Thankfully, Louise's lump was benign, but that was the last day she took the pill.
Off the pill, Louise felt she had run out of options. She knew she was extremely fertile and had even had an illegal abortion before the pill - an experience she would not repeat. "I can either violate my body before (with the pill) or after (with an abortion). Why must I do violence to myself to prevent conception?" she asked. (p.13)
That question began Louise's fascinating journey into the connection between moonlight and fertility and led to the writing of Lunaception: A Feminine Odyssey into Fertility and Contraception first published in 1974. "Lunaception is a chronicle of my own search for an effective way to avoid conception without violating my body. I found what I wanted. And a great deal more." (Forward)
Louise felt alienated from her own body and ignorant of its systems, so she began her search by reading books on sexual reproduction. She marveled at the process of reproduction and began to question the whole idea of birth "control."
Her journey then led her to the study of anthropology, where she found "hundreds of different references to connections between women and the moon, and between menstruation and the moon. A connection was universally assumed, throughout recorded time." (p.77) She discovered that the majority of the world's languages have a common root word for "moon" and "menstruation." In English, for example, "menstruation" comes from the Latin word "mensis" which means "month" and is related to moon. In many cultures, she found, menstruation arrived with the new moon and fertility came with the full moon. What had happened to sever that connection in our modern culture?
Louise turned to the sciences and to the study of the rhythms and cycles that exist throughout the universe and within every biological being. There exist cycles outside of us, such as the daily cycles of light and dark, day and night. Similarly, there exist cycles within us, such as the daily fluctuations of body temperature in mammals. Louise had stumbled upon the key to her search. These cycles exist, she realized, and we cannot control them; we can only come into balance with them.
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