Why and How I Write What I do

Why and How I Write What I do

by | Apr 8, 2022 | Hilary Jacobson, Uncategorized, writing

Why and How I Write What I do

Since my early teens, I’ve been on a quest to find the missing pieces to help me make sense of the world and of myself as a woman and a person.

One of my first quests was to understand why my parents truly despised one another. Both were intelligent and modern thinkers – my mother a High School English teacher and aspiring writer, and my father an electrical engineer and successful inventor. But she expressed herself through dramatic emotions and aspired to ideals of justice and to living passionately, whereas he loved facts, loved the classics, playing chess, and having structure and discipline in life.

My father would counter her impractical but high ideals with statements such as “a fact is a fact” and “life is not fair.” But without going too deeply into who my parents were, I just want to share that for me, they came to epitomize the tragic inability of otherwise successful and intelligent persons to get along and respect one another–a trend that we see dominating US culture today.

My mother was a second-wave feminist. One of the things she ingrained in me early on was the idea that you should not and could not be proud of your reproductive accomplishments (pregnancy and children) because reproduction was “mere biology,” simply an automatic behavior of the body, and not an actual creative or intellectual achievement.

As her daughter, I looked for the missing pieces: that is, for the reason that she was so deeply unhappy and unable to feel a connection to other people, including her children.

One thing both parents agreed on was to raise my brother and me without religion. They were atheists—he was from a Jewish background, and she, a Catholic family. They decided, in their words, to “give us a fresh start.” This left both of us feeling rootless and disoriented for many years, but it also gave us space to explore different approaches to what it means to be human, without religious indoctrination. For me, this exploration included a few years of Christian fundamentalism (where I learned my Bible stories and was steeped in Christian metaphysics and morality), followed by a time of atheism, and then forays into yoga and meditation. My experiments also included feeling the effects of diet and breathwork on my mood, health, mental focus, and productivity.

It was clear to me in my early twenties that it would be a mistake to separate the body and mind: they influence one another profoundly and on every level. What followed from that was the recognition that my mother was wrong: children are not the product of “mere biology,” but are a product of who we are: mind, body, heart, soul, diet, toxic exposures, and both our joyous and traumatic experience. Years later, I would understand that past generations’ diets, toxic exposures, and life experiences play a role in our own and in our children’s health and well-being. In fact, preparing for and having children is a profound act of generational love, responsibility, and creativity, on every level.

***

I would say about my writing that, well, first of all, I never intended to become a writer of heavy-duty, non-fiction, health-related books. (My degree is in music.) Although I always journaled and dabbled in poetry and fiction, writing was a hobby. That changed when I became a mother and experienced firsthand the sheer number of postpartum health struggles that go unanswered and unsupported by our medical experts. I realized, as you only can when you become a mother, what women are up against, and I began to look for the missing pieces.

My book, Mother Food, was the first result of this quest. I discovered that my body’s under-production of breastmilk responded strongly to foods and herbs that breastfeeding women around the world use with the intention of increasing their milk production. Yet, for western medicine, the idea that diet could matter for lactation has been decried as misleading and “mere superstition.” Biological functions, after all, are supposed to be robust, automatic, and reliable.

Consider this: It is not that long ago that babies were believed to feel no pain, and that mothering was blamed when a child was autistic. In fact, our medical history is packed full of wrong beliefs about babies, women, and the roles of mothers.

While researching for Mother Food, I discovered numerous research articles that investigated the ways that a mother’s diet influences pregnancy, milk production, her baby’s allergies and also infant colic—and much more. I recognized that this information is present in published books and research articles, but absent from the mothering books and magazines.

It became my goal to collect this information into one place, one book, and to describe it in easy-to-read, compassionate and supportive language (I’ve had “mommy brain” and know it is real). In Working at this project over fifteen years, I learned just how difficult it can be to write good non-fiction! Fortunately, I did a good enough job that now, nearly twenty years after its initial publication, Mother Food is still recommended by lactation specialists and valued by mothers.

After its publication, I was done with non-fiction and allowed myself to indulge in “hobby writing” starting with a re-writing of fairytales that feature daughters and mothers. I wanted to re-tell these tales in a way that allows the daughters and mothers in the stories to heal their relationships, while also reminding the reader about the suppression of women’s healing knowledge across centuries of European history. I worked on this compilation, titled Red Madder Root, off and on for seven years. Then I put it aside, feeling that the time was not right to publish it.

