Hello everyone. Welcome to the Sex, Love and SuperPowers podcast show. I’m your host, Tatiana Berindei, and today I have a very lovely woman who I’m going to be talking with. Her name is Robin LaCross, and we are going to be discussing raising empowered kids. I’m really looking forward to this conversation. Let me tell you a little bit about Robin before we dive in today. Robin LaCross is a Holistic Health Practitioner who specializes in women’s reproductive health. She’s been using and teaching natural birth control methods for over 25 years. Robin is passionate about empowering women and making sure all girls grow up knowing and understanding their bodies.
Robin believes that by changing the way parents talk to their kids about sex, we can reduce unintended pregnancies and the spread of STDs in the world. To this end, Robin founded the HPV Education Project to raise awareness about the virus and the problems it causes. She also created a pair of online interview series called the Raising Empowered Daughters Summit and the Raising Empowered Kids Injury Series, where she interviewed over 40 experts on a wide variety of topics designed to empower parents to communicate freely with their children about growing up, sex, relationships, and staying safe. Robin helps parents prepare for these challenging conversations by offering online training programs, private coaching and through her weekly radio show, which I had the honor to be a guest on, The Holistic Sex Ed Radio.
Welcome to the show, Robin.
Hi, Tatiana. Thank you so much for having me here today.
Yeah, I’m really excited to have you. Before we jump in, will you tell our listeners what your superpowers are?
My superpowers, I have the gift of the big picture view. When somebody tells me that they have a goal or desire or vision, something in their life that they want, I can immediately see the path to that outcome. One of the ways that this big picture view has taken shape in my life, well, there’s many ways that it has taken shape in my life, but one of the problems that I ran into as a teenager or my early twenties was not understanding my body. As a result of that, it triggered a quest for information. What I wanted, my goal was a natural solution to manage my fertility and I couldn’t see the road there. It triggered a huge quest for information.
In the end, I have this amazing view, this very deep understanding of the female body and can help other women achieve their goals, what they want with their reproductive health. So I think that’s also morphed into a superpower too, is you my ability to use that big picture view to help other women create a way to manage their fertility successfully so that they can live in harmony with their body, achieve your goals, whether it’s to eventually have a family or not have children. It’s really been a blessing in my life for both myself and for my clients.
I love that you’re talking about the big picture view. Often when we talk about that, at least I get this visual of the eagle eye view, like you zoom up a thousand feet and you can see the whole planet underneath you. I love that you’re bringing it down to an overview of the body and an understanding of the big picture of the body, which we might not necessarily think of as a big picture. Yet, what you’re talking about is so important and valid in terms of how all of the different components work together and understanding that and being able to have agency and authority over how we interact with the natural rhythms and cycles in our bodies is pretty awesome. So, I like your drawing that line there.
Thank you.
Natural fertility methods have gotten a lot of kickback, right? There’s a lot of people who don’t believe that that’s a thing or that it’s a bunch of BS or it’s like, “Oh yeah, how do you know that you were using the rhythm method because you have five kids,” or whatever, you know?
Right.
I know, I really do want to talk about raising empowered kids, but I feel like this is tied into that.
Oh, absolutely.
I’d love to hear you talk a little bit about that, because I feel like there’s a lot of misconception, a lot of misunderstanding around what natural fertility methods actually are and how to do them effectively.
Yeah. You mentioned the rhythm method and it’s kind of the joke of natural methods, let’s put it that way. Basically, what the rhythm method is, is an educated guess about when you’re going to be fertile, so no wonder people get pregnant. You know what I mean? The female body is this amazing, beautiful thing, and within our body, we have this amazing cycle that we go through every day, every week, that’s a little bit different. Every month there’s this pattern that unfolds. What people don’t realize is there’s the myth of the 28-day cycle.
Right.
This is the textbook version of a woman’s fertile cycle. This is what the doctors learn on. So, they need-
This is what your due date in pregnancy is based on too, isn’t it?
Yes, it is. So that’s why sometimes kids are “early” or “late”. It’s only because we’re using a system of averages rather than based on scientific data of what’s happening inside a woman’s individual body. That’s where for fertility awareness methods comes in. It’s not a guessing game, it’s a scientifically-based combination of methods that when combined you can gather enough information to make solid decisions about your fertility as far as when to use condoms, when not to use condoms. I mean, and we’re talking about like a monogamous relationship where you’re not concerned about STDs, that sort of thing.
