Because women so often dream of houses—a very concrete symbol of our psyches and our bodies—I have depicted the female hero’s journey as a journey through a house. Each room of this house contains challenges that we must face in order to find the treasure that also awaits us in that room. Our mother’s womb is the foundation or “basement” of our house. We enter the first room by going through physical labor and birth, followed by a period of postpartum adjustment. The energies of conception, gestation, labor, and birth that brought us into physical life will then repeat themselves metaphorically as we move from one room to the next, meeting the challenges associated with that room and also reaping the rewards and finding the treasures.

To grow and evolve to the subsequent stage of development—the next room—we must go through labor and birth yet again. Appropriate timing for this process is as crucial to our health and happiness as is the timing of labor during a pregnancy. Failure to progress and move on when we have reached the end of a developmental stage, or trying to skip a stage and moving on too soon, are associated with health risks—even, in some cases, premature death.

As an obstetrician-gynecologist, mother, and author, I have come to see that every significant creation in our lives, whether it be a child, a work of art, a home, a relationship, or our life itself, requires an investment of life energy similar to that of a human pregnancy. And each of our creations, like each of our children, is also shaped and influenced by our own consciousness.

That’s not all. Each creation also requires a support structure to sustain and nourish it, just as the human placenta nourishes the unborn child. And most intriguingly, each of our creations goes through essentially the same stages that women go through when we create and birth new life into the world. The biological and cosmic processes of conception, pregnancy, labor, birth, and the postpartum period are physical metaphors for how we create everything in our lives. These processes are the mechanism through which we carry out the dictates of our internal blueprint for creation. All mothers give their daughters this profound legacy.

An impressive number of world traditions have acknowledged the seven-year cycle in human development. In the Jesuit tradition, for instance, a child is said to have reached the age of reason by age seven. Rudolf Steiner, the founder of the Waldorf school movement and Anthroposophical medicine, taught that children are biologically and intellectually ready to read only after their secondary teeth come in at about age seven. The famous modern psychologist Erik Erikson also divided the life cycle into developmental stages— though not of seven years—each of which is associated with specific challenges, conflicts, and achievements.

Based on tradition and my own experience, I have assigned seven years to the passage through each room in the house of life. This, however, is not meant to be a straitjacket of “shoulds” that you must follow to be healthy and successful. It is meant rather as a broad framework to give you an idea of the terrain you or your daughter will be covering in your unique journey through life.

Just as there’s no way to predict exactly when one will go into labor and give birth, there’s no way to predict the timing of one’s journey through a given room. There is considerable normal variation in how long it will take to meet the challenges and find the treasure associated with the room in which they are cached. Some women move through a given room in two or three years. Others need ten years or even more for the same passage. Sometimes you may even need to go backward for a while, revisiting a room that you thought you’d left for good. An accident or illness will often force you to do just that.

I firmly believe that each of our lives is imbued with a unique purpose and meaning from the very beginning. Our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors are the way in which we tap into and further develop our life’s purpose and innate creativity. Each time we encounter one of life’s obstacles or tests, no matter what their timing, we have the opportunity to either blame our outward circumstances for our problems or go within ourselves and make contact with our souls and our creativity. If we do this consciously and repeatedly throughout our life cycles, we develop significant inner resources and skills that help us carry out our unique purpose. And as a result, we become a gift to ourselves and to the world. Our life, regardless of our circumstances, becomes a blessing that adds richness and goodness to our families and our world.

On this journey, mothers and daughters are in partnership from the very beginning. The circumstances of a mother’s conception, pregnancy, labor, and birth with her daughter form the original imprint that her daughter encodes about what to expect as she moves from one room to the next on her life’s journey. Yet it is the baby who initiates labor, and the mother whose body must relax into the process. These experiences form the very foundation for every subsequent developmental stage. They are the grist for the mill that our souls will grind and refine repeatedly throughout life.

One of my friends notes that whenever she’s involved in a project, her “pregnancies” are overdue. She spends an inordinate amount of time in the gestational period, gathering information, collating it, and fact-checking. Then she tends to “deliver” her project precipitously. She was astounded when she found out that her mother’s pregnancy with her was nearly a month overdue. Her mother finally went into labor and had a very quick birth after taking castor oil and driving over bumpy roads. The daughter’s creative challenges were different, but she mirrored her mother in how she met them.

The treasures associated with our life’s journey include health, love, a sense of gratitude, creativity, joy, freedom, abundance, and success. All of these qualities contribute greatly to our state of physical health. These treasures are found by meeting the challenges of each room.

If we have not successfully met the challenges associated with a given room and can’t apply the skills developed in appropriate ways, then we’re apt to get stuck in that room. As a result, our physical and emotional health may be at risk. Our relationships may also suffer if we try to keep our children and/or loved ones in that same room with us long after it’s time for them to move on.

Learn More — Additional Resources

• Mother-Daughter Wisdom, by Christiane Northrup, M.D. Chapter 2: “Life Is a Series of Wombs; The Inner Blueprint of Creation of Growth.”