As life would have it, one of my dearest prayers was answered in 2013. On a whim, I’d taken a 200-plus hour certification class in hypnotherapy. (I thought it would be an interesting way to spend the summer.) Toward the end of the program I realized I had acquired a set of skills that would help me help mothers who suffered from birth trauma and breastfeeding grief.

I opened a hypnotherapy practice and soon, set to writing again. My second non-fiction book. “Healing Breastfeeding Grief,” was published in 2016.

***

The recurring theme of my life seems to be finding the missing pieces, organizing them in ways that are easy-to-understand, and then passing the information to those I hope will find them useful. I also seem to find themes that are neglected and bring them into the public’s attention.

For instance, in the 1990’s, no one talked about how food and herbs can help mothers produce a good milk supply. In the 2010’s, no one talked about the special traumas of new mothers. This second book, too, was welcomed by postpartum specialists and today is translated and used internationally to help mothers recover from their traumas. 

I thought I was finally done with non-fiction! (Can you tell that I really don’t like writing non-fiction? It is truly so so hard to write well!)

But in 2020, isolated in my home during the lockdowns, I felt moved to write another non-fiction book, again for mothers. This time it was about gardening: how to grow foods and herbs that support milk supply but that also can be used in the treatment of common family health matters.

With this book, I want to educate mothers about the useful medicinal and edible plants that grow in our neighborhoods and gardens, including weeds such as dandelion, sow-thistle and purslane. I packed my book A Mother’s Garden of Galactagogues full of practical know-how. It was published in early 2021.

Climate change has been on my mind, so the book includes many “famine foods,” “drought-tolerant foods” and plants that can be grown year-round on balconies and porches. With these “home grown galactagogues,” mothers can be empowered to nurse during difficult times.

Indeed, in summer 2021, the impacts of climate change could be felt. Our farmers had no water for their fields. Fires burned in surrounding forests. On one dreary day in August, (the sky was thick with smoke and ash), I remembered a little book that I’d written long ago about mothers and daughters and the suppression of women’s medicine. Taking the abandoned book out from storage, I went to a nearby creek where, sitting on the bank close to the water, the air was clear enough to breathe. Turning the pages and becoming absorbed in the stories, I was overcome by emotion and started to cry. I heard my own clear voice from my past, reminding me how and why we commit to live our best lives, even in the darkest of times.

I wondered if perhaps the time to publish the book had arrived. I shared it with a few friends and, getting their positive responses, felt it was true: many wonderful people may feel informed, uplifted and supported by these stories. Perhaps though, especially, this book is for the same people who read my non-fiction books: women who believe in and support the wellbeing of families, who work in the healing arts, and who walk an authentic spiritual path, whether within or outside of any religious teaching.

The tragedies continue. In 2022, war began in Europe, exasperating food shortages. Mothers struggle to obtain formula. New strains of viruses are in the news. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, (IPCC), tells us that the planet will soon undergo dramatic changes.

I think about young families and children every day. I think about the struggles of people to overcome suppression. I realize that even in the hardest of times, and even if should it be the end of the world, children are born each day. Babies must be fed. Mothers need the revivified knowledge of ancient traditions, and to know which of our weeds, flowers, trees, cacti, vegetables and fruit that grow all around will support their milk supply.

My hope is this: that in response to so much hardship, a culture of the heart will emerge. I hope that my writerly contributions, even my little story-book, Red Madder Root, will be part of and contribute to this new phase of human culture.  

 

 

Writing the book “Healing Breastfeeding Grief”

Writing the book “Healing Breastfeeding Grief”

by | Dec 6, 2021 | book, breastfeedinggrief, writing

Writing the book “Healing Breastfeeding Grief”

For ten years, I listened each day to mothers as they vented their profound feelings of loss, grief and failure–feelings I also had with my first baby when I could not build a milk supply. 

I wished with all my heart that I could do more than just commiserate. I wanted to actually discover a way to help mothers heal from what we came to call “breastfeeding grief”: mourning the loss of the breastfeeding relationship and the breastfeeding experience we had expected and planned to have.

