In honor of Earth Day and Infertility Awareness Week — I’d like to share a bit about how Nature held and supported me during my fertility journey...

Around this time last year, I sat under this Oak almost every day, the back of my heart pressed up against her trunk. I would sit and breathe, sometimes meditating or chanting if I had the strength. Sometimes I would just press my face into her bark and cry.

All my life I felt such a deep calling to be a Mother. That Motherspirit is a part of me at the soul level. Yet I couldn’t seem to embody it in a physical sense. Arthur and I were ready to be parents, but conceiving turned out to be harder than we anticipated.

Last year I was under so much stress. Between the pandemic, a job that was sucking the life force out of me, a close family member getting diagnosed with cancer, and my own health issues, I was a wreck. I wasn’t ovulating regularly (therefore I wasn’t having regular cycles — a common fertility concern for women with Hashimoto’s), and in spite of doing everything I could think of to be “healthy,” I couldn’t seem to feel better. I was trying SO hard to be in control, and I was falling apart. Anyone who has struggled with fertility knows what I mean.

Not ovulating meant we couldn’t even “try” to get pregnant some months. For me that was the worst part. I felt hopeless and heartbroken — trapped in an endless cycle of “waiting.” I remember as I was cooking dinner one night Arthur came up behind me and wrapped his hands affectionately around my belly. I just started sobbing. I felt broken and empty.

One day, after crying about my lack of Motherhood, my therapist suggested to me that the spirits of my babies were already nearby, and I could be in Presence with them whenever I wanted. It was something I had never considered before. The thought appealed to me and gave me some comfort. The Oak tree had already become a sacred spot for me, and my therapist recommended that I sit there and allow my babies to come near. Maybe the idea seemed a little “woo,” but what did I have to lose? I was desperate for some peace and comfort, so I gave it a try.

“Okay babies, I’m here” I remember thinking as I sat on the bare earth. “You can come close if you want.” I waited as I watched the sun sparkling in the leaves. Now, nothing overtly supernatural happened, but something inside me shifted. I felt better. The idea that somehow my babies and I were connected and in the same energetic space made the pain of not being physically connected more bearable.

I kept going back. Sometimes I would “invite” my babies to be near, sometimes I would just sit and know that they were. As I sat with my back against the Oak, I let her mother me. I imagined that I was being nourished by her strength. I imagined that I was sending my roots down into the ground like hers, that I was stretching my branches toward the sky like hers. I imagined that I was becoming a safe and sturdy place for the souls of my babies to enter.

Just after the Summer Solstice was a New Moon solar eclipse in Cancer — the sign most closely associated with the Mother. I knew that New Moon would impact the next six months, and any intention I set at that time would be powerful and effective. I wrote this intention down in my journal, and carried it in my heart as I sat by my tree:

Divine Wisdom,

Open a portal for me to enter

And never look back

Send my roots down deep

To a secret spring

Let me swell and overflow with abundance

Let my voice speak from that place of plenty

Let me rise

So bet it.

My experience at the Oak transformed me. Allowing myself to be held and supported by Nature gave me strength and courage to keep going. It reconnected me to the creative, life giving energy of the Divine Feminine. It gave me faith in myself. It helped me to finally embrace the Great Mystery of fertility. This is what I realized: I am a Mother. That is just what my soul is. Even a physical babe in my arms couldn’t “make” me into a Mother, because I already am.

This realization helped me to let go and allow my experience to unfold in its own time. It brought me out of the Masculine energy of forcing and striving and into the Feminine energy of being. Finally I was becoming a vessel for life to flow through me. During this time, I wrote this poem:

Six months after setting my intention at the New Moon, on the Winter Solstice, I found myself transfixed with thoughts of the energetic womb —the void inside us all. I was comforted by the thought of darkness and emptiness as a fertile place full of potential. I felt somehow welcomed at last into that space within myself. I went to the Oak to tell her about it. It was too cold to sit for long, so I just pressed my face against her bark and inhaled. This time I didn’t cry; I just felt hope and joy. As I looked up at her empty branches, I knew there was still abundant life inside and beneath — in the dark places I couldn’t see. And I heard her speak:

“Nature always shows us how. In the Winter, Bear returns to the womb-cave to rest and wait to be reborn in the Spring. That energetic space is inside us all, waiting for us to dare to venture inside. Winter tells us: don’t be afraid of the dark; don’t be afraid of the Void. The Void is dark and empty of physical matter, but it is full of energy and potential. Every living thing, every creation, comes to this world from that magic space. Just like Bear, venture in. Something magical is waiting for you inside. Go in and find it, and then bring it forth with you in the Spring.”

I smiled and hugged her goodnight as the sun set, finally at peace. And then something truly wonderful happened. Just three days later, I realized I had conceived my first baby.

How an Oak Tree Helped Me Conceive