterus. It is held within a living conversation between the Heart, the Kidneys, the Spleen and the Chong Mai, the Sea of Blood. Blood is more than a substance, it nourishes the uterus, anchors the shen and carries the imprint of our lived experience. The Kidneys hold our deepest reserves of Jing, while the Spleen continually transforms nourishment into the Qi and Blood that sustain new life. When there has been a pregnancy, these relationships change and when that pregnancy ends, they change again.
Practically these sessions may include rebuilding Blood where there has been depletion, replenishing Kidney Yin and Jing, strengthening the Spleen so it can once again create abundant nourishment, gently regulating the menstrual cycle, warming the uterus where there is cold, or calming and nourishing the Heart so the Shen feels at home within the body. These are the classical foundations of fertility in Chinese Medicine, but they are never treated in isolation from the life that has been lived.
Grief is not separate from physiology, the body that is preparing to conceive again is the body that has carried birth, loss, grief, love, sadness, pain and fear. Working together we will tend the physiology with depth and care, drawing on the wisdom of classical Chinese Medicine while also making space for all that is held in the body.
Together, we nourish what has been depleted, support what is ready to unfold, and honour the profound wisdom of a body and this sacred life we are living.
