Bellyful of Loss
What happens when Mother Earth is battling infertility?
“Woman is the First Environment…
From the bodies of women flows the relationship of those generations, both to society and the natural world.
In this way, the earth is our mother, the old people said.
In this way, we as women are earth.”
–Katsi Cook, Mohawk Elder and Midwife
I remember the first time I saw Venus of Willendorf in a darkened lecture hall on the University of Waterloo campus. The tiered seating of the hall was quite steep and the sound of the lecturer’s voice echoed above the low hum and advance of her slide projector. The actual figurine, found by archaeologist Josef Szombathy in a tiny Austrian village in 1908, stands at just under 5 inches in height, but projected there on screen, her impressive figure towered over us in that first year lecture on the history of art. She appeared enormous, mysterious, erotic and potent.
The idea of the earth as our mother is ancient: the Greeks called her Gaia and the Romans, Terra. Antiquities that testify to the practice of fertility worship and rites have been found buried globally and some, like the Venus of Willendorf, date back over 30,000 years to the Paleolithic.
By the time I graduated university, I was diagnosed with endometriosis and informed I would likely encounter problems becoming pregnant. Additionally, I was told that, if by some miracle I did manage to achieve pregnancy, I would have a greater chance of miscarriage. I was single and 26 years old at the time. The idea of family still felt a long way off. I’d never thought about my fertility ever being an issue by the time I might feel ready to attempt parenthood. Learning this news was a shock.
Five years later I had fallen in love and we began attempts to have a child together. Over the course of the decade that was my 30s, I lived rurally in a fieldstone farmhouse just outside Elora, Ontario with my spouse. It would prove close to a decade of miscarriages and failed attempts (both naturally and via various fertility treatments). As 40 loomed, I was spent physically and spiritually and I ended the relationship. Those years had taken a massive toll and I needed a new path for a new decade; a path I preferred to pursue alone.
Around the same time, a friend encouraged me to buy a camera. Photography quickly became a way for me to process the pain of my past infertility struggle; a practice of self-care to heal both the physical and emotional scar tissue that had built up. My grief was the only thing my womb appeared willing to house.
In the years that followed, I began to document the rural areas so familiar to me during the decade I lived in my farmhouse. I found myself particularly drawn to the seasonal process of tilling and fertilization of soil, seeding, growth, abundance, fecundity and ultimately the harvest of bounty each autumn. In the landscape, all my attempts at motherhood were mirrored in these seasonal agricultural rituals of local farmland.
Every spring echoed the hope I’d felt at the beginning of my journey. Some years, the harvest was not good. Crops failed. There had been too much rain; flooded fields washed the seeds away. Some years, drought left the soil too dry for crops to flourish.
The pattern of needles puncturing my arms appeared for me in tracks of furrowed earth. In the visual repetition of rows lay the seemingly endless monthly recurrence of the fertility treatment process: drugs, monitoring, insemination, failure, menstruation… begin again. Each winter, the shock of a red barn against snow evokes for me the drops of blood announcing the onset of miscarriages that haunt me still. Even after I finally achieved success alone via In Vitro Fertilization, I felt compelled to continue to document fields plowed and harvested and landscapes lying dormant. Via photography, I tilled the soil of my depression to unearth my own examination of fertility and women’s health, the health of anyone with a womb, and to plant something medicinal; a hope that my heart might heal along with my body.
I call this series Fallow, comparing myself to a field left untouched because its state is so damaged, it must be left alone and given time to allow its soil to regenerate and become fertile again. Time away from the struggle of infertility was clearly what I personally needed. After almost two years break from treatment and the more permanent breakup of my relationship, I was finally able, at 42, to carry a pregnancy to full term and give birth.
My son turned 10 this year. I continue to be drawn, visually and otherwise, to the celebration of the earth as fertile and life-giving, but more and more I cannot help but worry over its fragility. Nothing like having a child to make your concern over future sustainability and protection of the planet more urgent. As I continue to witness our planet in crisis, I feel deeply affected and obliged to act. We are in a climate crisis now in which the damage humankind has wrought upon the earth returns to haunt us and is quickly becoming irreversible.
Scientists and journalists tell us we are now in the midst of the Sixth Mass Extinction. And there are various ways climate change impacts and will continue to impact future generations and survival of species. Climate change has certainly wiped out human lives in the form of extreme weather crises and war. Might it also affect human fertility?
Back in 2015, according to the WEC, scientists were seeking answers as to whether hotter days could have adverse affect on human sexual behaviour, sperm motility and menstruation as had been indicated in some experiments on other mammals. Scientists had already been documenting “TFL” (Thermal Fertility Limit) of various species and the effect hotter temperatures have on that limit. In November 2018, USA Today reported the results of scientific research by Dr. Kris Sales at University of Anglia that found that heat waves do affect sperm count in bugs and “halve male reproductive fitness”.
