Ilene is on Hiatus!!!

As some of you know, I will be starting a full-time, two year master's degree program in September, in social work. And, just to make things more exciting, I'm also moving (both home and office, because I work at home). Therefore I am going on hiatus. Actually I am already on hiatus, at least as far as teaching is concerned. I have already begun to refer new clients to other teachers. I'm not sure how long the hiatus will last. I'm going to see how things unfold. 


I will continue to be involved in Fertility Awareness, but mostly in ways that won't be obvious to the general public. In addition to teaching, I do a lot of behind the scenes stuff having to do with Fertility Awareness as a profession. Although there are a few paths to professional certification, there are no national or international standards in place regarding qualifications to teach. Anyone can call herself a teacher (or sell fertility-management software). And of course practitioners in the field find little or no support from the medical community, and are often isolated in their own communities because qualified, secular (non-religious) instructors are so few and far between. Thus it can be difficult for them to find peer support and to grow as professionals.


I have been involved in the issue of professionalism in this field since I began teaching 10 years ago. I will be focusing on this work in the coming year, by expanding and strengthening our professional network, and by creating what I hope will be a widely recognized set of standards. I will also continue to coordinate professional forums through which people involved in the field communicate with and learn from each other. So, in the coming months I will be primarily involved in those activities. I will leave the teaching, at least temporarily, to others. 


One of the things I've been focusing my energies on this past year, as I prepared to make this transition, has been the training of new teachers. I've had the privilege of working with several young women who are well on their way to becoming qualified instructors, with a wide range of interests and areas of concentration. They will continue their training with Oregon instructor Sarah Bly, and I look forward to introducing you to them in the future as they embark on their teaching careers.


I have also been working with Sarah on another project which I think at this point is still a secret :) I will tell you all about it once it's ready to go public.


And actually I've been working on another project having to do with Fertility Awareness that is also not quite ready for launch; that's something else I hope to share with you in the near future. 


Ok, so maybe "hiatus" isn't the right word. I guess it's more like "scaling back." 


So, if you are reading this, and you are in need of instruction, what should you do? Here are my suggestions:


--If you want to obtain instruction in a secular context, the Justisse website lists many qualified FA teachers, including graduates and current students of their own teacher training program. Make sure to pay attention to the various designations. I would suggest sticking to FAE's and full (graduated) HRHP's. A lot of teachers can work by phone or by Skype these days, so don't worry if there is no teacher in your area (and there probably isn't).
Justisse directory of instructors


--Not on the list, but worth considering, are:


Katie Singer (author of Garden of Fertility)
New Mexico
(505)820-0773
You will need to have read one of her books if you want to make an appointment with her.

Sarah Bly
Oregon
www.graceofthemoon.com

--Please mention my name if you contact any of these instructors so they know where the referral came from.

--Of course if you're open to studying Natural Family Planning (NFP), as opposed to FAM, you'll have many more instructors available to you, including some from whom you might be able to learn in person (as opposed to long distance). NFP is in many ways the same as FAM, but is taught in a religious/moral context. Sexual activity outside of marriage (and certainly same sex activity) is considered unacceptable, as are all forms of "artificial" contraception and abortion. The main NFP organizations in the US are the Couple to Couple League and the Billings Ovulation Method Association. Their websites can direct you to local teachers. Be aware that NFP teachers often have fairly rudimentary training and may not be able to advise you with respect to complex or health-related issues.

I will miss teaching like crazy, but I am also very excited about all the new developments in my life. I plan to keep updating the blog and the Facebook page, though probably not as often as I do now. As always, I invite you to keep in touch with me. Having a baby? I would love to hear about it! Moving? Send me your new coordinates! My coordinates, by the way, will probably remain the same. The email address will definitely stay the same, and I think the phone number will, too. If not, I'll let you know. 


Enjoy the rest of the summer. 