Where was the therapy that would help? I did not know.

In 2013, a school for hypnotherapy opened in the town where I lived, and I thought it would be an interesting way to spend the summer. I did not plan to practice as a hypnotherapist. As I had practiced meditation form, I was curious to understand what this other kind of “trance work” was all about. One day though, much as had happened with Mother Food, I realized I was learning a skill set that might actually enable me to transition mothers out of their negative emotions, their sense of loss and failure, and help them re-connect with their positive sense of self as a mother, while building their joy and confidence.

I felt as though my prayers were answered. I was certified in a potent therapy form that would help mothers.

I remember returning home after the ten-week intensive course in a kind of daze. I immediately began to give sessions to mothers with breastfeeding grief, and soon was seeing beautiful turn-arounds with most every mother.

Click here for a professional review of Healing Breastfeeding Grief.

In 2015, I decided to write a book about what I had learned. I wanted to crystalize my experiences so that mothers but also doulas, midwives, lactation consultants and therapists could learn from them.

I also wanted to write a book that in itself could serve as a kind therapy, a book that would let mothers know they are understood and are not alone.

I worked hard at word-crafting sentences so they would flow and resonate with compassion. As one reviewer says, “The healing starts on the very first page.”

I was very fortunate as in a local writers group that met weekly, the mentor of the group, Ruth Wire, had worked as a nurse decades earlier, and all the members were parents. They enthusiastically supported my writing and gave great suggestions. I would like to thank especially Madeleine Sklar for holding my hand and spending hours chiseling with me at sentences and paragraphs during those times when I felt I just could not get a section right.

 

To purchase on amazon, use this link.

SALE: 20% off of orders of 10 or more through the publisher. 

 

Writing the book “Mother Food”

Writing the book “Mother Food”

by | Dec 6, 2021 | book, motherfood, writing

Writing the book “Mother Food”

A Slow Gestation

The idea for this book was conceived and then took hold of me, a little more each time, with the births of my four children. With each child, I learned a little more about overcoming my low milk supply issues by using traditional herbs and foods — an area of knowledge that was not at all in the mainstream twenty, or even ten years ago, and that today is still little understood.

The catalyst to actually begin researching and writing was the birth of my forth child and my only daughter. That was in 1992. With her, I encountered new and considerable obstacles to breastfeeding and bonding. I was able to overcome these with the knowledge I had gleaned with my older three children — knowledge that I believe every mother has a right to know.

Childbed Fever

The first major challenge was childbed fever and a stay at the hospital. A sliver of placenta had remained in my womb, and when it began to decay, bacterial infection invaded my body. My daughter was ten days old when I was rushed to the emergency room, shaking from fever, too weak to stand. Fortunately, my breastfeeding-friendly doctor agreed that I could continue nursing in spite of undergoing surgery and taking high-dosage antibiotics. I was also allowed to room-in with my daughter: she slept in my bed, right next to me on the extra-large pillow.

Although I was so weak, I responded to her needs as quickly as possible, day and night. I changed her clothes and her diapers right there in bed with me. At the first sign of hunger or fretfulness, I fed or comforted her. I loved being close to her and feeling the warmth and emotion flow between us, that incredible exchange of finest feelings, as comforting to the sensitive new mother as to the baby.

Each afternoon, a friend came by and was available to carry her around during the hours when she might be fretful. Evenings, my husband was there to do the same. The quintessence: my daughter never felt abandoned to discomfort.

As mentioned above, I struggle with chronic low milk supply. The causes were hormonal (mild PCOS), a minimal amount of glandular breast tissue, and possibly also my having a medical condition that suppresses my immune system (Lyme disease). To prevent milk supply problems in the hospital, I asked my husband to bring me bottles of “Rivella,” a soft drink flavored with herbal extracts that is drunk in Switzerland (where I lived) to increase milk supply. In addition, the nurses made me pots of an herbal lactation tea. The result was that although my body was struggling to maintain milk production throughout this medical crisis, I did indeed manage to exclusively breastfeed my daughter.

