It's the last week of January and our newsletter is arriving at the latest possible hour. I’ve written 5 unpublished blogs in preparation for this article and nothing seemed quite right to share.
My word for 2025 is
“self-compassion”
so as I strove to bring you something of substance, I also sat gently with myself gazing silently into the fire, wrapped cozily in my blanket, and allowed myself to be with “what is”.
I’m feeling unsettled.
I don’t know if it’s politics, the weather or missing my children who have returned to university after a connecting family holiday.
I’ve always carried a sense that I could be doing more with my one precious life. It’s both a powerful catalyst for my work and a fatiguing force that needs constant wrangling. It creates both stimulation and exhaustion. But this drive gets me up every morning, hoping to make a small impact crater in the enormous mountain of change that needs to happen to create the harmonious world I know is possible.

While I was writing this blog, my daughter, who is taking Arts & Science at McGill University, sent me a highlighted excerpt of her academic paper. It was intended to continue our beautiful banter about “gender as a social construct” and deepen the gorgeously stimulating conversations we are having about society, sex, life and love. Ahhhh, the pleasure of having adult children!
As I read her message, the synergy was astounding, which should come as no surprise because messages and miracles surround us at all times.
I’ve added the emphasis to the sentence I find most intriguing and, as you continue reading, I’m sure you’ll see why.
Keep in mind that my blog was written before I received this entry!
"Theorists of patriarchy have directed their attention to the subordination of women and found their explanation for it in the male ‘need’ to dominate the female. In Mary O’Brien’s ingenious adaptation of Hegel, she defined male domination as the effect of men’s desire to transcend their alienation from the means of the reproduction of the species. The principle of generational continuity restores the primacy of paternity and obscures the real labour and the social reality of women’s work in childbirth. The source of women’s liberation lies in ‘an adequate understanding of the process of reproduction’, an appreciation of the contradiction between the nature of women’s reproductive labour and (male) ideological mystifications of it (O’Brien, 1981, pp. 8–15, 46)." (1)
Now, with that in mind, enjoy my blog…

As an obstetrician and gynecologist, I have spent decades blessed with the profound role of participating in sharing a woman’s experience of bringing life into the world.
Women birth life.
Women create and sustain life.
Without women there would be no life.
And, yet, at some point, so many women forget that they hold the key to this miraculous and incredible power. Through receiving, growing, delivering and sustaining life inside their bodies, women are the source and sustenance of humanity.
Women are not just physically strong to birth babies, they are also emotionally connected and mentally prepared to keep another creature alive so that she can grow and contribute in unique ways. And so on and so forth; co-creating the world as we know it today.
Women’s bodies are a physiologic miracle.
Women’s minds are a hormonal milieu of electrical enlightenment that ignites ideas.
Women’s hearts are the epicenter around which a deeply connected world orbits; the sun that illuminates love from within.
I am sensitive to families with fertility challenges, work diligently with couples yearning for children, and deeply respect those who choose not to birth a baby. These women, by virtue of being in a feminine body, have power in the very core of their womanhood. It’s not the process of birth that catalyzes power, it’s the possibility within each woman to heal the world through a woman-centered approach to love, life and lasting legacy.
It’s not the uterus but the DNA that holds the latent potential for greatness.
When a woman reclaims her life from all the external noise, she unleashes the beauty and gifts that reside within her. She gives birth to her brilliance.
A woman’s head and heart are an untapped global resource, fueled from the soul fire within each sacral chakra that is as unique as her chromosome complement.
My hope and dream is to guide every woman to know the miracle contained within her feminine frame and to learn from listening to the wisdom of her innate body-intelligence.
As a woman is catalyzed her creativity flows easily, innovation is ignited and community connections become cultivated with power and grace; compassion and care.
When a woman is unburdened of all the external expectations, the seeds of her potential are fertilized to germinate and replicate, turning cells into circumstance.
When a woman expresses her perspectives openly, the solutions to the world’s problems become more perceptible.
When a woman opens her heart to her own longings, maternal instincts materialize, and her deepest desires will always be in service to the greatest good for all.
The unrealized potential in women is the world’s largest untapped resource. Unleashing women is the solution to alleviating suffering, elevating humanity and healing the globe.
By guiding a woman to reclaim her life, the pathway to leadership and self-actualization will create ripples of a reborn reality and exponential impact in the workplace and the world.
The time is now. The process starts here.
This is a year of new and renewed possibilities for me, for EWC, and for all women.
This year, as I embrace midlife in new ways, my promise to myself is to hold my life with deeper self-compassion, self-love and self-care.
My reclamation is my resistance. My rest is a refusal to relinquish my power.
The promises you make to yourself are special and sacred too - make them now and hold them close -
Woman, remember who you are.
Throughout this year, I will re-envision, renew, recommit and reclaim my life so that the legacy I leave will be one of bold action and lasting love in my expanding roles of marriage, motherhood, medicine and our moon mission.
*1. Richard Parker and Peter Aggleton (Editors), 1999, 2007, Culture, Society and Sexuality. Second edition. Chpt 5 Gender as a useful category of historical analysis by Joan Wallach Scott (1986). Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. London and New York.