Ann: How far would you go?
Katherine and Sophie: Two moms; Carolyn: Single mom
11NEW DEVELOPMENTS AND FINAL THOUGHTS
Foreword
As I read this book, one primary message came through to me: hope. Hope for women facing fertility challenges is woven into every word. What a great relief women experience when they can share stories of their difficulties, their journey, and what they learned during the process. In my experience, women heal most deeply when they can tap into and accept their own vulnerability by hearing what others have gone through.
When I began experiencing fertility challenges, I knew something was wrong but was only familiar with Western medicine. I didn’t know anyone else who had gone through the lonely and often frustrating hopelessness I was feeling. I had never been exposed to Chinese medicine, and when first introduced to the possibilities of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), I found them strange—I simply could not fit this approach into my logical brain. Yet, it worked. The changes in my body and mind, the awakening of my heart and spirit were irrefutable, yet inexplicable. I had to study this healing modality and find out what made it work.
In the years since then, I have devoted my life to the practice of TCM—learning, practising, teaching, and offering it to many thousands who suffer through their own devastating fertility challenges. I met Mary Wong in the early years of my teaching, and she made a strong impression. It’s always a bit intimidating for a Westerner to stand in front of a Chinese doctor, attempting to share my view of a medicine that was part of her cultural upbringing.
Mary was undoubtedly knowledgeable, but what struck me most about her were her honesty and openness. She is the kind of person who not only makes a good doctor but a trusted friend. She rode the interface between Eastern and Western culture and medicine, devouring knowledge, learning and treating, studying, serving, and giving it all she had. In her clinic, people healed. And when she went through her own fertility struggles, like me, she was down and dirty with the psycho-emotional component. “Physician, heal thyself” were not mere words to Mary; she lived them.
Mary can do what I have never quite pulled off, and her abilities are evident in this treasured book you hold in your hands. There is a beautiful image in Chinese philosophy of an organic life form rising from the very substance of earth itself, embodying the spirit of creation in its impulse to walk, breathe, and experience the miracle of this life as it reaches toward the light of its own existence. It is richly Asian, conveying through imagery what TCM offers. Mary’s effortless expression of who she is and what she was born to do is apparent in the ease with which she conveys the power of Chinese healing, while at the same time demystifying it with her concise understanding of modern Western science.
When I was interning in a Chinese hospital, I was tired and overworked, and my energy and immunity were low. Yet like a typical American overachiever, only semi-conscious of the messages my body was giving me, I pressed on. One day, an attending physician took my pulse, and the next day I was served soup for lunch with the Chinese herbs I needed to restore my energy. While I thought it odd that food and medicine be combined in one dish, this is Mary’s starting point. It’s in her bones.
Fertility struggles are frustrating and isolating. They seem to eat away part of a woman’s soul. They can plunge a woman down to the depths of her despair, but they can also force her to face difficulties in the way she’s living her life. I can think of almost nothing else that can do this. Yet sometimes, when we’re in our lowest places, where we feel nothing can pull us out of the muck, true healing can happen. This is a place of courage and honesty that few are lucky enough to know. And where a woman’s body had been saying “no” to life, it can ever so gently turn into a “yes.” This is what I call hope. If you want to find this hope, it’s important to know you are not alone. There is support. There is another way.
I wrote The Infertility Cure many years ago, attempting to open up this new way for women who were locked into the often frustrating approach of reproductive medicine. Mary picks up where I left off, walking you along a pathway she herself has trod. With wisdom, honesty, and a lighthearted pragmatic approach, she blends modern Western science with the ancient art of Chinese medicine. Hand in hand with you, she shares poignant real-life stories of help, hope, and true healing. Her unending positivity as she counsels and comforts you along the way is infectious: may you catch it and make it part of your journey.
Randine Lewis, PhD, L.Ac
Author of The Infertility Cure and The Way of the Fertile Soul
Introduction
Since I was a young girl, I’ve known I wanted to make a difference in people’s personal lives and have been strongly drawn to fields involving health and well-being. Initially, I planned to go to medical school. I did not come from a long line of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) practitioners. In fact, when I was growing up, I shied away from anything to do with my Chinese heritage.
Having been born in the Netherlands, lived in Hong Kong, and then moved to Canada by the time I was eight years old, I wanted nothing more than to blend in with the neighbourhood kids. Embarrassed when my parents spoke Chinese to me in public, I spoke back to them in English. My mom would call me a bamboo star (Asian on the outside but culturally hollow inside) or a banana (yellow on the outside and white inside). Maybe it was fate that led me back to my roots as I witnessed first-hand the miracles of acupuncture and Chinese medicine.
It was the summer of 1988. I had just finished my second year at McMaster University, where I was studying biology. My eighty-six-year-old grandmother became very sick and we took her to the local hospital. At first, the doctors thought she had cancer, but her biopsies came back negative. I remember sitting behind the drawn hospital curtains, using nail clippers to cut off the hardened skin peeling away from the palms of her hands like scales. It was difficult to watch her wasting away in front of me.
Just as I finished and she lay sleeping, the doctor in charge came in and told us her kidneys were failing, but he did not want to operate due to her age. He gave her two weeks to live. Grief came over me; I was very close to her. She lived with us and had always taken care of us growing up, as my parents had worked long hours in the restaurant business. But I held it together for her sake. There was nothing left to do but bring her home and make her as comfortable as possible in her dying days.
Then my older brother said, “We’re Chinese. Perhaps we should try Chinese medicine?” He looked up a TCM doctor in the Yellow Pages (a print directory everyone used before computers and websites came along). I drove her to Chinatown for treatment by a renowned TCM doctor, who must have been in his seventies himself. After three weeks of acupuncture and Chinese medicinal soups, she started to feel better. Within three months, she regained her health and her energy. I marvelled at her miraculous recovery and became disenchanted