It’s Whiny Wednesday, time to bring your gripes, woes, and worries to the table.
What’s on your mind this week?
Whiny Wednesday
May 1, 2013 20 Comments
Asparagus in my Future
April 15, 2013 6 Comments
Last month I did something I’ve been thinking about for years and which signified a real and definite change in my outlook on life. I planted an asparagus bed.
For those of you who aren’t horticulturally-inclined, planting an asparagus bed is kind of a big deal. Asparagus takes up a lot of space, with tall spreading plants. The plants don’t produce edible asparagus in the first year and have to be carefully tended and consistently watered to produce crisp, delicious spears the following year. With care, the plants will continue to produce year after year, but planting a bed means dedicating a large patch of garden and making a long-term commitment, which is why I haven’t done it before and why it’s so significant to me now.
So much in my life has been uncertain for so long that I’ve found it hard to make plans for a month in advance, let alone commit to a project that will take at least a year to come to fruition and will mean an ongoing commitment of many years. Ever since my future as a mother began to look uncertain, I haven’t been able to form a clear picture of how my life might look down the road. Setting goals and making plans has felt pointless when I’ve no idea what my desired destination is anymore.
Although having a bed of homegrown asparagus isn’t exactly a fully-formed picture of my ideal life, and there is certainly a lot of fuzziness around the path my life will take now, my decision to commit to planting took forward planning and feels like the beginnings of commitment and permanence. It’s a step towards a positive future…and a very tasty future, at that.
Happy 3rd Blogiversary
March 15, 2013 13 Comments
Tomorrow marks the third blogiversary of Life Without Baby! Three years ago, I sat on the patio of a little café in Wine Country, I ordered a dozen oysters and a glass of sparkling wine, and I wrote my first blog post. My, how time has flown.
For the sake of my health I am writing this post from the couch in my office and drinking tea rather than champagne, but it’s fun to reflect back on the past three years and see how far the blog has come, and how far I have come on my own journey.
I’m thinking of all the people who’ve come and gone from the blog over the years, those who’ve stayed, and those who’ve become good friends. I’m thinking about the 808 posts, 359, 577 visits, and 5,594 comments that the blog has accrued, and it makes me smile.
So, maybe it is cause to crack open the champagne after all. In fact, I’ve decided to throw a party to celebrate. And as with any good party, there’ll be presents.
If you’d like your very own copy of my book, I’m Taking My Eggs and Going Home: How One Woman Dared to Say No to Motherhood (or you’d like to give one to someone else) you download a free copy in whichever e-format you like from Smashwords. Just use the coupon code EJ59W.
In addition, several people have expressed an interest in the new Road Map to Healing program, but don’t have the resources to pay, so I’m also offering a Pay-What-You-Can donation option. Registration is normally $159, but this weekend you can sign up for whatever amount you can afford to pay (although, I’m asking that you consider a donation of at least $30.)
You can learn more about that program here, then if you’d like to enroll, please use this link, not the registration link on that page.
Both these presents are only available for the blogiversary weekend only, so if you want to get yours, please do so before the end of Sunday.
Oh, and if you’d like to bring your own blogiversary present to the party, the best thing you could give me would be to write a glowing review for my book on Amazon. It’s about the most valuable gift a writer could ask for.
So, thanks for all your support these past three years, and I do hope you’ll get yourself a present to celebrate.
Silly Dancing and Other Childish Behavior
March 11, 2013 6 Comments
Have you ever wanted to dance for absolute no good reason? This feeling has been creeping up on me a lot recently.
Sometimes I feel trapped in my adult body and my grown-up brain. Part of me wants to break free from my stiff ankles and sore lower back and just do a silly dance. Part of me wants to let go of my dignity and decorum and run the risk of being seen to “show off.”
Is this childish or just childlike?
There’s a part of me that’s always been a bit of a rebel, albeit a law-abiding rebel. And lately that rebel inside wants to throw off the mantle of respectability, discard expectations of middle age, ignore the assessing eyes of the well-behaved and the socially compliant.
If I was a parent I would have to be socially compliant; I’d have to be well-behaved. Yes, there are many badly-behaved parents in the world, but nobody thinks much of them. Parents are supposed to be good.
But I’m not a parent, so do I have to behave?
That rebel inside me wants to dance. It wants be a little bit naughty. My rebellious inner child wants to come out to play again, and I’m not sure there’s any reason she shouldn’t.
My inner rebel wants to feel the syncopated rhythm of a life well-lived.
What about you? Does your inner child want to come out to play?
Your Stories
March 7, 2013 1 Comment
Sadly, I have no guest post this week. But you can change that!!
I’d love to share your writing here. Even if you think you’re not a writer, you have something to say, a story to tell, a point-of-view to share. And if you think you’re the only person to ever feel a certain way, I promise you, you’re not.
If you need some inspiration, here a few recent posts from Kathleen, Sparkling Rain, Maybe Lady Liz, Amelia Ricardo, and Robin.
If you’d like to share your story, please take a look at the writer’s guidelines for ideas and suggestions. If you’re concerned about privacy, you’re very welcome to writer under a pseudonym. And if you have a blog or website of your own to share, I’m more than happy to toot your horn.
I looking forward to hearing what you have to say.
