It is Thanksgiving, and I thank God every day for bringing Diane Hale, RN CFCE into my life.

A Guest Blog from SGC Co-Founder, Debra Gramlich MD CFCMC

I met Diane 24 years ago when I was first learning the Creighton Model as a young breastfeeding mom, and we have worked professionally together since co-founding the St. Gianna Center in 2009.

Diane has a heart that loves and gives and just seems to expand without limit, like the heart of Christ. I have personally experienced this love from her in so many ways: daily text messages with a prayer and a beautiful picture to lift me up that day, her incredible memory for my birthday every year, her amazing little notes with profound wisdom she delights me with at Christmas, the authenticity and joy she showed with each of my pregnancies, and her powerful prayers for my intentions whenever I ask for them.

I know Diane and her incredible life story, and her expansive heart has been molded and shaped by her faith in Jesus and the wisdom and virtues she developed through married life, motherhood, and many years spent working as an emergency room nurse and also as a certified FertilityCare Educator. Diane has 10 children, 30 grandchildren, 24 great grandchildren, and 5 great- great grandchildren! She is a living witness to the beauty of fertility and both biological and spiritual motherhood.

Diane has taught almost 1200 clients how to chart their cycles with the Creighton Model FertilityCare system (CrMS), which has published effectiveness studies in peer-reviewed research journals for both achieving and avoiding pregnancy, as well as ongoing and previously published research on its applications for Naprotechnology in the treatment of infertility and many other conditions.

Fertility Appreciation: The ability to mutually value, respect, and understand one’s fertility.

However, education in FertilityCare is much more than just learning science and an awareness of fertility signs. Fertility appreciation is the deeper foundational concept of the Creighton Model and is “defined as the ability to mutually value, respect, and understand one’s fertility” (1. Hilgers et al, 2002, p. 6).

FertilityCare practitioners teach this appreciation for fertility to their clients through positive language, encouragement, one-on-one accompaniment, professionalism, and by helping the client/couple grow in SPICE (spiritual, physical, intellectual, creative, communicative, and emotional) intimacy.

Women and couples are taught the difference between affirmative touch and arousal touch, and the difference between a cerebrocentric approach to sexuality based on human communion and the genitocentric view held by the world in which we live. How these concepts are lived and embraced by the individual woman or married couple can vary, but Fertility Care Practitioners like Diane are committed to educating and walking with every person who comes for this education, helping them along the way with the challenges that may arise. Each Practitioner truly prays for them to experience, through this knowledge of how their bodies are designed to function, an appreciation of God’s love for them. Diane Hale embraces this role and embodies the ideals of Fertility Appreciation.

Back in 2001 when my husband Gregor and I first started this journey with FertilityCare, we were doubtful and honestly, afraid of an unexpected pregnancy. But God was mercifully patient with us. As Gregor and I grew in our ability to understand our fertility and to communicate better on many levels, we began to experience this deeper communion described here by St. John Paul II:

“To accept the cycle and to enter into dialogue means to recognize both the spiritual and the corporal character of conjugal communion, and to live personal love with its requirement of fidelity. In this context the couple comes to experience how conjugal communion is enriched with those values of tenderness and affection which constitutes the inner soul of human sexuality, in its physical dimensions also. In this way sexuality is respected and promoted in its truly and fully human dimension and is never ‘used’ as an ‘object’ that, by breaking the personal unity of soul and body, strikes at God’s creation itself at the level of the deepest interaction of nature and person.” (2. St. John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, paragraph 32)

It was both Diane’s living witness and the knowledge and loving accompaniment that she gave my husband and me through the Creighton model that helped us to grow out of a worldly view of fertility as something to be feared and controlled into a much deeper and more profound appreciation of our fertility.

This truly transformed our lives and remains a precious and eternal gift for our marriage and for our children.

If you or a couple you know is searching for more meaning in marriage, if you are struggling with understanding your fertility and God’s design for your marriage, or you want to learn more about your fertility and how to enrich your marriage, contact the St Gianna Center at 813-421-4625 to start learning the art of Fertility Appreciation and CrMS. Diane leads a team of eight women at St Gianna Center who are Fertility Care Practitioners and Practitioner Interns. They are ready to accompany you on a journey to learn the beautiful art of Fertility Appreciation.

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1. Hilgers, Thomas et al. The Creighton Model FertilityCare System: A Standardized Case Management Approach to Teaching. Book 1: Basic Teaching Skills. 2 nd ed. Pope Paul VI Institute Press, 2002, Omaha NE.

2. St. John Paul II. “Apostolic Exhortation on the Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World-Familiaris Consortio.” Vatican: the Holy See. Rome, 22 Nov 1981.