One thing that sets New Feminism apart is its insistence that women are good. It insists that we can not respect women by disrespecting their bodies. We cannot raise women up while painting their bodies and their natural functions as bad. As The Guiding Star Project’s aim is to create Guiding Star centers where women receive holistic care that works with Natural Law and affirms the inherent worth and goodness of women, we are happy to share this guest post from Stefany Beyer.  Stefany is a member of The Board of Directors for Guiding Star and shares a passion for New Feminism. As her story shows, if women and healthcare workers try to listen to women’s bodies, it can have amazing results.

Over the course of the past five years, my husband and I have experienced something of a fertility roller coaster.  Two years of trying, a healthy baby girl, and then trying again.  After a miscarriage, more trying, and now a healthy pregnancy, I feel that I have come around a sort of circle.  I’ve solved a piece of my fertility puzzle, and I’m in a place now where I feel like this is a story that needs to be told.  It’s a story that speaks to the importance of listening to one’s body.  It’s a story about the kind of healthcare that leads to real healing.
After we lost our little Francis Pio in October 2012, I began having symptoms of endometriosis. Knowing that this disease can lead to serious complications, I began consulting with a doctor specially trained in NaPro Technology.
NaPro is an acronym that stands for Natural Procreative Technology.  It is based on the understanding that fertility is a healthy state of being, and infertility is a symptom of something gone awry. In other words, infertility is a woman’s body asking for help. NaPro doctors are trained to use a method of cycle charting and other medical means to “listen” to the woman’s body, to discover what it is saying, and then to heal it with the goal of restoring healthy fertility and achieving greater overall health.As a result of this tenant that infertility is a symptom, my NaPro doctor takes miscarriage pretty seriously.  The first thing he did was to order some blood work in case it would indicate the cause of my miscarriage. When the test came back, we learned that my body was not able to process folic acid.  In fact, we learned that my body was only 30% effective at changing this vitamin into a usable form.  This is a concerning problem since folic acid is essential for the healthy development of a baby’s neural tube.  I’ll never know if this was the cause of my miscarriage, but it’s likely. In addition to contributing to infertility and miscarriage, this disorder significantly increases my risk factor for developing a blood clot.  It can also contribute to anxiety, depression, other neurological disorders, gastro-intestinal problems, and even cancer. Some researchers think it also contributes to autism.  This disorder is why my body was asking, or screaming, rather, for help.  And because my doctor was listening, he was able to discover it with a simple blood test.
The doctor put me on a prescription supplement that contains a kind of folic acid that is already processed into a form that my body can use. I didn’t really expect to feel any different on this supplement, and at first I didn’t. But after about two weeks I began to notice a change. After three weeks I couldn’t believe how good I felt. I had energy that I had never had before. I was more patient with my two-year-old, I was less angry with my husband, and I was less likely to fly off the handle when some small thing overflowed my stress level. I felt alive in a way that I never had before.
When I think back to life before the supplement, I struggle with finding words to describe it. I felt like I was wilting from the inside out. No wonder I had fertility trouble! My body was just trying to survive from one day to the next. But this changed too, and the very next cycle, we got pregnant! I am entering the third trimester now, and so far this has been a healthy pregnancy with healthy hormone levels. I truly think this baby is with us because my NaPro doctor believes in the importance of listening to the body, which is at the heart of NaPro Technology.
I feel this is the kind of care that every woman deserves: healthcare that supports her natural functioning, rather than impairing it; healthcare that seeks to restore a woman’s body to this healthy functioning when something is wrong. This is respect for the woman and her body. This is real healthcare for women.