In honor of National Infertility Week later this month, Life Without Baby is going live.
I’ll be doing a live online broadcast and interviewing some amazing women about coming to terms with being childfree, whether by choice, chance, or circumstance. We have all arrived here by different paths, but we also share so many similar issues, as you know if you’ve been reading this blog for a while. I’m hoping this will be a great opportunity to really talk openly (and not just write and edit in private) about this very important issue.
So, I’d like to know: What do you want to talk about? If you could sit down with someone who’s walked the path and made peace with not having children, what would you ask her? It could be a specific question or a general topic of conversation, whatever you’d like to know.
You can post topics and questions in the comments, or if you’d prefer, you can email me directly at: editor [at] lifewithoutbaby [dot] com.
I’ll post more details about the event soon. In the meantime, I look forward to hearing from you.
~Lisa
Was there one key turning point you remember on your path to being at peace with being childless?
I’m also interested in this question – as well as what were the things that helped you (still do help you) to be ok with being childless.
How do you respond to probing and insensitive questions like, why haven’t you used a donor egg and why haven’t you tried adopting?
How do you overcome the fear of being alone in late life?
Have you lost many friends when they become mothers? If not, then do you have any tips on how to preserve the friendship?
Like IrisD, I wonder about strategies to deal with the aging without family support issues. I also wonder if there are any strategies to dealing with friends issues: feeling isolated, being the only one in your cohort without kids, making new friends with child free people, etc.
How long did it take to find happiness after infertility hell?
Did you find that once you reached that point of “being ok”, that you’d have set backs? If so, how did you respond to those set backs? And how did you find the strength to just keep pushing forward?
How do you ever make peace within? Do you ever get over the loss? Where do you find someone to talk to? I am 53 and feel worse about infertility now than when I was younger. I thought I had reached an okay point around 40, but not now.
If you have a male partner, what did he experience during the various stages of infertility? What supports were available to him? How did the potentially diffferent processes of grief & recovery affect the relationship? What do you wish you could each tell your younger selves?
How long did it take you to come to peace with being childless/At what point do you stop grieving? How do you leave behind the lifelong dream/image/plan of becoming a mother? How do you come to grips knowing you’ll never make your parents into grandparents? How did they react?
“Studies show that MEN actually have an advantage for their career (promotion etc.) if they have children. Do you feel that you are at a disadvantage in your professional life because you are childless?”
Someone asked me something similar recently (a student interviewing me for her master’s thesis. she didn’t know i was childless-not-by-choice, of course. The question was, do I believe it’s and advantage for women in professional life to have children). i think that would make an interesting discussion.
Have you already chosen your interview partners? If not, could you please, please, please include some women in a childless-by-marriage/childless-by-separation/divorce/childless-not-by-choice-and-single situation? Please? We get left out sometimes….
Elena, absolutely. 🙂
cool, Lisa. I’m looking forward to that broadcast!
Ladies,
Thanks for all these great questions and topic ideas. If you have more, please keep them coming.
I will post more information a little closer to the time, so stayed tuned.
Thanks for your participation. I wish we could all sit down for tea (or wine) and just talk about all these issues, but hopefully this will be the next best thing and a little more convenient. 🙂
Lisa -x-
All of these are great questions. I related to every single one.
I honestly am still struggling with the “you can have my kids” or “take my kids for a week”. A couple of times I couldn’t stop my snarky answer: Would you reeeeeally give up your child for Any.Single.Thing? No? And then my No. Didn’t think so….
Will you be able to post specifics after?
DAK. Yes. If the technology gods smile on us, the broadcast will be recorded so you can watch it later.