Being Fertile

by Lorrie Klosterman and illustrations by Annie Internicola, July 25, 2007

If you’re trying to navigate the emotional and physical battering of infertility’s rough waters, come ashore. The Fertile Female, Julia Indichova’s most recent book, is a verdant island of tranquility and hope. Indichova survived those waters herself years ago; her first book, Inconceivable, recounts her travails in search of motherhood. That search included standard pharmacological and technological interventions (just shy of in vitro fertilization)—to no avail. Instead of pregnancy, she got a diagnosis that her personal biochemistry would never support baby-making. But through her days of panic and despair, she continued to explore alternative approaches that might turn things around: excellent food choices, herbal support, exercise, spiritual discovery, emotional clearing, and other tactics that would “at the least,” she says, “give me the healthiest body I ever had.” And she trusted, for the first time ever, that she might know best how to discover what her body needed, and cultivated faith in her inner wisdom.

Now living in Woodstock with her husband and two daughters—both conceived without medical intervention—Indichova has compiled what worked for her into books, a CD, workshops, and supportive phone circles. She has done so not to be a self-promoting guru, but out of compassion for others. From across the US, Canada, and Europe, people call and write in distress after medical interventions have failed; they also call and write in ecstasy to tell her of children conceived after implementing her strategies. Those strategies have been endorsed by leading specialists in reproductive endocrinology.

Indichova never imagined such a role for herself.

A child of Holocaust survivors living in a small Czechoslovakian community, this humble woman has spent many years making the best of a difficult personal and cultural history. She emigrated to New York City at age 20 and worked as an actress, dancer, director, producer, and teacher of English to non-native speakers at Columbia University. During that time, her journey to become pregnant evolved. When she succeeded, word spread. “I found myself on the phone a lot,” she recalls of the people who sought her counsel. She had to help. Starting with support circles in her Manhattan apartment, today Indichova continues a support circle in the city and holds phone-support circles of international scope. She also has developed a seven-hour intensive workshop, The Fertile Heart Approach to Conception, which she offers locally in Woodstock at the Fertile Heart Studio—“a pretty, healthy place where I could teach.”