Case Study · No. VI

A photograph of an embryo.

A friend, an IVF transfer, and a 10–15% chance.

On a womb ceremony held before a friend's IVF transfer at 44, and the long arc of relationship the work asks for.

Ixchel Kinloch·2026

A child wading into the clear green water of the Yuba River, granite boulders and oak forest behind. — The Yuba River, where the story arrived back to me, in a photograph, through tears.

This past weekend, I drove up to visit a dear friend I've known for more than twenty years.

As my children splashed in the Yuba River, we sat together catching up on life, work, family, motherhood, and all the ways we've changed since we first met as young women.

At one point, she pulled out her phone and showed me a photo of her embryo. Through tears, she shared that her IVF transfer had been successful.

I knew enough about her journey to understand what a significant moment this was. Only later did I look up the statistics and learn that for a 44-year-old woman undergoing IVF with her own embryo, the odds of implantation success are cited between 10% and 15%.

I sat there in awe.

Handwritten intentions on cream paper resting on a clipboard, beside a red candle and a framed photograph of a Bwiti elder. — October 2025, her intentions, set at the altar before our first ceremony.

Just a month earlier, in April, I had held space for her in a womb ceremony before that transfer.

Our first ceremony together had taken place in October 2025. Over the months that followed, we continued the conversation, the reflection, and the relationship. By the time she returned in April, we were able to enter much deeper territory.

A woman resting on the ceremony table beneath soft blankets, deep red rose petals scattered across her womb, a red candle in the windowsill. — April 2026, the womb ceremony.

The ceremony was devoted to motherhood, lineage, healing, and the possibility of new life. Because we had already worked together, there was a depth of trust that allowed us to go far beyond what is possible in a first meeting. During a particularly potent bodywork session, I was able to work directly with trauma she carried in her womb and ancestral line. As layers began to release, she shared that it felt as though we were reaching beyond her individual story and into patterns that had been carried for generations. By the end of the process, she described feeling lighter, clearer, and more connected to herself than she had in years.

Close-up of deep pink and red rose petals scattered across the womb during ceremony.

Open notebook with handwritten questions, 'What wisdom do you want to share with me?', 'How do I embrace all of my abundance?', 'What is my purpose?', beside a red candle and a framed photograph of a Bwiti elder. — The questions she carried into the soul journey.

Through that work and a subsequent soul journey, she connected not only with her own soul, but with the spirit of her future son, Oliver, asking questions about the mother she hoped to become and the life she hoped to help bring into the world.

The following month, in May, her IVF transfer was successful.

What struck me, sitting beside the river, was the arc. Some of the most meaningful work unfolds through relationship and over time.

Sun-dappled flagstone patio after ceremony, a pink bucket of spent rose stems, scattered petals and herbs returning to the earth. — After the ceremony, petals returned to the earth.

From our first ceremony in October, to a womb ceremony in April, to seeing a photograph of an implanted embryo this past weekend, I was reminded that this work does not happen in a single sitting.

This ceremony also took place during the early days of my newest incarnation, IXCHEL Spiritual Clinic. In the Fang Bwiti tradition in which I was initiated, the clinic is held as the womb: a place of healing, gestation, and emergence. There is something profoundly meaningful to me that one of the first ceremonies held within IXCHEL Spiritual Clinic was devoted to the womb, motherhood, lineage, and the possibility of new life.

Sitting beside the Yuba River, looking at that photograph, I felt an immense sense of gratitude, for my friend's courage, for the trust she placed in me, and for being invited into one small part of a much larger story.

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