The Happenings, the Non-Happenings, and the Future of Fertility Awareness

This post is late! Here's what's been happening, with backstory:

I am currently working with some wonderful, talented women who are on the path to becoming teachers of Fertility Awareness. I think an important part of the teacher-training process is being connected to, and learning from, other Fertility Awareness educators. So when my Israeli colleague Michal Schonbrun told me that she would be coming to NY for a couple of days in May, I asked her if she'd be willing to spend a few hours working with my students. She readily agreed, and somehow that idea grew into a two day event. One day was for teacher training, just for my students: Michal in the morning, and me in the afternoon. We also decided to create a public event. That event was to have centered around an introduction to Fertility Awareness (my presentation), and also was to have included presentations by two artists who do incredible work related to fertility and sexuality. The artists are Alexandra Jacoby, whose work I've mentioned & written about before, and Rebecca Morton (whose website is nearly complete, I'm happy to say).

So we poured a lot of time and energy into creating both these events, and my last blog post was to have been in late April, promoting the public one. But about a week beforehand, we decided to cancel the public event, due to poor ticket sales. We were all very disappointed, of course, but there came a point where we had to make a tough decision, and that's the one we made. I see again and again how people who know about Fertility Awareness tend to be quite passionate about it, but people who don't know about it tend to be indifferent. FA is a hard concept to get your mind around, since we're not used to thinking about fertility management, or body literacy. We think about birth control, until and unless we're ready to get pregnant. Then we think about pregnancy achievement. And we hardly ever think about empowerment around our sexuality or reproductive health care, unless something goes wrong. In short,  we don't have a holistic approach to our bodies in general, and much less so when it comes to our fertility and sexuality. So, Fertility Awareness, which offers a comprehensive approach to fertility, sexuality, and reproductive health care, is off the radar for most of us. It just doesn't fit neatly into the boxes we're used to ticking off.

So we cancelled the public program, but proceeded with the teacher training day. And that was a big success! I look forward to introducing you to each of these women as they get closer to actually teaching. There are so few qualified, secular teachers of Fertility Awareness in the US. My colleagues and I are actively working to make sure that there are new, younger teachers to carry on this work in the future. It may never be "popular," but it's life-changing stuff, and we want to ensure that personalized, non-religious instruction will always be available to those who need it. Charting on your iPhone is convenient, of course, and I think keeping track of your data electronically is a great idea, especially as our devices become more entwined with our lives. But electronic charting will never eliminate the need for personal instruction. When your smartphone can discuss with you the relative benefits of progesterone supplementation vs. Traditional Chinese Medicine for luteal phase defect, or how to assess if you can have unprotected intercourse up to day 3, day 5, or using the formula S-21, or helps you negotiate when to start trying for pregnancy when your partner is on the fence, or does any of the myriad other things that only a human teacher can do for you, you let me know, and I will take a nice long holiday.

By the way, in anticipation of the public event, I finally got the Facebook page for the Fertility Awareness Center up and running. It's been pretty active thus far. In fact, I think eventually it might supercede this blog. So if you're on Facebook, please "like" us. You'll be rewarded with more frequent postings, news of events, links to like-minded orgs, and photos. And of course you'll be part of a community of other FA devotees.

Orgasm, Inc. Also Heads Up re Upcoming Event.

Have you seen Orgasm Inc. yet? It's still playing around the US and Canada, and of course it's available on Netflix. This funny, insightful documentary is about the medicalization of female sexuality, and the enormous profits to be made at the expense of women's health. Filmmaker Liz Canner centers her film on the race to develop and market a drug to treat something which is essentially a made-up disease, "Female Sexual Dysfunction,"  and explores the range of what one reviewer called "the commodification of women's pleasure centers," including the relatively new and extremely lucrative field of vaginoplasty. (Grrrr...) You can read more about the film and find a list of "playdates" here.



Unrelated but important heads up!
The Fertility Awareness Center will be having a public event on Sunday, 5/1, in the afternoon, in Brooklyn. There will be an intro to Fertility Awareness (for those who are interested in, but not yet practicing FA), and presentations by two artists whose work is sure to provoke conversation. More information coming soon. Tell your friends! Save the date!