Perhaps until male fertility is proven to be under threat via climate change, it will continue to be a non-issue to men who dismiss its reality. It appears as no coincidence to me that certain men now in power who continue to deny climate change and argue against any need for sustainable energy, or divestment of fossil fuels, who fail to commit to the protection of our planet also happen to espouse attitudes towards women that are sexist and misogynist; are men accused of rape or sexual assault; men who battle for control over our bodies in order to limit our access to health, knowledge, protections, and autonomy. Such eco-misogyny equally threatens the empowerment, leadership and lives of women and girls and the future of our planet.
In his piece The Misogyny of Climate Deniers, Martin Gelin quotes Martin Hulman who, along with Jonas Anshelm, published a paper in 2014 on the language of climate skeptics:
“There is a package of values and behaviors connected to a form of masculinity that I call ‘industrial breadwinner masculinity.’ They see the world as separated between humans and nature. They believe humans are obliged to use nature and its resources to make products out of them. And they have a risk perception that nature will tolerate all types of waste. It’s a risk perception that doesn’t think of nature as vulnerable and as something that is possible to be destroyed. For them, economic growth is more important than the environment.”
As I write this, the Amazon which has been termed “the lungs of our planet” is being intentionally razed to clear land for cattle in Brazil. We are clearing trees that capture carbon for political and economical profit and for greed. Gelin writes, “many men perceive climate activism as inherently feminine.” Witness the vitriolic attacks by men upon climate activist Greta Thunberg or Indigenous leaders like Sylvia McAdam, Tokata Iron Eyes and Ladonna Brave Bull Allard, who are among those founding movements like #IdleNoMore and #NoDAPL, the Water Protectors defending Standing Rock. In a recent interview by Brandon Keim of Dr. Suzanne Simard, Ecologist and Professor at University of British Columbia, Simard states, “you can smell the defense chemistry of a forest under attack.” There are forms of personhood other than human existing on our planet. We must act to defend them.
The need for more women in leadership and decision-making positions could not be more clear. TIME recently published a piece on 15 women leading environmental activism, stating the “UN estimates 80% of those who have been displaced by climate change are women.” In early 2018, the World Economic Forum revealed that, “women account for nearly half of the world’s smallholder farmers and produce 70% of Africa’s food.” While women are providing the bulk of food and fuel to their communities, the majority of women do not (or cannot) own the land that they farm. Consequently, despite their excess of toil, poverty continues to take a larger toll on women and their offspring globally. If soil is experiencing drought and flooding, then, as the TIME piece states, “women bear an outsize burden of the global-warming crisis.”
In my own process of creating Fallow, I think a lot about access to health treatment, especially for people living remotely or in areas of the globe affected by climate change; it’s behind what drives other documentary photography projects I pursue and hope to produce. I am a white, privileged woman who, at the time of attempting pregnancy, was employed full-time, had a car and lived in an urban centre. Yet still I encountered barriers in accessing treatment, whether age or gender-related, economic or physical. I felt sure that whatever challenges I personally faced are indeed multiplied for women of colour and women living remotely and/or in marginalized communities or areas of the globe without the health supports and infrastructure I enjoy where I reside. Health rights and access to health by women, girls, BIPOC, LGBTQ2S, non-binary and other marginalized groups matters greatly to my own work as a photographer.
When I think of the phrase “Water is life”, I think about the waters of women. The waters we shed each month tied to our reproductive physiognomy. I think of waters in utero. I think of waters breaking when we begin labor. I think of waters we emit to nurse our young.
We are come from water. We comprise water. We need water to live. Our planet is 71% water. Agriculturally, flooding and drought affect our very survival. I think any photographer now documenting landscape cannot help but consider the vulnerability of our planet each time we lift our lens to our eye and the responsibility to draw the eyes of others to these issues. Humans are not separate from nature. And we cannot separate ourselves from the dire warnings of the planet that birthed us.
For myself, I think on how ancient cultures worshipped the female for eons; how some cultures still honor the earth as the embodiment of the feminine. Katsi Cook’s words speak to the need for each of us to reflect upon our own personal connections to the land we live upon and the obligations we share collectively to this planet we call our Mother. She carries us all and she provides, but we cannot continue to ceaselessly extract her resources without consequences. We must find balance and practice sustainability. Greed only depletes what our planet can provide. If we want to survive we must, in turn, support her and ensure her survival.
A fallow field is one strategic response towards the necessity of achieving and maintaining balance. It’s an acknowledgement of the importance of self-care. Life on our planet has developed myriad ways to heal itself and perform a kind of self-care when damaged or under attack. I’m thinking of forest re-generation, for instance. But when the speed at which the actions of humans destroy our planet exceeds the pace at which it can act to save itself, to replenish and rebound, we must acknowledge our role in the causes and consequences of climate change and aim to slow and reverse its many impacts such as extinction, drought, floods and displacement.
Unlike a fallow field, the duration of time required for regeneration is a luxury we can no longer afford. We must act and act now.
