Graduating to Mentor

Perhaps this is your first introduction to the benefits of charting your cycles. Or…. perhaps you have charted your cycles for years, or even decades.

Maybe you learned to chart your cycles in your teen years, using it to navigate what is often a phase of irregular cycles to predict your period, or inform diagnosis and treatment of painful periods, pms, or other dysfunction. Maybe you first learned of modern methods of Natural Family Planning as a couple preparing for marriage, and used it together throughout your married life to space pregnancies. Perhaps you first learned NFP when your whole life changed with the birth of your first child, and healthy and natural ways to plan your family and being open to life now took on a deeper meaning. Or you may have discovered the benefits of advanced scientific methods of charting fertility when your own fertility eluded you, and you found yourself unable to conceive, or suffering recurrent miscarriages. Some of you may be late to the whole charting thing, turning to it for the first time to navigate the twilight years of fertility that we call perimenopause.

Some of you have never had the benefit of good instruction in NFP. You relied on an app to tell you fertile or not, or patched together your own system, often adding on a few extra days of abstinence to compensate for lack of confidence in your self devised method.

I hope many reading this benefitted from instruction by a trained teacher, or several, as you may have found you preferred one method of NFP over another at various times in your life. Your initial consults may have been as a newlywed, or breast-feeding mom, or grieving a miscarriage, and now in a blink of an eye, you are navigating hot flashes!

You may be among those who have now gone a year without periods, and “graduated” from cycle charting. Like most graduates, however, you are not “done”, but only beginning a new era.

However long you used NFP, and in whatever life circumstances, you accumulated a wealth of experience, wisdom, and insight that equips you to mentor those still in the charting years. The perspective of the graduate can be a guiding light to those still navigating the waters, and a source of information to those who may never even have heard of NFP, let alone spoken to someone who successfully lived it.

I am thrilled when I am invited to speak to audiences beyond the childbearing years! I do not have the opportunity often, because it is assumed that the topic of NFP is not relevant to that age group. That could not be further from the truth. Young couples using NFP are often barraged with cynicism and comments from peers and family members that betray a lack of knowledge of modern NFP. I recall one young couple whose Catholic Grandma pressured them to stop using NFP and go on depo-provera, which she offered to pay for, out of concern she would interrupt her grad school with an unplanned pregnancy Educating those beyond childbearing years on the benefits of Natural Family Planning is educating the mentors of the next generation.

NFP graduates have much to contribute to the conversation! Have you graduated from NFP? Congratulations! You are now a mentor! You are in a unique position to be a source of support and information—as a Mom/Dad, Auntie/Uncle, Grandma/Grandpa, Godmother/Godfather, trusted friend, colleague, church volunteer, or other mentor roles. Stay informed, and share your lived experience and wisdom of the years with those you encounter.

We welcome and value the support and involvement of our NFP graduates here at CANFP. We invite your expanded involvement, so all may benefit from your experience! Go to https://canfp.org/get-involved/ to explore opportunities!