The Return of the Rhythm Method

My credo is that the more contraceptive options women have, the better. There is no one right method for all women, and a wide variety of methods increases the likelihood that any given woman will be able to find a method that works for her. However, I recently found that I'm not quite as broadminded as I thought it was on this topic. Georgetown University's Institute for Reproductive Health recently received a 3 year, $600,000 grant to increase the availability of natural family planning here in the US, primarily to low income women. Sounds great, right? So why am I angry and slightly nauseated? Because the method they are going to be promoting is the Standard Days Method, aka Cyclebeads. And Cyclebeads use exactly the same principles as the Rhythm, or Calendar Method. It is a purely statistical method that does not take into account individual variability or use any observational methods except for keeping track of menstruation. Mind you, this heavily field-tested and deeply funded method can be very effective. If women fall strictly within the parameters for its usage (regular cycles always between 26 and 32 days), they can expect a 95% effectiveness rate. And I have stated in the past that I think this method, along with the Two Day Method, can and will be a boon to women in the global south who lack access to decent health care. My objection is not to the effectiveness of the methodology, but rather to the return to the dark ages that this grant represents. Are American women really so stupid and unmotivated that they cannot be taught to observe their fertility? No, not everyone is going to be up for detailed charting and lessons in anatomy & physiology, but even a simple temperature-only method would empower women far more than this Birth Control for Dummies approach, in which fertility is regarded as a great mystery that cannot be understood. Women all over the world, many of whom lack numeracy and literacy, have been taught to observe their cervical mucus and track it with colors and pictures (as with the Billings Method). Surely if rural women in China can learn this technique, and practice it effectively, women in this country can, too. 

"Bringing easy-to-use, effective natural planning to American women." 

Is this really the direction we want reproductive health care and sex education to be moving in this country???

Donations Now Tax-Deductible! We Have Fiscal Sponsorship!

Fabulous news, people. Thanks to the good folks at the Harm Reduction Coalition, who have agreed to be our fiscal sponsors, donations to the Fertility Awareness Center are now tax-deductible!

-If you think Fertility Awareness has value and should be (much) more widely known,
-If you think women (and men) are not being informed of all their reproductive health care options (with respect to both birth control as well as pregnancy achievement),
-If you think sex is better when you don't have artificial hormones coursing through your blood or chemicals in your yoni,

...then put your money where your heart is. Any amount is appreciated and will help us to carry out our mission. If you're tired of looking at that shabby website we've had forever, help pay for the new one! If you want me to be able to attend the first Fertility Awareness conference to be held in North America since 2006, help me buy the plane tickets! If you want to make sure there is always someone to answer the phone when someone is rural Idaho wants to learn more about Fertility Awareness, help pay for that service!

Making a donation is easy, and we will send you a receipt for your taxes. Please make checks or money order payable to HARM REDUCTION COALITION and (this is very important!) put FERTILITY AWARENESS CENTER on the memo line. Send your donations to:
Fertility Awareness Center
PO Box 1190
New York, NY 10009-1190

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!!!

FAC in the Media

For some unknown reason, we’ve been getting a lot of media attention of late. I was interviewed twice for an article that will appear sometime later this year in a national magazine, and I also participated in a documentary on the topic of sex education in America. I’ve no idea when that film will be coming out, or if I’ll be included, but the filmmakers did film one of my classes, and they seemed pretty enthused. I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, you can check out a couple of articles that have appeared in regional papers. This first piece was published in The Radish, a Midwestern magazine focusing on healthy living:
http://radishmagazine.com/stories/display.cgi?prcss=display&id=356095

And another piece ran in two Vermont papers, The Times Argus and the Rutland Herald. It’s the same piece, picked up from a news service, so no need to read both:
http://tinyurlw.com/2xvydw
http://tinyurl.com/ytvofb

Buy some raffle tickets!!!