The Nurses

Then something happened that made a huge impression on me. Nurses I had never seen before began to visit us, to stand quietly and respectfully inside our room for a while, and then leave without saying a word. I finally asked one what was going on. She told me that the nurses “downstairs” were talking about my baby — about the remarkable baby who ever cried. The nurses wanted to see for themselves if it was true! She explained that in the maternity ward, the babies were fretful and crying a lot of the time.

You see, in Switzerland, health insurance pays for up to ten days of rest at the hospital after birth. During this time, mothers are supposed to learn about babycare from the nurses. In my case, however, I had gone straight home a few hours after the births of my first two babies. My last two had been homebirths, so I had never had the benefit of their guidance.

Well, the nurse’s amazement amazed me! Obviously, they didn’t understand the kind of interaction necessary to prevent a baby from becoming fretful. Indeed, I remembered the questionable “support” I’d received the first few hours after my two hospital births. With my first, because he was fretful, the nurse put him in a little bed, all alone, crying, so that I could rest. That separation ripped my heart, and his crying began to sound horribly angry. Being born and immediately initiated into anger and separation is not my idea of a good start in life! But since the nurse seemed to think it was okay, and I was a new mother and insecure, I trusted her. With my second, the nurses took him for testing and then didn’t return him for a half hour. I was aching for him all that time. When I asked about the delay I was told it was because he was so cute, and a very special baby. They had enjoyed their time with him. When a nurse then saw that I was attempting to breastfeed him, she said, “What? So soon? Don’t you want to rest?” It was now 45 minutes after birth. Didn’t she know that the best time to initiate breastfeeding was the first hour after birth?

Well, with my daughter cooing on my lap I assured the nurse that she was no angel. She would cry like any other baby if her needs were not met. The secret was recognizing her signals and responding to them as soon as possible — even within a split second. But there was more to it. I also knew how to keep up my fragile milk supply, and I knew that I should eat certain foods and not others to avoid risking my baby’s digestive distress. Indeed, I knew from repeated experience that a baby who has enough milk, and whose milk is easy to digest, is very simply going to be an “easier” baby. Every baby is different, of course, but a mother can learn how to be sensitive to those differences and gauge her choices accordingly.

Postpartum Depression

A few weeks later I encountered the next big obstacle: postpartum depression. I had gone through a long phase of exhaustion following each birth, but had not experienced depression before. Now I saw what it was like: parts of my brain shut down; I no longer felt involvement in life; I felt no joy in being a mother, or in my new baby.

Nonetheless, because I knew it was important, I continued doing things that contribute to a bonded relationship: I gave my baby the contact she required (she was the sensitive kind of baby who never sleeps if put down, so she had to be carried in a sling or snugly during the day, even when sleeping, the first three months of her life). I continued taking foods and herbs to maintain my supply. I observed which foods caused her digestive distress, and I avoided these. When I watched TV, I wore a headphone. I believe that babies who listen to television or radio and who hear, for instance, sudden loud sounds or music that convey shock, horror, surprise, or pathos are at greater risk for the sensorial disorganization that many children have today. I also sang to her throughout the day, including when I watched TV with headphones on, even though it felt very odd to do so. The result was that when I came out of depression (the healing process took about four months; I was not informed enough to take medication), I had a trusting, happy baby, (and a very musical child as we would discover) who would continue to be confident in our relationship, and to nurse for several years.

My Happy Baby

My happy baby was my little miracle. How had I come through postpartum depression with an intact relationship to my daughter, including an intact breastfeeding relationship? Everyday, I marveled and rejoiced. I also rejoiced that I had known how to overcome my low milk supply, and to produce milk that did not cause my daughter to have an upset stomach. (She would get an upset stomach and become colicky whenever I ate certain foods or combinations of foods, so I was sure to avoid these.) I had learned these tools not from doctors but from mothers, especially mothers from the “anthroposophic” community (Waldorf school) which, in Germany, has studied the effect of foods and herbs on mothers and babies for decades.

I felt as though I had stumbled upon a treasure chest of insights – to which mothers held the key. This set of insights seemed ancient in its “rightness.” I believed that all mothers should have access to it.
Putting this key back into the hands of all mothers was the motivation for researching and writing Mother Food.

