If you’re a single woman longing for marriage and motherhood, charting your cycles might feel somewhat fruitless—perhaps even a bit painful. But Natural Womanhood believes that the body literacy one can gain through charting is never useless, and that it can still be a valuable (and even fruitful!) process. Below, Beth K., a single woman and natural family planning (NFP) instructor, shares with us the value—and the pain points—of charting as a single woman, for which she has found understanding through prayer. As a practicing Catholic, Beth’s prayer practice may sound foreign to non-Catholic readers, but it reveals the deep connection between our human struggles and our spiritual life.
Beth’s story
Beth Kopczyk first heard about natural family planning (NFP) from her mom, who together with Beth’s dad taught NFP classes to engaged and married couples while Beth was growing up. As a youngster, Beth didn’t know that married couples use NFP (also known as fertility awareness methods, FAM, or fertility awareness-based methods, FABMs) to effectively space pregnancies, but she knew that her older sister checked her temperature every morning, even though she was single. So, from a young age, Beth understood that fertility awareness could be relevant for women who weren’t married, but wanted to track their cycles–especially to know when “Aunt Flo” would be visiting next.
As Beth told Natural Womanhood, “I remember my older sister telling me that she knows exactly when her period comes because she was taking her temperature. Since we shared a room, I would hear [her] thermometer beeping every morning and she would show me her charts.”
Beth herself only had a passing interest in charting her cycles at the time, occasionally taking her temperature with the thought of determining when her period was approaching. She didn’t fully understand how temperature observations correlated with the fertile and infertile times of a woman’s cycle, and how it could be used for overall health monitoring. Several years went by, and college graduation came and went, before Beth committed to an unusual New Year’s resolution that would change everything.
Her New Year’s resolution involved a thermometer
Beth summed up, “A few years out of college, I decided to try taking my temperature consistently for my New Year’s resolution. I had never completed a New Year’s resolution up to that point, but I was determined to see if taking my temperature “worked” (especially to figure out when my period was coming). A few months into taking my temperature, I shared with my sister what I was doing.” Beth was surprised by what she heard next! “At that point [my sister] was married with one son, and her husband was consistently charting with her. She told me ‘you can’t just take your temperature, you also have to chart your cervical mucus!’”
Beth continued, “Well, I started looking at the pre-printed cervical mucus symbol key more closely on my own charts, and figured enough to chart some of my mucus signs. It definitely wasn’t enough info to accurately chart [for family planning purposes], but even still, I was amazed at the data I found.” After a year of diligently charting, Beth says, “I wanted to share with everyone that a woman’s body is telling her about her fertility!”
Her appreciation for NFP turned into a career
Beth found the knowledge she gained of her body from charting her cycles so valuable. Her desire to share this knowledge with others soon led her to pursue certification as an NFP instructor. Since then, she’s turned this passion into a career by teaching NFP within her diocese. She says, “At the beginning of the next year, I took an NFP class, and registered to get training in teaching NFP for our diocese… I was blessed to have been offered a job in our diocesan Natural Family Planning office, where I currently work and teach NFP to single women and couples preparing for marriage.”
Frustrated with her singleness, she heard this in prayer
While Beth has found great goodness in the body literacy and knowledge of her fertility gained through charting, she also found it revealed a “pain point” of sorts in her life: her singleness.
“As a single woman,” she says, “I have struggled with wanting to get married. I felt like the knowledge of NFP was a good preparation, among other things, for me to be married, and I often found myself frustrated with my state in life. With the knowledge of my fertility, I knew when I was in my fertile time.”
She continues, “One particular cycle, I was very aware that my body was preparing to ovulate. That evening I went to the Lord in [Eucharistic] adoration and cried out to Him (through my journaling): ‘Lord, I want to be a wife and a mother. You know I am fertile, and yet there is no way for me to get pregnant right now. (I was fully aware that I would not have sex until I was married.) I SO desire to have a baby in my womb, and I long to be a mother.’”
Beth’s cry of frustration and disappointment didn’t go unanswered. “As I poured out my heart to the Lord, I heard Him respond, saying, ‘My beloved daughter, what if My plans for your child are not for the egg that is being released this month? What if My timing is so uniquely designed that I know which specific egg and sperm I want to meet and which DNA is in that specific egg and sperm? What if My plans for that little baby that has not yet been formed are different than what you imagine? For I have known the exact moment each egg and sperm will meet before time began!’”
Seeing a woman’s fertile time as ‘holy ground’
Beth shared her reflections on that profound experience with Natural Womanhood with the hope of encouraging other single women who may be feeling similarly frustrated, and wondering if charting is worth the added struggle. “My experience in adoration really showed me that God cares about my fertility much more than I even do, and He wants to be intimately involved in every aspect of my life. It was a reminder to me that God is in control of my life and has better plans for me than I could ever think of!”
She shared, “A woman once told me that the fertile time in a woman’s life is ‘holy ground,’ similar to the place where Moses went and saw the burning bush. God told him to remove his sandals, for the place where he was standing was holy ground. I believe a woman’s fertile time is like that: it is a particular place where the Lord can enter into a woman’s (and a couples’) life.”
Fruitfulness in a time of singlehood
She explained further, “For myself, this experience in adoration helped me to hope and trust that this time in my life is good–that even right now, Christ can and has made me fruitful. I find that I’m able to trust God with my desires, and see that He is fulfilling them in some way right now. I don’t have to wait until I’m married to have fruitfulness from this time of my life.”
She added, “This prayer experience also allowed me to have a particular reverence for the fertility of women, especially my own. It has also allowed me to not run from these desires, but rather to press into them, and to recognize that God is still moving in this place!”
Is fertility awareness charting data just ‘useless knowledge’ for single women?
Asked what she would say to a woman who views fertility awareness data as “useless knowledge” in the single years, when it may not be “usable” for conception, Beth responded, “The knowledge we learn about our bodies is usable no matter what the state of life we are in! Why does a woman track her period (which I find that most women do)? Typically, it’s so she doesn’t bleed over her underwear and pants, so that she is prepared. Likewise, a woman can be prepared for her ovulation, which is the central point of the cycle. A woman will know that her interest in men might be higher during ovulation, and that our bodies are physically made to unite. Awareness of one’s cycle leads to a greater self-knowledge that can then allow you to give yourself in a more full way. It also allows us to recognize the uniqueness of each person and each individual cycle.”
Beth acknowledges that, at times, the inability to use fertility knowledge for conception can still feel very stressful, and said “I think that with everyone, there will likely be times when charting may be difficult and we may need to stop charting for a time, and that’s okay.” Still, Beth believes every woman deserves to understand how to access and interpret her own personal health data. “I personally think this knowledge must be shared with everyone since it is the beauty of God’s design for our bodies.”
Many of our readers at Natural Womanhood come from a faith-based background like Beth’s. We sincerely hope that sharing her story of encouragement and purpose during her single years inspires other readers to see the goodness of their female design from a fresh perspective, understanding that each woman’s fertility is meant to be a biological reminder of her call to personal fruitfulness no matter what season of life she is in—and that the opportunity to better understand and care for ourselves is never a useless endeavor.
Additional reading and listening:
NW Podcast S2 Ep. 4: FAM for Single Women
How to become a fertility awareness method instructor
Coming to appreciate my fertility: from middle school days to now
This is such a beautiful testimony! Awareness of our pain and identifying what it is makes it easier to face and even offer to God in unity with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which is Christ Himself in His Passion.