Inherited wisdom In her latest practical and spirited guide, Yarmouth physician and writer Christiane Northrup unveils the innate power that exists between mothers and daughters

In her new two-hour special that aired on PBS around the country in March, Christiane Northrup, a physician and writer in Yarmouth, advises women to look in the mirror and say three simple words: I love you. In a recent phone conversation, I told her I had been practicing her advice and had asked my sister to do it, too. Sometimes, I confessed to her, we find ourselves laughing when we do this.

Northrup didn’t miss a beat: “Right there, in that moment of fun, you have decreased cortisol and epinephrine. You have relaxed your blood vessels. You have enhanced your parasympathetic-sympathetic nervous system tone, lowered your blood pressure, improved your eyesight, deepened your breathing. You see? That’s it. It’s that simple.”

But after more than 20 years of working as an obstetrician and gynecologist in Yarmouth, Northrup knows that self-love isn’t always easy, especially for women. In her newest book “Mother-Daughter Wisdom,” Northrup proposes that the relationship between mothers and daughters has more emotional and symbolic clout than physicians and families have understood. As with her two earlier books “Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom” and “The Wisdom of Menopause,” the new one – already a best seller – is both a practical and spiritual guide for mothers and daughters, a kind of “Our Bodies, Our Selves” for the baby boomer generation. It includes medical explanations and direction, as well as tips for ensuring good comportment, dietary habits and financial security. When we spoke last month, Northrup was at home in Maine between gigs on her international speaking circuit and book tour.

Alicia Anstead: When I read “Mother-Daughter Wisdom,” I saw that there was so much more I could have done to be mindful as a parent. I don’t feel guilty; I did what I could with what I had. But I wish I could play a little catch-up. Can you teach daughters how to write thank-you notes at 25?

Christiane Northrup: Here’s what you can do when they are 25. This is really what I love. I have a daughter who is 24, and one who is 22. I know exactly the stage you’re talking about. When mothers change and mothers decide to rebirth themselves, it’s noticed and the ripple effect goes throughout the whole family. So at this stage, it’s not ever about what you say or do. She’s beyond that now. Now it’s about what you do for yourself that will have a huge impact. My mother is going to be 80 this year and she’s changing dramatically as a result of the work I’ve done in writing “Mother-Daughter Wisdom.” Actually, it feels like a miracle. She’s getting some joy in her energy field now.

Anstead: As I was reading your book, I began to imagine my body as a container for my mother, my grandmothers, other ancestral women, my daughter and eventually her children. It was feeling really crowded in there. How can I have my own integrity quite separate from these women who are haunting and delighting me?

Northrup: That is the neat part. The job here? Bring any messages that are holding you back to consciousness. Bring any messages that are egging you on to consciousness so that you become fully who you are. I believe our ancestors are cheering us on in that way, are living through us. You’re the latest form of that energy. As healthy and happy and joyful and accomplished as you can become, the happier the entire legacy will be. That’s the good news. That’s your only job. You don’t have to do anything for your mother. You don’t have to do anything for your daughter. You have to do it all for yourself.

Anstead: We hear so much about motherhood in the age of anxiety in the United States and the superior support mothers get socially and institutionally in Europe. What do you think our government should learn about motherhood?

Northrup: I have no idea. I don’t have a political bone in my body. I don’t think about public policy. However, let me give you one thing I think would be very good: If every woman as a given automatically got three months off to be with her baby. And well-lit beautiful places in every restaurant or theater or movie place where women could go and nurse their babies. I would like to think it’s good policy for all businesses and government to do what’s good for all women. I think what we really need to do in this country is get over our perfectionism. This baby Einstein stuff is nuts. My kids wouldn’t go to camp. They wouldn’t take lessons. They spent their summers playing in the backyard. In other words, they were kids. This business of being scheduled from five in the morning until 10 at night is insane. Kids need to be kids, and they need to go out and play and use their imagination. I didn’t feel that mother madness.

Anstead: There’s so much pressure on women who want to work and raise a family. I wonder what the effect is on daughters? What can daughters learn?

Northrup: I feel very, very grateful that I worked now that my daughters are older. The World War II mothers – most of them did not work. My mother couldn’t even take out a loan when my dad died. When the baby boomers threw off those constraints – I am woman, hear me roar – we changed the rules, and went out in the world of work. At 32, I was a partner in my medical group and had my first baby. I remember thinking: Wow, this is it? I’ve made it? Is this all there is? This isn’t as fulfilling as I thought it would be. Then I worked to balance my real life – my home life and my career life. Women were doing this all over the country. Now what you see is that their daughters have much more in common with them than I did with my mother once I got my M.D.

Anstead: The celebratory way you present labor and birth made me want to rush out and get pregnant. You associate it with joy and pleasure and bonding. These are not words that ever came up when I had a baby in 1980.

Northrup: Never. Never. I think it stems from the Judeo-Christian [belief] that Eve was the cause for Adam’s downfall and she will pay for it in pain and suffering in the form of labor. That’s a belief system so engrained in Western culture that we’ve forgotten what’s available in labor. I had a massage from a woman in Damariscotta, and she told me she measures all of her spiritual experiences by the labors with her two daughters at home in Damariscotta. She said, “It was a transcendent experience the likes of which I won’t ever reach again.” If women knew this, things would change.

Anstead: Your style is so welcoming. I appreciate that as a writer and a woman. What role do you as a writer see yourself playing in women’s lives?

Northrup: My experience is that my role is to be a medical authority that reflects back to women their own intuitive guidance, their own inner wisdom, and strengthens it by simply pointing out and telling them to trust it.

Anstead: Do you worry that women who don’t have the privileges of middle class are left out of the guidance that comes from having the time to sit down and read your book? What have you done to reach this audience?

Northup: I’m not sure there’s a way to. I believe very strongly in the law of attraction: When the student is ready, the teacher appears. I’ve received some amazing letters as a result of the public television show that is available, obviously for free, all over the United States. I know the message gets out there. The Web site is available. Women from all walks of life have access to education now at an unprecedented level. The Internet has opened the entire world up to anyone who can go to a library. But to go to a library, you have to have the will to get up.

Anstead: When you imagine your readership, is there a face to it?

Northrup: I always think about my readership as the millions of baby-boom women who came of age in the ’60s and ’70s, and their children. I also have a significant following of gay men. I’m always surprised at book signings about who’s in the audience. It’s not always what you might expect. “Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom” has been translated into 17 languages. The word is getting out there in the most amazing way. I think of each book as a child that has its own soul and its own destiny. And though I was the mother, the creation has its own life. I do what I can to get it on its feet, and then it goes where it goes.

Anstead: That’s a lovely model for parenting.

Northrup: It kind of takes away the anxiety.

Anstead: It has a wonderful custodial feel. You don’t own. You assist.

Northrup: That’s it.

Alicia Anstead can be reached at 990-8266 and aanstead@bangordailynews.net.