But what people don’t realize is ovulation is not set in stone. When you’re looking at the textbook 28-day cycle, you have 14 days, ovulation, 14 days, period. Ovulation is nice and neatly set in the middle. That’s great if you have a “textbook” cycle, but for most women, we don’t, and ovulation can be influenced by a number of things. It can be influenced by stress, travel, sickness, lots of different things. Some women have unpredictable cycles because there’s hormonal things going on.
So really what it is, is by teaching young girls that there’s a 28-day cycle, it, one, makes them feel like they’re abnormal if their cycles are longer than 28 days or shorter than 28 days. What I teach my clients is that, okay, ovulation is not set in stone, it can vary based on things that are happening in your life. However, there’s a hormonal chain of events that lead up to ovulation, which cause symptoms in the body that you can detect. Then there’s scientific ways of measuring that actually ovulation did occur, and at that point you’re non-fertile for the rest of the cycle.
For somebody who’s teaching fertility awareness methods to women who don’t want to get pregnant, what I do to make it easy on my clients is I just tell them no unprotected sex until you have absolutely, positively confirmed that ovulation is done for that cycle. Once you have, then the rest of that cycle, let’s just say 10 days or so roughly, that you can have unprotected sex without fear of pregnancy. Then once your period starts, that’s day one of your new cycle and then we go into that whole process of it’s going to be based in part on your cycle history, because there is value in history, however, it’s not wise to make educated guesses about your fertility if you really don’t want to get pregnant. That’s why the rhythm method just doesn’t work and that’s why people make jokes about it.
Yes, thank you. That was such a clear and concise answer. I can say that I have very successfully utilized fertility awareness in my life. You obviously have been, you don’t have children.
Yeah, I’ve used it for over 25 years. Basically how I got involved in this stuff was I started having sex at a young age. I was introduced to sex by a sexual predator in our family, so there’s a history of sexual abuse. When I was 14, I decided that I wanted to give my virginity to a person of my choosing and so I made arrangements with my boyfriend to have a night where I gave him my virginity. It was a magical, beautiful night, however, we got caught in the process and my parents broke us up and the whole big drama thing. But basically, the long story short is by the time I acquired my second boyfriend, my mom decided to put me on the pill and I was 15 years old.She was raising empowered kids.
I stayed on the pill for five years. When I was 20, I decided that I really didn’t want to be on the pill anymore. I was moving towards a more holistic lifestyle. I had become a vegetarian, I was getting into herbs. I was discovering alternative healing, it was a big thing in the ’80s, it was all the rage. And just putting hormones, artificial hormones, in my body just really felt out of alignment with what I was trying to do.
Basically, what happened was in spite of having sex ed twice in school, in spite of having all of this, my mom and I, we sat down and we had the “talk”, in spite of having all this supposed education, I was still clueless about how to protect myself from getting pregnant. That triggered a quest for information. Basically what happened was I discovered this book on natural family planning, and it was a religiously-flavored book about how to get pregnant and use the signals and symptoms of your body. I was like, “Wow, I don’t want to get pregnant, but wow, my body’s doing all this stuff that I had no idea that I could learn to interpret and watch and record all this information and actually learn to tell when I was fertile.” That just really triggered a quest for more information.
I like went to the bibliography and there are just references to scientific articles and other books, and so I went to the medical libraries and started doing this research because I wanted to know what do the scientists know about the female body, about fertility, about menstruation, about early pregnancy. Then I was stumbling on herbs that were used to influence the cycle, both to increase and decrease fertility. It became like my second PhD in life, my personal PhD in life. I just-
I love your enthusiasm that sent you on this quest. We do have to go to a quick break.
Okay.
I’m sorry to cut you off.
No worries.
… but we’re going to dive deeper in, because I know you have such a wealth of information about how to talk to your kids about this and how to really raise empowered children. Before we go to break, will you tell our listeners where they can go to find out more about you and your work?
Yes. You can go to my website, holisticsexedradio.com. I have all kinds of information there, links to my other websites, and you can find out all about me and my radio show there.
Awesome. We’re talking with Robin LaCross today about raising empowered kids, more when we get back. You don’t want to miss this one, so stay tuned.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
Music Credit: All instruments played by Amanda Turk. Engineered and produced by Tatiana Berindei and Daniel Plane reelcello.com
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