Here's the dope: some wonderful, generous people have donated some really groovy stuff to support the Fertility Awareness Center. You can buy tickets online, and/or at the benefit. Winners will be picked at the benefit on 11/27 (see BENEFIT post, below this long one). The great thing about this raffle is that you can enter for just the prize(s) you want to win. If your heart is set on one of those beautiful lucite purses from the 1950's, put all your tickets in that pool. Or, if you can't decide between the bodywork session or the class at Babeland, and part of you just really wants that biscotti, distribute your tickets between all three. Most of the prizes are things that can be shipped, so if you don't live in or near New York, don't fret! You can still participate. And we've made the tickets affordable so that you can buy a bunch:

1 ticket - $3
2 tickets - $5
5 tickets - $10

Prizes are described below. Pick what you want, then go to Paypal and send us some money! Here's how you do it:

• Go to PayPal.
• Log in (or create account).
• Click on "send money" tab.
• Enter our email address - admin@fertaware.com.
• Specify the amount you want to send, based on prices, above.
• Choose one of the options in the "for" menu - service/other or goods - doesn't matter which.
• Click "continue."
• On the next page you will see "message to recipient." For subject, please put "raffle tickets." For message, here's the important part - tell us what you're trying to win!!! You can say "5 for x, 3 for y," or, if you're feeling lucky, "1 for z." Every bit helps!
• Don't forget to click the "send money" button :)
• You will receive a confirmation from PayPal.
  

And now for the prizes!

(1) 90 minute essential oil restorative bodywork session. Ahhhhhhhh. Union Square area. Expiration date 1/31/07. (New York area only)

(2) $50 gift certificate to Flower Power , an Herbal apothecary, staffed with caring, knowledgeable herbalists offering the highest quality organically grown medicinal herbs. Can be used online or at store.

(3) $30 certificate good for one workshop at Babeland. Workshops cover a variety of topics related to sexuality. Take a class at Babeland University and get smarter in all the right ways! Note: we have 2 of these certificates, so 2 people can win this one. (New York area only)

(4) Yummy hazelnut biscotti from 'n Joy Sweets & Pastries. 24 pieces, will keep for several weeks (right - like you're not going to eat them before then).

Now, are you ready for the antiques? Deco Etc (122 W 25th Street, 212.675.3326) has made an amazing donation of some truly unique & beautiful items.

(5) One of two lucite purses, both from the 1950's. This first one is perfectly clear with a gold-colored clasp. It's about 8.75" long, 4.25" wide, and just over 3" deep, and is in the shape of a long octagon. Lucite is lightweight and easy to care for. And you'll always be able to find your cell phone! Please refer to this as "clear lucite purse" if you're going for it. Antiques are often not perfect - one handle seems to have been replaced and is translucent, rather than clear.




(6) The second purse is also lucite, but this one is red, in an imitation tortoiseshell pattern with what looks like brass trim. 8" long, 4.25" wide, 3" high. Some overzealous fashionista tried to clean this purse with vinegar, and now it has a faint eau-de-salad, mostly noticeable when you open it. Do not clean your purse with vinegar! Plain water will do nicely, or a glass cleaner mixed half & half w/water if you need something stronger. Carry a scented handkerchief and no one will notice. Please refer to this as "red lucite purse" in your entry.


















(7) Our last item is a beautiful old desk clock, probably from the 1930's, maybe 40's. Face plate is lucite, with a black dial with gold numbers set against a larger clear panel. The dial itself is a brass-colored metal. This clock has to be wound, and it makes a ticking noise that most of you young'ns are probably unfamiliar with. It has an alarm, which also works, but I wouldn't count on it for anything important. If you win this clock, and you love it, you should take it in to a professional for a cleaning & general tuneup (in particular to get it to run faster). Antique clocks need a bit of periodic maintenance as they work on mechanical bits like springs and gears. But how many of your little electric alarm clock/iPod docking wonders are going to be around & working in 70 years?