Ever since my mentor Dr. Christiane Northrup challenged me to “be less sperm, more egg” two and a half years ago, I’ve committed to less of the pushing, striving, and making it happen “spermy”-ness that has always been my modus, in favor of more attracting, magnetizing, and receiving that characterizes the oh-so-divinely feminine egg. As Martha Beck said to me when we were discussing this, “Lissa, the egg is just bigger.”

I’ll never forget it. I was sixteen, getting ready to go to prom with my high school senior boyfriend Pete. My BFF had curled my hair and put it up just so. I was wearing blue eye shadow from the Clinique bonus I had just gotten as a side effect of buying moisturizing cream I never used for fear of acne breakouts. And I was all dolled up in pink taffeta with puffy Cinderella sleeves someone should have warned me would embarrass me years later.

In the summer of 2009, shortly after Christine Bronstein had given birth to her third child, she couldn’t explain why the tears wouldn’t stop streaming from her eyes. After all, for the first time in her life, she finally had what she had always craved - a relatively “normal” family. Yet in spite of her two healthy sons and her beautiful newborn girl, sadness washed over her.

I was reading my shero Brené Brown’s new book Daring Greatly: How The Courage To Be Vulnerable Transforms The Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead when I reached page 51 and my heart stopped in an “OMG, how did she read my mind, and how did she know exactly how to give language to something that’s been hurting for years?” sorta way.