“Perfect Red”: A Valentine’s Day Interview with Author Jennie Nash
February 14, 2013 7 Comments
It’s Valentine’s Day and what better day to talk about the topic of passion—not necessarily the romantic kind, but the “courage to follow your dreams” variety.
I had the opportunity to talk with my good friend, author Jennie Nash about her new novel Perfect Red and about her passion for encouraging dreamers and creative types. And by the way, she was instrumental in prodding me to follow my own passion, to write my book and create this site!
You can see the interview below and read Chapter 1 of Perfect Red here.
I have my own copy of Perfect Red, and if you’d like one too, Jennie has generously offered to give away three signed copies. All you have to do is email her and on Sunday February 17th she’ll select three winners at random.
You can reach her at: jennie.nash [at] gmail [dot] com.
Follow Friday Comes to the Blog World
February 8, 2013 5 Comments
If you’re a Twitter user, you’ll probably know about Follow Friday. Follow Friday is a chance to give a shout out to tweeps you follow and spread the word about what others are doing.
I always seem to forget about Follow Friday, so this week I thought I’d bring it to the blog and share the happenings of some of my fellow bloggies.
On The Road Less Travelled, loribeth hits on a topic I’ve been trying to articulate lately—the obsession we have with the life we didn’t get to live and how easily that story can come to define us.
Jody Day at Gateway Women is taking that same topic and shaking it up with her upcoming book, “Rocking the Life Unexpected: 12-Weeks to Your Plan for a Meaningful & Fulfilling Life without Children.” She’s crowd funding to get the book published, so if you’d like to help her, you can find out more here.
Over at Silent Sorority, Pamela is celebrating her six-year Blogaversary and reminiscing about the Bad Old Days when the blogosphere was all but silent on the topic of living childfree after infertility.
La Belette Rouge has a word or two to say, most eloquently, on the topic of bitterness.
And at No Kidding in NZ, Mali makes a case that not having kids keeps you young.
Please check out these blogs, if you haven’t already. And in case you are a Twitterer, you can find Life Without Baby tweeting and twittering at @lifewithoutbaby.
Whiny Wednesday: Facebook Vacation
February 6, 2013 15 Comments
I’ve been on a Facebook vacation since the beginning of the year. There were a number of factors that played into my decision, including the amount of mindless time I was frittering away, a sudden surge in baby news, and an alarming surge in banal twaddle from people I wasn’t interested in hearing about.
I also realized that I was walking around talking to myself in third person status updates: Lisa Manterfield is doing dishes and wondering why she moved into a house with no a dishwasher. Lisa Manterfield is in a bad mood today and wishes today was Whiny Wednesday.
I don’t know when I’ll be back from my FB vacation, but I can’t say I’m missing it at all.
As it turns out, it IS Whiny Wednesday. What do you wish you could take a vacation from this week?
Whiny Wednesday: Unsubscribe Means Unsubscribe
January 23, 2013 15 Comments
I’ve been on a mission lately to cleanse my email inbox. It got to the point that I was getting so much junk email in my various accounts that I couldn’t even find the important emails. So, one morning I set off on and Unsubscribe mission and I’ve been going at it ever since.
For the most part, it’s going well, but I am finding some very persistent marketers who don’t seem to be able to comprehend why anyone would want to leave their precious mailing lists, so they send an email just to make sure I really want to leave. And I swear that, since I’ve unsubscribed, some companies have now flagged me as a live human being and have added me to a special list of people to be hounded ten-fold.
But slowly I’m getting a grip on my inbox. I can even see my actual email now!
It’s Whiny Wednesday. What’s irking you today?
…In With the New!
January 7, 2013 7 Comments
Happy New Year!
Welcome back. Hope you all had a wonderful holiday season.
As you can see, a few things have changed around here over the past couple of weeks, and today I am very pleased and proud to unveil the brand new site, or Life Without Baby 2.0, as I’ve been calling it.
If you’ve been hanging with me on the old blog for a while, don’t worry, you’ll find all the old posts and all your old friends still here. If you’re used to finding yourself over on the community site, that’s here too, with everything as it was.
You’ll also find some new features, such as a resource library of useful information (Learn) and some new programs that will be coming up this year (Get Help).
Some things are still works-in-progress and I’ll be gathering new information and adding it as I go. For example, I want to include a more comprehensive list of helpful books that deal with the topic of life after infertility and living childfree. If you’ve read a book that’s been helpful or inspiring, please tell me about it so I can add it to the list.
Before I send you off to snoop around the site and get acquainted, I want to introduce to three fabulous women who made all this happen.
Julia Clarke at ScarletHare designed the logo and colors for the new look.
Lee Miller of Pink Bubble Gum Websites not only went above and beyond the call of duty to put the whole site together and make it look beautiful, she also shared her web and life wisdom, made me laugh, and reminded me to take one imperfect step at a time.
When Lee and I had finished making things pretty, the unflappable Wendy Cholbi glided in and made it all work. She seamlessly moved three years of work from the two former sites and made them all come together here.
I would like to extend a huge thank you to these talented professionals for helping me do what I could never have done alone. Thanks, ladies.
And now I invite you to come inside, take a look around, and make yourselves at home.
Welcome to Life Without Baby 2.0.