Now, there are two types of persons in my family: scientists and artists. I lean toward the latter. My degree is in music. I also love to write, especially poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction. Well, research shows that musicians use their brain in an integrated way, using both halves creatively. That was the approach I took to researching this material: get the whole picture, discover the interconnections, and explain these in simple terms that make the reader think, “Oh, I get this now! It’s so clear!”

Imagine a mother of four lively children, bringing home boxes of books from the university library, and reading these each evening in bed while nursing her baby – then toddler, then young child. My daughter was four years old when I published an article in “c u r a r e,” a German academic journal of ethnomedicine, titled, “Have Lactation Medicinals an Influence on Culture?” This article summed up my findings: that lactation medicinals had been ignored by science (this has now changed), that foods that increase milk production were the crops earliest cultivated by Neolithic peoples (perhaps because breastfeeding mothers preferred these foods), that lactation medicinals are plentifully found in world mythology, associated with breastfeeding goddesses or mother goddesses. Finally, I included a description of some of the chemical pathways that lactogenic foods and herbs use to increase milk production.

What Kind of Book Should I Write?

In 1996, I sent my initial manuscript, then titled “Ancient Tools of Motherhood,” to a Swiss publishing house, the Kreux Verlag. Their main editor responded that I was writing not one book, but two: I was writing a self-help book, but also a book about history and culture. She said that this combination would be hard to market, and that I should instead write one book or the other.

I thought about this suggestion a long time, but remained convinced that mothers deserve and require a book connecting both history and culture to their practical experiences today. One of the remarkable moments of motherhood is the realization that one is sharing an experience common to women of all times and places. The next step is to understand how this universality includes our choices for diet and health, with respect to how these choices influence our breastfeeding and mothering experience.

At the risk of sounding dramatic, I believe that understanding motherhood has never been as crucial as it is today. More of our children are born prematurely, or are born at term but with neurological damage such as learning problems (and suck problems), concentration or sensorial disorders, and a spectrum of autistic disorders. Indeed, it is estimated that 1 out of 96 children are born with an austistic disorder, and nearly every second boy has some degree of concentration or sensorial integration disorder. We need to understand how we got where we are today and what we can do about it — for although this problem belongs to society as a whole, and as a society we will eventually have to come to terms with it, we mothers can be proactive now, both before conception, during pregnancy and birth, and again through our choices for our baby’s nourishment. “Mother Food,” precisely because it is many books in one, can offer important impulses to this discussion.

In 1999, I was thrilled to learn that a new venue of publishing had opened up: “Print on Demand,” a digital publishing arrangement that leaves complete responsibility for content and editing to the writer. This venue would allow me to write the combination how-to and cultural book that I had planned. I was energized to concentrate on writing again.

In 2000, I was almost ready to publish. Then I was bit by a tick and my life turned upside down. My doctor believes I’d had Lyme disease since my early twenties, but without its having broken out actively. With the new tick bite, Lyme disease quickly developed and put me out of function for six months of antibiotic treatment. When I began to recover, enough that I could consider working on this book again, I realized that I could not return to this book as it was. I had to re-write it in order to remember what it was about (Lyme disease affects memory and thinking processes)! And that was a good thing.

Again I had boxes of books to read. Wonderfully, everything I read in the very most recent books on diet, the immune system, allergy, and babycare confirmed and complimented what I already knew. Now I had many more insights for mothers. I continued to work toward publication, and in 2001, became a certified holistic lactation consultant in a new school founded in Switzerland. Local midwives referred mothers to me who had extraordinary problems with milk supply. Most wonderfully, I moderated a breastfeeding group on the internet where mothers with exceptional breastfeeding difficulties congregate for support. In 2005, this group became a non-profit, MOBI Motherhood Intl. (Mothers Overcoming Breastfeeding Issues).

What is Unique about Mother Food?

The central goal of Mother Food is to address breastfeeding issues that are linked to a baby’s apparent suffering at the breast, such as persistent hunger from true low supply, and pain from colic, reflux, and allergy. These conditions are the least well explored in breastfeeding literature today, and mothers who describe having these problems often feel misunderstood by their healthcare providers.

Another goal is to include a historic overview of mother foods from ancient Greece, India and China. These comparisons offer fascinating surprises and insights that are the birthright of all mothers.